Ingersoll Rand Inc.

we I think I think we're I think we're good I think we're ready to go all right all right our next uh fireside chat is is Ingersoll we're in we're really happy to have Vic Kinney chief financial officer here with us today uh Vic great to see you yeah thanks for having us so I don't know if you want to open up with any initial remarks if you want to get right into Q&A however you want to do this listen why don't we just jump right into it all right perfect why don't why don't we start um look the evolution of Ingersoll has been incredible um The amount of M&A you guys have done over the last four to five years has also been incredible. It's been an important part of the value creation framework going forward. We're still trying to get to know a little bit about this ILC Dover acquisition. So why don't we start there and tell us what the strategy is behind that acquisition, ultimately what that means for your broader medical portfolio as you continue to scale the business.

Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, so let me just start by saying, you know, first and foremost, really excited by kind of the momentum we've seen. We're coming up on close to five years now since the merger to creating or saw RAND. And, you know, one of the biggest opportunities that we saw when we put the companies together was a large fragmented kind of you know, end market base, the opportunity for acquisitions. And, you know, I think one of the big things, and we'll get to ILC Dover here, was that there were a lot of bolt-on, you know, M&A opportunities. And so to set the stage, here we are in, you know, December 2024. I think over the last four and a half plus years, we've done, you know, 55, 56, you know, acquisitions. I would say all largely bolt-on in nature, and maybe ILC Dover slightly larger than a bolt-on. I think in the context of ILC Dover, No surprise that life sciences has kind of been a focal point of the strategy. As you remember, post-merger, you know, we wanted to specifically distance ourselves from, I'd say, what we call more cyclical assets. So we did take the opportunity essentially one year. In the one year post the merger, we sold, you know, the legacy Gardner Denver oil and gas pump business. the club car business, both great businesses, but just didn't fit the mission-critical flow creation, less cyclical asset portfolio that we were looking for. And now, flash forward, life sciences already was our single largest end market total business, and we saw a big opportunity with ILC Dover to kind of, let's say, create a much more firmer beachhead, if you will, on the life sciences side, both to establish life sciences even more prominently, but then also to create a platform for further M&A. I think in terms of ILC Dover, simply stated here, great platform, really exposed a lot more on what we'll call the bioprocessing side, particularly with a distinct focus in areas like consumables. So their hallmark products are things in single-use powder containment, isolators, liquid handling type applications, consumables in the context of tubing, which for us is exactly where you want to play in this space. And I think there also are some nice parallels and synergies with the existing portfolio. And so we can obviously talk a little bit more about ILT Dover, but, you know, one of the areas that's really exciting for us is, for example, in the IR medical business, which we've had, you know, we had peristaltic pump technology. We never had the consumables like the tubing and whatnot. Well, ILT Dover, one of their core competencies is silicon and thermoplastic tubing and extrusion of that nature. So now we actually have the consumables to go with our peristaltic pump technology. Powder handling and a lot of the powder handling applications, you need to have air to convey the powder in the application set and well. Flowers and vacuums are piece and parcel to Ingersoll Rand. So I think we're seeing some nice synergies in terms of, you know, what we'll call commercial or cost and centers there. But I think I'll see Dover when you think about the biopharma and the medical device business, which are essentially the 2 biggest pieces there in terms of true life sciences. Really excited. They've had great growth trajectory, continue to perform well, and we're really excited about kind of the future opportunities there. Awesome.

Look, I remember years ago, it's probably, I mean, probably when you guys were Gardner Denver, talking about scaling this medical business to one day maybe be, you know, call it a $2 billion plus type revenue business. We're getting there. We're on our way. We're getting there. You talked about those opportunities within ILC Dover necessarily being a beachhead, right? So where does this open up additional M&A bolt-on opportunities to get us to potentially that $2 billion level?

Yeah, so I think with the ILC Dover acquisition, we've opened up probably an incremental TAM that's upwards of close to $10 billion, comparatively speaking, to where we historically played. So interestingly enough, I would tell you, I think the story there is actually not too dissimilar from what you've seen in the balance of the core business. You know, when you think about how we have done M&A, it has been 90% sole sourced, including even, frankly, ILC Dover. Largely bolt-on in nature, but, you know, I'd say nice differentiated technology that we think that we can leverage and scale within Ingersoll RAN. Obviously drive, hopefully, some good cost synergies and some controllable synergies in that respect. The reality is we're seeing similar opportunities now with that kind of more established beachhead we had. We already had, I'd say, some opportunities and I'd say some funnel in the life science side. ILC Dover, quite frankly, came with its own ready-made funnel, for lack of a better way to say that. And so even in the... when we did our earnings six weeks ago, we talked that we had done roughly 15, 16 bolt-ons year-to-date, and we announced that we also had 10 more deals under LOI. One of those actually is in the life sciences space. So I think, you know, again, it'll take some time to scale and ramp like anything else, but I think you're seeing good opportunity just like you've seen in the core business to kind of replicate that model. Smaller bolt-ons, you know, I'd say prudent multiples. We're not going to go over our skis in the context of, you know, kind of strain from the discipline you've seen us do from a purchase price perspective, but a very comparable model to what you've seen on the balance of ITS and PST.

Look, we've talked a lot now about how this has created a ton of value for the company in the last few years, lots of singles and doubles, if we're going to use maybe potentially the sports analogy. It was strange with this particular acquisition, the space piece of the business and then having to lower expectations fairly shortly after you completed the deal. Maybe just talk about that piece of it, what part of the process didn't work in terms of trying to root that out ahead of time and what you learned from it.

Yeah, of course. I think we'd always say we're always learning through the process, whether it be M&A or anywhere else. Like I said, and kind of as we started, Super excited about ILC Dover. You know, I think, you know, the life sciences applications, the biopharma business, the medical device business continue to be really excited about and the synergies that come there. The space business, which obviously is, for those of you who may not be familiar, the third business within ILC Dover has legacy played in the space kind of ecosystem, spacesuits and other applications for aerospace and defense. Good business. Simply stated here, you know, went through the diligence process. To be very honest with you, I don't think there's anything that could have been done differently, if I'm being very honest. We closed the deal in June and then late June, and that's just how timing works. You know, we provide spacesuits to a third party who then provides to NASA, and said third party unexpectedly to anyone in this industry, including NASA, decided to walk away. And so they descoped it and as we're the supplier to them that obviously trickle back to us for what was called the next gen or XE bus next gen space suit. So that's just the reality of what happened. I don't think there's anything that could have been done differently or happened differently in terms of the diligence process or expectations. This is kind of was unforeseen and as unexpected as could be expected, unexpected as possible in the industry. And, you know, the way I'd say it here is, obviously, yes, a little bit of reset and expectation specifically on the space revenue base. You know, it obviously has come out of the equation, I'd say, partial year for this year because we only own the asset from June, but it is ongoing thereafter, so it's going to reset expectations from a 25 onwards perspective. Space business, it's a good business. It's one that we've always viewed as kind of the optionality in terms of the acquisition. Continuing to run it in the context of, you know, normal course. And we continue to kind of move forward from that perspective. So I think the simple answer here is anything we would have done dramatically different? No, I don't think so. Unfortunate? Sure. You know, we're continuing to move forward, though, in terms of the base business. And listen, if something of that nature or other spacesuit technology or, you know, something comes back to kind of replace some of that volume or whatnot, of course, we're well situated there. And we'll kind of see how that all plays itself out.

Makes a ton of sense. And just to contextualize it, we're talking about like roughly $30 million revenue headwinds into next year.

It's probably about $30 million this year. It's probably annualized closer to $50 million in terms of the go forward, in terms of a full year. Sure.

Okay. Going into just closing the loop here on the M&A, so you mentioned 10 LOIs. This year you were kind of punching above the weight in terms of your long-term target from M&A. I think we're expecting somewhere between like six to seven points of M&A. I think you've already got maybe three in the bag heading into next year. Next year is shaping up to be another year where you maybe do more than the long-term target?

Sure. You know, I think the way we think about it here is – let me put it this way. The funnel, whether you want to look at it as the funnel in totality, the deals under LOI as we sit here right now, I mean, you know, we – necessarily not expecting that you're going to see an ILC Dover-sized deal necessarily next year. We expect right now, and we'll always see, that it should largely be bolt-on in nature. But in terms of deal flow, funnel, good equitable spread between ITS and PST, as well as a good equitable spread, I'd say, geographically. there's no reason to expect anything different. So we're really excited about it. You know, the way we probably would say it here right now is in the context even of 2024 to date, we kind of have nine core P&Ls that kind of comprise total Ingersoll Rand. Nine that, you know, report to Vicente directly, if you will. Seven of the nine have done M&A in 2024. And I would say, you know, if you were to give us another quarter or two, you'd probably see eight of those nine having done M&A. And that spreads as far as from, you know, U.S. to China, Australia, Western Europe, India, Latin America. So, you know, it's as global as it can be, which I think speaks to the fact that this process is, you know, inherently in the business. We've got great M&A firepower engine sitting in the business, partnering with the business, and that's where the cultivation is happening. This is not happening in Davidson, North Carolina, you know, with three or four of us. No, I mean, we're helping to run the process. You're not doing it all? I'm far from it. No, we have an M&A leader. She's helping to kind of oversee the process and the funnel and cultivation and execution. But we have M&A leaders sitting in here in the business, partnering with the business leaders, because they're the ones who are seeing it day to day and may not know what assets we should really be looking at.

Great. Can you give us an update on the CARE initiative? For those not familiar with it, this is an initiative that you called out at your Investor Day in 2023. basically trying to grow the enterprise recurring revenues of the business. At the time, it was roughly a $200 million number, ultimately trying to get to a billion dollars. Any update you can give us on that initiative?

Yeah, absolutely. It was actually, I think, maybe almost one year ago exactly, right down the street here, where we put forth what we'll call a bold target and kind of restate, Joe, what you said, $200 million of what we'll call true recurring revenue. So I'll call it kind of that subset of aftermarket that's true multi-year agreements that are, you know, essentially what I'll call an annuity flow stream of revenue going from $200 million to, you know, a billion dollars by 2027. It's kind of that bold target. We're level set on where that $200 million is kind of in 2023. A lot of it, the vast majority is coming from historically what we'll call care contracts, largely within the legacy Ingersoll Rand domestic U.S. Care contracts at their core, there's multiple tiers of them, but think of it as kind of a risk transfer agreement where the customer is agreeing to enter into a multi-year agreement with Ingersoll Rand. They transfer the risk of operating their compressor to us. we are guaranteeing a certain amount of uptime, and then we are essentially taking care of that asset for them, soup to nuts, including all maintenance and whatnot thereafter. In return, they are essentially cutting us a check every single month, and it's really a win-win for both sides. From a customer perspective, peace of mind, they don't have to employ in-house service techs or anything like that, which that demographic is kind of getting aged out and hard to kind of come by. It's very forecastable for them. They don't have to deal with break-fix, and essentially it's kind of a peace of mind factor for the customer. In return, Ingersoll Rand, we have a global service tech network, so it's not like anyone can do this. We have the know-how. We have the ability with our enterprise to be able to service said compressors. And frankly, we know who to sell it to, when to sell it, how to sell it. Done properly, this is margin accretive to the enterprise. We have, like you said, about $200 million base. Done properly, it plays 60% plus gross margins. So really for us, what we have spent the last year doing, and full disclosure, a year ago we put out a bold target. And I wouldn't tell you at that point in time we had it all really mapped out. Flash forward a year, we have it mapped out essentially across the entire enterprise. Remember, this was historically a domestic U.S. kind of Ingersoll Rand. So Europe, Asia, the Gardner Denver portfolio, and then there also are targeted, not everywhere, but targeted opportunities in PST where a CARE-like model can kind of be adapted. So we really have it now mapped out by business, by product line. I would tell you down as low as level to the kind of the salesperson level. Every Friday, Vicente's staff call, you know, we are managing, you know, we have multiple KPIs, two to three, specifically on recurring revenue, where we're actually, you know, seeing what the leading indicators are to get us to that next kind of milestone. And then the other piece that's really exciting here is in addition to care, we also have kind of the air quality and the eco plant platforms that are kind of the two other legs of this stool. And so as we flash forward now to one year later, I think the momentum is really exciting. we're not getting out and giving quarterly updates on where we're at. I will say this, you know, when you take 200 million in 23 and a billion by 27, you can do the math, is it 200, 400, 600? No, there is a little bit of a ramp because there is this adoption on the global side of it. But I think as we sit here right now and getting close to the end of 2024, I should say, we feel pretty good about the momentum and we very much still feel like we're on track to that billion dollar target.

Great. Look, it was never expected to be linear, right? It sounds like Now that the plans are in place, 2025 could potentially be an inflection year, or is that the expectation?

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, 25 to 20, you know, I think without question, we expect to see acceleration. Let me be clear here. I mean, we've seen nice growth here in 24 as well. It's just, you know, it's 200 becoming 400. No, it's not exactly linear, as you said. But I think we're excited by the momentum we're seeing. I think the global adoption has been great. Eco plant is now effectively now being bundled into care. So it's kind of almost becoming another offering set. into the care model. The air quality piece is taking off as well. And so, you know, I think we're quite excited. Quite frankly, even now, the mindset change within a lot of the other businesses who historically just hadn't thought about selling this way and now seeing the model adapting kind of best practice from the U.S., which I think for us is great because you're kind of kickstarting this process to get to where we were in 2023, that $200 million. It was a decade plus, you know, of learning and, you know, to their credit, historically speaking, how to get there. I think we're accelerating that learning curve, you know, exponentially as we now take that best practice and, you know, kind of move it through the enterprise. Yeah, great to hear.

So on your latest earnings call, you guys talked about projects taking a little bit longer. Some of that was attributed to election uncertainty. The election is now behind us. Just curious, like whether there's been – Any update, any uplift that you've seen at all at this point since the election?

Yeah.

I know it's only a month away.

Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, I think the simple answer here is it's good that whatever uncertainty or quote-unquote distraction that it created is kind of behind us. Would I tell you anything has dramatically changed, at least in terms of like, you know, on the ground type activity? Not dramatically. You know, I think we always said it'll be good for this to kind of be behind us. And then we expect, you know, a gradual, you know, gradual improvement is probably the way to think about it. And so I think that's probably exactly the way, you know, things are continuing to play themselves out. So, Joe, nothing dramatic of sorts here. No, you know, light switch type effect or things of that nature. But we continue to remain encouraged by, I'd say, you know, some of that, you know, positive sentiment and whatnot that will continue to move into 2025.

Yeah. So a lot of discussion at this conference and then heading into the conference around short cycle trends. And so as we head into 2025, any comments you want to make on how you guys are thinking about the shorter cycle pieces of your business and then ultimately, you know, as you think about an initial framework for 2025, any color that you'd like to add as well?

Yeah. So, I mean, maybe one, we'll obviously, you know, give proper 25 guidance and kind of our next earning cycle. So I'll kind of step back from that for a second. What I will say here is, When you think about kind of the portfolio construct for Ingersoll Rand, roughly speaking, we'll use rough numbers, 20-25% of the revenue base is longer cycle in nature, which we just spoke about. The balance would be what I call short cycle and kind of the more aftermarket side of the equation. If you look at like the last couple quarters and whether it's ITS or PST, obviously it can be a little bit challenging to see because you've got to peel it back a layer or so. But interesting enough, I'd say the short cycle side of the equation has actually been relatively stable. You've actually even seen good book-to-bill trends in areas like PST and some of the more industrial sides of the business, which are much more book and ship and shorter cycle. So I think we continue to remain encouraged there. Now, I think as we move into 25, I would say the same comment as we said before here. I think it's going to continue to be gradual is probably the best way to say it. We don't expect some, you know, major inflection or things of that nature necessarily happen overnight. We think that, you know, gradual recovery will probably be the answer, you know, in terms of improvement and things of that nature. When you think about our business and kind of give a little bit more regional color, we're pretty global in nature, as you know. Roughly speaking, about 50% of our revenue base in the Americas, U.S. being the biggest piece of that. But the Americas has been the best performer year to date. I'd say actually Latin America has been even better, but it's relatively small comparatively speaking. Europe, or EMEA as we'll call it, Western Europe has kind of just been, frankly, a bit of a tale of which country you want to talk about. Areas like Germany have obviously seen some pretty stiff headwinds. Some other areas of Western Europe have been a little bit better, comparatively speaking. I wouldn't tell you anything has dramatically changed on that front. Our best performers, and frankly, you know, you've heard us talk about it quite a bit, have been Middle East and India, where I think the growth prospects continue to remain quite, you know, quite healthy on the go forward. And then in Asia, you know, roughly 15%, 18% of the revenue, China is obviously the biggest piece of that equation. China, without question, has obviously been the biggest headwind we've faced. What I would tell you here as we continue to move kind of through the balance of the year is, has anything changed there? No. I think at the Q3 earnings call, we said things haven't really changed. Now, if there's a positive to be had, they haven't necessarily gotten worse, but they haven't gotten better either. And I think that's the reality of what we're going to be facing moving into the first, you know, that's the reality as we move into 2025. Obviously, our team is pretty, you know, pretty large contingent in China. You know, obviously with the election, you know, there's clearly uncertainty as to what that's going to mean as we move into 2025. I think we're encouraged by at least some of the anecdotal, you know, some of the governmental stimulus things they talk about to, you know, upgrade assets from an energy efficiency perspective and things like that. I think we're well situated when that starts to come to bear. But, you know, I don't think we expect things to dramatically change on the ground in China for at least the relatively short term. So what does that mean for 25? I think it shapes itself up for... Continuation into the first half of the year, kind of comparable to what you're seeing. Gradual recovery and hopefully a little bit of a better exit in the second half of 2025 is probably the way things shape up. But as far as kind of the growth algorithm and things like that, again, we'll give a little bit more color when we do earnings. The ability to deliver price, 1% to 2%. The ability to drive, I'd say, a little bit above market with demand generation, some of the self-instigation of demand with MQLs. And then the balance will be kind of that innovation, targeted market share opportunities, and just kind of the puts and takes between growth and some of the known headwinds. I think that's probably the area. If there's one good to be said about China, we're not going to be walking into next year with the $100 million plus of large projects that we have to comp. So I'll take that as a positive, but things on the ground in China are still kind of comparable to what you've been hearing before.

That makes a lot of sense. I'm going to open it up to the audience, see if there's any questions, or else I'm happy to keep going. Any questions from the audience? All right. Let's keep going, Vic. Super helpful color on 2025. One of the things that you guys also talked about this past quarter was just this delay in site readiness and potential political instability also affecting some projects being pushed out, and specifically around your MQLs. Your MQLs were up 12%, but the conversion of those MQLs are taking a little bit longer. Just talk to us about that dynamic and how do you see that kind of Hopefully working tough out in the near term.

Yeah, so, you know, we talk quite a bit about, you know, our demand generation engine. And, you know, one of the, obviously, I'll call it a leading indicator, but, you know, one of the key outputs there is MQLs, or Marketing Qualified Leads. And so, you know, for us, we've been continually encouraged by the fact that, you know, obviously we've seen, you know, low double-digit MQL growth. Obviously, MQLs, you shouldn't necessarily take them as a direct translation to orders, obviously. There's a digestion period. Historically, you could say that a conversion rate from an MQL to an order was in that six- to eight-week span, and yes, it has elongated in that respect. I think from our perspective, though, the reason that we're still encouraged by what we're seeing on the MQLs is a couple things. MQLs is really, in our opinion, a reflection of self-instigation of demand, right? So demand that we are instigating with our customer base. And roughly speaking, 50% of our MQLs are coming from new customers, 50% from existing customers. So I think without this kind of demand generation engine, without these efforts, I think there'd be a lot of opportunity left on the table that we would otherwise not be benefiting from. So I think one, The MQL momentum continues to be encouraging. Yes, of course, elongation based on what's happening out there, but at least it speaks to the fact that there still is that kind of underlying demand and interest in the market. And then, to your point, hopefully as things alleviate a little bit here, as sentiment gets better, that's stuff that will translate a little bit more to tangible orders that you'll see in the backlog. So continue to be encouraged here. I would tell you the momentum on demand generation, the investment in demand generation, it's probably, and you guys have met Mike Weathered before. He kind of runs the DGX or demand generation team. It's probably the one, I would say, business-centric function we actually run holistically. So it actually kind of sits all together running under Mike, and that's just because we see scale from it running as one enterprise as opposed to breaking it into nine or ten different pieces. So, you know, continue to be encouraged on that front. The other piece of it is the funnel for the longer cycle, which I think we kind of gave you both of those views. The funnel and the longer cycle, same thing, continues to be growing quite nicely. One thing that, like I said, 20%, 25% of our revenue base is longer cycle in nature, and it actually sits on both sides of the business. So we talk about it a lot more on the ITS side with large compressors and large blowers. PST, you know, quite frankly with like, you know, Milton Roy dosing pumps and things like that, there are some long cycle type projects that sit there as well. And what I would tell you there is whether it be some of the skittishness around some of the election, a lot of it, quite frankly, though, was just the glut of projects that EPCs have had. We see it, quite frankly, both in the elongation of funnel getting to order, as well as, in fact, some of the orders we already have that are being executed. And that final site readiness, factory acceptance testing, kind of that last milestone or two, and getting that over the finish line. Has anything changed dramatically today? The answer is no. I don't think anything's changed as we sit here, you know, to your point, three, four weeks post-election. But I think here, hopefully with time, that'll continue to alleviate, similar to kind of what we talked about here as we move into 2025. And I think hopefully both the momentum we're seeing both on the orders front as well as in digestion through the larger ecosystem will continue to get better.

And, yeah, I know Mike well. I love Mike. I think I've referred his presentation to more investors on your business model than any other. I will be sure to let him know. I'm sure he's listening. On the compressor side, the long cycle piece of the business, you said MQLs were up 22%. What types of projects? I know you said it's across, but you talk about ITS a lot more than you do the BST segment. But, like, what types of projects are you seeing that?

Yeah, you're seeing it across the board. So interesting enough, in our ITS business, you know, you'll have the long cycle, the large compressors. So we cap out at kind of like centrifugal compressors. We don't play larger than that. We don't play in like the turbine, you know, large and, you know, large like almost like engine like, you know, or like they look like big, what do you call it, the larger side than the strip goals that other competitors play in. Turbine, sorry, turbine type almost looking compressors. We also play in what we'll call large blower, so multi-stage blowers. And so we're playing across quite a bit of a spectrum there. In terms of applications, you can see them in all sorts of applications. Large air separation. We actually play very nicely. We have our Leroy business we bought right around the Gardner-Never IPO, which is playing in things like large-scale renewable natural gas, which has been a great tailwind for a couple years now. So it's pretty, you know, I'd say pretty universal in terms of the large-scale applications. It's also quite global in nature. You actually see a lot of these, you know, EPCs, you know, a handful of EPCs, but these projects are being taken pretty global. So, you know, we see them across everywhere from Europe, Middle East, Asia, even parts of the U.S. as well. So, again, I think you've seen a good spectrum of those types of projects and multi-application.

So we talked on China. I think very clear comments on China. So we'll see how the first half of the year turns out, and hopefully things kind of pick up as the year progresses. Can you maybe just talk about Europe? What parts of your business are actually over-indexed to Europe? And then we've talked now for a few years about the upgrade opportunity or replacement opportunity and fairly short payback associated with your more energy-efficient compressors. Just help us kind of understand that. What's happening in Europe for you guys and that replacement opportunity?

Yeah, I think it's a story that's continued to play itself out probably for the last few years. So in terms of, I'll call it Europe, we'll focus on Western Europe. We are pretty well established across that entire spectrum, whether it be the Compair brand, Legacy, even parts of Gardner Denver. So we have a pretty well established presence there. We've also done quite a bit of M&A in that area. What I think you'll hear and see here is that, obviously, it's very country-specific. Areas like Germany, for example, have had, quite frankly, a lot more headwinds. It's an area that's kind of hyper-competitive in terms of a lot of the competitive suite playing there. An area we've probably been, I'd say, comparatively speaking, lower share than other areas of Europe, but that's probably a little bit more consciously so, but an area that's faced more headwinds. We've seen, I'd say, probably better comparative activity in areas like the Italy's and France and Spain's of the world. So, again, I think in terms of where we're indexed, I think we're actually quite well exposed across the board. But, you know, I think we have presence in most major areas. And I would tell you now if we kind of expand the base of touch, continuing to grow our presence in the Middle East and India, we kind of put that together with our European partners. An area that I think historically we've probably been under-penetrated, which is why I think you hear us talk about the excitement about India, for example, as a growth out, you know, a growth vector going forward. In fact, we were just there and we're opening our second compressor plant as we speak. That'll be up and running in 2025. In terms of The other part of your question about what we're expecting going forward and how we're thinking about Europe and other aspects there, I think we're continuing to run it very much like you see how we're doing it in the balance of the business. The reality here is when you think about MQL's self-instigation demand and then also the opportunity to drive the acquired M&A in region, I think that's an area for us that is quite exciting. You know, the biggest thing here is when you've done 55, 56 bolt-ons, and the way I tell the team is, guys, it's inorganic for 12 months. It's our job and your job thereafter to try to drive the organic side of it thereafter. And generally speaking, we have any number of examples where, you know, great technology, it's been hypercentric in one region, you know, area one geography, but that technology is translatable. And so a year ago, if you remember our investor day, our Asia PAC business leader, Arnold Lee, he gave like four different case studies. Every single one of them was a revenue synergy that somehow translated to taking an acquired technology, things of that nature, from an acquisition and taking it into China. And that's why even in China, I know your question was on Europe, but in China, in what has been a pretty tough year, If you peel the onion back here and you actually look at things like blower, vacuum, they've actually been growing in areas like that. It obviously kind of gets lost in the large project comps and compressor. And part of that and the biggest part is that's taking either legacy garden average technology or acquired technology from a MD Kinney or one of these businesses we've acquired in the U.S. and taking it to China where there's applications. They just historically had no reach into those areas. So that's what I think you're going to continue to see us do, focus on those controllable areas where independent of what the market may or may not be doing, how do we drive those singles and doubles, whether it be through demand generation or translation of 50-plus bolt-on acquisitions that now are very translatable globally.

Super helpful. I want to go back to your comments earlier on life sciences being your largest end market. One area within life sciences that we're seeing across some of the companies that I cover that has been super exciting is Theranostics or Radiopharma. I'm curious, do you guys have much of a play there today, and is there maybe an opportunity to expand into that market? What was the first market? Similar, like nuclear medicine, radiopharmaceuticals.

Yeah, nothing I would say that's big exposure today is the simple answer. So I think we're playing a lot more in... You know, the bioprocessing side of the equation, you know, I think the consumable single-use technology in powder management, liquid handling, as well as we do have some legacy exposure in, I'd say, some more of the kind of core, like oxygen concentration, stuff like that, which is probably the piece that faced the toughest headwinds coming out of COVID from the iron medical. Anything of the nature you're saying, not necessarily a huge, huge exposure to that.

Understood.

Thanks.

But, look, helpful to see the biopharma markets stabilize for you guys as well. That's a nice opportunity. Let's talk about margins for a second. So the adjusted EBITDA margins, you know, high 20s, potentially low 30s. You're already at the low end of that target, that 2027 target this year. How are you guys thinking about incremental margins going forward and, you know? I don't want to ask you for a new target at this point, but you're already at the low end. So just how you're thinking about the margins?

I don't think you're going to hear a new necessarily target from me here today, but I think, yeah, we're incredibly excited by the momentum the team continues to drive. To kind of put it in perspective, obviously you've seen some pretty outsized incrementals this year. I think it would be attributable to all the areas you would expect, and I'll kind of touch upon them here briefly. I think on the go-forward basis, though, would we tell you that 30% to 40% incrementals is probably where the comfort zone is? Sure. I think in terms of some of the drivers here, in terms of that continuation from this point forward, price cost. We've said very explicitly that our enterprise should be playing that 1% to 2% price realm year in, year out. Obviously, you've seen some outsized opportunity compared to that in years past. But I've been with the company 14 years at this point in time. There's not one year I can remember where we haven't delivered that or more. Cost side of the equation continues to move kind of sideways at this point in time. Obviously, we will see, you know, kind of what happens as we move into next year from a tariff perspective. I think the good news on that front is a couple things. One, we are in region for the region, so you do not really see a lot of what I will call, you know, for example, China production coming back to the U.S. or things like that. immaterial at best. Yeah, I recall it being pretty minimal last time around. Exactly. And yeah, we do obviously have, we're not immune to tariffs. We do have, you know, some of our supply chain from a China perspective. But I would tell you it's relatively small. Teams have done a nice job over, quite frankly, the last number of years continuing to diversify the supply chain base. We have minimal exposure to Mexico. So, you know, again, I would tell you, you know, we'll continue to mitigate just through, I'd say, if tariffs were to come to bear in a material manner, pricing opportunity as well as just, I'd say, some resourcing opportunities. The other pieces I would tell you, productivity. You know, when you have an in-region for the region model, we do recognize that you do tend to have a little bit heavier footprint. With that comes, you know, we're 80, 90 plants roughly globally. There's always a, whether it be on the labor productivity, I2V, a productivity angle. And the other two angles I would tell you here that, you know, we've talked about. One, Volt on M&A. Typically speaking, we're buying M&A that probably comes in in the low 20s EBITDA margin at the time of purchase. We're driving for a mid-teens ROIC by year three through controllable actions, which is largely cost synergies and maybe controllable areas like price. And so you'll continue to see some step change on that bolt-on in nature between both segments. And the last piece is the recurring revenue. So I think you have a lot of good levers to continue to pull. Obviously, we're going to continue to reinvest from an organic growth perspective, because for us, continuing to drive that organic growth momentum is really going to be the differentiator as we think five years out, ten years out. So whether that's feet on the street, innovation, NPD, or things like demand generation, you're going to continue to see us, and we're doing that as we speak. So put that together, we continue to be really optimistic. We don't necessarily see a cap on margins. We recognize that we're probably at some of our stated margin targets, particularly on the ITS side. What I think that means going forward here is we still see opportunity on the ITS side. Quite frankly, the recurring revenue momentum itself is probably the biggest, you know, kicker from that perspective. But I think the piece we're really excited about, though, is PST, which, you know, obviously has been the one that, comparatively speaking, has probably had less of the run compared to ITS. The reality is some of these, you know, initiatives, I2V, some of this stuff, probably just took a little longer to kind of get implemented in PST. But, you know, the concept of that business, which is playing that 30% EBITDA margin profile today, as we continue to integrate ILC Dover, as we continue to drive productivity, pricing opportunities, even some targeted recurring revenue, the concept of getting that to that mid-30s target we've talked about, I think that's the area you're going to see a little bit more overdrive as we think the next few years. But I think margins are going to continue to be an area for optimism for us.

Great. Last but not least, real quick, free cash flow margins, 20-plus percent. Inventory is still the biggest lever, or how are you thinking about the opportunity there?

I think the team's done a great job, but without question, I think there continues to be an inventory opportunity, continued levers in that respect. Inventory will probably be the biggest one. So we're encouraged by what we've seen on the free cash flow side, but there's, without question, still work to be done.

Awesome. Vic, so great to see you.

Yeah, pleasure. Thank you.