Please find on the investor relations section of our website, rsgroup.com, a short presentation on Risoul and the opportunity this brings RS, which we will talk through before we answer your questions. Over to you, Lindsley.
Thank you very much, Lucy, and thank you to everyone for joining this call today. I'm coming to you from Texas. I'm heading to Mexico to Risoul in a few hours for the next two days. Let me start. If you can see the slide deck on our website, if you have copies of it, I'm going to start with slide three, which talks about the acquisition of Risoul, how much we're paying, the fit, etc. Before I do that, I just want to address for those, because we haven't done an acquisition of this size in a while, so this might be a rather long call for some of you. I just want to hit it up front right now as to why now? Let me start by saying we've been working on this opportunity for four years.
Felipe Risoul founded the company 47 years ago. It wasn't something that he had thought about, transacting. This was something that we unlocked. We've been building and nurturing the relationship with Felipe Risoul and his family for the last four years. They're nearly 50 years old. It's a phenomenal company. We're really excited about this company. Now let me first start by saying industrial distribution in the Americas fundamentally hasn't changed in the last 30 years. We see this as an opportunity to combine our capabilities with Risoul's capabilities to fundamentally change distribution and make it much more efficient. I'll touch more on that. I also want to say, why now? Well, automation and controls is one of the fastest-growing categories we have as more factories become automated. If you look at the nearshoring opportunities in Mexico, they're significant.
If you look at the resiliency of this market, it's quite high. We've been taking share in this area, and Rockwell Automation is the most profitable automation and control supplier in the world. If we move on, and I'll touch on some of these aspects through the presentation, but why now? Well, family-run business, we believe we've got a good valuation, pre-synergies, as well as post-synergies, that we'll talk through today. We're really excited about the business. The management team is being retained. They've got a very strong culture. It's a good financial and cultural fit. If we move to slide three, this is the largest industrial distributor in Mexico. They are the leading industrial and automation product and service solutions provider in Latin America. It is a good strategic, cultural, and financial fit.
In terms of the price we paid, it's $275 million, which is equivalent to GBP 228 million. We are delighted to welcome Risoul into the group. 550 really highly skilled trained employees, low turnover. We expect to generate significant shareholder value through cross-selling synergies because we can bring our private label products into their business. We can bring adjacent products into the business that are synergistic to Rockwell. We can develop their digital capabilities, which they don't have a lot on that front today, and we can leverage our execution expertise. We see a lot of cross-selling synergy opportunity as we move forward.
I'll tell you this, acquiring Risoul, we expect it to be accretive to adjusted EPS in the first year of ownership and to exceed our group cost of capital within the first three years. If you move to the next slide, if you're following the slides, if not, I'll cover it. Slide four talks about the reputation of Risoul in Mexico. They are a highly regarded distributor in Mexico, not only by the Mexican market, but also by Rockwell, which is 70% of the business. They are family-run. It was started by Felipe Risoul. His son-in-law is the CEO of the company now. His son-in-law has been with the company, Gerardo Ayala, for 18 years. Very impressed with Gerardo. He fits into the culture of our company. He represents everything that we see in an amazing leader.
He's got humility, he's got passion, he's got trust with his people. They've got a strong and experienced management team that are all staying with the company, which is really important. We spent a lot of time in the last 12-18 months with their management team building that relationship, not only in Mexico, bringing them to Texas and working closely with them. Risoul is the largest authorized Rockwell Automation distributor in Mexico and also Latin America, and they're ranked number 10 globally. They've got the right to distribute Rockwell's products in five areas of primary responsibility. What Rockwell calls their franchise agreements are APRs, which are Areas of Primary Responsibility. They've got the right to distribute it within five areas of Mexico, which are the main industrial areas.
They've recently added an APR in Spain, too, because Rockwell would like to take the Latin American model that's really technically driven to Europe to extend and grow their market share. They've recently added Spain. You have to understand that they do Rockwell accounts for 70% of Risoul's revenue. Very important supplier to Risoul. We have renewed the APR. Those typically last three to five years, so we're not at risk of losing that. I had a call with Rockwell this week, and over the last 18 months, I've worked closely with Rockwell at all levels. 18 months ago, I flew to meet with the CEO and chair, Blake Moret in Milwaukee. We've worked closely with the executives across the board.
What I'm really impressed with about Rockwell, not only are they the most profitable A&C automation control manufacturer, but they're shifting to a solution sell. They're moving from a product to solution sell, which is exactly what we're doing as a company, too. Our paths mirror each other. I think they've got a very impressive leadership team across the board, and we want to enhance their model. There are things we're doing and we've been working on behind the scenes from digital predictive maintenance, our product, RS Industria, and how we can put that together with Rockwell to have one plus one equal three. Really important for us. The remainder, they've got 20 other major brands beyond Rockwell, which are detailed in the appendix of this presentation.
In terms of just raw numbers, at the end of their fiscal year, September 2021, the business generated $166 million revenue, $19 million of EBIT. They do come with distribution storage capabilities throughout Mexico, as well as delivering their own products. They generate 7% of the revenue from services, which I'll talk more about because I think there's a lot of exciting opportunities for us as we move into services with this acquisition. Slide five. On slide five, we talk about how Risoul fits into our growth strategy. This is what we talked about before, right? We want to expand our value-added services and solutions offer. Does it do that? Yes. Check it. They've got control panel repair capability, build capability. We will enhance their services as we move forward.
We'll add more value-added services, more digital capabilities, more maintenance capabilities. It also extends our product adjacencies. It makes us a very important customer to Rockwell, but also expands into other products like wire and cable, and expands into Mexico, where prior to this acquisition, we only did $20 million in Mexico. We talked about it being a very important market, certainly from a nearshoring perspective. It does expand our geographic coverage as well. When we talk about acquisitions, we talk about solutions, products, and geographic expansion. We hit all three in this acquisition. Now, next, we talk about, is it a good cultural fit? Is it a good financial fit? Is it a good strategic fit? The answer in those three questions is yes.
We have walked away from a number of acquisitions or discussions over the last couple of years because we didn't think it was a good cultural fit or a financial fit or strategic fit. This checks all three boxes on that front as well. Do the acquisition economics stack up? Absolutely. Return on investment is critical. We look to beat our cost of capital comfortably within three years. There's also some ESG considerations across all work streams in our analysis. It's Mexico, you know, we need to focus on emissions. There's other areas. They do a great job with education, working with universities, providing support of universities. I think they do more than most companies in Mexico, but we certainly will focus on ESG as we move forward with Risoul. On slide six.
Slide six, we really outline how aligned we are as a culture. Just to focus a little bit more on that, Risoul, like RS, has a huge focus on health and well-being, training, driving innovation. Gerardo actually even has set up a studio to record podcasts to his people around the regions. They've got over 250 specialists with strong technical expertise, so they work closely with the universities as well. They understand their products, their customers, their suppliers, and their needs incredibly well. They do provide product and service solutions with their service offer, which I'm gonna go through some of the offerings. I talked about control panel building and repair, but they also give technical training for their customers on Rockwell products.
They have the control board and panel assembly, as I referenced, air conditioning maintenance, specialist tool repair, smart network infrastructure. They do have limited digital capabilities, as I touched on, but we will help them develop a transactional website, help them with content, and we'll do that from our Americas business, which they will be reporting into. With that, we believe that with the website, we'll be able to expand the number of customers that we service in Mexico, and we'll provide revenue opportunity for complementary products, including our own brand private label, RS Pro. Slide seven, if you're following along on the slides. If you don't, you can look at it later, but it just goes to the management team. Gerardo, as I said, has been with the company for 18 years, working throughout the business in all areas. He's the CEO.
He joined in 2004. Supporting Gerardo is a very strong management team with wealth of industry expertise, including many years at Rockwell. Deep understanding of Rockwell, great relationships with the Rockwell team in Latin America, and they really understand the products and the solutions quite well. They are highly focused on their people. Through the pandemic, I think they did a phenomenal job of supporting their people, working virtually where they had to, protecting the health and well-being and mental well-being of their employees. They've got highly engaged employees. Their engagement score is 85%, and they've got top scores in leadership performance.
It's really, it's a dynamic environment, but it's an environment where you, when you walk in, you get the feel that this is a special culture, and they really care for their people and care for the relationships with customers and suppliers and their stakeholders. Strong cultural overlap between Risoul and RS, which is critical to us delivering the synergies that we expect. We're very excited, and I'm excited to tell you their management team has agreed to stay. We've got plans in place, really excited. It's a high-performance team that aligns with our purpose-led culture. Turning to the next slide, which is slide eight. I'll take a breather here for you to catch up. Slide eight. Risoul provides a significant opportunity to accelerate our growth ambitions in Latin America. This is not the end.
This is the beginning. We're only getting started in Latin America. We see it as a huge market opportunity, certainly Mexico with the nearshoring opportunity. Today, as I mentioned earlier, we've got about $20 million in revenue in Mexico under RS or Allied. The automation and control market in Mexico we've got valued at about $1.4 billion, and that's a number from 2019 that was reported, with an 8.5% CAGR forecast over the next 10 years from 2019. It's a region that's gonna continue to grow. If you were to fly down there and look just around the border at all the building that's taking place today, whether it's automotive or other industries, there's quite a bit happening in Mexico.
We're very, very bullish on the Mexican economy over the next few years. Certainly the benefit, as I said, from nearshoring owing to the globalization, and a greater focus on improving sustainability through reducing distances products travel, 'cause it's not very far from Monterrey where these guys are headquartered. That's a really important manufacturing region today, across to the Texas border into the U.S., to be able to distribute products throughout the Americas without bringing it across from, say, China. Mexico also, by the way, has a young population, and I was surprised by this. With a median age of 28, which supports future growth.
I think the country's witnessing, and when you go there, you see it, you feel it, a rapid adoption of factory automation and digitization, coupled with the implementation of Industry 4.0 and an expanding manufacturing sector. Quite exciting from that perspective. If you go to slide nine, we detail the significant growth opportunity that Risoul provides within the RS Group through revenue synergies and margin development. Combining our presence in Mexico, which we will do, is gonna make a huge difference from a customer standpoint.
If you take our range of complementary products, including our own brand, and put it with what they have, we'll be able to drive an increased average order value, increase market share with our customers and increase revenue, at hopefully a higher profit level as we move forward. Introducing some of Risoul service solutions offering to RS America will be good as well, including some of their control panel building capabilities, repair capabilities. For us, they provide a stronger platform for growth through really five key areas. Developing digital capabilities to widen the customer base and broaden our product range. Sales collaboration across Risoul and the RS teams and our integrated supply business, which we can't leave out here 'cause there's great opportunity for integrated supply, within the Mexican market as well.
Expanding the RS Group products and service solutions offer. Expanding the Rockwell relationship further, which is really important. I'm really focused on building this into a significant relationship globally as we move forward. Including Risoul's recent expansion into Spain really helps strengthen that Rockwell relationship. Improving our execution capabilities to drive efficiency. In short, on this slide, I just say we're very excited about the growth opportunity that Risoul brings to RS. With that, I'm now gonna hand over to David to talk you through the financials.
Good morning, good afternoon, everyone. Slide 10 details the financials. The acquisition price, $75 million. GBP 28 million is on a cash-free, debt-free basis. The deal is subject to customary closing conditions in Mexico, and we hope to complete by the end of November 2022. Consideration will be funded from RS's existing cash with the acquisition multiple equating to circa 12x adjusted EBIT 2022. That's on a 12-month trailing basis. The multiple falls to single digits year three net synergies. We see significant revenue synergies from cross-selling digits, operational efficiencies, and the acquisition is expected to be accretive to adjusted earnings in the first full year of ownership. Our return on investment exceeded the RS Group cost of capital within three years of ownership. Risoul's adjusted operating profit margin is slightly above that reported at RS for the year ended 2022.
Due to some global supply challenges, there is an increased order book at this point in time, which should unwind over the next 12-18 months. Balance sheet remains very strong. Following the acquisition, our pro forma net debt to adjusted EBITDA to March 2020 is under 0.8x, providing the capacity to support our growth ambitions. With that, I'll hand you back to Lindsley.
All right. Thank you, David. Let me just summarize on the last slide. We remain focused on generating sustainable shareholder returns. David and I and Lucy just finished an investor roadshow where we met with several of you on this call. Lots of questions on dividends in the U.K., on buybacks in the U.S.. Hopefully we signaled that, you know, we still have a lot of opportunity to invest inorganically to drive organic growth. For us, you know, we are not looking to pay a low price for poorly performing businesses. We're looking to pay a fair price for well-performing businesses, and that's exactly what we have here. Why now? The opportunity presented itself. We unlocked the opportunity.
Been working on it a long time. Critical supplier in Rockwell, very profitable business in Risoul, gives us that geographical solutions and product expansion. It's a business we've known, as I said, for four years, and we're strategic and culturally aligned. We do have quite a few of these that we're talking to. It takes time, especially for family-run businesses, to be able to build that trust and that relationship, 'cause we're taking over something special from them, and we wanna maintain the same level of discipline and care for employees that these families have for their employees for many years.
Just to summarize, acquiring Risoul enables us to expand our position, execution, expertise, specifically in Mexico and Latin America, as well as the Caribbean, and to drive cross-selling synergies across our products and service solutions offer, sorry, and we're delighted to welcome Risoul to the team. In summary, I just say we're very confident that we're well-positioned to deliver the opportunities available to drive profitable market share gains and attractive returns in Mexico, in Spain, and throughout Latin America, as we outlined consistently with our investor event in March. With that, Alex, if we can open up for questions.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, that's star one on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question, please press star two. Please ensure you're unmuted locally when asking your question. Our first question for today comes from Rory McKenzie from UBS. Rory, your line is now open.
Yeah, good afternoon. Good morning, everyone. Three, please. First, can you talk about the organic growth track record of the business, perhaps split into the pre-pandemic period, and then more detail on how much revenues were held back due to the supply chain disruptions. Then secondly, on the potential for revenue synergies, could you share some targets for number of SKUs you want to bring over from the wider RS Group? I know a lot of the traditional Allied world is A&C as well, so does that maybe limit how quickly and easily you could import new product? And then thirdly, just on kind of due diligence and risks. Now, you've done three larger deals, let's say. How quickly do you feel you can integrate this company, and in these future deals vs the past?
Can you talk about what you did differently or extra in this case, given the key supplier that's involved? Thank you.
Let me start and I'll let David touch on the organic growth 'cause I know he's got the numbers in front of him. Just in terms of backlog, you know, they roughly had $27 million in backlog a few months ago, of which they're waiting on product to come in. There's a very healthy backlog, healthy book-to-bill. The last couple of months have been quite solid for them. The demand is unchanged in terms of what they're seeing in the market in their five regions where they have the APRs. Rockwell is starting to free up some of the products and starting to improve their delivery. The outlook looks a little bit better. I'll let David touch on organic growth.
In terms of revenue synergies, let's not forget, you know, Fort Worth is only, you know, four- or five-hour drive from the border. We don't necessarily need to bring in a huge amount of stock to the warehouses within Mexico today, Rory. We can actually ship directly into the warehouse and then to customers with their own logistics network in Mexico quite rapidly. They'll have access to more than 200,000 plus. We will not sell competing products to Rockwell, but we'll have all the synergistic products available. You know, they've got 18,000 parts or so on the shelf, 80,000 or so they sell. They're gonna have immediate access to a couple hundred thousand products. It's gonna be pretty significant.
We're not gonna disclose at this point what we think those revenue synergies will be because it's a little too soon because we are working through integration, which we started the plans of that months ago, and that's part of the discussion that we'll have this week and next week. I think the risks are quite low in terms of integration because we don't have a strong presence in Mexico. They become our Mexican business, and we are not. This is a revenue and margin synergy play, not a cost synergy play. We're not coming in looking to take out people. We just wanna make sure that, you know, from an ESG perspective, we're enhancing it. Cybersecurity, we're bringing in the right resources. We're looking at IT, making sure their systems are protected and they're scalable.
It's really more from that perspective and I think we're much more experienced in that today, Rory. I think the risks are quite low on that front. For us, it's really more about how we get the digital capabilities up and running and how we expand the customer base and how we work out the logistics to get those increased products flowing from our Fort Worth warehouse into their Monterrey and Mexico City warehouses to enhance that customer relationship and grow that market share. David, do you wanna touch on the organic side?
Yeah. Organic, Rory, has been typically pre of mid-single digits. Pandemic and sort of supply chain has been a lot.
What we've also seen is the order book, as Lindsley referenced, the order book has increased. Again, unwinds itself and improves, then we'll see that order book unwind as we resolve customers going forward.
Yeah. Great. Thank you very much. Sorry, go on.
Yeah. Rory, let me just touch on the last point of your question, which is the relationship with Rockwell. I started 18 months ago by flying to Milwaukee and having a one-on-one session. In fact, I was the first visitor during the pandemic to their headquarters in Milwaukee to meet with Blake Moret, their CEO and chair. I got to tell you, I mean, Blake's been there a long time, I think since 1984. He's transforming that company. He's moving it to solution sale. We're 100% aligned. I'm very impressed with him, with the leadership team he's bringing in, with the team that's been there. They've got a lot of experienced people. This is a good company. I've known this is the old Allen-Bradley, and I've known them for 30 years.
I started by programming Allen-Bradley PLCs in college, and this is an outstanding company. Very distribution friendly. They've got a great position in the Americas in terms of market share, growing globally. We've worked every aspect of the relationship in terms of what they call market access, which is their distribution channel globally in Europe, the Americas, Latin America. We've been meeting behind the scenes and under NDA with their team now for about 12 months. We're completely 100% aligned on the direction we wanna go in and how we both want to invest to enhance this relationship, not only in Latin America, but on a global basis as we move forward.
Great. Thank you both very much, and enjoy your trips to Mexico.
Thanks a lot.
Thank you. Our next question comes from David Brockton of Numis. David, your line is now open.
Good morning and good afternoon all. Two questions, please. I appreciate you just touched on how Fort Worth can help with the business in Mexico, but could you just talk around the sort of capacity within the business to continue to expand? How well invested is the platform and the DCs to serve the wider Latin American region, please? And then the second question, I guess unrelated to the transaction today, but could you just talk about what the M&A pipeline looks like post this deal? Should we expect a period of digestion or are of further deals possible in the near and medium term? Thank you.
Yeah. On the M&A pipeline, you know, we can't predict when deals will. You know, some of these deals, you can't predict when you'll unlock it and when the company will be willing to sell. I will say this, you know, we've been very clear that with the market as it is right now, if we do head into recession, whether it's in Europe, the Americas globally, we do expect valuations to come down. If it's PE-backed, we want to be careful, clearly, because last year's multiple is not this year's multiple. I think family-run businesses are slightly different. But for us, the M&A pipeline is quite full, and we've got lots of discussions that are taking place, but we're being cautious, and David can add some color to that as well.
As far as the DCs, there is room for expansion. There's room to bring in. We're looking to bring in another vertical carousel. There's not a shortage of capacity today. It's more of let's sell the product first, then stock it. We've got the product in Fort Worth. Once we get enough customers buying product in Mexico, we can then shift that product to Mexico. As we expand into South America longer term, we'll look at both inorganic opportunity as well as maybe expansion of warehouse capability, depending on how difficult it is logistically to get products to those locations. There will be opportunities as we move forward. We're putting a warehouse into Spain under Risoul. There'll be other opportunities in the Caribbean as well.
We're not talking huge warehouses, more like 3PL locations, as we move forward in terms of this operation. We definitely have, I think, enough capacity between Fort Worth as well as in Mexico and Monterrey to be able to double the sales that exist today without a huge incremental investment from what I've seen. David, do you wanna add anything on M&A?
Just a quick. As Lindsley said, but our discipline remains strong. Our teams are busy, but we're gonna remain very disciplined in terms of those, you know, those strategic fit to returns. In terms of the investment, again, we factored both OpEx and CapEx investments as we acquire it. You know, it's not big dollars. It's sensibly priced investments, both OpEx and CapEx. You know, some of it's incentive related, some of it's technology related, some of it, but sort of building out those services and solutions. But it's all in the ordinary course BAU activities.
Thank you. Our next question for today comes from Oscar Val of JP Morgan. Oscar, your line is now open.
Yes. Good morning, Lindsley. Sorry. Good afternoon, Lindsley and David. I have three questions. The first one, I apologize, you might have touched on it at the beginning, but is there an earn-out or a contingent consideration for the management team that is staying on? Then secondly, just could you give a bit more color on the business model? How much is digital or is it less digital in webshop than your historical or your existing Allied business? How does the logistics work vs Allied? Then finally, you talk about Latin America as an opportunity. Do you see that developing with Rockwell, or is it more organically going into new regions in Latin America?
Great questions, Oscar. First of all, there's not an earn-out. Felipe has stepped out of the business. The ownership was Felipe and his family. Felipe has stepped out. Gerardo is running the company. We do have those retention packages in for all the leaders. You know, they're committed to the company. This is an opportunity where this isn't about the money for this team. This is about actually building something special. You know, how do you take this business from $166 million to $500 million over the next few years? How do you go do that and do it profitably? That's what this team's committed to do, and that's what we're committed to helping them do.
When it comes to digital, great question. Percentage of business that's digital, zero. They don't do digital business. They have some EDI transactions, et cetera. But for the most part, this is a very manual business. We think as digital capabilities are being enhanced within Mexico, it's a great opportunity for us to lead the way. Logistics vs Allied, the difference is they've got their own fleet of trucks. They deliver their own products to customers. There's advantages and disadvantages. Disadvantages, there's some emissions and ESG and carbon considerations that we obviously have to consider. The advantages are they control the deliveries.
Their on-time delivery is quite good and they do an outstanding job at delivering to customers once the product gets across the border that they receive and bring in. As far as growth within Latin America, it will be certainly hopefully with Rockwell longer term. Other adjacent lines and synergistic lines, and that will be a combination. You know, our first priority is always organic, but there'll also be some inorganic opportunities. There's some really good companies. There are other good companies in Mexico that we can look at, and there's good companies in Chile and Peru and throughout South America. I would say we probably won't look at Brazil in the short term, 'cause it's very difficult to do business there.
Throughout South America and Central America, let's not forget, you know, places like Panama and Nicaragua and Costa Rica, great opportunities throughout Latin America. We're really excited about that opportunity. We've signaled that in the past, Oscar, where we talked about the importance of Mexico, the importance of countries like Germany, the importance of the U.S. and of France and Italy, and of Southeast Asia. Those are areas we're really focused geographically today at inorganic opportunities because we see long-term potential, long-term over the next five to 10 years, being pretty significant with what's happening in the world today. That's where we're looking.
Great. Thanks a lot.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, that's star one on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from Henry Carver from Peel Hunt. Henry, your line is now open.
Thanks. Yeah. Hi, guys. Just a couple of, I guess, the follow-ons now. Just with regards to that pipeline, is it fair to say that now, judging from your comments, that it is skewed towards Latin America and the nearshoring opportunity there? Or is it sort of spread more widely globally still? And then secondly, just on the digital, I mean, clearly a big opportunity there, but it is, you know, obviously something that is not straightforward or several companies historically have found it can be fairly disruptive to add digital and to integrate that and to, you know, develop it.
I just wonder if you can give any sort of reassurance that, you know, that is probably not gonna be the case here and the opportunity overcomes the potential, you know, rollout issues.
Yeah. First question, in regards to the pipeline, it differs by region. We're very regionally oriented now as there are global companies that we're looking at. We have a European pipeline or an EMEIA pipeline. We've got an APAC pipeline. We've got an Americas pipeline. You know, I would not say it's still in the Americas, it's overweight to the U.S.. There's a lot of opportunities in the U.S., but a lot of those are private equity-backed deals, and we're taking a look at them. We're being very cautious in terms of multiples and valuations and, of course, looking at, you know, what's the cyclicality if there is a recession. We're doing what you would expect us to do on that front.
I wouldn't say we're overweighted necessarily in to Latin America. In the Americas, I'd say it's more to the U.S. than and still in Europe, across the board, we're looking at more in places like Italy and France and other countries outside the U.K. Germany continues to be a focus. In Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand. Really it's around the world. I think it's, we're still taking a global view with a focus and priority still on organic growth and looking at how we can enhance that organic growth with solutions, products and some geographical expansion. Digital, I think in terms of digital, we're talking less than probably a $2 million investment. We've been working on this behind the scenes for quite some time.
There are distributors like Digi-Key and Mouser that do a great job in Mexico on the web. There's opportunities that we can see that have been led in the electronics area by those companies where customers have adapted to the web. Being in Texas, we've got obviously proximity is great in terms of being able to get to their location from Dallas-Fort Worth, a direct flight to be able to have our teams work together. Obviously skill set in terms of language is there. I think we're pretty optimistic. There's always risk, but I think it's gonna be something that we'll be able to resolve sooner rather than later. Then it's getting their sales force comfortable and getting customers to use the web other than just for research, right?
That's gonna take some time to build over time, just like our own private label business. We've been through it in other countries, as we've gone with the digital first strategy, and it works. We're confident that we'll be able to make this work.
That's great. Thanks, Lindsley. Just a very quick follow-up. When digital is sort of fully where you want it to be for Risoul, where do you think the margins could get to for that business?
Well, from a digital standpoint, you know, it's always gonna be higher than the standard business because they're gonna buy a more broad array of products and be able to buy some of the products certainly from our private label brand at higher margins.
Great. Brilliant. Thanks, guys.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Thomas Sheridan of Jefferies. Thomas, your line is now open.
Yes. Thank you. It's Thomas Sheridan here on behalf of Kean Marden. I have three questions, if I may. The first of which is regarding the organic revenue growth rates mentioned mid-single digit pre-pandemic. I noticed on the slide there was an 8.5% forecasted CAGR. Wondering if that would be more appropriate in terms of the trajectory from here, especially as we see the order book unwind. Any thoughts on that would be appreciated. My second question is, David, I appreciate you can't say much around revenue synergies currently, but I'd be keen to know if you have any thoughts on the shape of the revenue synergies to come through in the next three years. Should we assume that they'll be stable in each year, or would you expect it to be a slower start?
We see those build up meaningfully in years two and three. Thirdly, just regarding Rockwell, I appreciate there's an extremely experienced management team there that have experience from Rockwell, but is there any risk that the APRs could go to other distributors or the fact that Rockwell may just want to go direct to market? Thank you.
Yeah. Let me take the third one first, and then David can touch on the organic growth. By the way, the CAGR was of automation controls in general, I believe, for that market at 8.5%. David can touch on revenue synergies. In regard to Rockwell, we just renewed the APR in advance of the acquisition. That was something that was really important that we get done pre-close or pre-signing. We still have to go through the Mexican competition period, and so we've still got to wait before close. You know, for us, that was really important to get that done. You know, with any supplier, it always comes down to performance.
I wouldn't say we're, you know, you're always at risk losing a supplier if you don't perform. I'll tell you this right now, we are going to perform for Rockwell. They have performed for Rockwell, and we're not gonna do anything to stall that. If anything, we're gonna do all we can to enhance that, to accelerate that so that we can pick up APRs in other regions. I think the risk is quite low, but with the caveat that we have to continue to perform. You can never become complacent in this business, and you can never take suppliers for granted, which is why it was so important in advance of this acquisition that we build a relationship, a much deeper relationship with Rockwell and have their assurance that we're not gonna lose the line.
Which was something that was important to me and why I spent so much time investing in the Rockwell relationship and will moving forward. I think it's low risk. I see it as an opportunity, not as a challenge or a risk. I see it as a major opportunity on a worldwide basis. Great company, great profit, and they work really closely with the distribution channel, and they allow the distributors to make profit if they perform. I'm really excited about the opportunity they present and have been for a while, and we've been looking at how we can work more closely with them. This gives us a great opportunity. David, do you wanna touch on the first two?
Apologies if my line is cut out a little bit. Revenue growth future, high single digits. In terms of the shape of the synergies, we would expect it to sort of ramp up over the three years. The greatest level of synergy will be in year three.
Very clear. Thank you both.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, that's star one on your telephone keypad. I will now pass the call back over to Lucy for any questions via the webcast.
Hi there. We've got one question that's come in saying, do you see any regional risk in Mexico, and how will the currency be managed?
In terms, you know, it'll be U.S. dollars, and then we'll manage through hedging activities.
Also U.S. dollars conversions, in terms of any other regional risks, as we see fit, as we do all of our other businesses, around the world and the various countries. At this point in time, the order book remains strong. The nearshoring activities are positive, and we certainly see good prospects as we look forward.
You know, I'll tell you this, Dave and I were talking about this on our last trip there. I was in Monterrey in 2002, and then when I went 18 months ago, it was as if I was in a different city. It's just amazing, the infrastructure and the build and the modernization of that area. Not just that, Mexico in general. You know, if you haven't been there in a long time, I think you'd be surprised at the level of automation, at the level of sophistication, the level of technical expertise and competency that's being developed in Mexico. I think it's got a long run ahead of itself in terms of opportunity from a manufacturing perspective.
It's certainly serving the Canadian and U.S. markets as we move forward.
Alex, just to say there's no more questions online, so handing back to you.
Thank you. Just as a final reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, that's star one on your telephone keypad.
All right, Alex.
Okay. Currently, we have no further questions, so I'll hand back to Lindsley Ruth for any further remarks.
Okay. Thank you very much, Alex and Lucy. Thank you. I just wanna say thanks to our team, our corporate development team and our team in the Americas, for the hard work that they've done in due diligence and working closely. You know, this has been a lengthy process that we've gone through. Also working with the Risoul family and with the company. They've been incredibly professional. I'd like to compliment Citi on their involvement in helping us in Mexico. Great understanding of the market. It's been a team, a real team initiative. We've seen everything. Risoul's been very open.
The family's been very open, and we're very excited about this opportunity, and I'm looking forward to being there in a couple of hours and spending time with the leadership team across Mexico tonight, and then with the team at their headquarters tomorrow. If you do have any further questions, please let us know. Rest assured, you know, we spent a lot of time doing our work on this, and we're really excited about the opportunity. Just remember, we're not done yet. We're a small player in a big market. We've got a long way to go. We're in the right direction, and we're looking to make amazing happen for a better world every day. Thank you for joining us today, and we'll talk to you soon.
Thank you all for joining today's call. You may now disconnect your lines.