Please join us in welcoming our next speaker. Our company is ATS Corporation, and from ATS, I'm pleased to welcome Ryan McLeod. He was formerly the CFO, and now he's the interim CEO.
Thank you, Jonathan.
Pleasure.
Great to be here.
Likewise. I think it's a one-year anniversary now. Now you're in the main seat.
Yeah, yeah.
I guess before we go into the questions, you did put out a LinkedIn announcement yesterday about a new hire with one of your prominent divisions, Life Sciencess. Could you just tell everyone about that?
Yeah, really excited. Sarah Moore joined us yesterday. She is the new group executive for our Life Sciences businesses. It is really six independent Life Sciences businesses, and she is a career Life Sciences person. She is an expert in the space. The last seven or eight years, she has been with Danaher Corporation, started her career, and spent the majority of her career at Siemens Healthineers. A really great addition to the team. Really excited to have her on board. She is going to fit really well from a culture perspective. She has done M&A. She is well-versed in the Danaher business system, that lean continuous improvement focus that we have at ATS. Really excited to have her on board.
I think that cultural fit is very important, particularly on the ABM framework, where it has become your culture over the past two, three years, five years, I guess.
Yeah, it really is. I mean, we describe it as our culture, continuous improvement, and it's really critical to how we operate. At its heart, it's a business system focused on continuous improvement, but it's day-to-day how we operate and think of it as a company.
I guess before we go into the segments, maybe we can start with a recap of Q2 fiscal, or I could say calendar Q3. Pretty solid results. Nothing particularly, I would say, to flag or call out. Really nice reaction from the stock on day one. Kind of come back. I think there's a lot of market dynamics at play there too. Maybe you can talk about how the results came in relative to your expectations, if there were any watch items there or anything you particularly want to highlight.
Results were very much in line with where we expected to be. First half of the year, we're up about 12% in revenues, which is in line. As we look to the second half of the year, our backlog is up about 13.5% year- over- year. We are very well positioned going into the second half of the year. There are a lot of really positive tailwinds, and I'm sure we'll get into the markets, but across the market verticals that we're in. We feel really good about the performance in the first half and the outlook for the second half and even longer term. I mean, a lot of what's in our funnel will support revenues for the next one, two, even beyond that number of years. There are a lot of really good things happening across the business.
I believe you did reaffirm some of the guideposts when thinking about this year with high single-digit organic growth and then margin expansion, I think on a year-over-year basis.
Yes. Yeah, so we've talked about high single-digit revenue growth year- over- year, and we're on track for that. As well, we've talked about margin expansion. We've seen good sequential margin expansion in the last couple of quarters. Q1 was a higher bar for us, but there was significant margin expansion in Q2. We feel we're in a good position to continue that trend for the second half.
Maybe we can dive into the segments, I guess, before getting into nitty-gritty. We'll talk about Life Sciences first. Maybe just give us a general outlook for that market. You've always talked about automation growing in the mid-single digits. Life Sciences probably above that. Maybe we can just talk about the general outlook and I guess maybe the different moving parts within Life Sciences.
Yeah. I mean, I'll start with we get asked a lot about GLP-1 and our exposure there, and it's a big piece of the business today. It's about 10% of our total revenues is tied to GLP-1 and about 20% of our Life Sciences business. What we do in that space is the drug delivery mechanism, which is the auto injector. It's a complex device. Quality is super important to our customers. Time to market really matters to our customers. From a consumer end market perspective, it's a very high growth market. What that means for us is we expect it to be an important piece of our revenues over the next, I'm going to say, five years, but likely beyond that as well.
That is, like I said, it's about 10% of our revenues today, and we expect it to remain in that range over that period. As opposed to we build capital equipment for our customers. What that means is a customer is launching a new product, and we're going to build equipment for them. Typically, that's going to go into the market. Assuming they have success, they're going to come back to us in three years, five years, depends on their growth rate, and we're going to help them continue to expand. What's unique about the GLP-1 space is that end market growth is so high that customers are really going to have to come back and invest in a shorter time frame. Whether that's every 18 months, every 24 months, it's going to be a shorter cycle from a customer investment perspective.
We're very excited about what's happening there. We have 10 active customer relationships in that space, so it's very well diversified. The next biggest piece of our Life Sciences portfolio is radiopharma. These are drugs that are used in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. There's a lot of investment happening in that space with pharma companies, so new drug development. The easiest way to kind of think about this is it's related to the personalization of medicine. What does that mean? Twenty or thirty years ago, if you were being treated for cancer, there would be a handful of therapies that you would use, and they were fairly broad. What's happened over time is the therapies that have been developed are very specific for whether it's a blood cancer or a bone cancer, where it is in your body.
They've become very specific to treat the types of cancers. And so that research and development that's being done by the pharma companies, that's driving growth for what we do, which is the equipment that's used in the production and distribution of these drugs. That's an area that we're very excited about. It will likely be a higher growth piece of the business relative to GLP-1s over time. There's a lot of other areas. Med device is a big piece of our business. Outside of auto injectors, we're in contact lenses. We are in wearable devices, so think blood glucose monitors. There's a trend happening right now where historically these devices have been primarily used for treatment of diabetes, blood glucose monitoring. They're moving more into a consumer-type application now, so not just for diabetes treatment and monitoring, but the general population these devices are being marketed towards.
Wearables is a big piece of our business. We're involved in traditional pharma manufacturing and the lab space. Lab is, for us, shorter cycle equipment, shorter lead times, more standardized, high-margin business. Today, that's the smaller part of our Life Sciences business.
I think that really highlights the diversification of Life Sciences. I mean, one of the main concerns we get from investors is on the oral GLP-1s. I mean, speaking to our biotech analyst, I think she said that Lilly's going to launch one next year. Then it takes time for mass adoption, and there's a lot dependent on the insurance coverage and sort of approvals. It seems, I do not want to say longer tail, but it does seem further out. How are you viewing that? I mean, arguably the diversification you just talked about does offset any sort of headwind that that could.
Yeah, it should. The challenge with oral GLP-1s is the efficacy of them, and there's also been more significant side effects in a lot of the clinical trials. To date, they haven't been successful. From a pharma manufacturer standpoint, it makes a lot of sense to pursue it. From a consumer adoption standpoint, people generally are going to want to take a pill rather than use an injectable device. I understand why pharma companies are pursuing it. Like I said, the efficacy of them hasn't been the same as the direct injectable. To your point, I do believe pharma companies are going to continue to pursue that. The other growth tailwind around GLP-1s today, I mean, this started out as a treatment for diabetes. It's moved into a weight loss application.
There's lots of, again, research development happening around treatment of other conditions, so neurological conditions, cardiovascular health. The opportunity for GLP-1s, in particular with the injectable devices, the preferred drug delivery treatment, there's still a lot of runway there.
You did mention the other applications with wearables and things of that nature. I guess moving into the energy vertical, or maybe we can just call it nuclear in the financial disclosures if you want. I mean, maybe it is a little bit more diverse, but it is dominated by nuclear today, yes. We will get into some specific questions, but maybe just tell everybody what that business actually does, who it supports, what are the applications, just to give us some background there.
Sure. Within nuclear, which is the biggest part of our energy business, over the last, I'm going to say, 10 to 15 years, most of the work in nuclear we've done is around CANDU refurbishment. This is the retubing of the CANDU reactors. Most of them are in Canada, but there are a few in parts of predominantly Eastern Europe and Asia. Conversely, with Life Sciences automation, you think an auto injector is a complex device, very lightweight. Our equipment does 300 a minute coming off the line. In the nuclear space, the equipment moves very slowly. You are going in and you are pulling out the actual spent fuel rods, pulverizing them, and putting new ones in. That is high level what the refurbishment process is. That is an 18-month process, equipment extremely precise, but it moves very slowly.
The name of the game in nuclear is our equipment allows the refurbishment to be done much more efficiently from a time, and every day a nuclear reactor is down is millions of dollars of lost revenue. That's the benefit as well as employee safety. You're handling radiated components, and you want to make sure you're doing that as safely as possible and limiting human exposure to radiated environments. We have taken that refurbishment work, and we've expanded into decommissioning. Decommissioning is if you're not going to refurbish a nuclear plant, you're going to tear it down, take it apart, and you have to safely dispose of all these radiated components. We've been in that space for the past five years. The more exciting growth opportunity for us looking forward is around new builds.
With the AI data center, all this development and investment that's drawing demand for energy, nuclear is a really great green alternative to support that. Where we're involved is in fuel handling, fuel fabrication, and the modular construction of the power plants. Whether it's SMR or large scale, it doesn't matter. We're involved in both. The last couple of years, we've been doing, I'll call it development work. We've been doing design work, we've been doing prototypes, and working with a very broad array of customers. As shovels get into the ground and some of these reactors start going through the approval process, get funded, and get into construction, we're very well positioned.
Not to say you're underselling it, but if I detected the tone on the last call, it was very bullish around nuclear. If we just take one data point of the year, the nuclear backlog, I think you're at about 280. You were 115 and change, 113 last year at the same time. How much of that growth is attributed to life extensions versus new build work? I ask that too because we do have some visibility on CANDU and the life extension projects that have been ongoing for a while, but it does seem like this is an inflection to some degree for you guys.
Yeah. The majority of it is still tied to CANDU. That is the biggest piece of our backlog, the refurbishment activity. Like I said, there is active decommissioning work that we are engaged on as well as new builds in both development and new builds that are proceeding and have, I think, call it shovels in the ground.
Interesting development. I guess moving on to the former high growth vertical, the transportation business, it does look like we've hit steady state, kind of CAD 50 million a quarter. Do you feel that segment has hit kind of trough revenues, or is there further downside on the whole EV expiration of credits in the U.S. or other adoption curve headwinds?
It's probably in the range that it's going to be for the foreseeable future. There's investment happening in the space, but it's not as tied to capacity expansion. It's more tied to technology changes, new developments in the battery design that are going to extend range or make charging times faster, more efficient. There's still development in that space and investment happening, but it is going to be smaller scale. I think there's significant capacity in that space relative to consumer demand. We don't see that being a growth vertical for us over the next three to five years.
In that context, how do you think about that business as part of the whole portfolio and whether there's opportunities to kind of optimize exposure and maybe redeploy into the higher growth verticals?
Yeah. We are very focused on optimizing the business. We went through significant restructuring last year as that business was coming off from a volume perspective. We announced a restructuring program in the most recent quarter, which was not targeted in transportation, but there is some impact there. Our objective is to optimize the performance of that business. Part of that is we are looking at adjacent opportunities that fit well with what we do in that space. Think industrial manufacturing, reshoring opportunities where customers are looking at bringing their manufacturing to North America or to Europe, wherever it is. That is creating opportunity for us in spaces that are outside of or closely adjacent to transportation. That is really our focus, to optimize the performance in that business.
Have you seen any uptick in conversations about reshoring as a result of all the tariff rhetoric and the uncertainty?
Yes, but it's happened over a period of time. I would say it's really been more tied to coming out of COVID and a lot of the supply chain disruption that happened during that period. Customers since then have been pursuing more localized production, meaning that rather than having a single large low-cost facility in a low-cost country, they are now looking at having production more localized with where their customers are. That means in North America, that means in Europe, and as well as in Asia. In order to do that, that does require more advanced automation typically. Tariffs we haven't seen as really a big driver because that localization strategy fits well in that kind of tariff environment. We do have some small mid-sized businesses that we work with, customers. That's more in the food and packaging space.
I would say there's a little bit more hesitancy around capital deployment. If a customer has a single site or two production sites today, they have to get it right in terms of tariffs. They can't put something in a region and not know the rules of the game, which seems to be one of the challenges today is the changing dynamic rule environment. Our big customers, they've continued to invest. They're continuing to launch new products, scale up production where they have demand. They haven't really seen or been affected by tariffs.
I guess maybe moving on to the broader conversation about margins. I'll ask the margin question in a second, but you did do some more restructuring in the quarter, I think CAD 15 million. I think on the call you talked about a one-year payback, but I think you're also reinvesting some of the savings into other areas of the business that may be growing.
Yeah, that's right. A good example is the nuclear space. We do expect that to be a high growth area. Most of our capabilities are in Canada today. Through that, we've supported a lot of the refurbishment work that's happened outside of Canada in Eastern Europe and Asia. As we're looking towards the new build environment, for example, a lot of that's going to happen in the U.S., and we're looking at building up a presence in the U.S. A lot of the workforce we have, the skill sets are transferable to nuclear, but there are some specialized skill sets that we'll need, nuclear engineers as an example. Part of the restructuring savings will go towards investing in some of those higher growth areas.
Good problem to have.
Yeah.
I guess the broader question on the margins, if we go back to the 2023 IR day target, I think it was 15% even margins. I guess is that target, timeline aside, still a possibility? How much of it was predicated on operating leverage and really nice improvement, right, over the last few quarters sequentially, more expansion for the rest of the year? How should we think about bridging the gap from Q2 margins of 11%-ish to that 15% target if that's still a longer-term goal?
It is. And it's certainly within reach. I mean, the world has changed since 2013. At that time, our transportation business was certainly accretive to where margins are today. That has, with the headwinds in that space, become a tailwind to our overall margin target, or sorry, a headwind to our overall margin target. That opportunity, we still see it. There is more operating leverage that's part of that plan from where we are today relative to where we were in 2013. There's still opportunity in the sales mix. After sales services, we have a growth opportunity to outgrow the rest of the business. I'll give you an example. Our food business, just under 30% of our revenues there are in services. Best in class would be 40%-50%. There's opportunity there in terms of mix.
What we do in terms of continuous improvement in supply chain material productivity or labor productivity, all of that will drive benefit. A lot of that's going to be, as I said, in the gross margin. Standardization is another area. It's one that's been very favorable for us through GLP-1. As I said, we work with 10 different customers in that space. All of that is part of our custom automation business, but we utilize a standard platform to do that work. Yeah, the target's still there, and we've got various levers to achieve it.
You alluded to mix on food and beverage as part of the business. We've talked about a few of the segments. If we think about M&A, I guess maybe just to level set everybody where leverage is today and where you see that trending through the balance of the year. As you look at the portfolio today, where would you look at potentially increasing presence throughout your verticals? Maybe how do you see mix of the overall business trending over the next three to five years?
Yeah. I'll start with leverage. We're about three and a half times today. We do, or 3.4, I think is where we finished last quarter. We have a target to get that below three by our fiscal year end, which is March. That provides us with more flexibility at the end of the day. From an M&A standpoint, I mean, start with the market. We like Life Sciences. We like food. They're regulated spaces. They're what we call high consequence of failure markets, meaning quality time to market really matters for our customers in those spaces. Price is always going to matter. That's always a discussion point. We just don't want it to be the number one focus area with our customers. We want to sell on different value levers. Like I said, within those markets, they're also less cyclical markets.
That's what we like and really where we're targeting to invest. There's a lot of white space.
I guess on the leveraging relatedly, is the free cash flow kind of come in a little below our expectations? It seems like the biggest drag is working cap. I think you still have a target on the table of 15% of sales investment rate. I think you're at 18%- ish now. I mean, great improvement. What's the confidence level in getting to 15%? And what does it take to get there?
There's some structural changes that have happened in the business. As we've added businesses that are shorter cycle revenues, more products. Again, the benefit is we're trying to offset some of the exposure to our customers' CapEx cycles. After sales services is a big piece of that, as is shorter cycle products. Those businesses do have a different cost structure. More working capital intensive, we hold inventory in those spaces, typically higher SG&A related to R&D, sometimes sales structure. All that said, the 15% working capital target is a good target for us. It's achievable. We have some larger Life Sciences programs today that we're executing on. We'll hit some larger billing milestones in our fiscal fourth quarter. That'll help us move a significant way back towards that 15% target.
I think that's a good point on the larger enterprise orders. Also seems to be impacting the cadence of revenue in Life Sciences and then also lapping tough comps on the backlog build.
Yeah. I mean, our Life Sciences business, it's half the business. There's some larger programs, some of them tied to GLP-1. As I said, we're very pleased with the progress in that business. Backlog's still very strong in that business and funnel activity is very strong as well.
I guess with the time we have left, we'll address the elephant in the room. Potential leadership change, CEO. Andrew, I think, announced resignation in May-ish, June, July.
July.
Summer.
July 4th.
Earlier, July 4th.
It really ruined some long weekends.
It does seem reasonable, the opportunity he was given at Baxter, a public company. I think everyone is aware of that. Maybe start off with what's the profile of the ideal CEO for ATS?
Yeah. I mean, it's similar to what I spoke about in terms of Sarah joining this week. Somebody with a strong background in continuous improvement lean, somebody who's going to fit in with our culture very well. That has become our culture. It's really how we operate across the entire enterprise. Somebody with a strong M&A background that's going to continue to be an important part of our growth. As I said, there's a lot of opportunity. There's a lot of white space in the markets that we really like. I think those are probably one and one A. The process, it's well advanced. The board's been very engaged on it. The full board, it's gone beyond just the subcommittee. Yeah, it's well advanced.
Our structure is such that we operate in a very decentralized manner, meaning we have business presidents who run the operations day-to-day. While we have been in this interim period, that structure has really allowed us to continue to operate in a business-as-usual manner. That is everything from day-to-day operations, customer engagement, as well as on the M&A side. All the cultivation work that we spend a lot of time on, that has all continued. It really has been a business-as-usual attitude amongst the entire team.
I guess the process you mentioned is pretty advanced. I mean, I guess standard executive searches are six months, July 4th. People can do the math.
Yeah. I'm not going to put too fine a point on it. These things, they take what they're going to take, but it's well advanced. Like I said, it's a priority for the board. It's obviously a critical and important decision. I have high confidence it'll be resolved shortly.
That's our time. Ryan, thank you very much.
Thank you, Jonathan. Appreciate it.