Thanks everyone for joining us. I'm Bert Subin, a senior research analyst here at Stifel, covering aerospace and defense. Today we have the pleasure of hearing from AAR. AAR is one of the premier aftermarket services providers purely focused on the aviation market, about 70% to commercial and 30% to government. We're gonna do a Q&A session, but Sean Gillen, CFO, is gonna walk through some slides and give a little bit of overview of the company, and then when he finishes, we'll go through moderated Q&A. Sean, over to you.
Okay. All right. Thank you, Bert. Thanks everyone here, and for those on the webcast for the attention. As Bert said, I'll just jump on a couple slides here, give a bit of an overview of who AAR is, and then we'll go into Q&A with Bert. So, a few slides on the website that you can pull down, just an overview of who we are. So real quick, you know, AAR, been around for a long time, founded back in 1951. Today, I have about, you know, $2.5 billion market cap, $2.5 billion in sales, about 5,700 people spread across the globe. We are overweight here in North America, both in the U.S. and Canada.
And then have customers really across a nice set of the government, as well as the commercial end market. Our single largest customer is the department—the U.S. Department of Defense. Large commercial customers are United, Southwest, Air Canada, Delta, and an assortment of other, you know, kinda leading commercial providers. In terms of the activities that we do, what we say is, you know, we're an aviation services provider. What does that mean? It means we're focused on the aftermarket, and we're not a manufacturer of product into the aftermarket. We're a service provider, which means we do maintenance of parts, and then we also sell parts, and then we package those under long-term supply chain arrangements with the government, as well as the commercial end market. So just a little bit on our segmentation.
In Parts Supply, we have two main activities in Parts Supply. We have Used Serviceable Material, or USM. These are parts specifically on the engine. We're about three-quarters engine material in USM. These are parts that can come off the engine, get refurbished, and then sold back into the aftermarket, and we're a leading provider of that, into the aftermarket. The other piece of Parts Supply is distribution. We're a distributor of factory new parts on behalf of our OE partners. Our model is exclusive in the arrangement, where we'll be an exclusive provider. We'll only sell their part in the aftermarket. We won't sell competing parts, and that has grown significantly, for us over the last number of years. Those are the activities within Parts Supply.
Next segment would be Repair and Engineering, and here is where we have our heavy maintenance business. So this is a hangar network. We have two facilities in Canada, four here in the U.S., and we do this on behalf of commercial airlines, where they need heavy checks on their aircraft, narrow body aircraft. Large customers are United, Southwest, Air Canada, Alaska. And we do that work on their behalf in the hangar network. And so I'm talking about the Repair and Engineering segment, about 34% of the sales there. We also had component repair capability here.
This is where the Triumph acquisition, where we acquired component repair facilities from Triumph, announced just before the holidays, closed on March first. All of those activities go into this segment here, and it really took us from subscale and component repair to now being a leading provider and component, as well as the heavy maintenance side of the business. And then last segment is Integrated Solutions. These are our long-term programs.
Essentially, these are supply chain outsourced supply chain support for commercial airlines, generally under a power by the hour arrangement for commercial, or on the government side, performance-based logistics, where we manage the parts and service and maintenance of these aircraft or parts or both on behalf of the customer and get paid a fee associated with with doing that, generally under a long-term contract, five to seven year type contracts. Then the last piece I'll mention is Expeditionary Services. This is a segment that I'd say is kind of our last, you know, legacy AAR business. It's a manufacturing business. It's not focused on aviation. It sells to the DoD, and it's only about, you know, 3% of sales, even a little bit smaller pro forma for the Triumph acquisition.
So that's one that I think over time would likely, you know, ... We've done a good job consolidating the portfolio to focus on the activities in the three main segments, and I think this one over time will make sense elsewhere. So I'll pause there. Just wanted to give a brief overview for those that aren't as familiar with AAR, and I think with that, we'll just jump into Q&A with Bert.
Yep. Thank you, Sean. Appreciate the overview. Maybe we'll start on the aftermarket. We've seen, you know, probably more of an extended cycle than anyone would have anticipated, and that's largely been a function of travel coming back really strongly and Boeing's own challenges producing aircraft, and so you've had sort of these dual tailwinds. You know, I feel like you've gotten maybe a little less appreciation for your positioning there. As you think about, like, what's been happening in the aftermarket, I guess, firstly, what's your view toward the cycle-
Yeah
... and toward the environment? And then two, how does that, you know, maybe fit into your model, and where do you benefit?
Yeah, good question. I think we, like, as you mentioned, all providers to the aftermarket have been benefiting from the macro dynamics at play in the aftermarket, specifically supply chain challenges, particularly coming out of Boeing, with a lower new delivery schedule than the airlines would have anticipated or anyone, which means that the very strong demand for travel that we're all seeing is being serviced by the existing fleet, and so that's generally mid to later life aircraft. That's good for people like us and aftermarket providers. And I think we see that continuing to be at play, as we go into the balance of this calendar year and into next fiscal.
I think undoubtedly the new delivery schedule will start to go up, but there'll still be a lot of the demand being serviced by the current generation aircraft. Go ahead.
Well, I'm just wondering, you know, part of what's happening here that maybe extends the cycle. I'm just curious your opinion on this: is if you're an airline and you're having to make the decision: Well, do I invest in heavy maintenance? And if you choose yes, based on demand being strong, that's not like a one-month decision, it's a multi-year decision. And so is there a case for the fleet, even as Boeing starts to produce more aircraft, Airbus produces more aircraft, just retirements may be artificially low just because you've sort of budgeted out to maintain those aircraft over a multi-year period?
Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, I think retirements will increase. You know, they've been at kinda historically low rates since COVID. And everyone, there's been this expectation each year that this is gonna be the year we're gonna see them start to increase the, the number of retirements. I think that's gonna continue to be lower relative to historical standards, but still higher than they've been more recently. And to your kinda first question, how do we differentiate? I think one of the things that's different for us, given how much USM sales we generate, is that USM relies on retirements. And so, as retirements start to increase, that'll be good for feedstock and source of material for us to get our hands on, and then sell into the aftermarket.
So I think that's a component of our story that maybe gets lost a little sometimes, and I think it's another reason that even if the aftermarket moderates, we'll continue to see kind of above trend line growth as those retirements normalize.
So if you think about the portfolio, and you gave the walkthrough of the different segments, you know, Parts Supply is split between distribution and USM. And then you have the component repair, you have other repairs, landing gear, you have airframe maintenance, you have the supply chain and logistics and government businesses, and expeditionary solutions, which you talked about, you know, maybe being sort of less core. As you think about the remainder of the core, you know, why is that now the right portfolio?
Yeah.
I guess the one piece of that, that some of your peers have maybe gone away from is USM. Why does that make sense?
Yeah. So as you mentioned, you know, the core today is part supply, Repair and Engineering, and Integrated Solutions. All of that fits together. It's all focused on the aftermarket. It's all service-based, and a lot of the information we get from one activity informs some of the others. And when we sit across from customers, frequently, we're not only selling our heavy maintenance, we're also selling our Parts Supply capabilities, and now with the Triumph acquisition, we can also sell our component repair. So I think all those fit together, not only in terms of how we operate, but also in terms of how we face the customer. On the USM side, you know, that business is performing incredibly well.
It is constrained by supply today, so it's not growing as fast as other parts of the aftermarket, but there's no reason that that will last, and that'll contribute to the growth going forward. You know, and it's one of our highest margin activities and a very good return on invested capital, too. So the USM business is a very strong business. There's just this moment in time when with constrained supply, that, you know, in making it grow slightly less fast than it otherwise would.
So if we put this into the financial context, you hosted Investor Day last year, and you talked about... This is before maybe appreciation for the duration of the cycle, and it was before the TPS acquisition. You talked about 5%-10% organic growth over the next half decade, which should be complemented by 10%-15% earnings growth. I guess, at that time, what gave you confidence in that guide, and as you think to now, where the environment's certainly stronger than I imagine you would've anticipated, and you're adding a strong component repair business, like, how do you now think about it?
Yep, good question. You know, I think that 5%-10% over that three to five- year time, in terms of sales growth over a three to five- year window, first off, was organic, right? So no M&A there, that was just the organic growth that we saw. And I think the way that we saw about that- thought about that is, if the overall aftermarket was gonna grow globally over that timeframe, call it 4-ish%, we'd be able to grow faster because of market share opportunity, both in distribution as well as in the hangar network. And then on USM, notwithstanding the tight supply, that it will increase its penetration rate, that there'll be more adoption of USM over that three to five- year window. So that's how we said, "If the market's gonna grow four, we're gonna outgrow the market." And that's just on the commercial side.
The government side, which can tend to be a little bit lumpier in its growth, 'cause you'll win a big program, stand it up, and then it'll be kinda mature over the seven-year timeframe, but over time, that government side should also grow in that 5%-10%. So that's how we thought about the growth. Then switching to margin, you know, we've undertaken a lot of effort from pre-COVID to today to get our operating profit margin from pre-COVID, about 5.5%, to today, which is kind of in the low 8s now in the most recent quarter. And all that was pretty much self-help.
And the next phase of margin expansion, as we said last July, was kind of that 9%-10%+ operating profit margin, was gonna come from continued portfolio improvement in terms of part supply contribution, some kind of self-help in the our in the maintenance and repair segment, some digital initiatives to improve our efficiency, and then leveraging the cost structure. So that was all before the Triumph acquisition. Obviously, the Triumph acquisition, you know, expands margins on a pro forma basis, close to 100 basis points, so you can kinda edge both of that range up to account for the recent acquisition.
So I wanna get into margins, but maybe first let's go a little deeper on the business. The Parts Supply has been an engine. I think at that time, you said it was gonna outgrow the rest of the business, and I think on an organic basis, that remains the case. USM, you know, has been constrained, but it sounds like that business has stayed at least steady.
Mm-hmm.
Distribution's been really strong. I think you called out 27%-
Yeah
... organic growth last quarter. What, what's changed in distribution? Like, why, why are you growing so much there? What do you see as, like, the opportunity? Is this something where you expect to be double-digit growth for sort of the foreseeable future?
Yeah, I think two things have maybe changed in there in terms of kind of our, what we thought growth would be to the outperformance we've seen since that moment in time. I think, one, the continued recovery in the aftermarket continues to be stronger than even we expected last summer, and so I think that's driven some of the growth, or the outperformance in distribution. And then the other one, which I think is the bigger piece, is just our ability to continue to win market share with OEs on product lines that we sell into the aftermarket. So we've done a nice job of showing our value proposition to the OE.
We can help push price increase, we can help them expand their, you know, market share, and we act as a, basically a third-party extension of their sales arm, into the aftermarket. So when we bid on new work with existing OEs that we work with, we can show them all the, you know, nice data that shows that we've been able to achieve that, and then when we have new OEs, we kind of have the same, same message to them. And so it just leads to getting more market share, more product line, more growth.
So the competition here, I feel like, has stepped up, and some of your other public peers have sort of, you know, expressed their intention to grow a lot more distribution. And I think the pitch is, you know, aftermarket strong, OEs don't necessarily want to be involved here, or they feel like they can expand their sales process through distribution, and so it becomes an opportunity maybe for OEs that's beneficial and that obviously provides a conduit for you. What would have to change for distribution to moderate?
Yeah, I mean, obviously, other than a macro slowdown, I mean, just I really don't see it moderating. I think also, you know, there's other people competing in the space. And I think for us, one of our differentiators is a couple things. One, we sell into both the commercial as well as the government end market. Not all distributors do that, and I think that's good for the OEs 'cause they don't have to have one distributor for commercial, one for government. And then the other piece is our global reach. You know, we have a sales force across the globe. You don't need to split your distribution into, you know, the Americas, Europe, and then Asia. We can cover all that for them.
So I think you have a little bit more of a one-stop shop in terms of our capability versus some of the other, you know, independents that maybe look like us.
So you had an announcement, I guess this is maybe a month or two ago, maybe on the heels of the TPS acquisition, where you won a fairly big distribution agreement with Triumph for actuators. That's set to start in, I think, calendar 2026?
Mm-hmm.
Like, what does that pathway look like, and how meaningful is a distribution win like that?
Yeah, I'd say it's similar to some of our other distribution wins. You know, the way these generally work is, you know, there's an upfront outlay for the inventory when you win the distribution right, and then you'll manage that product over the five to seven- year timeframe that it's under contract. And the ramp is pretty quick after it cuts over to you, especially if you're buying the inventory from the incumbent, because then everyone has to come to you in the market and tends to be a bit cleaner to do it that way. You know, we don't go into quantifying each product line, but I think you can safely assume that that's a pretty big product line in the aftermarket, so it's, you know, kind of meaningful growth for the distribution business.
Maybe moving on to the Repair and Engineering business. So this is, I guess it's helpful to get into TPS. So you acquired Triumph Product Support. I guess this is a... I think it closed March 1st?
Yep.
Just recently closed. I guess first, you know, what are you seeing sort of post-close?
Yeah.
And then secondly, I mean, maybe first, you know, what does this bring to AAR that you were having trouble doing organically?
Yeah. And so, as I kind of mentioned in my opening remarks, in our Repair and Engineering segment, the biggest activity before the acquisition was the heavy maintenance hangars. So these are large hangars that the entire aircraft comes into. You do the heavy check for the customer, and then you send the aircraft back. And we were really, you know, strong market position, number one independent player here in North America. In component repair, we had two facilities before Triumph, and frankly, we were subscale and had a lack of differentiation in terms of the product offering, and that's why the Triumph acquisition fits so well. One, it's aftermarket, it's services, and it's a business we know. And two, it takes us from an area that we didn't have the scale we wanted to, and now we do.
And specifically, some of the capability that came with it is around exterior structures repair, as well as, engine components. Not the engine itself, but components that go around the engine, and those are capabilities we did not have in-house before the acquisition. And then, like, lastly, it's got a facility in Thailand, and we didn't have bricks-and-mortar in Thailand before. You know, we sell into the Asia market, we have warehouses over there, but we didn't have repair capability in that region. And now, of course, with this acquisition, we have that position to serve, you know, a faster-growing market.
I guess now you're three months into it. I mean, is it progressing as expected? Is it looking better? You know, what are the-
Yeah
... really takeaways?
Yeah, I'd say as expected. I think from a customer standpoint, maybe even better than expected. We kind of knew that the customer... There's a lot of overlap with the customers. We know them pretty well through the other activities we had, but I think the feedback has been very positive from the customer. They're happy that this set of assets that they liked and knew well is now in AAR's hands, who's also a vendor that they've used for years and years with a strong brand name and focused on the aftermarket, which is obviously different than Triumph from the business was. So positive, maybe even more positive from a customer standpoint. The employee, you know, the management team we got and the employees are very happy to be part of AAR.
And then from just kind of the operational integration, off to a good start.
So, I mean, TPS was running, I think it was low 18% operating margin, which is, you know, considerably higher. And, you know, based on what you're talking about in terms of synergies and, and what you can do, maybe that's even gonna get better. Why does a business like this, why is a business like this able to earn margins that are, you know-
Good question
... quite a bit above what you're doing? And then, you know, what do you see as, you know, maybe the... You talked about DER repair with it, you've talked about PMA opportunities, like-
Yeah
... how important are those to maintaining those margins?
Yeah, good question, and it's a question we get a lot, which is: Okay, they're at 18% operating profit margin. Your Repair and Engineering was at 7%-8%. Why so much higher? One, I think it's the nature of the heavy maintenance, very labor-intensive process. But I think they, now we do, TPS, and why they are able to achieve their margins. They focused on certain types of repair that, where they were differentiated and could drive more volume, and therefore efficiency and turnaround time in the hangar. So it's very well-run shops focusing on repair capabilities where, you know, they can get compensated for their performance. I think the other things that underpin that is that they did have DER. They do have DER capability.
For those that don't know, DER capability is, you know, a way to design a repair that's also approved by the FAA that isn't the exact OE repair. And so frequently, the margin on those can be a bit higher. I think in their case, it's less around the margin, and it's more around the turnaround time. 'Cause if you're relying on the OE to deliver, you know, piece parts, it could expand your turnaround times. If you develop a repair that can shorten that turnaround time, once again, you just get more volume over the shop. And so I think that's what underpinned their margin profile relative to us and then relative to other players in the industry.
How much does it matter having, like, a DER capability versus just being, like, an authorized repair shop?
Yeah. You know, the DER both can have good margins. I think the DER capability differentiates in the aftermarket to customers, and I think maybe more importantly, can just shorten the turnaround time of a repair, which means you can drive more volume through the shop.
Got it. So, if we think about the rest of this portfolio, and already you've talked about the hangars, I guess maybe it's good to go into some of the expansion you're expecting there-
Yeah
... because that's gonna be a, I guess, a tailwind for growth, not next year, but in 2026 forward as, as those open up.
Exactly. So we announced, going back a few months now, an expansion of our Miami facility. So these are both the hangars, heavy maintenance business. We're expanding our facility in Miami, and we're expanding our facility in Oklahoma City. And we've broken ground on both those now. Expect those to come online kind of fall, late 2025. And it's about a 15% total expansion of the hangar capacity. And importantly, in each of those areas, the customer, United in Miami and Alaska and Oklahoma City, who are existing customers to those facilities, are, you know, committing to the volume. We're expanding for them, right? They came to us and said, "We're looking at our maintenance needs over the next number of years. We don't think we have enough capacity to do that.
Would you be willing to expand? And we said, "Of course." So, the important thing is when you do this stuff, if you have the customer commitment, then you can go and get the workforce and, and meet that demand. So both off to a good start, but it'll take, you know, about, a year and a half or so to come online.
But I think maybe something not appreciated about that is, if you're expanding that business 15%, let's say, you know, that should be several points of growth by the time you get to FY 2026, right?
Exactly. When you think about for that segment, for the company, that's right, and also importantly, the incremental margin, because we're leveraging the existing infrastructure, 'cause this is an existing infrastructure that's in place, the incremental margin is quite additive to, you know, call it the existing margin of that business.
Got it. So maybe before we get into margins and cash, just wanna sort of end up with Integrated Solutions in your government business. So that makes up, you know, roughly 30% of sales. It's been soft. I think you were down 7% year-over-year, and that compared to 18% growth in commercial aerospace. It's been weighing on growth.
Mm-hmm.
As we think out, I mean, noted in the DoD reports and pallet orders, that seems like that's expeditionary is getting a little better. But it seems like nothing's really changing otherwise in the distribution and the awards side. Like, what are you looking for to maybe give indication that government's going the other way? And if things stay as they are, do you still see that segment of the business growing next year?
Yeah, I think we see that segment growing next year, partly because separate from the government, about 1/3 of it's commercial, and as flight hours increase on those flight hour programs, that'll grow. But specific to the government side, you know, I think we've started to come out of some of the tough comp quarters where we had a lot of activity in the year ago period. But for that business to really return to growth, we need to take some of the projects that are in the pipeline and convert them to wins. And I think the frustration there has been that the government continues to move slower than we expected in terms of issuing RFPs and then making awards. But we have a good kind of body of work when we're bidding on these. We're confident in our win rate.
We just need them to, you know, kind of eventually happen with the government. And when I say body of work, our past performance on existing programs, like our WASS contract with the State Department or our landing gear contract with the Air Force, all performing well, hitting... you know, measuring well on the KPIs, and that helps inform, you know, our bids on other programs with the government.
What could lead to, like, a positive surprise in government? Could parts distribution step up, or is that sort of an unlikely near-term tailwind? Like, what could change-
Yeah, I mean-
-or-
... I think the nearest term-
Yeah
Catalyst for our government and market is part supply, because that's been lower. We've started to see that increase sequentially in the past, in the last couple quarters. So I think as we go into this year, you know, hopefully that should continue as the government re-pivots towards sustainment. And so I think that will be maybe the most near-term catalyst for government. And then I think the real big one is just a long-term program. You know, it's been a couple years since we had a WASS or a landing gear PBL or even our C-40 contract, where you have a big win with the government that ramps up.
And so I think if we have one or two of those, you'll have the commercial aftermarket continuing to perform really well, and then you'll have government, which has been a headwind more recently, return to, you know, to growth for the company.
Are there things you're tracking that could materialize, like, fairly soon, or?
I think some of these could be announced soon. To actually stand them up and see them in the financial results, that generally takes a few more quarters, but I think the announcement will hopefully, you know, give some clarity when the government finally makes a decision on these.
... I guess my last question on the government side is, a couple of years ago in the NDAA, you got some language that essentially enables USM to be sold to the, to the DoD-
Yeah.
which previously was not the case. Have you seen any green shoots in selling used parts to the government?
We're starting to see some green shoots. I mean, getting the government to purchase differently is taking a little bit longer, you know, because, and for those that aren't familiar, USM is very well adopted on the commercial side. So when I've been up here talking about USM, I've been talking about commercial aviation. There's a lot of commercial derivatives on the government side that are prime candidates for USM material, and it'll save the government money, and it'll reduce their turnaround time. Going back a year or so, for the first time, language in the NDAA, which is the congressionally authorized language that the DoD purchases under, said, "Where there's USM, you know, you must consider it." Not, "Thou shalt use it," "Thou shalt must consider." So we've been going around and educating the DoD on what's available to them.
So we haven't had any big win yet since the C-40 win from a couple of years ago, which really broke open the doors to this. But the government doesn't have to purchase that much differently for us to pick off... If we can pick off a few aircraft and a few engines a year, I mean, that's a meaningful franchise to us.
Got it. Maybe just to wrap up on the margins and cash and earnings side. Margins, we talked a little bit about, but can you just give us an appraisal of maybe where you sit on a pro forma basis after TPS? And you used to talk about SG&A getting to somewhere near the 10% of sales range. I think you've been more like in the 11%-12% range. How do you move the needle there? Is that just purely scale?
Yeah. So first on SG&A, you know, I think we're in the most recent quarter, we're like high tens. I think as we start to see some of the things I've talked about come online, particularly the hangar expansion and some of the growth from TPS integrating, I think our goal is still to get to that 10%, which will help, you know, that would add a point of margin. I think it'll take a year or two to kind of get there, but that's the focus from leveraging the SG&A cost basis. And then what was the second piece?
Just in terms of where you are today on pro forma.
Oh, pro forma leverage or?
No, no, no, on margins.
Oh, yeah. You know, on pro forma margins, you know, I think we're at that 9%, with, with TPS taking us up almost 100 basis points on a pro forma basis. So and where we see margins coming from, Parts Supply growing faster than the rest of the business will be accretive to margins. Some of the efficiency initiatives in the hangar will help expand the Repair and Engineering segments, and then leveraging SG&A, as you mentioned there. I think those are the three main components to the next phase of margin improvement.
Where do things like maybe, Dylan, maybe this is a question for you. Like, where does, you know, acquisitions like Trax fit into this? Because that's very margin accretive, but small. Are there opportunities to really scale that up and maybe give us a little bit of background on why that was, you know, an interesting deal to do?
Sure, so for those not familiar, Trax is a software business that we acquired about a year ago. It's essentially an ERP system for airline operators to manage their fleets and maintenance in particular. It has software-type margins, so 35% EBITDA margins. And it's when we acquired it, about $25 million in revenue, but with significant opportunity to add to that, both in terms of its core business, but to continue to build out its offerings and sell those in a way that Trax hadn't been able to do on its own. That is reported within Integrated Solutions. It is still relatively small, but a growth catalyst, both from a revenue perspective and from a margin perspective.
Are there other things you can do, and probably not in the software space, but are there other things that maybe, you know, wouldn't fall into, like, the typical repair-type business that you guys would go after on the tuck-in capability?
We have a variety of digital initiatives underway internally, intended to support efficiency and growth across all the businesses. And there might be opportunities to add to that capability inorganically, to kind of accelerate those efforts, and drive, you know, more efficiency and more growth more quickly than we can do organically.
Got it. Okay. Maybe just to wrap up, you—well, we started with talking about the Investor Day targets. You know, part of that was the 10%-15% earnings growth. Yeah, how does TPS fit into that? Because the one thing that did do for you is it took leverage from, call it, sub one turn to over three turns, and so that came, well, came with that is, you know, higher interest expense. And so I think it sounds like the deal you still expect to be accretive. So as you think about those targets, you know, 10%-15% still fair in your mind over the longer term?
Yeah, exactly. We expect the deal to be accretive in the first full fiscal year, so not taking us off those targets. And as we already talked about, you know, from a margin standpoint, it just, you know, puts 100 basis points on where we're trying to get. I mean, the company's been focused on 10% operating profit for years and years and years. I think we were moving towards that, and this will just help us get there a bit quicker.
So maybe to finish off on the, the deleveraging side of things. So now that you've, you've gone from a pretty low, interest expense position to certainly higher post-deal, you know, there's a lot of growth that you're gonna have from, from the distribution business, from USM, that's gonna require cash. How do you think about paying down debt, and, you know, what sort of time frame should we think about that being paid down over?
Yep. You know, historically, we've always talked about kind of being in one to 2x net debt as the target range, you know, always pretty conservative from a balance sheet perspective. As you mentioned, the acquisition takes us to that three to six. So I think our goal would be to get towards that 2x , you know, in kind of a two-ish year time frame, all organically, both EBITDA growth as well as some debt paydown. From a balance sheet perspective to fund the deal, we put in a $550 million bond, five-year bond, you know, not prepayable. I mean, you could three years in, but not prepayable. The interest rate on that was 6.75%, so really good kind of execution. Then we upsized the revolver a bit as well.
So the revolver is the prepayable portion, so as we generate cash, we'll pay down the revolver and kind of look to get that leverage, you know, below 3x and towards 2x.
Is that what we should expect, though? As you generate free cash, you just put it toward paying down outstanding on the revolver?
Exactly. It would go to the revolver. Yep.
Great. Well, Sean and Dylan, thanks so much for being with us. AAR.
Great. Thanks, guys.