Zurn Elkay Water Solutions Corporation

Good morning and welcome to the Zern-LK Water Solutions Corporation Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Results Conference Call with Todd Adams, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, David Pauley, Chief Financial Officer, and Brian Winlandt, Director of FP&A for Zern-LK Water Solutions. A replay of the conference call will be available as a webcast on the company's investor relations website. At this time, for opening remarks and introduction, I'll turn the call over to Brian Winland.

Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining the call today. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that this call contains certain forward-looking statements which are subject to the Safe Harbor language outlined in our press release issued yesterday afternoon and in our filings with the SEC. In addition, some comparisons will refer to non-GAAP measures. Our earnings release and SEC filings contain additional information about these non-GAAP measures, why we use them, and why we believe they're helpful to investors, and contain reconciliations with corresponding GAAP information. Assistant with prior quarters, we will speak to certain non-GAAP metrics as we feel they provide a better understanding of our operating results. These measures are not a substitute for GAAP. We encourage you to review the GAAP information in our earnings release and in our SEC filings. With that, I'll turn the Todd Adams, Chairman and CEO of Zurn LK Water Solutions.

Thanks, Brian, and good morning, everyone. I'll get right to it on page three. In aggregate, we had a decent third quarter. The sales grew 11% organically year over year, and EBITDA grew 16% to $122 million as margins expanded 120 basis points to 26.8%. We leveraged our free cash flow of $94 million in the quarter to repurchase about 600,000 shares. bringing our year-to-date repurchases to $135 million, or about 3.8% of total shares outstanding, and all this while leverage declined to 0.6 times. As you may have seen in the release, we also raised our dividend 22%, and our board has refreshed our share buyback program to $500 million. Dave will highlight it more in his comments, but we also completed our U.S. pension plan termination in the quarter, which is really just a nice thing to have behind us. This morning, as we've done in prior years, We'll take everyone through all the market data we have on the U.S. non-residential construction market and dissect it in ways we believe makes the most sense to understand how the macro data flows through to our end markets and ultimately into our business, setting the stage for what we think the market grows over the coming years. To cut to the chase, we think our markets in 2026 look a lot like they did in 2025. Last year this time, the data showed an acceleration into 2026, that with some of the uncertainty around tariffs and really the lack of interest rate reductions throughout 25 relative to what was projected a year ago, pushes that acceleration to 2027. The market outlook being relatively stable the past few years, we've been much more focused on what we can control, which is leveraging our internal growth initiatives, which are amplified by the competitive advantages we've cultivated around our product portfolio breadth, high levels of specification, and our unique go-to-market positioning. As we discussed last quarter, we feel like we continue to demonstrate that our teams have got a really good handle on the tariff, supply chain, and pricing dynamics. And Dave will update you on all the numbers in a bit, but overall, relatively consistent with what we communicated in the second quarter. All year, our approach to outlook has been to take things a quarter at a time because there's been several scenarios as to how all this change could have played out. But with only one quarter to go and basically only two months left in 2025, we are again raising our full-year estimates for growth profitability and cash flow. Now I'll turn it over to Dave and he'll take you through some more color on the quarter.

Thanks, Todd. Good morning, everyone. Please turn to slide number four. Our third quarter sales totaled $455 million as we continue to have solid execution on our growth initiatives. $455 million of sales represents 11% core growth year over year. In the third quarter, we generally saw our end markets perform in line with our expectations. as the non-residential market remains positive while the residential market continues to experience softness. Core growth reflects both a full quarter of impact and higher realization of the tariff-related price increase that we put into the market in April. We also saw about $8 million of incremental demand shipped in the quarter as a result of customers ordering ahead of a discrete pricing action we put in place in mid-September within our water safety and control products. The discrete pricing action was primarily to reflect incremental tariffs on copper-related goods and the updating of country-specific tariff rates. Turning to profitability, our second quarter adjusted EBITDA was $122 million, and our adjusted EBITDA margin expanded 120 basis points year-over-year to 26.8% in the quarter. The strong margin and year-over-year expansion was driven by volume leverage, productivity initiatives leveraging our Zearn LK business system, and continuous improvement activities across the organization. 26.8% consolidated EBITDA margins are the highest quarterly margins we've had since the LK merger. Year-to-date, our sales in EBITDA have increased 93 million and 39 million, respectively, which represents a 42% drop-through on the year-over-year volume increase. Our year-to-date EBITDA margin improved 120 basis points year-over-year, as our core sales grew by 8%. Please turn to slide five, and I'll touch on some leverage and free cash flow highlights. With respect to our net debt leverage, we ended the quarter with leverage at 0.6 times, the lowest leverage we've had as a public company. We continue to repurchase shares, and in the quarter, we deployed $25 million to repurchases. That puts our year-to-date repurchases at $135 million. Free cash flow, again finished strong at $94 million in the quarter. We continue to cultivate and evaluate our funnel of M&A opportunities, and our combination of management team capability, low leverage, and cash flow generation all support our ability to execute on the right M&A opportunity, while at the same time entering adjacency through investment and internal development. Todd mentioned it in his opening remarks, we exited the U.S. pension plan in the quarter, That eliminates approximately $200 million liability on the related assets and also eliminates the need for cash payments to support the pension plan on a go-forward basis. So a nice win for the team to remove that and exit the plan in the quarter. I'll turn the call back over to Todd.

Thanks, David. I'm back on page six. We continue to make solid progress this quarter toward our sustainability goals, advancing initiatives that support long-term value creations really for our customers. You can see some of the highlights here. Beyond delivering 1.8 billion gallons of safer, cleaner, filtered drinking water so far this year through our commercial bottle filling stations and eliminating the need for 14.6 billion single-use plastic bottles, we're continuing to find new ways to bring our commercial-grade filtration to even more people. Many people assume their water is safe because it tastes fine or comes from a trusted municipal source. But the reality is our census can't detect contaminants like lead, forever chemicals, and microplastics. And while the refrigerator or pitcher filters are convenient, most are only certified to improve taste and odor, not remove harmful contaminants. At Zernike, we've been tackling these challenges for years, protecting kids in schools, travelers in airports, and employees in offices with our commercial-grade filtered bottle-filling stations. Now we're bringing that same trusted technology into the home with our LK Live built-in filtered bottle fillers. These sleek, modern units complement any home design and deliver filter water to every room, from home gyms and mudrooms to primary suites. Our newest Live EZ models bring convenience anywhere. There's a water line, no electricity, no drain needed, just a wall, a water line, and a couple of batteries. We're supporting this launch with a robust marketing effort, including influencer partnerships focused on families, health, and DIY audiences, helping more people experience the benefits of cleaner, safer water right at home.

Thanks, Todd. I'm on slide seven. And similar to the data we've shared in the past, I'll provide an update on the market. As we look ahead to 2026, it's helpful to revisit some of the key indicators that shape our view of how the market will perform and what that means for our business. On the top of the page are three macro indicators that we track. The Dodge Momentum Index, Architectural Billing Index, and Construction Backlogs. I'll talk through each of these. Dodge Momentum Index measures the value in dollars of non-residential building projects in the planning process against a baseline year of 2000. The index is meant to be a leading indicator for all future non-residential construction spending, and therefore it's generally used to monitor the future direction of construction spending. Think of the Dodge Momentum Index as a 9- to 12-month preview of what's likely to start, but also recognize that there's a lot in there, price, various end markets, and geographies. Next is the ABI, which is a settlement survey that tracks a cohort of partners of AIA member-owned architectural firms, whether their billing activity for the previous month grew, declined, or remained flat. The way to interpret ABI is a score of 50 indicates a balance between positive and negative reports, while a score of 100 indicates all firms reported improvements. A rise in the index above 50 means that more firms reported an increase in demand for design services than reported a decline in demand. It's important to note that a rise in the index above 50 is not a direct measure of the rise in demand. because the survey does not ask firms reporting stronger demand to quantify the level of increase in demand, nor does it provide information on the size of those firms. That being said, higher readings in the ABI generally coincide with growing demand. Finally, on the right, construction backlog, which measures the amount of work surveyed contractors have in their current backlog. In some ways, it's their lead time to taking on new business, and as you might expect, it's their assuming no delays and consistent levels of staffing. All three of these metrics have a level of validity in them on how we think about the future. But as you know, our business is hyper-local, hyper-regional, and it all varies by region, vertical, and other than the backlog reporting, there's limited certainty as to what's really going on in the ground level where the projects are actually happening every day. While the three macro indicators we just walked through on the top of the page were third-party data, the bottom section is specific to our business. On the bottom left, you can see how our portfolio of products participates across the full construction cycle, from the start of the job all the way through to finishing front-of-the-wall product 18 or so months later. Non-residential construction is a complex ecosystem, coordinating multiple trades, supply chains, permitting, and weather impacts. On average, projects take about 18 months from start to finish, and our portfolio is uniquely positioned across that timeline, from flow systems early in the build to water safety and control mid-cycle and hygienic and environmental solutions and drinking water at the completion. With an understanding of how our products participate across the construction cycle, the other item to factor in is the lag effect, and this concept is illustrated in the chart on the bottom right. The leg effect shows how Dodge Starts ultimately translate into Zurn LK sales. In a typical year, roughly 20% of our new construction revenue is tied to projects that started in that same year, while the other 80% reflects work initiated in prior years. I'll talk through this more a bit. Start with Q1 of 2026. Virtually all of our new construction sales come from starts that happened in 2025 and before. And by the time you get to Q4, current year 2026 starts will have about a 40% contribution to our sales. This lag effect, combined with the breadth of our portfolio, gives us visibility into demand and confidence in the durability of our growth as we look into 2026. Moving to slide eight. We have Dodge starts on a square foot basis with actual starts data from 2023 and 2024, and then Dodge's projections out to 2028. The Dodge data in this slide and the next slide is the most recent report published by Dodge as of August 2025. We like to look at square footage because it strips out pricing, renovations and alterations, providing a clear view of the market driven growth that underpins the roughly 55% of our business that comes from new construction. Couple things I'll point out with the data. The Dodge data is separated between institutional and commercial end markets, which for us is the majority of our revenue. The pie charts on the right-hand side shows the 2026 square footage starts by building type, and you can see that within institutional, education dominates the square footage at 40% of the total. And within commercial, warehouses are the largest building type at roughly 50% of the square feet starts. And the last item is just a caution, that focusing only on the headline Dodge starts growth for these categories can be misleading, since the mix of education and healthcare within institutional and warehouse within commercial affects growth differently than how these segments are weighted within our own portfolio. Turn to page nine. This is the same dodge data in square foot terms now further broken down by our key verticals. As we highlighted last year, when reviewing the dodge data, the resilience of our business over the past 20 years reflects in part our significant overweighting to the strong stable segments within non-residential construction. On the top left, the graph shows the education and healthcare vertical starts information for the same time period as the page before. These two verticals represent 60% of the entire institutional index within Dodge and 80% of our exposure to the institutional non-residential construction market. Simply said, we're materially over-indexed to the strong, stable parts of the institutional non-residential construction market. On the bottom left, this graph is for office, retail, and hospitality verticals. Again, same periods as the page before, with the conclusion being that these verticals represent only 30% of the overall commercial starts within Dodge, yet represent 75% of our exposure. When we focus on the building types that are critical to our sales, we see that both healthcare and education and retail office and hotel starts are projected to continue to increase in terms of square footage each year, with growth rates generally accelerating in the out years. While the starts data has evolved this year as events like tariffs have come into play and the projections around interest rates have continued to change, the level of construction starts remains strong. Ultimately, the Dodge data supports that our pure end market growth in 2026 should look a lot like what we just experienced in 2025, a low market growth environment. As you know, though, beyond end market, we have other factors when we consider our outlook. growth within drinking water, or other key initiatives, as well as price. We've shared this stat in the past, but as of this quarter, we have had year-over-year quarterly growth 55 out of the last 59 quarters. That's a 15-year track record of consistent growth. I'll turn the call back over to Todd.

The last one for me is on page 10, and hopefully most of you have seen this page before, but if not, it's been our simple and we believe effective way to depict how we think about and manage our business, leverage our operating philosophy, and ultimately how we measure ourselves. And honestly, it's more than just a chart. It's exactly how we operate the company day in, day out. And even more importantly, inside the company, everyone can see how and where their impact is expected, creating great accountability and alignment throughout the organization. Beginning on the left, it starts with a relentless focus on a game we want to play. The choices here require discipline, and we've been very intentional, and I'll say picky, about getting this piece right, because it's easy to drift and convince yourself that it's close enough to make sense, but having this filter, if you will, provides perfect clarity and avoids distractions or any strategic drift. It guides how we drive our strategy, beginning with our end markets, what we look for in terms of what geographies, competitive dynamics, and characteristics approach around our portfolio, and most importantly, our relentless focus on bringing a premier pure play water business in North America. In the middle, we highlight that the glue to all of this is the Zurn LK business system. It's our common language and deep culture of continuous improvement. It tries the manner in which we operate every day, everywhere, and defines the capabilities we can leverage or in some cases need to build while aligning all of our resources to drive organic growth, profitability, and free cash flows. Finally, on the right, measuring our performance across all of our stakeholders, customers, shareholders, associates, and the impact we can have on a much broader scale through sustainability. At the end of the day, if we get all these facets within our business model, I'll say right or close to right, we end up building sustainable competitive advantages, which we feel over time drive superior outcomes for all stakeholders. As we sit here near the end of 2025 and begin thinking about 2026, One thing I would call out or emphasize is that over the coming years, we intend to further sharpen our focus, capabilities, and resource investment on driving even more organic growth into adjacent categories. We feel more confident than ever that we're in a position to exploit our competitive advantage around driving specification, establishing robust supply chains, and leveraging best-in-class go-to-market capabilities into adjacent markets with new, innovative products that we have a long track record of introducing into our core markets, which has led to the kind of organic growth record that Dave just talked about. So more to come on that in the coming quarters and years, but now I'll turn it back to Dave for the outlook.

For the fourth quarter of 2025, we are projecting year-over-year core sales growth to be in the high single digits, and we anticipate our adjusted EBITDA margin for our adjusted EBITDA is 99 and 102. As a result, we are again raising our full year output for sales growth, adjusted EBITDA, and free cash flow. We now see core sales growth of approximately 8% for the full year, adjusted EBITDA in the range of 437 to 440 million, and free cash flow greater than 300 million. We've included our fourth quarter and full year outlook assumptions for interest expense, non-cash stock compensation expense, depreciation and amortization, adjusted tax rate, and diluted shares outstanding. I also wanted to provide an update on total tariff costs for the year. Last quarter, we expected our tariff costs before any offsetting price for 2025 to be between 35 and 45 million. As country-specific tariff rates were updated and new tariffs on copper came into play during the third quarter, we now believe our tariff cost impact on 2025 will be modestly higher and be approximately 50 million for the year. While the environment around tariff tariffs continue to be a bit of a moving target, our team is confident that we can remain price-cost positive in the short and long term. Thanks, everyone. We'll now open the call up for questions.

At this time, if you would like to ask a question, press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, simply press star one again. We kindly ask that you limit your questions to one and one follow-up for today's call. We will pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Brian Blair with Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, guys. Another very solid quarter. Morning. Morning. The Q3 market updates and outlook and framing of ZWS participation across the built cycle is It's helpful. That in mind, has there been any meaningful divergence in the growth rates across legacies or in product categories over Q3 or into Q4? And then given run rate market reads and the lag effect detailed on the new construction side, do you know if there are any finer points on, you know, how your team's thinking about momentum into the first half of 2026?

Yeah, Brian, I mean, you know, first of all, I think we'll talk about 26 and 26. But when you look at many of our, almost all of our core categories are experiencing solid unit growth on top of a little bit of market, on top of a little bit of price. And so I wouldn't say that there's been any significant change from maybe the second quarter. And I don't see any reason why that momentum changes as we head into the fourth quarter.

Okay, understood. I caught a bit of a play on words with the filter afforded by the Zernac LK business system. With that said, maybe offer a little bit of an update on the reception of LK pro filtration, whether there have been any surprises, positive or otherwise, in the early going. And then it would be great to hear more about the market opportunity. with the live easy line and how impactful that launch may be to growth going forward?

Sure. You know, I think as we highlighted last quarter, you know, the introduction of the pro filtration, you know, was really significant in terms of taking a lot of the market feedback around ease of installation, the incremental filter capacity, along with, you know, the pre-sediment filters and a lot of those things. And so we've seen a really strong uptake right away. We expect that to continue. I mean, if you can change it in 30 seconds or less, and you can change it essentially once a year, I think these are things that were right at the heart of the feedback that we got as we were developing the product. And so really good, I think a really good solid start, but it's only a start. With respect to the live unit, we've had a, I would say, a more expansive live unit with a drain. They required, I would say, higher levels of installation capability. This product was developed really to make it easy and do it yourself. And we're excited about it. I think it's just good exposure to begin to tap into a market that is not big. I mean, this is not something that everyone's going to put in their home for a whole bunch of reasons. But we do think it's a nice extension of what we're doing, and it affords people the opportunity to um gain the benefits that they get from using these filters when they're at school when they're in the office when they're at airports etc you know you can get that same kind of quality water at home and so i expect it to grow nicely but i don't know that we're counting on this to be you know sort of a pillar of uh you know what our what our commercial drinking water offering is but something we're excited about and i think the uptake on it will be pretty nice understood makes sense thanks for the color

Your next question comes from the line of Nathan Jones with Steeples. Please go ahead.

Yeah, good morning. This is Adam Farley on for Nathan.

Good morning.

Hey, good morning. My first question is going to be around growth and specifically volume expectations. So it sounds like there's a little bit of volume maybe pulled forward into the third quarter. but you're guiding, you know, strong high single digits for the fourth quarter. So, you know, how should I think about volume in the back half?

Well, Dave, maybe you can clarify, but, you know, we saw good volume growth absent even this modest pull forward in Q3, and we expect, you know, sort of the same as we go into Q4. You know, I will tell you that I think that some of the pull forward is essentially offset by, I would say a little bit of incremental weakness in the residential market. And so when you look at it, you know, all the way through, I think the growth in Q3 is relatively high quality. And I think the way we're guiding Q4 is, you know, equal to that kind of momentum that we saw in really Q3 and for the second half.

Yeah, the only thing I would add, Adam, is in the quarter, we had a price increase late September. And so we saw customers order in advance of that. And so about $8 million was pulled from Q4 into Q3. If you eliminate that from Q3 and look at where we've got it Q4 to, it's about the same. So unit volumes continue to grow nicely.

Yeah, we don't communicate order rates. But if you go to the first nine months of the year, the order rates in aggregate are a touch above one. And I think we're sort of guiding to that. book the bill of about one in Q4. So nothing crazy, a little bit of choppiness from Q1 to Q2, Q2 to Q3, but I think when you get to the Q4 numbers, it sort of planes out and we're delivering to real live demand.

Okay, that's great to hear, and thanks for that additional detail. My second question is going to be around capital allocation. So increase the dividend, increase the share repurchase authorization. So what are the priorities going forward? Has anything changed? Should we maybe expect a little more share repurchase going forward? Any color there.

As we've done for a long time, we obviously generate a significant amount of free cash flow If you go way back, the objective initially was to reduce our leverage to a very comfortable zone, continue to invest in our core business, cultivate proprietary M&A opportunities, establish a dividend, and then look at the value of our stock relative to what we think the intrinsic value of the company is. None of those things have changed. And so I think that we continue to generate significant amount of free cash flow. Our dividend yield, we've tried to you know, leverage that cash flow to keep the dividend yield right around one. You know, we're in the process of looking at the next three years and determining, you know, what we think we can do and how that translates to where the current stock price is. I think we will be sort of steady repurchasers, and obviously this gives us just incremental flexibility to the extent there's a larger dislocation for whatever the reason. So I don't think we're signaling anything new, just that You know, over the last three years, we've generated a ton of cash. We've increased the dividend. We bought back some shares and cultivated M&A, and I think that's what you should expect going forward.

Great. Thank you for taking my questions.

Your next question comes from the line of Mike Halloran with Baird. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning, everyone. This is Pezon for Mike. Maybe following up on Adam's question here, Todd, maybe if you could provide a little bit more color on the M&A funnel. How has it changed over the last 12 months in terms of actionability, the pricing expectations, and then maybe if you would comment a little bit on the mix of hygienic and environmental versus drinking water. If we could just get a little bit more color on what you're seeing in the funnel and how that's evolved over the last 12 months.

Yeah, I mean, the funnel hasn't changed a bunch near the bottom. I think near the top of the funnel, some incremental things have come in, and we continue to cultivate those things. As far as valuations and actionability, you know, it sort of depends, right, depending on the fit, depending on where people are thinking. So I don't know that you're ever going to get us to talk about valuation because we look at M&A through the lens of what kind of returns on invested capital can we generate at a particular value in the synergies we bring to the party. So I don't think much has changed in aggregate. There's been a handful of things that are in an auction process, some modestly interesting, others not at all. So we continue to do the work. And I wouldn't characterize our funnel as unique to just drinking water. I think our flow systems funnel, I think our valving funnel, all those are equally important. And so it's broad. Not much has changed in the middle to the bottom. I would only say that the top of the funnel has gotten modestly larger really over the course of the last 12 months.

Got it. That's super helpful. Maybe just on a more philosophical question, obviously moving into residential drinking water with the Live Easy product, maybe could you tell us a little bit about how you think about your aspirations for drinking water on a residential application? Is there broader aspirations to get into residential drinking water? And is that something that can be developed internally? Is there something externally that might be interesting? maybe just a little bit of thoughts on how you think about the opportunity within residential drinking water beyond maybe the live easy product?

Yeah, I wouldn't characterize our appetite to go into residential filtration as high. I think this is more of an extension of what we're already doing to a relatively small market that we have access to. So the technology It's an opportunity for us to try some design work, try some technology with speed, and I don't think you're going to see us wade into residential filtration in a meaningful way. I think this is more of an extension from what we're doing on the commercial institutional side to a relatively small market that gives us the opportunity to test some things and learn. Understood. Thank you. I'll pass it on.

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

Hey, good morning, guys. This is Edon for Andrew. Morning. Another very strong margin quarter with high incrementals. I was wondering if you could speak to the consistent strong margin results and how to think about where we can go from here off of these record levels.

Yeah, I mean, I would say we've had consistent margin expansion. If you go back to when we merged with LK and just look at the quarterly progression each year, we've seen nice margin expansion. So, you know, started with delivering on the synergies, leveraging our Zurn LK business system, the hashtag CI improvements. So I think we're confident that, you know, the level that you're seeing is a new baseline in terms of where Xur and LK margins can be. I would just think about a more long-term view as 30% to 35% incrementals on volume.

Yeah, that's helpful. And then just to follow up here, you've managed the tariff environment very well on the top and bottom line. Can you speak to the Xur and LK business system and remind us why you would consider yourselves perhaps relatively um, or in a relatively stronger position and navigate the tariff environment versus competitors. And, uh, I'll leave it there.

Yeah. I won't, I won't really speak to, you know, comparisons, um, because I wouldn't want people speaking about us. I think what we did going on five years ago is think through the risks to our business and how we protect, you know, uh, our service levels, um, over a long period of time and developed a plan to primarily move our manufacturing supply chain partners out of China to other regions, including the U.S. And so, you know, over 50% of our COGS comes from the U.S. today, and by the end of next year, only about 2% to 3% will come from China. And so I think it speaks to that front end of what are we trying to do, what game are we trying to play, getting in front of it, doing the hard, long work to position ourselves. And as it turns out, you know, no one, including us, would have predicted the kind of tariff environment that we saw beginning in April. But by starting well in advance, doing the long, hard work, I think it's positioned us really well, not only this year, but really, you know, for the long term.

Very helpful. Thanks, guys.

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

Hey, good morning, guys. This is David Tarantino on for Jeff. Maybe could you give us what price versus volume was in the quarter? And then maybe could you give us what you think the carryover pricing into next year will be based on the increases you've already taken to date? I think you highlighted another increase in 3Q. So do you think this supports another year of above average price realization in 2026?

Yeah, so I think, David, to start, Price realization in the quarter, we saw about five points of price in the quarter. I think we'll wait to provide 2026 price until we provide guidance. But I think the way to think about it is we've been deliberate with the pricing actions and how that has followed our cost. And so as we've seen incremental tariff costs, we've put the right amount of price to be price cost positive into the market. And so as we think about price next year, what I will say is Think about it in terms of last year or this year, Q1 into Q2 had very little price. And then you start to get to a run rate price here in Q3 and Q4. So more price in the first half than in the second half going into next year. And then we'll evaluate whether or not a 2026 price increase is necessary as we move forward here.

Okay, great. And then maybe just to put a finer point on the 2026 commentary around the market seems like this points to market growth and the low single digit range. So any more color there would be helpful. And then how should we think about the outgrowth levers into next year between the key product lines both in and outside of drinking water?

Yeah, so our read of the Dodge data that we presented is really from a pure market perspective, 2025 and 2026 looks a lot alike. And so that's a low growth environment. If you look at where we think some of the levers are going on a forward basis, I would think about things like we've continued to see outperformance in drinking water. We've continued to see some of the other sales initiatives, whether that's in product categories like our water safety and control have outperformance, the new products that we've talked about, adjacent markets. And so there's a number of things as we look forward that we feel like we have the opportunity to outgrow the market. And so when we think about growth, it's market, price, and then our initiatives. And if you put those together, that's how we think about our ability to grow.

OK, great. Thanks, guys.

Your next question comes from the line of Brett Lindsey with Mizuho. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning all. This is Brett Lindsey on for Brett Lindsey. Good morning, Brett. Just wanted to come back to the filter first and really wondering if you had a post-mortem assessment on year one of that program specific to Michigan. Are you able to quantify the contribution from those installments thus far? you know, any color on some of the share capture as part of that program?

Yeah, I would say we've done a really nice job in Michigan. There's about 1.5 million students in Michigan, and the law requires one bottle filler per 100 occupants. And so you can do some math on that, Brett, just to see how much the opportunity is. But I would say our team has done a nice job of capturing what we expected in terms of the Michigan opportunity, and it's still ongoing. This was the first year that schools actually were able to access the money from the state. The state set aside $50 million to accomplish filter first, and it will continue into next year. And so while we saw a lot of schools comply with the law this year, there's still a series of schools that need to comply next year. I'd say also on the filter first front, While not a filter first fill, we did see New Jersey enact some legislation and release some funding that will help accomplish the same thing. Allow schools to purchase filtered bottle fillers to eliminate lead and other harmful contaminants for students. So we spent some time in New Jersey over the last 90 days helping schools work through what their drinking water plans are and really just helping keep students safe in New Jersey and Michigan.

Okay, great. And then just back to slide number eight and specific to the project cycle that you laid out, you illustrated the flow systems tends to lead. I guess, has there been any discernible increase or inflection in those categories or that product segmentation that maybe informs you some of these areas like commercial are beginning to show some improvement?

Well, you know, taken as a whole, our – our flow systems business has grown at or above the fleet average the entire year. So I think, you know, that pretends, I think, the kind of market that we're talking about, which is relatively stable to low growth, at least for the near term, with the opportunity to accelerate moving forward. So I think from a leading indicator perspective, our flow system business has done has done well really over the course of the last 24 months. So, you know, I think we're monitoring all these things, but recognizing that, you know, we're sort of in a unique environment to say the least. But, you know, we do find that, you know, that leading indicator is relatively encouraging for us.

Congrats on the quarter.

That concludes our question and answer session. I will now turn the call back over to Brian Winlet for closing remarks.

Thanks, everyone, for joining us on the call today. We appreciate your interest in Zern-LK water solutions, and we look forward to providing our next update when we announce our fourth quarter results in early February. Have a good day.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.