Nice softball. I wanted to start you off.
Sure.
It's been my go-to today so far, the Q3 results. Maybe we can just do a recap there, some highlights. Also, what are the main areas of investor concern? How do those trend in the quarter?
Yeah, so as you're aware, we just finished Q2, and that's all right, Jonathan. We're on the same page now. So to give you a little bit of context about our business, all of our markets except our transportation, more EV business, book-to-bill ratio for trailing 12 months is above 1. And so we continue to see strength in all of our core space and our strategic areas of focus. EV market has certainly fallen off, and we've readjusted the cost structure and readjusted the business as what we view as the foreseeable future. And so overall, certainly making progress, going to get back to the basics around where the business continues to drive and our teams continue to execute. Our largest market, life sciences, organic growth within the quarter for bookings was above 20%.
While we continuously strengthen the acquisitions that we've done, we're proud of that organic growth and that drive to identify solutions that enable and help our customers impact the markets that they support. Overall, good position, good strength, and one we continue to build upon.
So you mentioned the life sciences segment there. I think you've just come off your strongest quarter ever for booking. So maybe you can discuss some of the underlying drivers there, maybe the outlook looking forward. I mean, those are pretty elevated growth rates.
Yeah, so a couple of things. If you step back and look at our business, we are often tied with strategic focus areas for our customers, and I'll walk through a few of those areas. Easy one to walk through initially is we're very involved with the GLP-1 drug launches, and what happens is if a customer gets approval, they'll go through and they have to go through an auto injector, and we make the equipment for the auto injectors, and we've been in the space for two decades, and there'll be a theme that I walk through in the answer, but two decades, and we've been investing in technology and innovation to really put us in a lead position, and one of those areas is something called Symphony or Symphony Platform, and effectively what this does is it allows you to build product wallets in motion.
Why does that matter to customers? Because you can actually improve your output and reduce your footprint. Our solution based on the core technology can be up to two times the output and half the footprint, which really matters to our customers in this space. We have between seven and eight customers in this market right now, and we continue to be a key enabler. Additionally, we're very involved in radiopharmaceuticals. Actually our largest order within the quarter was in the radiopharma space. For those of you who don't know, we do the filling for radiopharmaceuticals, and whether it's identification or treatment of cancer. We have a business called Comecer that we acquired about six years ago, and this business continues to evolve and continues to build out capability to really enable their customers to bring these products to market.
That business, for example, has almost doubled its revenue in that time period, and their margin profile has grown at an even faster pace, even faster pace. Contact lenses continues to be an area for us, and I know daily use contact lenses; it's out there, been out there for a long time. Well, we have a lot of customers that are wrapped around this area, and they continue to invest wearable devices in the treatment of diabetes, as well as pharmacy automation. What I'm building out is we have many core capabilities that really enable and align our customers to bring their products to market. If you get FDA approval on a new drug or a new launch, you come to ATS, and we've got the filling capability; we've got the process capability.
We can help you bring that product to market cost-effective at the highest level of quality. So your risk profile is very low, and we continue to see opportunity in this area. Can I add one more? We're also pleased this past quarter we announced three acquisitions. One is a business called Heidolph, which is in the lab space, and Heidolph is an addition that we've been working on and really targeting for about three years, and that's going to just continue our ability to drive high value for our customers in the market. We also added a business called Paxiom. Paxiom does packaging, and they're in primary and secondary packaging, which is, think about when you have to have sterile packaging for food and life sciences, and we see a lot of opportunity with this, and then we added another digital capability within the quarter.
So overall, pleased with the progress, certainly much more to go.
So, it seems like very attractive end markets very attractive growth. How do you frame up your competitive positioning? I'm assuming this has got to draw a lot of new entrants or even existing incumbents from the space looking to take share, get on these kind of trends, the GLP-1. So what is the competitive advantage of ATS?
Yeah, so look, we're a decentralized corporation all aligned with our ATS Business Model. But ultimately, what customers look for with us, first and foremost, it's our brand. And what does brand mean in this area? It means history of execution and ability to support our customers to get their key drug or their key product to market. It's a trust factor. Because remember, if you're launching this product, this is 60%-70% gross margin, and you're a direct into your bloodstream. So quality is of the utmost focus for you. If you have a defect or a contamination, you have an issue. ATS is known to be very high level of quality, very high level of performance. We continue to execute and help our customers really bring their products to life. Additionally, service.
And service used to be a nice to have, and customers, I would say pre-COVID, okay, great, you guys service, et cetera, et cetera. Once COVID hit, they realized that it's not just about the first production process, it's about ongoing. And they looked at ATS on a global basis because their drug is not just for North America, it's not just for Europe, it's not just for Asia, it's all the above. And we are one of the largest players in the ability to support that global launch. So we can be anywhere they want to be to meet demand in the markets they serve. Next one is technology and innovation. We're constantly innovating. We're constantly driving this into our culture. I mentioned Symphony earlier. This is a very unique solution that we focused on really bringing this product to market.
And this has been an evolution of mine since I've been on to really drive into areas that are high value for our customers and to solve those problems and enable their success. And so they'll factor all three of those key areas into their thinking.
And we've only talked about one end market so far. Maybe shifting gears to food and beverage. I'm curious your outlook for that end market. I mean, it's been such an attractive, important market to you, and you touched on Paxiom. So if you wanted to maybe provide some more color about that as well, that'd be great.
Yeah, so I'll start with Paxiom, then I'll get into the space. But Paxiom, so they're big in, they call it, primary packaging and secondary packaging. So think simple way, potato chips going into a bag. That bag has to be sterile. It has to not have contaminants. It has to make sure that you don't have any type of issues when the consumer opens it up. They're big in that area. Well, that's used in food. It's also used when you use medical devices because you need to have the same sterile quality. So we're seeing our ability to grow our synergy funnel from a revenue perspective in food meet its expectations. We're actually very impressed with how fast the synergy funnel in life sciences is growing for this business. Now, it's still early days, but we're really excited about the future and the potential.
They're also in secondary processing and palletizing. So all three areas. Overall, in our food business, we're pleased with the progress. This area of our business has continued to evolve. And when we first started out, we were more in the primary processing. So think tomato from the vine to puree. That's primary processing. And we do a lot around that, whether it's going to puree or going to tomato paste or any of the areas that are going to be aligned with that. But we've also built out our trajectory in the secondary processing. And what secondary is, is think puree to baby food. Now, why does that matter? One is generally tied to a harvest season. The other one is on an ongoing basis. And so we're wanting to diversify and build out our capability on that ongoing basis.
Both require a high level of quality, a focus to really minimize risk in the space because you don't want to have any type of Listeria or any type of outbreak or contamination. You're going to focus on brand and quality of product. That's what we've really built into our capability. So, a proof point, we acquired a business called CFT several years ago. This business did low single-digit margin, so called 2%-3% EBIT. We've continued to help them. We've launched the ABM, our ATS Business Model, and really helped them identify ways they've had waste and grow their business. They've now done over a 500 basis point improvement on their bottom line. They're excited about the future.
And another key area is with the ABM. Oftentimes people think, "Okay, new acquisition, this is going to really be an impact on the people." And what we find is it starts off that way, but it quickly becomes an empowerment and enablement tool. So CFT went from, call it 8% turnover to about 10% turnover. And now they're less than 5% turnover. Their engagement scores have gone up. Their performance has gone up. The folks that want to be a part of this have come back to the business, and they're really driving this for their customers. They're identifying areas to expand, to build out, and to propel the business forward. And we continue to see opportunities in many areas along our food space.
If you look at how the dynamics of the end market are changing, we're really seeing an anomaly around labor and workforce starting to become in the growing area, becoming higher cost, and that favors automation, so we're seeing that ability to really impact, to drive a solution set, and so we're excited about the future, but we also know we need to continue to execute and continue to build.
So maybe we can move on to the other area of interest, transportation. I don't know how many questions you've got on that area today.
Just a couple.
So maybe we could focus on, I mean, you could frame it however you want. Selfishly, I'm asking about the auto space, the outlook for EVs, have we bottomed? And I guess more broadly, how do you think about the growth in your transportation segment holistically?
Yeah, so I mean, I'll start with the headline. I mean, this business, the way it sits today, the way we've structured, it's going to be roughly 10% of our business next year. So think about it in terms of like $200 million-$300 million. And when we look at the market and we look at just the overall demand, our funnel continues to be strong, but it's smaller opportunities. It's diversified with multi-customers. We're okay with all this. We've already taken the cost actions in the business. We've already aligned it to this space. And so we view this quarter and as we move into next quarter and finishing out in Q4, kind of being that trough and coming through. But overall, transportation is going to be a much smaller part of ATS for the future.
Our core market, life sciences, then regulated food and nuclear energy within our energy sector will make up +80%+ of our total corporation. So the future is really going to be around a regulated business and focusing on key attributes that drive that value creation. Transportation, nice niche, nice area around battery pack assembly for EVs. But again, it's going to be a much smaller piece of the business moving forward.
And you did touch upon the right-sizing initiatives. So maybe you can just update us on what you've done so far, what else you might need to undertake to right-size the cost structure there.
Yeah, so this quarter, we're pretty much done with all the actions, and we've announced it's roughly a $20 million cost structure or $20 million restructuring. We did most of those actions already. We have a couple of outstanding items, but very minimal. The first thing we do before we even take that action is we look at the workforce, and we have a very technical, very skilled workforce. We take that workforce where it's applicable, and we move that into areas of growth, so we do that with life sciences, and we can utilize the skill set in that space. It's people understand our model. They understand how we approach it. We've got common areas of focus like our SuperTrak that we can move those folks over.
And then we look at the rest of the business, and we identify what the market is going to look like a year, two years out. And we realign that cost structure. And that comes with footprint as well. So we've largely taken those actions and put that behind us, and now we're moving forward.
And then another end market that kind of came up on the last call, Q2 fiscal. Maybe I'm overthinking it here, the nuclear element. What are the solutions you offer there? How big is the opportunity? I mean, it's definitely a trend, a buzzword. We've all seen the big tech investments. But how do you see yourself playing in that space?
Yeah, so in the nuclear space, there are three key areas for us. CANDU reactors, the more commonly called the more common reactors, which you'll find in the U.S., which are the traditional reactors. And then there's what they call SMRs, small modular reactors. And I'm sure we've all heard about this. Our largest position in this is with CANDU reactors. And if you don't know the space, it looks like you've got multi-tube that is all the reactor. And so each tube has a nuclear core. And over time, that core will degrade and start to dip down. And you have 30-40 years, like Bruce Power. And what they'll do is they'll go through a refurbishment process. And so ultimately, what they're effectively doing is they're pulling the old rod out.
They're going to pulverize it, and they put a new rod in, which allows you to extend the life of the equipment so you can continue to produce green energy for the next 30-40 years. We do that automation process, so very highly valued for the customer. Hours, days, weeks matters because it's all about the return, and it's a niche area that our customers look to ATS for, and so we're a leader in that space, and globally, that's continued to evolve and continue to grow. That's still the smaller portion of the nuclear energy ability, but strong impact. The other area we do, and this is the more traditional, is we do decommissioning, and a normal reactor is called between 30-40 years. You can extend it, but then at some point, you have to go through the decommissioning process.
They'll usually set aside a certain amount of money for this. They'll call it rough numbers, $1 billion. If they can use automation and reduce that time, reduce that cost, they get to see the advantage of that. They get to see the benefit of that. We're also in that process. That's a smaller piece. The last portion is we're involved with the small modular reactor initiative. I say initiative. We do the fuel channel refueling. We work with several of the key players in this space. As we look at this, this has been going on for, call it a decade plus, where they've really tried to hone in and build out this technology. Now, the shift with nuclear being a big focus on energy has really repivoted this to be front and center. It's going to take time.
You have to prove the technology out. You have to prove that you can really deliver what you expect to deliver. So our view is this is a five-year journey. But we want to be with the key players. We want to enable them to really bring this product to market. And so we've been winning work, and we're going to continue to support. And when this comes to fruition, we're in a lead position to be able to help.
It's interesting. Maybe I guess to wrap up the whole conversation on the segments in the end markets, and you've touched on this throughout our discussion, but how do you see the end market mix evolving over the next five years, and I guess the corollary there was, are there any end markets that you're not in or at least in a meaningful way that you're looking to pursue?
Yeah, so I mean, if you step back, we have done, gosh, 20, 25, 26 plus acquisitions in the last five+ years. If you look at the general theme of those acquisitions, it's been life sciences, regulated food, and services and digital. We like those areas. We like that space. Even more so, we've gotten into high technology niche positions where it's high value for the customer and oftentimes high recurring revenue. You're going to hear us talk more and more about that. We've really shifted the business mix. We've also looked at how do we bring higher value within the spaces we play. What do I mean by that? We're a leader in integration. If you're going to launch an injectable device, you're going to launch a product, you come to ATS. We help you with the full process.
But then we can quickly bring in these solutions to that customer. They trust us. And we had an investor day last year. And one of our customers, Hologic, spoke at the investor day. And he talked about how ATS really helped them bring their products to market and really worked with them around servicing and driving to the demand that the market was setting on them. And how it was challenging during COVID, but yet we were able to execute. And then quickly, he talked about the new acquisitions with BioDot being picoliter dispensing. That's a trillionth of a liter. And why that matters is reagents, really real high value things. SP with the ability to do lyophilization, which is turning a liquid to a solid in the drug process.
So we continue to evolve our portfolio to not only be the CapEx piece in life sciences, but also the OpEx. And we've really driven the ability to also have high differentiated solutions where customers value the brand. They value the technology. They value the position. And oftentimes when we acquire, they'll call us. And so you're going to see us continue that evolution. And so when you look out the next year, two, three years, this will be a constant drive. It's a constant opportunity. And it's one that we see high return for our focus. One of the areas, and we acquired a business called Avidity. And what Avidity does is they're in the lab space for biopharmaceuticals.
So if you're going to be running tests and you're working on your next blockbuster drug, and you got to understand how it reacts in a certain environment, you want to remove all the variables. You want to make sure that you are ensuring that there's no problems with your testing process. So you're going to look at your water source. And you're going to make sure that water source is the purest level. That's what Avidity does. And so in biopharma, they're known across the board. And they also have very high recurring revenue. So they're in a niche area that provides water for this process. And there's a lot to like about that area. And so you're going to see us really looking at areas that we can continue around lab, as well as when there's filtration and ability to bring that value to market.
Interesting. And I don't know if you attended our keynote panel at lunch, but one of the major themes, not only at the panel, but among the manufacturing companies we cover, is nearshoring. How much of a tailwind has that been for your business? And do you think those tailwinds could be sustained moving forward? And I mean, embedded in there, obviously, is the election question. Does that have any impacts on those trends in your business in that regard?
So whenever you have an onshoring or a process around really bringing capability and manufacturing capacity to the region of demand, it favors automation. And what you'll find, and I talk, one of my standard works as a CEO is I will visit customers on a frequent basis. And what you'll find when you sit down and you talk to them, there's a challenge with labor. So while everyone will talk about onshoring, everyone will talk about bringing the product into the region, it's oftentimes a challenge to get the right labor on. Or the turnover is a challenge because they can't keep people once they get them on board. That generally favors automation. So they come to us, and they talk through, this is what we need. This is how we need it.
And we want you guys to be here for the life of the equipment to make sure that it's not just about day one. It's about day 30. It's about year two. It's about year five. And how are you helping us navigate that? And so when we work and talk to our customers, this is a real opportunity. Now, it's not changing. It's continuing to evolve. But when you look at an administration change, one, any administration that favors business is an advantage for us. But more specific around this area, if it becomes harder to bring labor in to do certain processing or do certain areas, that's going to favor generally our solution set. And I think about the example I used earlier with food. As you go through and you're either working with strawberries or tomatoes or a certain produce, the cost becomes greater.
You can't just pass that along. So you have to look for ways to really maximize, reduce your defects, improve your yield, improve your efficiency. We do all those things. We just launched a tool called Digital Tomato. What this effectively does is if you're a tomato plant processor, what matters to you is how you drive efficiency, how you meet your metrics. What do I mean by that? There's a thing called Brix. If you're going through tomato paste, it has to be a certain level of Brix content. It's really a measurement of the product itself. If you go over, it's waste. If you go under, your customer won't accept it. So you got to be right dialed in.
We, with our solution set, have the ability to have a continuous loop around feedback to ensure that you are as close to that level as possible. So you're not under where your customer rejects it, but you're not way over where you're giving product away. And lastly, efficiency. And really helping our customers drive efficiency in their process so they're maximizing their value. They're maximizing that ability to bring the product to market without having to go after price.
Interesting. And since you brought up the IR day earlier in the conversation, apropos nothing, I think you do have a long-term margin target, EBIT margins of 15%. We've talked about some of the headwinds, right, in transportation. But what's the outlook or the timelines of getting there? Or at the very least, what are the main levers that you have at your disposal to get to the margin target?
We set this target. When I first came on, we identified areas in the business that we viewed really are key areas to focus on to drive the margin of ATS. I've been here now eight years. When we first set it, the base business achieved 15%. We've acquired a few diluted businesses. We did that intentionally because we knew what we could drive for those businesses. We talked at our IR day that our target as a corporation is to get back to 15 as a total business. Right now, with EV, we're in a situation this past quarter where it's off that mark. We should start to see us normalize by Q4 and be in our normalized run rate. When we look out into next year and years beyond, there's some key levers we're focused on.
First one, supply chain. And this has been an area that we target, we drive on a continuous basis. When we acquire a company, one of the first things we do is we bring in our supply chain folks. I'm going to use a crude example. But if you buy this, and this is a component, so use your imagination, for $100, we buy it for $50. And we buy a lot more of it. So day two, after you get acquired, we come in and look at your supply chain, and we reduce your cost structure, pocket margin for us. And we do that across ATS. We set aggressive targets around how we're going to identify, how we're going to really improve. And our supply chain team continues to execute. Number two, standardization.
What COVID did for us was really forced us into a situation that we had to standardize. Now, why is that? Because our customers required us to bring our product to market. Instead of 44 weeks, be less than 20. You don't do that by just doing things the same way and trying to become a little bit more efficient. You have to rethink your approach, rethink your process. We drove that across our business. So standardization is now a real enabler for our future potential and margin expansion. And I talked about this auto injector. If you were to look at these machines, and we work with seven to eight different customers, what you'll see, the in and out feed are a little different. But the Symphony platform, it's the same. There's a couple of nuances in the machine itself.
But now you're getting to a 60/40, a 70/30 on custom and standard, which really creates a unique situation for driving cost out. And we see a continuation of that. Number three, our services and recurring revenue. Now, I walked through, we're anywhere between 25% and 35%. We're acquiring businesses at +40% . We're learning. We're building that back in. This past quarter, we were actually on the high end of that. This margin profile, this shift is going to continue to be an advantage for us. And the ABM, that constant drive to always make tomorrow better than today. It's an empowerment tool, driving efficiency in our labor, driving efficiency in our ability to bring product to market, driving Kaizen events across the board where we identify the gap and hammer to improve, common sense vigorously applied.
It's about measuring what matters most and hammering and hammering again to get better. And you'll see that across our ATS platform, across our business. So those are the key areas of focus.
You almost ran out of the clock on the M&A question, but I think we can get one playoff. Can you tell us a little about the long-term capital allocation framework? I mean, it's been such a big part of the growth story, right, M&A? How do you balance organic growth, M&A, potentially instituting a dividend policy down the road?
Yeah. So if you join my team, you get two books. And if you heard me speak, you'll know these. But I'm going to reference it again. The first book is The Outsiders. And the reason why you get that book is I want you to know how we think about capital allocation. I want you to know how we're going to assess and expect our return. The second book, by the way, which I usually get pressured on, is Extreme Ownership. And the reason why you get that book, no excuses, leadership. It's about really owning and driving results even when you don't have all the variables. But I say that first part because we look at capital allocation as one of the key areas of focus for us.
You can do a lot of stuff, but if you don't equate it back to shareholder value, then you've just done a lot of stuff. So our number one return is internal investment. We've increased, we've improved, we've driven innovation on a continuous level. Last week, we held our Global Innovation Summit, where we brought all the innovation leaders in from around the world. And they're focused on AI. They're focused on digital learning. They're focused on how they're going to build the next big product as a platform. ABM, driving returns in the business. Number two, M&A. Number three, when available, share buybacks. Right now, we're in a situation that our leverage is a little higher than we would like. And so we're going to also buy that down. And we have a statement on when we're looking at companies for acquisition, ABC, always be cultivating.
We're going to continue to cultivate while we're also deleveraging our business. So with that, I think we're out of time. Is there anything else, Jonathan?
That was a good Alec Baldwin impression. Thank you very much, Andrew.
Great seeing you.
Likewise. Thanks for squeezing it in.