Good morning, everybody. I'm John Hobbs, Director of Investor Relations for Albany International. Welcome to Albany International's Investor Day. I'm delighted to be here in Boston with Albany's management team. I know we're all particularly thankful to have the opportunity to gather in person after nearly two years of virtual events. It is very, very good to see each of you face to face. Today, we have presentations from members of Albany International's executive team. Bill Higgins, our President and CEO. Daniel Halftermeyer, President of Machine Clothing. Greg Harwell, President of Albany Engineered Composites. Stephen Nolan, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer. Following the prepared remarks this morning, the management team will be happy to take questions from the audience here in Boston, as well as questions from our virtual audience. We'll ask that you hold your questions until that time.
Virtual audience members, however, you can submit your questions anytime by simply clicking on the question button on your screen, type in your question, and click Submit. I do wanna remind everyone today that we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures during today's presentation. Additionally, many of our comments will contain forward-looking statements. These statements may involve a number of risks and uncertainties, including, among others, the continuing effects of the COVID pandemic and the indirect effects of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on our operations, on the markets we serve, and on our financial results. For a full discussion of these risks and uncertainties, as well as a reconciliation of non-GAAP measures we will use during this presentation, please refer to the notice contained on this slide and our SEC filings, including our 10-K and 10-Qs.
With that, I'll turn the presentation over to Bill Higgins, our President and CEO. Thank you. Bill?
Thanks, John. Good morning, everyone. As John said, it is great to have everybody here. I love being in Boston. I played a lot of hockey here growing up, so fondness for getting crunched into the boards here. But it's great to have you here. I know, even those of you that are online, you all have a busy day, and, wanna spend some time with you. We're excited to share our story with you today. If I just kind of tell a little story here about when I joined Albany.
Back in 2016, when the board of directors approached me to join the board, I knew a little bit about Albany, but as I looked into it, I thought, "Wow, this is an established industrial company in the paper industry that's building new materials and going into aerospace." When does that happen, right? It's something I wanted to be part of, and it just seemed something special. The board was, you know, looking at how do we reinvent ourselves, how do we grow? You're gonna hear that today, how Albany has a tradition, a history, and an emphasis on innovation and reinventing and inventing new materials.
As I dug in, as I learned at the board meetings, as I looked at the business, all of the discussion was around the AEC business, specifically the Safran venture that we had, and ramping up three manufacturing plants in three countries, in France, in New Hampshire, and Mexico. A new material for fan blades and cases on the LEAP engine. The processes being developed, the people being hired, being trained, all this was happening at once. It was an incredible story that the board was fully behind, supporting that. All the focus was on AEC and growing, getting that right, getting the operational execution right for that ramp up time phase. As I got into it, and I started looking at the financials, I said, "Wait a minute. What about this Machine Clothing business?"
This is an established long-term industrial manufacturing business that has 50% gross margins. That's not very common, those of you that know the industrial space. Incredible. I was really happy to join the board, and I'll come back to that in a minute. As John said, I'm Bill Higgins. I'm the president and CEO. I stepped in in early 2020, right when the MAX was going through its challenges, right when the pandemic was about to start. It's been a fun ride here. I would say today, one of the things I want you to take away is our strategy for growth is based on two fundamentals. Okay, the first is we're really good at developing advanced material solutions. The second is we do a great job for our customers.
That's with operational performance, operational excellence, technology leadership, technology service. Those two things, that sets us up to be what we think of as the partner of choice for our customers, particularly for critical customers that are growing. If you think about our market, our markets that we serve, our strategy takes advantage of long-term secular trends that have really good underpinnings in both segments. We'll talk more about that today. It's critical, as I said, that we are good at developing advanced material solutions at the highest growth areas in those end markets. Not just in general, but the highest growth areas. At the same time, we develop our people, we design our production processes, our engineering processes to be great at execution, to be easy to work with our customers.
Our customers call us when they have a problem. Our customers call us if there's a new opportunity. It's a powerful combination of technology expertise and operational excellence. With that, we've developed a strategy for growth that we call layered growth. It's diversified growth over the short term, the medium term, and the long term. You're gonna hear more about that today. Albany has, as I mentioned, a legacy of innovation and creativity of 127 years. We have a little over 4,000 employees with manufacturing in 11 countries around the world, serving global customers. Often, our locations are strategic in that they're near our critical customers.
We take advantage of our global footprint to optimize our manufacturing and our supply chain, whether it's for lower costs, whether it's for speed to market, whether it's to avoid the supply chain risks that competitors might face. Financially, we've been a strong cash flow generator. 20 years of consecutive dividend payouts. We have low debt, solid balance sheet with the capacity to invest for future growth, both organic and inorganic. We go to market as two segments, our Machine Clothing and our engineered composites segments. Both of our segments provide highly engineered products and solutions for our customers. In Machine Clothing, we're the market leader in paper machine clothing, providing the belts that go on paper machines. These are critical belts, often custom-made. Most of them are custom-made for the specific machine, the application.
The really good news is they're consumable. They're regularly replaced. Daniel will talk more about that. That makes it less cyclical than a capital intensive equipment, providing more reliable cash flow through the ups and downs of the economic cycle. In Machine Clothing, we have what I describe how we go to market with customers is we wrap around the customer. We know the customers really well. We know their processes. We know the machines. We know the stages on the machines. We know how our material operates on their machines. We take data on the machines for over decades. We save the data, and if our customer wants to change something, we know how to adjust it in the engineering mix and the formula of how we make a belt. If our customer has a problem, they call us.
Even if they have a problem with a competitor's belt, they call us. Our technical experts are that good. We essentially become an integral part of the service and technology of our customers' operations. Our engineered composites segment is earlier in that journey, but the approach is consistent, right? Think about it. We're developing highly engineered, advanced composite solution aimed at the cutting edge of aerospace. We're broadening the composite capability that we have, that we've developed in cooperation and development with Safran on the LEAP engines, to go after other aircraft types, to go after other parts on the airplane. We're working with OEM and Tier I's on lightweight structural solutions such as with Airbus on the Wing of Tomorrow program, longer-term, next-generation wing development.
You've probably heard recently, we won the aft transition on the Sikorsky CH-53K helicopter program, where we're essentially now building the whole back half of the helicopter, which makes Albany a major player in the rotary aircraft space. Again, we're diversifying where we go in the marketplace. Our long-term vision is to propagate the use of advanced composites, and particularly our proprietary 3D woven composites, across the aircraft. Our goal is to be at the center of the migration to lightweight, more fuel-efficient aircraft. Employing new materials, some that we develop ourselves, some that we'll develop in partnerships with our customers. As I said, our board of directors has taken a long-term perspective on this. In fact, we had meetings here, board meetings here last week in Boston.
I can tell you'd be impressed by the conversation around technology, the next generation. What's the next generation of our weaving technology or the chemistries or the materials or what can be the application? In August, we have a deep strategic review with our board of directors at one of our research facilities. To step back for a minute and think about it. 20 years ago, our Machine Clothing engineers were in a research lab weaving new materials, thinking, "What else can we do with this expertise?" Today, we're the sole supplier of fan blades and fan cases on the LEAP engine with Safran. This is the most advanced jet engine flying today. It's the sweet spot in commercial aviation, the Airbus A320neo and the Boeing 737 MAX aircraft.
When you think about that long-term approach to collaboration, this took 20 years developing with Safran from start to where we are today. It's notable that collaboration between our engineers, between Safran's engineers, between our manufacturing people to design all new manufacturing processes, and those of you that go on the tour today will see that. The performance of the 3D woven composites on the LEAP engine fan blades is far and away the best material for fan blades on the market. Blades are lightweight. They're durable. They're designed for the life of the engine. Let me say that again. They're designed for the life of the engine. It's an extraordinary durability for a high-speed rotating part. You know, think about it for a minute.
Airlines don't have to have expensive aftermarket repairs and replacements at a certain life cycle of the engine. These are designed for the life of the engine. If you're gonna buy an aircraft and you have engines and one engine might come with blades that need to have some kind of service, and the other engine comes with blades that are for the life of the engine, which one are you gonna buy, right? Tremendous success in the collaboration we've had with Safran. As I mentioned. You know, our strategy is to position Albany as the technology leader and partner of choice in our end markets. This means we have to be good at, really good at both advanced materials development and operational performance.
That's to win new business, to expand our market share with new customers, to win more share with existing customers, and we're doing that today. We work side by side really closely with our customers. We do the same thing in MC and AEC. We work on markets that have higher growth, as I mentioned. For example, in Machine Clothing, we've been focused on developing new materials in the higher growth areas of packaging and tissue. That's where we have strong positions today. We're developing the next generation of products so we can capture the growth, create value, and return for our shareholders. In AEC, we're on the LEAP engine today. It is the critical engine, and we're working on the next generation of composites.
Supporting that, we don't talk about a lot, is we have a strong operating culture of continuous improvement and excellence, and performance with our customers. Why is that critical? It's key to getting results. I think it was Warren Buffett that said, you know, "A poor culture eats strategy for breakfast every morning." You have to have a strong operating culture. Our delivery, our quality, our productivity, our safety metrics are best-in-class for an industrial manufacturing company. In fact, the AEC business in the first quarter of this year had zero recordable accidents, which is very unusual for a manufacturing company. So again, we're learning to get better. We're using the tool Six Sigma Lean, critical to delivering to our shareholders, delivering value, and being consistent and reliable. Our teams demonstrate we know how to execute.
We have a focused strategy. We pay attention to the details with our customers. We're easy to work with. Machine Clothing not only is it number one in the paper machine clothing space, but in technology as well as in product breadth across the machine and great cash flow generation. As you know, great cash flow generation for our shareholders. In AEC, we're earning a reputation as a strategic partner with arguably the most advanced composite material in aerospace.
We're winning new customers, more products with existing customers. We have lots of projects underway. In fact, Greg and his team invested in R&T, the front end of the business, engineering over the last year or two to really beef up that front end so we can handle all these projects. I can tell you today, our engineering teams have never been so busy.
We have more teams going back and forth with customers. We have customers in, some we talk about, some we don't, in the plant, looking at designs. How do we design a new material? How can we design the manufacturing process? With a strong balance sheet, low debt, and cash flow to invest, we're on track, not just to grow the business for the next five years, but beyond that. If I step back for a second and just kinda look backwards, talk about the past a little bit. Prior to the pandemic, on the top line, we were demonstrating significant top-line growth. Today, we're back on track to growth.
While the aerospace industry slowed down through the pandemic, as I mentioned, all our focus was on the LEAP program and getting the LEAP-3 plants up and running and the processes improved and the yield and throughput. That slowdown in 2000, you know, after 2019, when we were hitting all our metrics, you know, we were hitting our stride in the LEAP program. Safran was happy. We were really chugging along, and then everything slowed down. It gave us time to kinda look broader and diversify. So when you talk about winning the CH-53K aft transition, it's because we started to diversify.
We looked into other areas where we could go and build on some of the relationships we had, as well as win new customers and new product projects. In Machine Clothing through the pandemic, the pandemic accelerated some secular trends that were already happening. On balance, it works in our favor as we had refocused the business. Daniel and his team had refocused the business on the higher growth areas of packaging, tissue, and pulp. You think about it, the pandemic accelerated those trends. Yeah, sure, the publication market was coming down. The pandemic accelerated that decline as well. It probably took about five years out of the decline in the publication grades. We had already focused on the packaging and tissue grades, and online shopping accelerated. Even my 86-year-old father knows how to shop online now, right?
With that, the need for boxes and shipping paper and corrugated boxes for larger things just took off. The pandemic also drove a heightened consumption of personal hygiene and paper products used at home. We all know the stories there, right? There wasn't enough tissue or whatever. You think about it, the use of tissue around the globe became more common. Tissue, too, paper towels became more common in developing countries that maybe didn't use quite as much before. Those trends help us longer term. More recently, demand in schools and restaurants and businesses have come back. Throughout the pandemic, I'm really proud of the teams and the people at Albany. We continued to generate good margins throughout the pandemic, all the challenges that came, including the MAX.
We recovered well, that's thanks to a strong set of operating teams and leadership with a sound strategy long term. Longer term, as we think about this business, the underlying secular trends, the underpinnings of both segments are strong longer term. You know, there's this impression that the paper industry is in decline. Yes, the publication grades have suffered a significant decline over the years with the replacement of newspaper, newsprint, magazines, books with digital. But what's often missed here, it's now become a smaller part of the overall industry. At some point, it will likely level off, and that pandemic accelerated that trend. At some point, the publication levels off.
Today, our sales only represent about 17% of the Machine Clothing revenues go into publication. This sets us up for longer term growth, more in tune with global GDP, global economic growth. This opportunity is kind of enhanced by, you think about e-commerce, the growing middle classes around the world, per capita paper consumption around the world, increased focus, as I mentioned, on personal hygiene that was kind of accelerated by the pandemic. My favorite is paper's a renewable resource. Think about it for a minute. There are many areas where paper can replace plastic. It's already happening, okay? It's a more responsible area for development, and our Machine Clothing customers have taken note of that and are investing in it. I'm really excited about the longer term there. Similarly, in aerospace, we have really good underpinnings.
The secular trends in the industry for AEC to grow. It starts with the recovery in commercial aviation, narrow body aircraft, domestic travel, and it's followed by international travel and wide body aircraft. As I've mentioned, we've diversified, so we're looking at longer term commercial defense, fixed wing, rotary aircraft, other areas in aerospace, whether it's UAVs, space, business jet, we're working on all those areas.
The industry will continue to pursue lighter, stronger, more fuel-efficient, more sustainable aircraft, whether it's fixed wing or rotary. If you think about it in the environment we're in today, higher jet fuel prices will eventually drive a shift to more fuel-efficient aircraft. The current LEAP engine is 15% more efficient than the prior engine. The RISE engine that we're working on with Safran is gonna be 15%+ more efficient than the LEAP engine today.
That's gonna continue. There's gonna be a drive to more efficiency and sustainability. We ask, how do we create value? I've talked about working closely with our customers. It's kind of an interlocking process. We work really closely to get a deep understanding of our customer needs. Their process complexity and the challenges is truly collaborative. We develop solutions with them. It's a lot of back and forth. It takes a lot of upfront work. You know, our teams are going back and forth, and I see this all the time, and I'm really proud of how the teams work. We have customers that come in, and they're meeting with the operations people, they're meeting with the design engineers. We bring our material experts to the table.
When we develop a new product, then we often have to develop a whole new manufacturing process to go with it, as you'll see if you do the tour today. That goes through a rigorous qualification process, both the part and the process. At the end of the day, that gives us a differentiated position with customers. It makes it really hard to unseat us. We're the sole supplier on the LEAP engines. Pretty hard to unseat that. We've demonstrated working with LEAP and Safran, we can industrialize an advanced manufacturing process for 3D woven process. This isn't a manual process. We're gonna industrialize this. We're gonna automate it as we go. A lot of Lean and Six Sigma tools to do that. As we do that, we drive the cost down.
As we drive the cost down, we become more competitive to go into other applications on other aircraft. Our capital allocations as a company support our growth. Our number one priority is to invest for organic growth, and I've talked about that. We continue to invest in research and technology, product development, process development, to commercialize new products, bring new products to markets with customers. This isn't.
We're not doing science for science sake. We don't have some research center up on a hill with, you know, a bunch of PhDs running around there. Our PhDs are running around in the plant with the engineers and the manufacturing guys and the customers. Our research is co-located with our manufacturing, so we can develop in sync with our customers and with our production capability. It's focused applied R&D. We're investing in that.
We can bring a range of technical solutions to our customer, and it gives us an edge and differentiation. We'll continue to invest CapEx. We have been in both segments, Machine Clothing and Engineered Composites, upgrade improvements, gain production, efficiency, scale, automation, and new product development. As I said, our first priority is to invest for organic growth. We will also pursue acquisitions that fit with our strategy. It's a disciplined approach to augment our organic strategy. It makes it narrow for us, you know, looking for the right acquisition that brings the technology or brings the position or helps us advance our technical position at the right price, so we can get a good return for our shareholders. It keeps us disciplined to what we really do well.
We generate healthy amounts of cash, have a clean balance sheet, so we have plenty of firepower to work with. We talked a little bit about looking backwards. As we look forward, and you're gonna hear more about this from the rest of the executive team, Albany has this long history of, you know, innovation and transformation I talked about.
If you look out over the next five years, the strategy that we have in place, we see the revenue mix, you know, the top line becoming more balanced as AEC grows faster than MC, and this would be without acquisitions. On the bottom line, while AEC improves its profitability and contribution cash flow, we expect over time Machine Clothing to generate the majority of the corporation's profits just due to the strong margins and the leadership position that Machine Clothing has.
Let me take a minute now to introduce the executive team, the senior team here. This is a great team. This team makes my job easy, as well as all the people behind them in the company. Daniel Halftermeyer, President of Machine Clothing, has a long history in the industry. He knows the industry really well. He and his team have done a phenomenal job of being the architects for this longer term strategy of repositioning Albany. Adjusting the capacity, taking capacity out, moving to where the high growth regions are, building that global footprint, so we have a strong relationship with the Tier 1 and Tier 2 paper-making companies. Daniel's built a strong team to do that. He runs a tight ship and has consistently improved profitability and cash flow generation along the way. Great track record.
Daniel knows how to make money. Greg Harwell, President of Albany Engineered Composites. Greg comes to us with a background in aerospace, a strong operating leader and materials background as well. As I said, I think of AEC as having all these growth opportunities in front of it as we diversify and develop that strategy. Greg's done a great job of solidifying our reputation in the aerospace industry, building on our partnership with Safran, winning new programs, you know, contribute to what, you know, we call the layered growth strategy. Greg and his team are working with all the tier one customers, OEMs. As a smaller aerospace business, it doesn't take much to move the needle. Only takes a couple of programs or even a bunch of singles and doubles, and we can move the needle and grow this business.
Greg, like Daniel, is also a really strong operating leader. Stephen Nolan, our Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer. Stephen brings a strategic mindset, you know, from his days at McKinsey, quick wit. He's got experience in M&A. He knows the aerospace and defense industry as well, so he's right in there when we're having our strategic discussion. Like me, Stephen's an engineer originally. We won't hold that against you though, Stephen. He's done a great job. Many of you know Stephen, and he'll share the financials and the outlook and our approach to capital allocation. We have a strong team. They do a great job, and I'm really proud to be working with them.
With that, let me hand it over to Daniel, and come on up, Daniel, to talk about the Machine Clothing. Thank you.
Well, thank you, Bill. Good morning, everyone. I'm very excited to be here today to talk about what Machine Clothing is, why we are the partner of choice, and why we feel very comfortable to sustain our strong cash flow generation. I will add a few comments on Bill's introduction. I've been President for Machine Clothing for the last 12 years, and our team has foreseen what digitalization would do to the paper industry.
Therefore, we had moved our businesses from a commodity business to a more technical service product and became the partner of choice. While we are doing that, we also have restructured the organization from a regional basis to a more global-focused one. While we were doing all that, we've been able to expand our adjusted EBITDA margin by about 10 percentage points over the last 10 years.
Over the next 20- 30-minute, I'm gonna talk here about three main topics. The complex system where our paper machine clothing is operating in, and why technology and innovation is so important. We're gonna look at the global trend in the paper and board industry and the importance of the macro driver for paper machine clothing that Bill just talked about.
We're gonna talk about the operational excellence and how discipline has helped us to sustain our strong cash flow. My goal in this presentation is to make you feel very comfortable about our business. As you will see, paper machine clothing is really a technology-driven business. At the end, I will share with you what we're gonna do over the next three-four years, and how we're gonna be able to maintain and sustain our cash flow generation.
What is really Machine Clothing? Now, let's take a few minutes to look at the drawing here on the left side of the screen. You see those two or three little lines, they are on scale. They are our people. It gives you a perspective of how big those paper machines are. On average, packaging machines are about the length of an American football field, and it's about 300-400 inches wide. That gives you a perspective of how our belts—we make large, very large belts to operate on those paper machines. If you look at the different colors on this drawing, those are different sections. In each of the sections, we need a different belt to be able to carry the pulp through the paper machines.
Each belt must be designed to perform a unique function in the paper-making process. I would like to add a few other key points here. A paper machine is essential to the operation of the paper-making process. As we know, the paper starts with pulp, wood and fiber, and 90% of water. Without paper machine, you can't move the pulp through the paper machine. Basically, you can't transform the pulp from its liquid form to a solid form. Paper machine clothing is essential to make paper. I want to talk about two other things. The harsh environment where paper clothing needs to operate. The paper machine belt needs to run continuously 24 hours a day, seven days a week at a very high speed, 50 miles per hour.
That means in a single day, our belt will travel from Boston to Florida. On top of that, as we've just seen, there is a lot of water in the pulp. We need to extract this water in a very efficient way when we push the pulp through the paper machine. For example, in the green section, we call it the forming section, you're gonna have to extract about between 8,000-9,000 gallons of water per minute. That's basically to empty the water out of your house swimming pool every minute.
Those belts have to operate in a very harsh environment, but they need to have complex structure to be able to extract all this water in a specific way with a consistency and performance day after day during one up to 12 months. As a result, those belts have an operating life, so they're highly consumable goods. They need to be replaced. On a typical paper machine, we consume about 20-40 belts per year. That means that the paper maker needs to replace a belt every week or two. Those are highly consumable product. Bottom line, we need to be technology-driven to be able to make those design. They are essential to the operation of making paper. They work on harsh environment. They have a complex structure and a consumable product. Now we just talk about the custom tailored-made challenge.
As we see in the previous slide, each belt needs to be tailored to the machine, but also to the paper grade. As we all know, there are thousands of different paper grade in the world. You just mentioned it, copy paper, magazine paper, packaging paper, small box, big box, tissue, toilet paper, all different paper have a specific need to have a specific belt. Our belt have a critical impact on the characteristic of the final product. We need to engineer and customize them so our customer are able to respond to their customer. Give you a few example on those characteristics. Let's take a towel tissue. We all know that we need absorbency, softness, bulk, wet strength.
Our belts have a direct impact on the characteristics depending on how the dewatering is happening, how the water that goes through the belt. If we look at packaging, we need light boxes, e-commerce, where the shipping costs are extremely important, versus heavy duty boxes, where you put television, furniture, where the goods need to be protected. We need stiffness, we need strength, we need resistance to water.
Now the producers of goods want to print also on those boxes so that the printability issue. As a result, we need to design a wide variety of belts to allow the producer to produce all those different types of paper. The second characteristic I want to talk is the effect on our belts on the quality. The Machine Clothing, as you've seen, is in direct contact with the paper as it moves through the paper machine.
Belts have a critical impact on the final quality of the paper making. For example, if paper is not made uniform, that would create weaknesses. Think about the toilet paper or the towel paper that you want, you can't take out of the dispenser because there is not enough wet strength. Or for example, the copy paper jamming your printer. All our belts have a direct impact on the quality of the paper. As a result, our belts need to be very highly designed with high quality. They are made with high precision. If not, we will not be able to make paper that respond to their customer needs. On top of that, each paper machine in the world is different. There is not one paper machine that is identical.
They have each specific dimension, different width, different lengths, and each of those belt we make need to fit precisely on those paper machine. Because we have the technology know-how, we can produce custom-tailor belt for any grade, any specific position section on the paper machine and any paper machine in the world. Now I want to talk about the second point, the global trends in the paper and board industry. There's a perception that paper and board production is in decline. Yes, over the last 15 years, well-documented decline in printing and writing grade have muted the overall growth of the paper industry. Today, their impact on the overall demand for paper machine clothing is on the wane.
That's because the other grade we just talked about, tissue packaging, have grown about 3%-4% per year, and now is the dominant grade in our market. As Bill mentioned it earlier, there are also new trend that are adding growth to the industry. Definitely, the rise of e-commerce has created demand for packaging. As you said, we all do shopping online now. The other trend that I'm very excited is the sustainable aspect of the paper and board on the environmental driver, and we'll talk a little bit later more about that. As far as Albany, more than a decade ago, as I mentioned earlier in the presentation, we had foreseen the secular shift in the paper and board trend, and we decided to grow in the growth grade.
Today, our sales to producers of tissue packaging and other growing grades are the majority, the vast majority of our revenue when the printing grades are only about the grades in decline, are only about 17% of our total sales. Once we understand the shift in the industry we talked about, we have redirected our investment and assets to serve the customers in the growth grades and the regions. We looked at all the customer bases. We looked to understand the ones that we're investing in the growth grades, the ones that we're here for the long run, the ones that were attracted by our value proposition, the ones that had an attractive long-term demand. We then took a multi-year effort to move our asset base and our organization to be very close to these customers.
If we look at the footprint, that's where the capital of the paper maker was going. That's where the high speed, large, sophisticated, demanding machine were going. I give you a few example. If we look at the Americas, as a printing grade, we're declining in the Northeast of the U.S., we had relocated and developed our asset in the middle of the U.S. At the same time, we looked at Brazil, where is a lot of wood fiber to make pulp. We decided to build a big factory there. The same concept apply in Europe when we looked at the north of Europe. That's where the fiber was, so that's where we are main asset. In Central Europe, that's where the good were.
When we look at China, we looked at the Pacific Rim, and we all know that the factory of the world was around the Pacific Rim. We thought we see we foreseeing that those producer would need some packaging boxes. That's where the paper industry would go, and that's what we have put our asset. One big factory close to Shanghai and Hangzhou, and one very close to Guangzhou in the south of China. When we looked at the customer, as we said, our focus was to do business with the large, the high speed, the sophisticated, the demanding paper machine. There's about 8,200 paper machine in the world.
When we look at the distribution, we saw about 2,500 machines that were really large, high speed, demanding, sophisticated and attracted by our value proposition. That's where the growth is. That's where our value proposition is recognized. Because the strategic move we made several years ago, our footprint and the customer base, we are today well positioned to the future. As we just talked about our strategy is, number one, focus on tier one machines. These are usually the wide machines operating in high speed, very demanding, critical towards the process, sophisticated and more cost efficient. They understand and support our value proposition. These are customer paper grade and machines where we absolutely need to be the partner of choice.
We are also approaching what we call the tier two customer in the right grade and in the right region to capture more business. As Bill mentioned it earlier, to be the partner of choice, we have to be very good at operational excellence and technology development. That strategy has paid off. Our technical know-how, our product portfolio, combined with our current footprint, has helped Albany to become number one in the paper machine clothing business with about 30% overall market share. As a result of all that, we have high profitability and sustainable cash flow generation. Let's talk a little bit about the foundation of our business. Basically, it's based on five pillars, but it really starts with operational excellence.
Several years ago, we started with a continuous improvement concept based on Lean philosophy, Lean principle, just in time, Six Sigma. Equally important, we have engaged our people and then trained our people to understand and embrace those processes. Over the last 10 years, we've been able to improve the efficiency by 30%. This is the kind of result you expect when you embark in a multi-year Lean principle. Clearly, this is a result of the engagement of all of our people across the globe in manufacturing, but not only, in sales, service, technology and administration. At the same time, we develop new technology through the R&D activity. We all know that the quality is becoming incredibly important. It has evolved from during several years.
The paper industry's quality is at higher level than it was several years ago, and this simply will require a better belt. This technology improvement have been key component to keep our technology leadership position. As Bill said, they always call Albany when there is a problem on their paper machine. To briefly recap, operational excellence, technology leadership, combined with high engagement of our people, has helped us to develop strong partnership with our customer. As a result of that, customer intimacy is a critical part of our strategy. As we think about the value proposition, it's just not one attribute we offer to our customer. Instead, we offer a total solution. We look at pre-sales engineering, we look at developing the product itself, and we do post-sales engineering service.
Basically, it start with understanding the customer need, develop and make a customer's product and constantly optimize the product. We focus on the product for a few moment. I want to talk about why our customer are viewing our product as premium solution. First, quality is critical. As I mentioned earlier, our product has a direct impact on the paper. Our belt is in direct contact with the paper through the whole process. A non-uniformity create a weakness that we talked a little bit earlier. We need to design high quality, consistent product that can also operate in a harsh environment. Secondly, for our customer, cost of operation is very important. Material, energy, labor make up about 90% of the cost of paper and board production. Let's talk about material.
We design structure, as we know, as we've seen, to retain the fiber and optimize the way that the paper is extracted from this pulp. A well-designed Machine Clothing belt can improve the raw material usage simply by making sure those fibers don't go through the belt and get lost in the water. They stay on the top of the belt and make the paper at the end of the process. If we look at energy, when you think about dewatering, as I said, pulp is 90% water. Water can be removed by heat at the end of the paper machine. Heat consumes a lot of energy, steam, electricity. This process is very costly. You can also take the water through a mechanical process, and that's what's happening in the early part of the paper machine in the forming section.
That's why our belt needs to have complex structure. When you take this water out, you are able to keep the fiber and the distribution on top of those fabric through the processes. Of course, it's less energy consumption when you do it through a mechanical process. Last one is the reliability. Our belt need to be very reliable. Paper machines are very expensive and must run continuously to generate their return on that investment. If a paper machine belt fails, the cost of an idle paper machine can vary between $10,000-$20,000 an hour. Our belt are mission-critical. To summarize our value proposition, product quality, understanding the impact on our customer efficiency, and reliability. That proposition has cemented a partnership with our customer.
This is why we put it all together and what we have been able to deliver over the last 10 years. Yes, there have been ups and downs and difficult times. Publication markets were hit after the recession, and the industry has moved around. Low-cost mills closed, new ones built, new ones been built, and so on. We have been we have continued to deliver very good results because we were and remain the technology leader. We have today a unique business, and we feel confident to continue to deliver excellent results for the years to come. Early in the presentation, we talked about the macro drivers that had a positive impact on the paper machine clothing: e-commerce, sustainability, GDP, and health.
Some of our customers are investing effort and working capital today for renewable recycling and to replace plastic in a variety of application. We work today with some of those customers to develop Machine Clothing products that address the technical challenge of their effort. This is a trend I see. This will continue to drive innovation and has the potential to add to our growth beyond the five years focus we have today. Actually, our core strategy will remain the same. We will continue to focus and adapt to market dynamics. We're gonna look at the customer need and at the product development. We are going to focus on serving the global customer in the growth grade and growth region.
We are going to continue to improve our value proposition to build stronger partnership with the current and future customer, and we're gonna accelerate the technology development. Technology makes a huge difference for us. We have a track record to be good at it, and we'll continue to maintain our technological leadership position. If we do all that right, I'm very comfortable and very confident that we'll be able to maintain and even improve our market position and continue to deliver attractive result and strong cash flow. Thank you. Now we'll turn the podium to Greg to discuss the Albany Engineered Composites business. Greg?
Thank you, Daniel. My name is Greg Harwell. It's a pleasure to be here and to be with you. It'll be a chance to give you a little glimpse into our world at Albany Engineered Composites. I wanna start off with too is it's a privilege for me to lead the team that I have. It's the best in the industry. It's a phenomenal group. That's just an emphasis. All right. Let me start off with what we stand for and kind of set the stage for growth, because that's what we're all about. We're an established A&D supplier. We're not a boutique player in this industry. We absolutely have been around for a while, and we continue to grow, and we continue to make serious moves in the industry.
Our name is becoming a lot more significant and paired with that of composites and high technology composites. We have broad capabilities. We have proprietary technologies. We have a reputation for world-class quality and on-time delivery. Our operational excellence is really second to none. We have a great operating culture and one that drives improvements. We're winning new customers, and we're winning major platforms. We'll talk about some of those in a little bit. We're broadening our customer base, and we're broadening our program portfolio.
R&D is significant for us. That is a mainstay, and that's the other foundation of that growth that we're working on. With all that being put together, strong revenue growth is expected. We're growing, and we have a clear layered growth strategy. I'll talk about what layered growth strategy is in just a second. I wanna go back to the pre-pandemic. In pre-pandemic time, we were about $450 million with a large emphasis on the commercial side. You can see that with the pie showing about 72%, being tailored to just that portion.
Since that time, we've taken a look at the pandemic and said, "Okay, we gotta change our portfolio and balance it out a little bit differently." Post-pandemic, we laid out, and you can see in 2026, we're looking at really a more balanced portfolio of about 45% in defense, another 45% in commercial and then other category. The other categories would be consisted of, you know, biz jets, space, sustainability, you know, everything else that would make up that element. You can see, we're not just sticking to one side of the particular market, but we're looking to balance that market out. On top of that, we're committing, and we're working to grow in this company. Last year, we're just over $300 million.
By 2026, we look to be doubling those revenue numbers. We're gonna be moving significantly from where we're at today to a much larger organization by the time we roll into 2026. On top of that, we're gonna learn how to respect the quality of earnings. Those three elements, if you take nothing away from this presentation, it's first of all, our growth. We're gonna double our sales. That's our effort, that's our target, and that's our focus. We're looking to have a balanced portfolio, and we're looking to respect the quality of earnings. That is the mainstay, and that's the huge driver. Talking about the layered growth strategy, how is that gonna happen? Well, we're increasing production rates on existing programs. We're anticipating that, and we see that.
We're increasing scope of work on existing programs, and we're having new program wins, some of which are announced, some of it, quite frankly, are not announced, but we're winning in the industry. As we're looking into the future, I'd like to reflect on where we came from. The genesis of AEC, and you just heard a lot of what Daniel talked about, is the weaving technology that we have is MC.
MC started developing the weaving patterns that we actually migrated and used into AEC. With that is we have a strong connection between the two business units. It just so happens as we were perfecting and working on the 3D woven technology, Safran had a need of a new technology for their fan case and their blades and spacers on the LEAP program, and thus became the joint venture.
Additionally to that is M&A has also helped us grow and position ourselves. We needed to broaden our technology beyond just one technology element, and that's where Texas Composites being one of the first, acquisitions that we had and a series of others with Harris and CirComp being the last. SureComp is an example of what Bill was talking about on the M&A. They brought to us an enhanced wet filament winding technology as well as thermoplastics. It's again, broadening our capabilities and making sure that when we go to a customer, we have a full solution or a range of solutions for them in the composites world. Let's face it, composites is the material of tomorrow. Much of what we're working on now is positioning ourselves for the tomorrow aircrafts, rotorcrafts, and whatever else systems that are out there.
That leads us to R&D. R&D continues to be a mainstay for us. We continue to invest heavily into it. This is a world that's emerging. This is a world that you're advancing technology, in some cases, coming up with the cutting edge. If you're not out there investing in it right now, you're gonna miss opportunities in the future. We realize that, and we're capitalizing on that, and we're working very well. We have two center of excellence within AEC. One center of excellence is being in Rochester, and the other one is in Europe and Germany. With that, they work and coordinate together, but it allows us to kind of spread things out a little bit. As Bill mentioned, they're co-located with the facility. We actually have on the floor and capabilities right up front.
Not only do we have to be good at technology, we have to be world-class in our operations, and I'm proud to say we are. We have great innovation in product technology, great innovation in process technology, as well as software technology in supporting that. An example of that would be the digital twin capability that we have. With that would be an example is our modeling would be able to model on a software and then have a pretty good indication of what the testing and the end result would be. We're well down the road on that, and we use that technology, which is good. If you take a look at the center, the AEC differentiator, what differentiates us from someone else? Our customer intimacy, I think, is second to none.
We do wanna be that first call from our customer, that choice, that partner of choice, if you will. That is a big deal, and it's something that we emphasize. That's just not the initial contact call, it's throughout the entire process. Understanding the applications, this is where technology solutions come into play. High-performance team. I think we have the best team in the industry. We have a solid group, a seasoned group. Our safety is extremely good. We have great quality and great lean efforts. Similar to what Daniel talked about, we're based on, in essence, the Toyota Production System, and then all the elements and tools and advances thereafter, including Six Sigma and so on. Best cost manufacturing is what we continue to drive for, and there's rigor around our systems and metrics which allow us to execute.
It's one thing to win a program, it's another to execute flawlessly. This is where we put a lot of our emphasis on and why the operations is so important. On top of that is the intimate knowledge that we have in engineering, as well as knowledge, capabilities and development. Together, putting them all together, that gives you the AEC differentiators. It's a big deal. Not only do you have to win it, you have to perform. We have historically performed and will continue to do so. Today, we're positioned to outgrow the markets. The numbers come from Forecast International. Gives you kind of an idea of where is aerospace going in the future. It's a great industry to be involved in. It's one to invest in. Commercial aerospace is gonna continue to grow.
We're seeing a recovery on the single aisles. You know, we see it more at the end of 2023, right? We've seen quite a bit of recovery thus far. We see it continuing to go out and eke out. The wide body will be further to the right. We see that, looking about 2028. We think there's gonna be a pretty good progress up through 2026, but it'll take a bit of a time. There's a lot of, you know, dynamics that are happening in the market and constantly changing. The gas price is one that's gonna be a headwind for the markets. But we still see a pretty good growth overall. The big question's gonna be is, where is the battlefield? We believe the next battleground will be the middle of the market.
You know, I don't have any insight that's gonna be coming from Airbus or Boeing, but this is where when that new aircraft comes out, you're gonna see a lot more composites on that than you have seen in the other aircrafts. Our you know, our expectation is that, and we're well engaged in certain elements on that. On the defense side, we see about a 4%. It's a steady growth area. There are several you know issues that are happening in the world today that is stimulating some of the international sales. There is some positive sides on that, if you will, on the sales, not some of the incidents.
Again, we have also future vertical lifts that are taking place, and a lot of elements that are preparing ourselves for flight coming in the future are being worked on today. You wanna be part of that upfront. The biz jet market continues to be strong. We're looking at a good 4%-8% growth on that side. Our sales, if you take that market and now turn it into what are you doing, Greg, in AEC? You know, again, we call it a layered growth strategy. Let's talk about what does that mean. For us, right off top, we're looking at a 14+% compounded annual growth rate over the next five years. That's pretty bullish and exciting. That's what will get us to that revenue number that we talked about before.
Part of it's on base business. On the base business, what does that mean? That means that about 8% is gonna be, in essence, market momentum. We're on the right programs, and as those continue to grow, just naturally, so will we grow with it as we deliver the products. On top of that is what I'm calling organic growth. Organic growth or new business would be the new wins that we're securing. That's another good 6%-8% growth on top of the base business. You know, quick math will get you above that 4%. Again, that's kinda what we're looking at here. On the base business, one, we have to continue to excel. We have to perform, and we have to be flawless in how we bring that on board.
On the organic side, in the new business, it's about magnifying our impact and being able to pull it all together and execute off it. Taking a closer look at our market, let's start with the defense market. I wanna highlight just three of our biggest programs. This is not all-encompassing, but it's three of our biggest programs. These three make up about 80% of our defense package. It's a pretty significant piece of it. The F-35 is an excellent aircraft. It's flying. We have over 235 part numbers on it. We've recently, not too long ago, had another win to it. It's evolving. We're still having good progress. We're still winning. We see this being a good mainstay for us as it continues to go.
The CH-53K, we've had a fair amount of dialogue already on that. It's very exciting. Again, this is where being a partner of choice came into play. With Sikorsky, we were that partner of choice, and we ended up picking up the aft transition. The aft transition was a $340 million win over a course of 10 years. That's extremely exciting for us. Not only do we own the sponsons, the tail rotor, the horizontal tail, we also now have the aft transitions. Simply put, if you just look at that aircraft, the whole back half of the aircraft or rotorcraft is ours. We're very excited about it. We see this being the largest program in defense that we're gonna have at least in the next five years.
The JASSM missile, it's a very strong program, and we're gonna see continued growth in that as well. It's nice to be on that. Some of these are different technologies that are in place, so it's where you see the full solutions that we're able to offer up to our customers and tailor them to the needs of the customer itself. Now let's look at the commercial side, and I wanna highlight three major programs. Again, they're not all inclusive, but they just touch on some key pieces of it. The LEAP is one of them that we spent quite a bit of time talking about. It's a very important program to us. We are on life of the LEAP. For the fan case, the blades and the spacers. Again, something that we're very, very excited about being part of.
We're roughly seeing about $200 million out in 2026, so it's not just the main piece of that. There's some other elements in the LEAP that we're adding on to it, but the main piece is that's a cost-plus program. So as demand goes up and cost goes down, you kind of see you can't just do a simple linear. It won't work that way. So there's a little bit of a balance between both of those. But the nice thing about it, if you think of our market, it's somewhat of a sine wave. This mutes that sine wave and the radicalness of it to being in a cost-plus. So that's a real benefit to ourselves. On a 787, we're seeing a 787. We believe it's gonna continue and come back.
We're obviously at a little bit low point right now, but we see the growth aspects of that, going forward. We're looking at about $40 million. If you ask, Greg, what does that mean? That's what we're looking at about seven ship sets per month. That's what that $40 million would attest to by the time we come out there. We have two of the forward aft section or forward sections, and we have one of the aft sections that we just recently won, and we believe that's gonna come into play in about 2024 or so, that piece of it. On the GE9X and GEnx, this is very exciting. On here, similar to what Daniel showed you on his way of showing a person, those are little small people.
On the right-hand side of that's a person standing there, not as small as the ones that Daniel showed against the machines, but still small enough. To give you an idea of the size of it, this is a 3D woven case, which is why I wanted to talk about it. That the size of that, the diameter of that is greater than a 737 fuselage. If you think of the 737 walking through it, this is larger than that piece of it. This is 3D woven, and the important piece of that is the acreage growth. We're able to actually manufacture this technology at fairly large parts. That allows us to actually find new applications for it, and size isn't as much restrictive as what people might have thought in the past.
The other important piece of this is we've industrialized the 3D woven technology. For those lucky enough to come on a tour, you're gonna have a fun time walking around and seeing it. It's a very complicated, very sophisticated process, but the fact that we've industrialized and continued to work the cost down is actually encouraging. It allows us to position ourselves into new applications and programs with our customers. It's a different dialogue than just technology. It's also competitiveness with it. The fact that it's proprietary doesn't hurt. Let me share a little bit about our very successful partnership with Safran. What's important, I think I really just wanted to highlight that piece of it is, one, we have an exclusive life of the program position with them on the LEAP.
The LEAP has a long ways to run. We know the LEAP is on the MAX. We know it's on the NEO, it's on the one A, and it's on the 1C. It's on the right programs and the right aircraft, and it's gonna still grow quite a bit. It's a great engine. On top of that, we have the GE9X exclusivity, which we just talked about, but also we've just signed a general collaboration agreement last year. I don't know if you saw the advertisement and the signing of that, but what that did is it solidified our relationship with Safran for another 25 years. It also opened the doors up where our technical teams are working with their technical teams on the next gen engine, the engine that they call the RISE.
That's extremely important because if you're not working closely with your customer on new developments, you know, you're not gonna be part of that. You know, I think the key to this slide is we're not here to ride the market. We're here to exceed the market. What you see on this graph is the additional business beyond base business. This is our new business wins, and this is us graphing where it is. We have three major sections. I started with that in the pie at the beginning, if you remember. You can see a good portion on the bottom being the defense side. You see a significant growth. If you just go to 2026 as an example, you can see the growth on the defense. You can see the commercial piece of that and the importance of that.
Then you have the other category, which again, is the space, biz jets and other elements of UAVs and so on. We've had significant wins in 2021. 2021 alone, over 40% of that 2026 run rate, annual run rate, has been captured. We're well down the capture rate for that 2026 piece. Again, I'll say it again, over 40%, a significant number into that percentage, we are actually over captured at an annual run rate in 2026. We're doing well. That doesn't count the wins that we have won already this year. We continue to move down the road, and we're winning. You know, we're growing, we're winning new customers, we're winning new applications. Frankly put, we're winning. As I mentioned previously, technology continues to be our driver and our enabler to success.
When I take a look at this one here, if you just look on the left-hand side, we're talking about moving 3D woven beyond just the LEAP. There, part of that is how do you improve your competitiveness, the automation aspects of the operations that we continue to invest in. We're looking to grow applications beyond just the LEAP on 3D woven, and we're being successful. On top of that, we're innovating, and we're growing our technology in other applications of composites. We're not a one-trick pony, if you will. We have a array of solutions for our customer. That's in collaborations, and the hypersonics would be an example of that. We have early customer engagements, which is part of the secret of who we are, and then we're working on sustainability technology solutions as well.
You know, composites fit that business case extremely well. We're in the middle of that. On the next five years or within the next five years, we're gonna see a lot more movement on the hypersonics. It's still the Wild Wild West out there. There's still a lot of technologies in play as well as ourselves.
We have several different paths and solutions. It's a discovery of which technology will best fit the applications, but we're having the right conversations with the right people. Beyond the five years is we talked about the Wing of Tomorrow. There's actually other pieces of the airframe that we're actually looking and having discussions on that we believe our 3D woven technology would be a good fit. Then the RISE we spoke about quite a bit on the next gen engines. Maximizing our shareholder value is our top priority.
How do you do that? Part of it is really three main drivers that we have. First of all is a value proposition to our customers, so maximizing our customer solutions. Another piece of that that flows right into it is continuing to invest in technology. As Bill mentioned earlier, we're not investing in technology for investment's sake. There's purpose. We need to be purposeful about it. We're looking at which technologies we believe are emerging. In some cases, we're actually pushing the very edge of that technology and working to find those new applications. Then opportunistic M&A. We're not looking for a company that's not allowing synergies. We want something that would bring us synergies.
It could be the part of the global footprint, it could be the technology booster, it could be the customer, but talent is also something that's weighed in that. Stephen will touch more on the M&A portion of it, but I just want you to know that we also are keeping our eyes very wide open out there with opportunities. In summary, you know, bottom line is our revenue. We're targeting a growth of double from last year, and I think we have a very strong path to that endeavor. The market resurgence is gonna help us. Defense programs, key investment wins that we have in defense is gonna help us and strategic customers. You know, we're not running after every customer. We want strategic partners and customers.
As much as we're evaluating, we're being evaluated, we're also evaluating our customers. We want legs with the program, we don't just want spot buys. We're being very purposeful about it. New programs, new applications, new defense, market resurgence, all that spells success for AEC. We have a good team, we have the right people, and we're excited in our future and the technology boost that it has with it. Thank you very much for allowing me to share a little bit about AEC. At this point, I'll turn it over to Stephen.
Okay. Thank you, Greg. If I'd like to add my welcome to all of you, both those here and joining us online. I know you're all very busy taking time out of that busy schedule to spend some time with us, to listen to our messages today. Thank you very much for that. My goal, and I'll make my remarks brief. Part of the growth strategy from Bill, from Daniel, my goal is to give you some sense of what that looks like when you roll it up together at the core. I'm gonna talk briefly about the past. Not gonna spend a lot of time in the past, but just a little bit about our historical performance, just to highlight some of the trends that are underlying the numbers.
Talk a little more about where we are today, in particular, what we're gonna do with the very strong balance sheet we have. Talk about the future, both the five years and even beyond the five years, what our likely performance looks like. Historically, here in this slide, Bill has done this a little already. We weathered the pandemic and the MAX grounding fairly well, given everything else going on in our industry. You can see our top line clearly suffered somewhat with, in particular, the grounding of the MAX, and then as the pandemic rippled through the rest of our commercial aircraft business. Our profitability during this timeframe was remarkably resilient, really driven by a couple of factors. First off, in Machine Clothing, two factors in Machine Clothing. One, as Bill mentioned, we're a consumable product.
While we're in a cyclical business, it's a muted cycle compared to what you would expect for, let's say, the paper machine makers themselves who are providing capital goods. With a consumable product, you see a more muted cycle. Secondly, we were certainly helped during the pandemic by the fact that e-commerce just took off, and that certainly helped packaging grades in our business. While some other grades we support suffered, like publication, as Daniel mentioned, and away from home tissue certainly suffered, that was more than offset by very strong performance in the packaging grades and some of the at-home tissue that we support. On the AEC side, our margins were quite robust as well, supported by two factors. One, the underlying strength of our defense business. Greg mentioned, you know, our goal to be 45% defense in 2026.
We already have a good defense business today, and that provides a nice stable foundation as we went through the pandemic. That business did not contract in the same way that we saw the defense or the commercial business contract. Secondly, on the AEC side, and Greg mentioned this in passing already, the cost-plus nature of the Safran contract means we recover all of our fixed costs on that program irrespective of the volume, which effectively means our gross margin, you know, at a high rate in percentage terms, our gross margin is similar to what our gross margin percentage is at low rate because all of the fixed cost is absorbed, and we are passing along a greater share of those fixed costs on each engine ship set.
That really helped us through the pandemic but partially moderates our ability to grow margins in the near term in the AEC business because that's, you know, that LEAP, the business as it grows rapidly over the next few years. We will not see an expansion of those margins on the upside, and that's what limits our margin growth somewhat over the next, you know, 12-24 months within AEC, but still very, very bright outlook. From a cash flow perspective, you can see we've also done very well in cash flow during the last couple of years. In particular, in the most recent year, where we delivered, you know, well over 100% of net income in terms of free cash flow conversion.
Our cash flow is a little, you know, counterintuitively, I like when our cash flow is a little lower, because what the low cash flow really means for us is we're investing in growth. AEC, when it's a high-growth business, requires some cash flow investment, and we've certainly seen that over the past. As growth moderates a little, we see it generating a lot of free cash flow, and that's what we've seen over the last couple of years. We'll go through a little bit of a cycle in free cash flow in the future when growth is very high, such as this year where, AEC is investing in new programs like our transition. It will tamp down our free cash flow somewhat, but we are investing those monies for great returns in the future.
We think it's certainly a long-term positive for the stock. However, you know, we expect even in those high growth times to be a nicely cash flow generating stock, as I'll touch back on a little more in a moment. This is adding up what you already saw from Greg and Daniel. As Greg talked about, there are two types of growth he sees, growth in the base business, and growth in new wins, collectively greater than 14% CAGR over this timeframe, which is really fantastic performance. Also here you see the Machine Clothing growth as that market expands.
We are always obviously striving to increase our market share, but as a market share leader, you know, a lot of our growth has to come from growing the market and not just taking additional share. There is a cap on how big we can really get from a market share perspective. You add that together here, we're talking about a $1.2-$1.3 billion business out in 2026. We also expect very strong margins at that time. We've talked about in the very near term pressure on Machine Clothing's margins driven by the current inflationary environment and our inability to pass all of that effect along to our customers in the short term.
Over time, we expect to lap that effect, where contracts come up for renewal and we get to more completely pass along those cost increases to our customers. As we look out, we expect, you know, very strong margins in the future in Machine Clothing. We also expect continued improvement in margins in AEC, you know, in the low to mid-20s out there in 2026. Going back to the past just momentarily, you know, our leverage ratio is quite low right now. This historical chart just shows we levered up for the purchase of Harris back in 2016 and burned down that leverage over the last several years, over the last five, six years.
That, by the way, is our kind of general model going forward that you'll see is we will lever up for acquisitions, but we will de-lever after that. We finished 2021 with, you know, under a quarter turn of net leverage. You know, my personal opinion, I think shared by Phil and the board, is that that's no way to finance a business. Financing the business completely with equity, not only is equity have a higher cost of capital, obviously, you don't get the tax advantages as that you do with debt. We'd like a little more leverage, quite frankly, than we had at the end of 2021.
We have a very strong balance sheet, which really gives us a lot of strategic flexibility in terms of what we do, funding the growth strategies in both segments, and, you know, returning capital as appropriate to shareholders. Look, what is our focus here? Our focus at the end of the day is to invest that balance sheet where we think we can get the best return on investment and therefore create shareholder value. Our belief that I think is, you know, being proven out is that the best source of that high return is organic investment, which is what you can see here in the orange. Investing in our people.
We've talked about expanding our sales and marketing team within AEC because there are a lot of opportunities we just, you know, were missing previously because we didn't have a large enough focus on that market. Talked about R&D in both segments, where, you know, AEC is investing both for long-term opportunities like we talked about RISE, the RISE engine or the Wing of Tomorrow with Airbus, but also very near-term opportunities, hypersonics, variety of other military applications. In Machine Clothing, we're also investing in a variety of R&D efforts, some very near term, some a little further out. We do have a, you know, a complete research and development activity, but as Bill pointed out, more focused on the applied side of research rather than pure science.
The reality though is even though we'd love to invest as much as possible in organic growth, and, you know, quite frankly, the good idea window is always open for organic growth. I haven't seen any idea come forward that meets our, you know, return requirements that hasn't been funded. It does have to meet our return requirements, but there is kind of almost, you know, there's no artificial cap put in how much we'll invest organically. The reality is we have more available capital than we have good organic growth opportunities. We're certainly going to look at M&A. I'll talk more about that in a moment. We're also gonna look to return capital to shareholders appropriately. You probably saw that last fall, our board authorized a share repurchase program.
We are in a situation where we said, you know, there's no imminent acquisition on the horizon at that point in time. Yet, you know, our leverage is lower than we would like. This was a good use of some capital for our balance sheet in the short term. It is no way a substitute for doing M&A. We believe, you know, we have sufficient capital to do both. You know, how much are we really talking about here in terms of capital deployment? If you look at the last five years, a lot of our capital was taken up with, you know, CapEx, paying down the debt, you know, that we had built from the Harris acquisition.
You know, our regular dividends, it left only about 10% of our cash flow from operations for M&A and for returning additional capital to shareholders. The next five years looks very different. We think we've about 50% of our cash flow from operations available for those uses, for disciplined M&A and for returning capital to shareholders beyond the regular dividend we've already got in place. If you add that together with just the available capacity on our balance sheet today, our ability to lever up, you know, out a couple of years, you're talking close to $1 billion of available liquidity for us to engage in some of these strategic actions. It's really a significant amount of money that's available to us.
It's you know, almost an embarrassment of riches. You know, the goal right now is to be very prudent in how we spend that, to ensure we're getting a good return for shareholders from any investments we make. M&A, clearly a significant factor there. Bill mentioned this already, but I want to emphasize it. Our organic growth strategy is not dependent upon M&A. We'd love to do some M&A. We think the right acquisitions could accelerate that growth strategy, but it is not essential that we do M&A. If you know, five years from now, we found no good acquisitions, we will still have executed the growth strategy you saw today from Greg and Daniel. It allows us to be very selective, very opportunistic in terms of deals. We don't have that pressure to get something done.
Bill mentioned the narrow focus. We are looking for businesses which closely align with our current businesses in both segments. We are not looking to go far afield and, you know, just plow a new field where we don't have current experience. We're looking for businesses that can generate significant synergies with our current business. Obviously, we're looking for an internal rate of return on those investments well above our cost of capital. That is one of our primary financial metrics we look at. We're also looking to stay within our long-term leverage targets. We have previously said we'll be happy operating long term at somewhere in that 2.5 turns of leverage level. That's not to say we wouldn't go higher. I mentioned, you know, with the Harris acquisition where we levered up.
If we found a good acquisition today which required us to go well north of that, even up to, you know, 3.5 turns of leverage, if we thought it was sufficiently strategic and we saw a path to quickly delever back to our long-term comfort range somewhere in the mid-2s, we would absolutely do that. We're not going to engage in acquisitions, which is going to leave us well above, you know, well above our 2.5 target long term. In terms of what we're looking for then in those acquisitions. Look, it's a lot of words here in this paper, on this page. At the end of the day, it boils down to a similar thing across both segments. We're looking at strong tech, strong technologies, strong customer relationships, strong product capabilities. That's really what we're looking for.
The time horizon is a little different between the two segments. AEC, given the long product cycle, a lot of what we're going to look at for acquisitions in AEC is preparing us for that next generation of aircraft. You know, on the military side, that's probably the back half of this decade. On the commercial side, it's the early first half of next decade. This is long term.
You know, as you look back and judge the success of an acquisition in AEC, you'll probably have to wait 10 or 15 years and look back and say, "Did it really deliver what was required?" In Machine Clothing, it's more near-term focused, where it's probably more like 10 or 15 quarters rather than 10 or 15 years before we can, you know, judge the success of an acquisition. Because what we will be doing with the business will be very different on the Machine Clothing side than AEC, which is, say, very long-term in nature, just given the long life cycle in the aerospace market. Rolling that all together long-term, I'll let you read this page.
We talk about strong performance over the next five years, greater than 5% organic growth rate at the company level when we add together both AEC and Machine Clothing. You know, we expect to average more than 100% of net income in terms of free cash flow collectively over the five years. Not to say we won't dip below at certain years when we're investing in growth, but over the five years, collectively expect to exceed 100% on average. Very strong performance over the next five years. Beyond the next five years. As you've heard today, there are also additional favorable trends which can support long term. Greg talked about new engine, RISE, and there could be other new engines.
New aircraft, both the potentially middle market aircraft, as Greg mentioned, also new single-aisle aircraft, in you know over the next 10, 15 years. Talk about proliferating 3D weaving across those aircraft. For right now, we're focused mainly in the engine because since we perfected 3D weaving, there has been no new aircraft on commercial side. There's only been new engines, so we've gone where the money is. As we look forward in the future, we expect to be able to proliferate across that fuselage. And obviously on the Machine Clothing side, as Greg talked about, or Daniel talked about, sustainability. That continued shift from you know plastics to paper. It's kind of the inverse of the advice that was given in The Graduate. It's no longer about plastics, it's now all about paper long term.
We do believe that is going to continue to accelerate over the next 10-15 years. We're very optimistic about the long-term future, not just the next five years. We believe this is a great long-term growth strategy, and we think we can continue to deliver very strong margins, very strong cash flow throughout that growth cycle. With that, I'll pass it back to Bill.
Thank you, Stephen. Now if I can wrap up a little bit. Earlier today I talked about to become the partner of choice, we have to be technologically driven and operationally disciplined. We're achieving those goals. We're in position to long term develop growth, excellent profitability, and growing cash flow. Our Machine Clothing segment has long been producing significant, reliable cash flow returns, and Daniel outlined how we can continue that approach, and tradition, and strategy as we go forward, growing with those customers that are growing and focused on growing with the grades of paper that are growing. At the same time, Greg laid out an Engineered Composites segment strategy that we talk about as layered growth that will essentially double revenues and significantly grow profitability and cash flow over the next five years.
As Stephen indicated, we'll generate significant cash flow well beyond our internal needs and commitments. It's about being disciplined. Disciplined with capital allocation. That'll be critical. Our priorities are clear. First, we're gonna invest for organic growth, investing in technologies that will target the growth for the next five years, but also beyond. Second, we'll invest to ensure that we run modern facilities. We'll invest in our people. We'll invest in our processes. We'll invest in automation, so that we can be that partner of choice. Third, this strategy, as Stephen emphasized, it's not dependent on acquisitions. However, we will look for the right acquisitions that fit with our strategy, that help us achieve our goals and provide excellent returns for our investors.
I started out today with a little bit of a story of when I first was approached by Albany and how I was intrigued and how, you know, I came to conclude that Albany was something special. I believe that more than ever today. We have a strong team. We have strong operations. Just look back through the last three years how our team's performed. Flawlessly with our customers. Safety, quality, productivity, the learning that we went through. I'm really proud to be leading this organization, and we're excited about the future. We have a lot of opportunities in both segments long term. On behalf of the Albany management team, on behalf of the employees, we appreciate the time you've spent with us today. I know you all have really busy days.
We're gonna take a minute here to set up for the Q&A session. Those of you that are online, as John mentioned earlier, you can submit a question through the Q&A icon on your screen if you haven't already. Those that are in the audience, we'll have a microphone. We'll pass that around. We'll be ready in just a moment.
Thanks very much, Peter Arment from Baird. Greg, maybe just to start with you, just could you level set us on kind of the assumptions behind the LEAP target in 2026, the $200 million kind of? I think we, you know, those of us who followed the company for a while kind of remember you were back there, you know, back in maybe the 2018, 2019 level.
Right.
What it looks like today, and then kind of what's behind the $200 million, and how we should just think about that. Thanks.
Thanks, Greg.
Yeah.
No, go ahead.
Oh, yes. Thank you, Peter. Yeah, it's we looked at a couple of things. One is the cost curve. You know, what are we expected to do as far as cost reductions? You have the ramp-up of the numbers, right? The number of engines that are gonna be delivered between that timeframe. Between the two of them, you kind of come into the number just shy of what we're talking about. We have additional LEAP wins that we're expecting along the way that kind of puts us into that spot. If you look at, you know, it doesn't exactly pair because when we do it, we look at a build rate, not just what AEC sells, Safran sells, because there's inventory positions and so on.
There's a correlation, but it's not exact. You can't really just model it exact. It won't come out that way. You know, you have what you look at right now in the MAX. The MAX, I think, is they're expecting around 30, and they're looking at around 54, somewhere in that area. If you look at the Neo, you're going from the 50s to the 70s. Those are kind of the expectations that we're looking at.
I think the big thing is the cost improvements.
Mm-hmm.
Really, that's what it speaks to, right? We're using the LEAP program as well to drive down the costs so we can take the 3D woven composites to other applications. That's probably the biggest change from 2017, 2018.
Just to follow up on that, you guys, everybody obviously has inflation, you know, running through. You talk about cost reductions and, you know, cost plus contracts. How does that work in this environment where, you know, there's decent amount of inflation in the pipe? How do you pass that along or lack thereof?
Sure. There's a number of programs we have that are somewhat insulated, where, for instance, the one we're just talking about is a cost plus. Actually, ironically, inflation would actually raise our revenues because the cost just gets passed through right to Safran. We have other programs where materials pass through and
I'm sorry.
Why don't you comment on maybe the AEC side?
Yeah. On the government side, for instance, in some elements, or not just the government, but we have materials that are enabled or pass-throughs on certain elements of it. Then there's other pieces of it that, you know, you have the inflation, you have to kind of, it's a headwind for you have to overrun it.
For these, the commercial contracts right now, LEAP specifically, what is that rate of inflation you're seeing? I assume you'd, you know, Safran has to figure out what to do with that inflation.
Yeah. One thing to understand, a very large portion of the cost base of LEAP is raw materials. That is bought under an enabled contract that Safran has negotiated that is, at least in the near term, fixed price. You know, we have not modeled in growth on the cost of those, you know, the fiber and resin we're buying under those contracts because Safran has not told us about any, you know, renegotiation of the price in that contract with those suppliers. Were they to renegotiate that contract and agree to a price increase with that-
Customers.
We would see that increased cost at that point in time, and that would get passed on to inflation. It's one of the reasons why you're not seeing expansion on LEAP that you might be expecting, because we're not seeing inflation on that portion of the bill, you know, the cost base. We're seeing it in labor. You know, labor, while it's running a little higher than it has been, it's still relatively modest to date. Our assumptions are relatively modest over the next five years in terms of continued labor inflation.
There was some unusual news recently around CFM and having challenges delivering. Usually, CFM is not open in the news like that, and that kind of laid bare. How are you guys, you know, producing in parallel? I assume it's not the long pole in the tent is not you guys on that front.
It's not us.
Do you just keep producing and, you know, shipping, or do you get modulated along with whatever they're seeing for whatever reason?
It's a great question because it depends on what's happening in the market. For instance, normally, we'll set a plan at the beginning of the year, and there's usually very little deviation out throughout the whole year. Now, during the pandemic, that wasn't the case because no one really knew the engine changes, and so there was quite a bit of gyration throughout that whole process. Overall, we set a plan, and we pretty much still keep to it. The impacts that we're talking about, we haven't seen any changes come in our direction, so we're pretty firm on what we're set. It really weighs how much inventory do they want, how much do we have to legally keep per the contract and where are we at with it. It's serious.
I would say it's an extensive communication process with Safran.
Yeah.
You know, their plants are co-located with our plants, so we're managing that capacity flow. We're trying to level load the factories so they're efficient.
Mm-hmm.
We're not changing those plans monthly or whatever, unless the pandemic, you know, it was really an unusual time. We're really going through the year trying to set a level plan. Then as we get towards the back end of the year, we're hiring more people. We'll look at raising that up to meet the run rate for next year.
One more question for Stephen. $1 billion of available cash you talked about, and then 2.5x leverage, seems like kind of max capital deployment potential of like close to $2 billion over the next four-five years.
No, the $1 billion was assuming we would go to 3.5, to be clear.
Okay.
That's our max available should we find a particularly strategic acquisition. In that billion-dollar range is what we're talking in terms of available liquidity over the next few years.
Okay. The cash builds on the balance sheet. I mean, you're
Oh, absolutely.
You're gonna be building it. Is that a net or gross leverage?
That's a net leverage.
Yeah.
Look, as you go out a few more years.
Seems like a lot more than $1 billion.
Yeah, given cash flow generation, that number will continue to grow. Yeah.
Yeah. Okay, thanks.
Okay, I do want to give. We've got a number of questions from our online virtual audience, so, let's get to one of those. Not addressed to anybody in particular, but, it says, "Many businesses are facing supply chain challenges in the near term. Can you update us on your current conditions, and how do you think they'll evolve over the coming months?
Yeah, let me start that, and then maybe Daniel or Greg could add some color. As we went through the first quarter last year, we could write a book. I mean, I'd love to have the supply chain management people write a book. Every time we do a review with them, it's an amazing story. It's a 24/7 job managing all the materials that are coming in to make sure we have them when we need them on time. Daniel's group, for instance, the operating team looked at the first quarter and estimated that we probably lost because of late deliveries.
You know, we got materials, but maybe they were a little bit late, and we were planning a schedule to make a belt that we couldn't make because the material coming in was late, a resin or a yarn or whatever. We estimated we lost about 10% of our available capacity in the quarter. That's a big number. Yet the team still managed to produce outsized returns and have a great quarter with good profitability and drive more so that our absorption was good. That all comes down to how the supply chain teams manage through the quarter. The other thing that I thought was really interesting, we had a supplier that, you know, in all this turmoil basically said, "I'm gonna stop supplying that material to you." We couldn't run without it, right?
He just said, "I'm gonna stop." You know, it's like, "What?" You know, what do you do? Our teams came together, cross-functional team, our engineers, our customer service people, our operations people, you know, our chemists, basically everyone came together and said, "Okay, where can we go around the world to replace this material?" We did sort of a high-speed search and then a qualification of that material to replace it and get that up online before we would run out. It was a tremendous effort by the team. We've done a great job of managing through the supply chain challenges and disruptions so far. Really proud of how the team's operating. I don't know if you wanna add to it, Daniel.
Yeah, I could add a few points. You know, to be global, that gives us a tremendous advantage. To go back two years ago, when we saw the pandemic coming early 2020, it started in China. Our team immediately had to foresee what was gonna happen, and we started to buy a lot of material. We've been our own. We have built up our own material inventory since February 2020. Yes, there have been increases, but we've kind of been protected over the last 12 months. Now, of course, there's gonna be an impact on those major increases we have been receiving, but this is gonna be in 2023, 2024.
Greg, I don't know if you want to add anything on that.
Yes. For myself, it's really two pieces of it. One is obviously the rising cost and us managing it. We're fairly protected, because some of the contracts that we just talked about, as well as some of the elements are just pass-throughs, you know, raw material and so on. That part helps, but where we struggle, and I wouldn't say struggle, I'd say where we balance that out is making sure we have availability of product. Thus far our team has done an excellent job and we've been able to manage it extremely well. It's something that we'll definitely keep an eye on and constantly working.
Yeah. Greg's teams, to the question earlier, they've been running at 100% on time delivery with customers.
That's right.
Somebody else had a question.
Hey, good morning. Thanks, guys. Michael Ciarmoli, Truist Securities. Maybe just one on each segment. First, I guess, Greg, and obviously AEC Defense, I think you laid out a 4% CAGR for the defense industry. You're gonna be growing, you know, basically double that over the forecast period. How much visibility do you have? I mean, is that revenue locked in? Does it assume or contemplate anything on future vertical lift? I guess I'm just trying to figure out, you know, what's sort of in the backlog or secured already versus what do you have to go out and win to achieve that?
Yeah, no, it's a great question. As I mentioned earlier, on the new win portion, we've already secured well over the mid-40% of it in 2021 alone. That's items that we've won. Based on the build rates and us talking to our customers, we're expecting to be producing in 2026 by that timeframe. I'm anticipating the win, the time to go through FAIs and whatever else, and then actually be on a run rate. You know me, I feel fairly bullish about that, you know, the fact that we're that much into one year, and we've had successes this year. Again, we don't announce a lot of the successes because our customers don't want us to.
Sure.
Does that help? Did I hit the mark on that?
Yeah. I mean, you've laid out, I guess, F-35, CH-53K, JASSM. It seems like you've got real good visibility there.
Yes.
With those programs. I guess, are you implying anything or embedding anything for future vertical lift?
Well, on the future vertical lift, it's not gonna hit as quickly.
Right.
As what you're seeing. You may end up, you might get some NRE, you might get something like that. We didn't put that in there because-
Sure
To be quite honest, it really depends on where it goes.
Sure.
There's been a lot of you know, FLRAA, FARA, where is it? Which one? And the timing. You know, there's a little bit of dynamics on that, so that I stayed a little bit away from.
Okay.
More the certainties are the ones that we had a pretty good idea of.
Got it. Then just on Machine Clothing, maybe a question on the pricing environment. You know, the presentation, very helpful. It sounds like, you know, a lot of the product offerings are customized, tailored specifically for, you know, a specific customer's needs, you know, whatever they might be manufacturing. So it would imply there's pretty high switching costs. I mean, do you have more pricing power to go, you know, to really get real pricing growth in this current environment?
You want me to start? You know, the whole presentation was about partnerships. You know, we approach our customer and the price increase in that spirit. Many of our contract are for two, three years. In some of those contract, there are some price increase. They are marginal. They are about the CPI, PPI that we used to have before the inflation. That is going through. There's good conversation, and we get that. The challenge now is to get the higher price increase, and those conversation have started. That's with the customer where we have partnership. The other customer, yes, we're asking for more price increase. Everybody knows that logistics costs have increased, the lack of truck drivers. I think it's gonna be accepted. It's just gonna take a little bit longer to flow through the P&L.
Okay. We have another question from online. Let's see. How do you expect capital expenditures and D&A to trend through 2026? And then separately for Daniel, have you seen any customer destocking in the AEC segment?
Me?
Two little different ones.
I'll take the first one unless Daniel, you wanna do the other as well?
No, go ahead.
Look, as you saw over the last couple of years, D&A has been running ahead of CapEx because we discussed as the AEC business slows down, we significantly reduce CapEx there and D&A stays above it. There's a bit of uncertainty as you get out to 2025, 2026. I hope that CapEx exceeds D&A during that timeframe, because I hope to be successful in winning some additional programs, these ones that will deliver growth out beyond the next five years, and might kick in in that timeframe. Absent those, we're looking at a situation where D&A over the time will be roughly equal to CapEx.
As I mentioned earlier, I like low CapEx or cash flow in a given year because it typically means we're investing for growth on programs we want. I hope to fall short of my expectations on free cash flow generation.
You want me to take the other?
Yeah.
On the inventory and destocking question, have you seen the cost of idle paper machine is very high. The industry seeing the logistic and the raw material issue has built some inventory to protect the paper machine running. This has been done in a very good manner. You know, they have not gone and asked for several pieces. When they have two or three pieces in stock to cover that position, they may have asked for one or two pieces. There have been some inventory build up, but it's not like three or four times what they had. What I was sharing also with a few of you, this is a long cycle. The paper they are producing today is for Christmas.
If there is a slowdown, it's gonna be very long term. I don't see a major destocking coming like, you know, from day to the other day.
Yeah. I think, you know, and I'll speak for Daniel here. On the last earnings call, I think I talked about there being maybe, you know, $10s of millions in excess inventory. I think Daniel would tell me it's very low $10s of millions, probably $10-ish.
Ten-ish
Round numbers of probably excess inventory out there.
Hi, Elizabeth Grenfell from BofA. On both sides of the business, how are you thinking about the risks associated with China, and the plants that you have there and economic concerns and the geopolitical backdrop? On the supply chain and are the days of just-in-time inventory done, and are you thinking about running your inventory in a different way because of the supply chain headwinds we're seeing now?
Yeah. Let me start that. If you think about how we've expanded our global footprint, our businesses, our two plants in China in the Machine Clothing segment, they're really good plants, really well operated, we're positioned there to serve the Chinese market. We didn't put them there as a low-cost, you know, export machine like a lot of companies did in early on in China. Those are there to serve the Chinese market. Then the rest of the footprint, if you look at Brazil, if you look at Northern Europe or Central Europe, North America, including Canada, U.S., Mexico, we're very well positioned around the world in the global markets that we serve.
There is some material that flows around the world as a supply, and that's something we'll have to look at in the long term. I would describe it as a just-in-time. We don't have a just-in-time thing where things are shipping. In fact, in the pandemic, when the transportation became so bottlenecked and so difficult, we were actually in country. You know, we're putting our belts on a truck and driving them down to the paper mill. We're not putting them on a ship or on a train, in general. There's a little bit that we ship around the world if we wanna optimize our footprint. In general, we could deliver locally. I don't know if you wanna add to that.
Yeah, I think you described it very well. What our system is built around is also us capable of supporting a different site. We have internal processes where if one of the operation could run in trouble, it will be very easy for us to support from another site in another region. Maybe back on China, we didn't see any impact on the COVID itself. You know, our facility were running, the paper industry was running, so we didn't really get impacted on that. I know that been on the news where the Shanghai port where were stopped, but we had enough inventory that we didn't get hurt by the port being stopped.
Okay, we have another online question. This is with regards. Couple of folks are asking about the opportunities with regards to three-dimensional woven composites and where they could go. I'm gonna paraphrase one of them. Can you elaborate on what types of applications 3D might be applied in? And what is the earliest that you think Albany International could see some sales from those types of applications?
Yeah, let me start, and then Greg, you can add to it. I get pretty excited. We didn't even mention today that the first 3D woven composite component we made was a landing gear component. It's flying today on the 787. It's a brace. It's about that big. When we developed that landing gear component, Safran had to make a decision or kinda on the run to either go with titanium or go with the 3D woven composites. At that time, while we were developing the fan blade technology, they chose to go with titanium just for cost reasons. That was way back when, right? This discussion we had earlier about how we've been driving the cost down.
That creates an opportunity for us to go back and look at all those kind of opportunities across the airplane. Ideally, the best opportunity would be the design and development of a new aircraft, right? Because from an engineering standpoint, we can alter the material properties, we can alter the material thickness, we can design the material so it optimizes where it supports stress or strain loads.
So you don't have to have a uniform piece of titanium or steel or something. We can actually change the shape and the dimensions of it. Just like, you know, a fan blade is curved, it's aerodynamic, it's got a shape to it. We can design it with our programs so it optimizes where the thickness is needed for strength. Why is that important? Because the rest of the material doesn't have to be so thick, and that makes it lighter.
You're starting to optimize the material on the aircraft. To have it where you need it, but not everywhere. But we need to get in on the design up front, the design and engineering up front to design the material to do that. For that, we need new airplanes or new components.
I mean, an example would be we had an application came to us, and they gave us the envelope and the design parameters, and we were able to not only produce it for them the way they asked for it, but an enhanced version as well. We have enough design capabilities that we can say we optimized it. There are a number of areas that we can propagate this. You know, a lot of it is like Bill mentioned, it's the load, it's dimensions. We now have some acreage capabilities. The other one is the thermal properties, and you know, those come into play with more of the hypersonics and some of the other elements. There's a lot of flexibility with that.
Then again, to augment that and to help that is the other technologies that we have in composites. I don't know if that took care of most of it.
The other question was around how long does that take, right? I kinda think of it as maybe not in the short term, but more as sort of that midterm.
Yeah.
Depending upon the application.
Yeah. I think, for instance, on something like the hypersonics, you'll see that come about faster. On some of the other elements, if you're redesigning an airplane and whatnot, obviously that takes, you know, many years down the road. But the nice thing is a lot of this is cascading, so where one will come into play, you're working on another one. You're kinda closing gaps. You don't have gaps throughout the road.
Yeah. The other thing I would emphasize is that if you went back 18 months even, we didn't have the sort of connection with the broader market. We were working very closely with a few customers. You know, you can count our big customers on one hand. I think, you know, with the success of the LEAP program, it's kinda put us on the board.
Mm-hmm.
Now we have a lot of other customers, a lot of the other ones we don't talk about are in our facilities. They're in the engineering rooms. They're saying, "What can you do? What could you do about this? What could you do about that?" Maybe some of those will come to fruition sooner, but I still think of those as, you know, a couple of years, two-three years before we can bring a full design product to market.
Yeah. That's fine.
Shane Connor, Huffman Prairie. Just to confirm, so the new business capture rate. The business won through 2021 would capture 40% of the 2026 revenue, new business revenue target?
It's a little bit over 40%. The question would be is, of the wins in 2021, what portion of that would be at a run rate by 2026? That's where that little over 40% is. In other words, in essence, I just have to win only, let's just say 55% in the next several years when one year I did that much. So it just gives you know, it's we always risk-adjust. Those are all risk-adjusted numbers anyways based on the program. We looked at, one, that piece of it, and then what's the forward look with the programs that we're engaged on and what's our risk-adjusted percentage of wins.
Yeah. These are layered programs.
Right.
This is not something like we think we're gonna win something in helicopters, right? These are very specific programs.
Right.
Maybe just a follow-up. I assume most of that is 2D composites, but maybe you can just speak to the mix, specifically in military of
Yeah.
2D opportunities and 3D versus 3D opportunities.
Yeah. The thermoset 2D is the predominant, right? That still continues to be the mainstay in the composite world. There are some other elements in there and some other technologies it's infused into it, but that is the biggest piece.
Pete Skibitski at Alembic Global. Just wanted to ask you guys if programs like RISE and Wing of Tomorrow transition into production programs in the future, do you intend it, you alluded to it, that you would sort of keep your relationship with Safran? I guess what I'm trying to figure out is you like the relationship where your margins are somewhat capped, but your financial risk is somewhat capped as well. You know, Wing of Tomorrow, would that be separate?
I, I
Because it wouldn't be an engine program.
Well, I think it's fair to say that this cost-plus nature of the LEAP program has been really good for both of us. It's driven us to collaborate extensively, more than most aerospace companies do, right? To really develop the material, drive the cost down, improve the productivity and all that. I don't believe the next programs will be cost plus. You know, we were very happy to have it through the downturn. I'm not sure how happy Safran was, right? I don't think the next programs will be cost plus.
It served its purpose.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It did. It got the technology off the ground. They bore the biggest risk, and now we've established the technology, so now we wanna take it to market.
Okay. Thank you.
Okay, we've got another one from online. With a 30% market share in Machine Clothing, is there an opportunity for M&A and further consolidation in that marketplace?
I mean, I think there's opportunity for M&A in both segments. The machine clothing segment is probably a little more consolidated. As you know, we have the machine builders that have paper machine clothing capability, significant competitors in the industry. There's not a lot of companies out there in paper machine clothing, but we'll continue to look at, right? I mean, it's actually, Daniel would say, it's actually the history of how we got to where we were. The number of acquisitions we did that built up the business and then the consolidations and the global footprint, kind of reorienting that Daniel talked about.
Yeah. Yeah. I think that's correct.
Yes. I'm Daniel. We were talking earlier, you've taken out a lot of labor out of the MC business over the last sort of decade. You know, can you talk a little bit about kind of the productivity that, you know, going forward, you know, kind of what kind of your ability to sustain the margins? Obviously, I know you lead with technology, but maybe you could talk a little bit about that because it's been quite a transformation over the last decade.
Well, thank you. That's a very interesting question. There are essentially two programs. We're certainly gonna continue on the continuous improvement, and there's a lot of activity, and we're gonna put more robotics, more automation than we have been. That's underway, and I'm very excited about the gains that we can make over the years. On the technology part, where we're really driven to support the customer and help him to run his paper machine, we're also looking at making the product in a more cost-effective manner than we've been in the past. We're exploring several good technologies that potentially will give a tremendous cost advantage in the next few years.
Those are the two elements of absorbing the inflation and improving our margins.
Yeah. The team's done a great job in offsetting inflation and driving margin expansion, as you know, over the past. We have confidence they can continue it.
We have no further questions from the virtual audience right now.
Hey, Bill, if you could just elaborate a little bit more on, you were just talking about the cost plus contract and how in the future you think the next contract would be fixed price. Stephen, we used to talk about pre-COVID. I would always often ask you about the LEAP program and if that would flip to fixed price. My question is, one, could that program still flip to fixed price? Two, what would be the mechanism to do that? And three, how would that change maybe the AEC margin targets going forward?
Yeah. Let me start with. We have an excellent relationship with Safran. In fact, it's gotten better over the last couple of years. Really good interaction back and forth. We're doing a lot collaboratively together. As I said, the structure of the venture and the cost plus nature of the contract has driven us to really work together closely. Obviously, if we try to move to a fixed price, we'd want a high price, and Safran want a low price. That, that's kind of the starting point. The way it works in the contract, we both have to agree to do that. Right now, things are working pretty well.
You know, there may be a day where we say, "Look, we'll take the risk because we can keep driving the cost improvements and Safran will say fine." You know, we haven't announced that yet. So far, it's worked in our favor. I forgot your last question.
If it did flip, what would the margin differential be maybe?
It depends on the price, right?
Mm-hmm.
We do have confidence we can keep driving the cost down. We're gonna keep at it day after day.
Presumably higher.
Well, we wouldn't agree to it if it were lower.
Right.
Look, I think the major disconnect probably between us and Safran right now, were we to engage in that discussion, is uncertainty over volumes. You know, at this stage, it's a well-understood process, and Greg and his team have a cost reduction plan. They know what they're going to do next. They know the impact that's going to have on labor hours and raw material consumption. So it's well understood. The biggest unknown is how many are you making, and therefore how much, you know, how much fixed cost is each unit absorbing. I think right now, Safran would lean towards a number somewhat higher than we would think is the risk-adjusted number. It's certainly challenging in the near term to think of doing that.
At some point, if the near term becomes the medium term, we get to the point where, you know, we're almost at the RISE engine, then it may become, you know, a, you know, unnecessary to even think about it. But we just don't know at this stage.
Yeah.
When we'll get clarity in the market.
Yeah, I, you know, the good news is, Greg and his team has done a remarkable job of saying, "Okay, we're gonna take, you know, whatever it is, 10, 12% out of the cost this year or next year," whatever it is. They hit those numbers every year. They haven't missed them yet. The flip side of that is Safran knows we can do that, right? They're part of it, you know? It requires their cooperation for us to improve the cost because there's a lot of approvals as the OEM, you know? That's one of the difficulties in aerospace. If you try and change somebody's product and you're changing your process, you have to re-qualify it with your, the OEM. With Safran, we don't have to do that. We work together to do it.
Obviously, the part has to be qualified, but it's a back and forth. They know how good we are at improving the cost. You know, it gets a little more difficult to negotiate that and say, "Okay, we wanna set it here." But there's probably a point where they would let us take the risk at some point. I'm not sure we're there yet.
Any further questions from the audience? I think we're good.
All right. Well, thank you everybody. Appreciate the time you spent with us. Enjoyed the conversation, and I look forward to those that are going on the tour of the facility. Anybody that can't make it, just let us know at some point, and we'd love to give you a tour. Just be in touch with John. It's quite a sight to see. It's not your typical aerospace manufacturing plant, for those of you who've seen it. It's a very unique one. All right. Thank you, everybody.
Thank you.
Thank you.