Good morning and welcome to Allegion's 2025 investor and analyst meeting. I'm Josh Pokrzywinski, the Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you for joining us today as we talk about Allegion's long-term strategy and how we're creating a safer and more accessible world. Throughout the course of the day, we'll be making some forward-looking statements and referring to some non-GAAP financial measures. If you have any questions or want details on those, please read the cautionary statements or the reconciliations in the appendix. One of our core values at Allegion is be safe, be healthy. For those of you in the room, please keep an eye out for exits in the case of an emergency and help us maintain a safe and healthy environment here in the room. As for the agenda, we have about a two-hour program for you this morning.
Take a break about halfway through at 10:30. For those in the room, hopefully you had an opportunity to interact with some of our product showcases on the way in. You'll have another opportunity at the break, so please take advantage of that, as well as after the prepared marks and after Q&A on your way to lunch, where hopefully you'll be able to join us as well to continue the conversation. I appreciate your time and attention today. With that, I'll bring up our President and CEO, John Stone. Take it away, John.
Thanks, Josh. Good morning, everyone, and thanks so much for the time. Really grateful for it. I know everyone's busy, and we're standing here in this wonderful facility. Honestly, it's a little bit intimidating for a bunch of hardware guys. I don't know if any of you happened to check a coat down at the reception desk, but in that coat check room are some very nice invisible sauce hinges. We'll talk about that acquisition later in the presentation. I think most of you know Allegion. You know we're a very high-quality industrial company. You know we serve a very important mission, keeping people safe and secure. You know we're staffed top to bottom with great people. I'd take a second here just on this opening page to expand a little bit on the mission that we serve.
I'll argue till the end of days that there is no more important or no more meaningful secular trend than the increasing need for personal safety and security. Ask yourself, do you feel more safe, more secure than you did five, 10, 20 years ago? The need for our products has never been greater. The threats continue to multiply. They can be Mother Nature. We make a lot of products. Those of you who joined our engineering center tour two years ago saw some of the tests that we do for tornado and hurricane-proof doors. You literally load up a cannon with a four-by-four piece of wood and launch it at a door over 100 mi an hour to test the strength and durability of that door. In my office, I keep a Schlage lock cylinder. I didn't bring it because I didn't want the TSA to confiscate it.
It's really important. That Schlage lock cylinder took a bullet from a school shooter in 2024. Shooter literally tried to shoot their way through the Schlage lock and get into a classroom and do harm. That cylinder took a bullet, got mangled, but the bolt held. Let that sink in. Those kids went home that day. That's what drives us. That's what drives me. That's what motivates us. That's the mission that we come to work every day really excited to fulfill. We'll talk more about that mission, talk more about how that's fueling our growth. I would complement that. We've got a great mission, a really important mission, and we also run a great business. Plenty of companies have one or the other. Very few have both. Allegion has both.
Today, as we get into the content, what I'd like to open with, and I will actually close with this as well, is a really simple, really straightforward message. I know you're busy. I know you go to these things a lot. I know you probably have the time to remember one or two things out of this. This is the one I'd like you to remember. You know Allegion is uniquely advantaged. As we go through the presentations, you'll hear from Dave lardi in the Americas. You'll hear from Tim Eckersley in Allegion International to double-click into those advantages and talk about how we use that to further our business. You know we're executing at a high level. The results we've been putting up demonstrate that: margin expansion, organic growth, and tough markets. We're executing at a very high level.
As we go through it, Tim Eckersley will expand on some of that. Vince Wenos, our CTO, will as well. Mike will bring it home, talking about the results we've generated the past couple of years. The last point is in bold, and it's in bold for a reason. This is where your professor would stomp their foot a few times and suggest, "Take notes. Remember this part." This is what we want to show you. We want to explain to you. We want it to be believable. We want you to walk out of here with the same kind of confidence that we have, that we are primed to grow faster. Our vision, as you heard from Josh in his opening, is to make the world safer and more accessible.
If you go all the way back to the founding of some of our key brands, like Von Duprin, or LCN, or Schlage, Carl Prinzler invented the panic exit device in response to a tragedy. Lewis C. Norton invented the door closer in response to just an annoying door that would bang in the wind during a church service. Walter Schlage invented the first cylindrical lock. These innovators on these flagship brands of Allegion not only created their category, but they made building entry and egress safer and more accessible. We're continuing their work today. I'll never miss an opportunity to brag on our people. I think most of you would know my history. I've been in the U.S. military. I've been in great companies like General Electric and John Deere. I can tell you without a doubt, this is a special team.
As you have time, as Josh mentioned, interact. We brought the varsity squad out there for the product demos. Talk with them. Engage with them. We've got a small representation of the Allegion team, but this is a great team. Two years in a row now, we've been recognized with the Gallup Exceptional Workplace Award to show high levels of employee engagement. I know you've all heard it. Engaged teams perform better. What we see is a team of experts. We treat one another with respect all day, every day. We're passionate about that mission I just talked about, keeping people safe and secure. That's what drives us. Highly engaged teams like this come to work every day and give you that extra ounce of discretionary effort.
I would tell you this on this page, while a lot of companies talk about it, this is truly part of Allegion's moat. This is what makes us different, and this is incredibly hard to replicate. High level, as we get into just start at the top, and I'll gradually zoom down, double-click down into some of the key elements of my opening here, and then pass it over to the rest of the presenters. High level, this is our global business. We'll spend most of the time in these next slides talking about the second two bullets, about our proven ability to expand margins over the cycle and deploy capital consistently, and that, again, we feel very much so and want to convince you of the same that we are primed for accelerated growth. A quick overview at the highest level of our main markets.
U.S. non-rez, primary market for Allegion, some of the most salient strategic points as to our advantages and what we aim to accomplish in these markets: leadership in school safety, everything from advocacy to proper standards to also the proper install, proper monitoring, and some great examples out on the display floor that Mark Vigre n can talk you through. Things that are seemingly simple when you see it. I would tell you, when you see something that strikes you as quite simple and quite obvious, that means the engineers designing it did a fantastic job with the product. Driving electronics growth through partnership, tailored market solutions, and also leveraging our very large install base, spec writing expertise, and a front end that I would say is enviable to completely impossible to replicate by anybody else in the space. U.S. residential, important segment for us, profitable segment for us.
The strategy here is leading where we're strongest, leading in electronics with industry-first technologies. As we get into later in the presentation, Vince will show you a history of this and even indicate what's coming next. Leverage innovation, brand strength to grow and gain share. For a company Allegion's size, I have been amazed as new to the company and new to the industry, truly amazed at the level of recognition and respect and integration we have with the megatechs. Massive companies that use Allegion as a trusted technical contributor to standards and a trusted technical contributor to deploying their technology from their smartphones. Allegion International, Tim Eckersley will talk more about this in his presentation, but suffice it to say that this team has earned the right to grow. We have representation. Bern Sommer from Allegion International runs our electronics business over there.
Highly encourage you to spend some time with him and see just how special that team is. Tim's looking to expand specification capabilities in international, take some of those best practices from the Americas front end and deploy it to international markets, continue to add accretive bolt-on acquisitions. Again, this team has earned the right to grow, and I think the future is very bright for them. We will spend more time explaining each of these advantages, but what I would say, this is our entitlement to grow. These advantages are ours. Many of them are very, very difficult to replicate. You know we're already in a good and disciplined industry. These advantages are what makes our business so resilient, and this is why we're very optimistic on Allegion's future. Creating long-term shareholder value, that's what we're here to do. That's what we're here today to talk about.
The recipe, Mike will double-click into this and expand a little bit more on the middle two elements. We'll spend the bulk of the presentation, though, talking about the bookends, accelerating organic growth and deploying capital effectively. In both cases, we feel we have a great opportunity right now to continue to accelerate our performance. Now let's take a very high-level look at why we feel we're primed to grow faster over the cycle. There's some historical information here, historical backdrop, just to give a little bit of context and also a little bit of credibility to what we talk about when we say over the cycle, looking forward. Two cuts of time here. One, the 2010s, 2014 to 2019, and then 2020 to 2024. Going back to the 2010s, you see about 7.5% average annual revenue growth outside of FX.
You see end markets, it was a good time for non-rez construction. Volume favorable, price favorable, and about two points of average M&A contribution there. A good time. Also low inflation time. Look into pandemic, supply chain problems, higher inflation in 2020 through 2024, but Allegion still found ways to stay resilient, stay nimble, and put up mid-single-digit total growth. The mix was a little different, right? Very heavily weighted to price, leaning on the pricing power in America's non-rez in particular, about 2.5 points of acquisitive growth. If you look forward to what we're expecting over the cycle, this is get back to the mid-single-digit growth in the core, led by outgrowth and outperformance in electronics that we obviously have more content coming, and then take that average M&A contribution up a little bit.
I've talked about this recently on a couple of earnings calls and at a couple of conferences where if we brought in about two points of acquired revenue growth into 2025, I'd like to see that more in the 3%-4% range going forward. It doesn't take a huge swing in our end markets for this to be possible. I think, again, primed to grow faster. We've done, in my opinion, a very good job building a high-confidence, high-quality M&A pipeline of value-accretive targets, and we're going to demonstrate our capability to deploy capital effectively and make this a reality. If I zoom out for a second to the highest level look at deploying capital, we'll take the next couple of slides and dive into it a bit deeper. At a high level, if you look at Allegion's history, we've been rather balanced.
Admittedly, in the pandemic years, we got a bit more episodic, some large swings in repurchase and acquisition. Looking forward, we do look to maintain that balance. We look to be balanced and consistent and disciplined in deploying capital. You can see what that means. Just over the next three years, if you look at deploying 100% of the available cash flow, that's about $2 billion. We're going to do it responsibly. We'll be disciplined, and I'll talk more about what that means and define it for you. This should also show a clear orientation towards profitable growth, and that's where we want to put the capital to work. Okay, one click down into M&A of capital deployment. Where are we focused? The first thing I bring up on this page is what do you not see, what's not up here, and that is speculative adjacencies.
That's not contemplated right now. What is contemplated right now are things that are right up the fairway or right down the fairway, excuse me, of our core business. Continuing to find targets that expand and fill out our mechanical portfolio, doing the same on the electromechanical portfolio. Complementary software and services, we'll have a dedicated slide to explain that a little bit further. Some of the key attributes that we look for in these acquisition targets leverage our strength, clear synergy, quick synergy capture, enhancing our financial profile, ROIC north of WACC, and that in the future will accelerate Allegion's organic growth. Where do we have a right to win? Where's our core? Where are the ponds we're fishing in? It's right here. Everything in and around the door, everything in and around the opening.
This slide is using the Americas for an addressable market, just so we're sizing it appropriately. We frequently talk about we're in a good industry. If I just work my way clockwise around the slide with you, if you go to the upper right and look at product segments like exit devices, closers, even automatic doors that we acquired with SAT, that part of our industry is rather consolidated. We have a very strong share position. So is our largest competitor. When you look through the rest of the product segments, it is much less consolidated. Polymetal technical glass, accessories, locks, and electronics, much less consolidated. In all honesty, Allegion's share is not at the point in those product segments that we would consider our fair share.
What we're doing is looking for, finding good companies in those spaces, acquiring them, bringing them in, plugging them into our enviable front end, our spec engine, and demand generation, and then accelerating their growth far faster than they could as an independent company and filling portfolio gaps with an acquisition rather than multiple years of R&D investment. Right in the core is where we're looking to continue to drive M&A. Recent examples, high margins, expanding our presence in fast-growing specialty applications, specifiable and very rapidly integrated, one in polymetal, one in technical glass, one in accessories, and since then we've continued to do more. What do we mean when we talk electronics and software, particularly when it comes to M&A?
On the electromechanical hardware, a great example here recently was an acquisition in international, but also has relevance and growth potential in the Americas, and that's Dorcas, a manufacturer of electric strikes. Great innovation, great intellectual property, founder-led business, and the founder is now an Allegion employee and is excited to be on the team. An electric strike in the Americas frequently gets matched up with a Von Duprin exit device in the building. Our share in the exit device dwarfs our share in the strike. Now with Dorcas, we have an opportunity to right the ship, so to speak. On the software side, a couple of things going on.
One thing would be similar like we did in 2023 with the acquisition of plano, a workforce management software that bolts and plugs directly into our Interflex system, but looking to acquire complementary software and services that accelerates electronics adoption right in our core. Again, speculative adjacencies not being contemplated. The other product we highlight on here, John Goodwin will talk about it out in the floor if you had a chance to visit with him. We have a couple of slides to talk about this more as well as our Zentra tool, which is a cloud-based electronic access control for multifamily properties that we see as a key opportunity, a white space to move into that isn't really served by the very large enterprise-scale building automation type providers.
It's white space for access control married up with electronic locks that really is the domain of the hardware companies to move into that space and win. That is the opening. What I'd like to do now is invite Dave Alardi, the President of Allegion Americas, to talk about the Allegion model. Dave.
All right, good morning. Thanks, everyone, for joining us, and thanks, John, for the baton here. I have the pleasure to talk a little bit about what makes Allegion unique about this front end of our business. I know several of you have had questions over the years that want to dig a little bit deeper into how do we get it done and create sort of this differentiation of our teams in the field that allow us to create demand and really pull that through to our channels.
It really has been something that, as over the years we've invested, you know, when we talk about capital deployment, this is certainly an area of our investment we've made in people, in processes, in tools, as well as in our distribution channel. The breadth of offering of our portfolio is only as good as our ability to really execute that demand creation process upfront, bring that specification through to the building design, support an end user when they own the building, ensuring that they have the reliability, and then ensure the channel is there to support them all the way from the new construction phase through the aftermarket. I'll talk a little bit more. We'll click into our unique front end.
Before I do that, I want to talk a little bit around technology as well, because as one of those key trends in the marketplace where electronics, software, access control, and our ability to tie new technology with great development partners like the meg atechs that John talked about, those areas of the market and those parts of our portfolio are growing faster. They're growing faster not only as you think about a new building and what the expectation is of a new building into their customer base, but also in the upgrade side and in the aftermarket as people want to increase the level of convenience, increase the level of security, and overall increase the level of safety they have for whoever may be occupying that building.
It is critically important and helps us differentiate ourselves as we show up in the marketplace with our consultants, because our knowledge, our expertise allows us to build a relationship that creates more value around owning the building, operating the building, not just supplying a one-time transactional type of opportunity with hardware into that space. That is a unique way in which we create a level of demand that I believe is really uncaptured by many others in the industry. Let's dive in a little bit deeper. When I talk about who are these relationships that we have created over many decades of relationships, it starts in the design of a building. If you think about more of a greenfield opportunity, project architects, architectural designers, security consultants, you see project managers up there as well.
Also, there are a lot of space planners in the space, both in the design community as well as in the end user community that are working to understand how do we best utilize this space. Sometimes it might be in a hospital or in a school system. How do we ensure we have the flow of people the way we want it? How do we ensure security and access are met and those needs are really captured? About two-thirds of the Allegion front end is focused on actually the influence part of this building lifecycle.
Only about a third of our teams are handling the distribution channel where we have the transactional relationship, like you see there in the center with a software provider or a distribution channel or an integrator that is actually going to be the conduit for the material supply or the installation of that project at the end user. About a third of our team is there, but two-thirds are really dealing with the design side as well as this last part on the right-hand side of the slide, which is the end user. The facilities managers or the IT department that are trying to manage access and, of course, having to conflict with what's going on on their connected systems or dealing with cyber types of situations as well and want to understand how do electronics play into that environment?
What ways can they reduce risk within their facilities? Of course, you have certain markets, like a multifamily as an example, where we're trying to support the tenants. What experience does someone who's living in those buildings actually have every day in managing access? Do they feel safe? Do they feel secure? What level of convenience can we provide? We'll talk more. That's where a lot of the electronics and technology, things like mobile credentials, really come into play and help us really design something with the end user that can put back into the front end of the process.
Rather than hearing from me about each of these types of relationships we have in the marketplace, we had some time with some of our customers in each of these areas and just asked them, "What value do you get from Allegion in the relationship we've built with you?" I want to share this video with you now, and I'll be back to go on to the next segment.
Allegion steps up to the plate big time, and we've always believed in the quality of the Allegion products. They are instrumental in helping us marry the security of the project and what the owner wants to see from a hardware perspective security. There's a lot that Allegion is doing, driving demand through their specifications and continuing to develop new products. We have a great relationship with you.
When you bring something new and it's a complementary product, it's very easy for us to adopt that and leverage it in the portfolio. I cannot imagine life at Auburn without mobile credentials. It changes the way that we gain access to buildings. It changes the way students experience campus. There was a lot of complexity of dealing with old technology and upgrading to new and all the different use cases we had on campus. We talked to other customers. We felt confident that Allegion was taking care of them. They've been a great partner of ours. It was probably the best decision we made on this project. People take for granted when they walk out the door that it's going to be shut and locked behind them. That doesn't happen by accident. It's certainly not a mistake.
Never kind of failing, if you will, to appreciate the magnitude of the gravity of what it is that your business is providing. It's going to help us stay safe. It's going to help a nurse stay safe.
Awesome. I love that video. One of the most reasons I love that video is because you actually see real applications of how people are trying to manage the complexity, especially in large institutional end users. Whether it's Auburn University, you heard Rob talk about how they're taking old technologies and trying to upgrade the experience of their campus, whether that's them dealing with academic buildings that have a different user application versus the dormitories at the university or getting into the halls where they're dealing with a lot of public people that may be coming in where they have common space.
I think that you hear that from Auburn University. They're moving to mobile credentials, and they can't imagine what it would be like if they didn't have it today. That is sort of that switch that we see often happening over the years in these relationships that we've managed at the end user level. That is how we help a facility really own their facility long term. I'll click into a little bit more of that. You also heard from HKS Architects, one of the largest architectural firms in the country, on the design side and really helping them understand how to apply our products and the codes and standards in any given project into that project design and working with them to understand the needs of the end user to get there. Let's click into that design phase for a moment.
Our team brings local knowledge and expertise of the building codes. We're establishing and on the committees, oftentimes helping build the security and access points within those building codes and then trying to help apply them into those projects with the architect. What you'll see on the right-hand side is actually our technology that we're using to partner and accompany our individual consultants that are walking into those architect firms, talking with the end user and their needs. The Overtur platform has a direct connection with a plugin into the Revit application. Revit is the software that is being used by the architect to design the building. When they get to the space or the part of the project where they need to apply hardware into that job, they can electronically transfer that project to our Overtur platform.
Our specification writers, knowing the codes in that market, knowing the uses of every part of that building design, whether it's large space, small space, office, conference room, etc., can apply the right products into that solution. That is where we tailor our solution into whatever those diverse project needs are. We're applying that into whether it's a mechanical opening, a restroom opening, or electronic access control that's going to need to have an understanding of how that device or that opening is going to work with some of our software providers. Oftentimes we collaborate on this job with our channel partners, integrators, software providers, the architect, and perhaps even the construction team that is working on the design of the building at the owner.
Really important relationships on architectural consulting all the way through to writing the specification for the project and then handling that in a very efficient, effective way through technology like Overtur to ensure our team is focused on solving their problems and helping them create a design that is going to meet the requirements of the end user. Let's jump to the next phase. Now it's time we're moving towards more of the contracting side where you've now taken the building design, you've hired the general contractor, and we're now meeting with that general contractor that's been selected to talk about the security and access needs of that project. They've hired potentially an installer that may be independent from our distribution channel. Our distribution channel is responding to that general contractor's bid requests that are based upon the design of the building.
We wrote the specification, it's handed to the contractor, they bid out the work to our distribution channel, and our teams are engaged at that phase of the project to ensure that our projects are being quoted into that job and meet the design requirements of the intent of that building. Okay. We also have access control going on, right? A lot of new technology getting put into buildings, and you may have a software provider and an integrator that's helping support that. We'll sit down, and what you see on the right-hand side of the list or of the slide is a screenshot from our Overtur application that we use as the punch list tool.
This is a mobile application that allows us to walk the job site with the contractor, with the distributor or installer or an integrator, and review whether or not the installation is complete, has been done effectively, that it meets the requirements of the original design and the specification, and if there are any challenges that have to be kind of met in order for the building to really be turned over and them to gain that certificate of occupancy. That is really what we're trying to do. Our technology that's supporting our consultants in the field is designed to get us and our distribution off the job faster with the right products designed into the building and keep that contractor moving on the project to get it to the end user. A really important process there.
We have built a very, very robust distribution channel that helps really into those finer details with the contractor, carries that contractor all the way through the process. Oftentimes in some markets, our distribution channel is the installer as well, or you get a really high-quality output for the owner. That's a little bit into that construct phase and the excellence of the channel really delivering on that demand that we've created, pulled through the channel to help drive growth and ensure that stickiness through the project. Let's move to the last phase, which you can see how we have to turn over a building in new construction, but predominantly our end user consultants have been with the owner for many years. That project, because it's an institutional type of focus for us, you have a new school that's going to be built because there was a bond passed.
We've been having that relationship with that K-12 district or that facility manager for many years, knowing that that design is coming. You also then have the new construction finishing and the turnover process happening. We are there. We can train the facilities team. We can ensure they have a walkthrough of any of the new technology that may have been installed in that building. We also make sure that they know who their service provider may be if they're going to use an independent service provider in their facility. That's, again, where our aftermarket channel can step in and support maintenance and support for that facility after the fact.
Believe it or not, when you look at some of the numbers every year, I looked back for 2024, we trained over 15,000 people in our in-person and live and virtual training that's live on Allegion products across these different work streams. Those are institutional locksmiths, architects getting their credits for continuing education. We had over 13,000 courses completed alone in our self-paced learning platform where they're learning about the product, understanding how to service it and maintain it. Our distribution channel takes advantage of those to onboard and train their employees, and end users take advantage of that to ensure they know how their in-house locksmithing teams or IT and security teams know how the products are intended to operate.
A really important part of how we kind of help an end user optimize the use of their facility is to understand how to turn over a new facility and plan appropriately on how they're going to plan for new construction in the future. We work with them to create a standard document around what their different applications needs may be and what are the product solutions that they want to sort of replicate as they move from a new construction facility to maybe a renovation on an existing building. That is kind of what you heard in the video, right? Our partnership that we've built helps them really solve for some of these challenges as they continue to go from an installed base to a new building or even a renovation of an existing building.
A really important part of how we close the loop, create the demand when we need to, whether it's new construction or aftermarket, pull that through the channel and ensure that we can be primed to grow. In that process, we introduce new technology. What's going to make it work more effectively, more efficiently? What's going to bring a higher level of security, help you manage keys, moving towards cloud-based and mobile credentials? Those types of applications become really, it's an opportunity in every step of the way for us to introduce those technologies into the marketplace. How do we leverage it? I think this slide, I want to give you a little bit of a sense of our focus because you can't—this demand creation model is very unique. We've been investing in it every year for a long time.
Our relationships have been very long term. That serves us really well, especially in kind of where you have high content areas. We can leverage it. That's that institutional space. Think healthcare, whether you're talking about large hospital systems, medical office building, or even a lot of what you've seen in ambulatory care, as well as in some of the senior living type environments. You also see this happening in K-12, higher education, some of those examples of the users you heard in the video. You also have some high content then in this multifamily space. Technology in this multifamily space is really leading a lot of what we see going on in new construction as well as the renovations that's happening in that space.
It is because you have a high operational cost with high turnover in that type of a market where technology helps solve some of those challenges. We provide a complete solution, as you heard with John, and you'll hear a little bit more from Vince around how we solve for technology being deployed in some of these high-cost environments. The content is good there as well. Lastly, a little bit less focused than in institutional with this demand creation model, but there are certainly segments and focus areas within commercial, right? We have, especially in large cities where we have dense population like New York, Chicago, etc., there's certainly an element of the commercial space that is really strong, right? It's not as widespread across the Americas.
You also have some of the hot trends like data centers that would fall into this area or serving large customers that do a lot of work in the hospitality space as well, large stadium type projects. Certainly have a focus when we get into those types of jobs. Lastly, in the international space, Tim's business, as was said earlier, has been leveraging and trying to replicate some of these best practices in the international markets. We have been writing specifications in those markets. The Overtur tool that you saw is a global tool. We have it in multiple languages being used in multiple countries today and leveraging this unique demand creation model in areas like Australia, New Zealand, Spain.
I know Tim has a desire to keep going because we know that this is a proven way that we can create differentiation in the marketplace. Let me wrap it up. What you heard so far about this unique front end, highly skilled team of people that have great knowledge and expertise and how to apply complex codes and standards environments into different buildings and really apply our portfolio into a tailored solution, create that demand, ensure that we're supporting an end user long term, and pull that demand through the channel.
Lastly, it also creates a space for us to really insert the technology and the growth areas around new technology into the space, leverage our relationships that we have with software providers, with megatechs in this trend of access control and connectivity continuing to grow, and keep differentiating our solution relative to competition in other ways in order to apply that into these complex environments, especially some of those institutional non-residential spaces. Thank you for your time. I'll turn it over to Tim, who leads international business. Tim.
Thanks, Dave. I appreciate the kind words.
I also appreciate all the—and proud and thankful for all the work that Dave and his team have been doing with us and the international team to take some of those capabilities and bring them around the world and start to create some moats in various places around the world, also working pretty well. In the case of international, we've also been developing capabilities that are unique in the marketplace and actually exporting some of this work to the Americas. I wanted to take a few minutes now to talk about a couple of areas where we have been focused in terms of driving growth and priming Allegion for faster growth in the international segments. If there's one thing I'd like you to remember about Allegion, and particularly in our international business, and makes us unique and different, is we are not a container company.
We do not buy containers of product in other places and ship them around the world. That's not our business. That's not what we do. What we do do is we serve local markets with locally tailored solutions that are actually developed and, in fact, manufactured in those local markets. We configure to order just like we do in the Americas business, and we focus on adding value to what's important in those local markets. Now, how do we do that? We do that by sharing best practices. We take all the strengths of Allegion globally, and we apply them while acting locally in the markets we're performing in. We enhance the business quality of our focus through portfolio management and the way we approach each individual market and the market segments that are available to us.
Our focus on critical configured-to-order capability optimizes and increases the safety and security of our offerings as we continue to invest in automation in our facilities around the world, provides efficiency, quality, and must-have solutions for our customers in those local markets. This ultimately allows us to produce millions of SKUs around the world that are tailored and appropriate for those individual markets, and they do not come out of containers. Let's talk a little bit about how we go about leveraging these global best practices and optimize things locally. We think about that in the context of three key dimensions, the first of which is in the hardware device area where we have been doing a tremendous amount of work over the last three to four years in developing core component platforming capability across our company.
John and Vince are going to talk to you guys in a little bit more detail on this. By doing this core component platforming capability, we can take a product that maybe at one point was 100% produced specifically for that local market and reduce it to a product that has 85% component availability on a global scale and 15% to make it localized and appropriate for that market. It also allows us to customize that product for the unique needs and the requirements and the standards that are in that local market, both security and code standards and the like. A great example of this is the new XE360 that's actually out on display in the mobile credential display that Olivia is driving out there.
The XE360 is our newest electronic lock, connected electronic lock that will be actually deployed and introduced into the marketplace simultaneously in the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, and France in 2025. That is all built on a set of core mechanical and electronic components that are common across the world, supplemented by small, unique required differences for the local markets. In the case of software and electronics, we see similar opportunities and capabilities to continue to drive a global approach, but do so with a local flair. Mobile credentials has been a big topic for us now for several years. I'm proud that most of, if not all of, our mobile credential technology now is already being deployed globally, meaning that a residential access in multifamily in the U.S. can be immediately provided to our systems and our capabilities in Australia and New Zealand.
Credentials, readers, our connectivity software that connects our devices to the cloud, all things that can be leveraged globally. The Zentra multifamily platform, John Goodwin's demonstrating out back, a global platform that can be supportive of multifamily, multi-res markets around the world, coupled with a unique device that's appropriate for the market that they're operating in, but capable of managing that multi-res environment, whether you're the owner or a tenant or otherwise. These are the kinds of advantages we see coming, and we see giving ourselves the ability to grow more effectively and more quickly across the world.
One last thing on this software and platforming electronics that is really important is that as we go to work, go to business, and go to the market with the PACS physical access control OEMs, they now only have to integrate with Allegion once through our connectivity platform and immediately have access to global markets and a global set of products that operate with their access control platform in the same way in every market around the world. That is one of those unique key differentiators about the way we've orchestrated and architected our strategy. Finally, let's talk about process and strategy.
Dave made a good mention about the fact that we've been learning a lot in international from the Americas team, and we have the channel, particularly on the non-res side, where we've actually had teams from Australia spend a month in our Dallas office learning how we differentiate across those three dimensions of design, construct, and ownership. We have modeled not only the processes, but even the organization so that we can do a better job of creating our own demand in the critical Australian market. We are already starting to see the benefits of that focus and that capability. Again, leveraging things that we can do once globally, bringing them into the local market, supplementing those with the local requirements, and driving and accelerating our growth in those local markets. In order to do that, we do have to continue to deploy capital into our facilities.
We have been doing that significantly over the last several years in investing in automation. Long-term improvements in automation drive innovation. It drives safety. It drives quality. It drives productivity and allows us to serve our customers in a more efficient and effective way. We continue to invest heavily in the automation of our factories. There are four examples in pictures on the screen: in Greenfield, Indiana, where we have created a cobot operation that is moving cells or kick plates around on a cell; and in Princeton, Illinois, where we have been on a five-year capital program to completely reinvest in the core CNC technology of our flagship closer devices at the LCN plant in Princeton.
In Osterfeld, Germany, where we design and manufacture our complex miniaturized mechanical electromechanical cylinders that Bernard is showing out back, also doing a tremendous amount of new automation, moving around pieces of washers and cylinder components that are barely visible using automated technology. Some of the best automation you'll ever see in the world is happening in Osterfeld with these tiny, tiny little components and manufacturing those cylinders. Finally, in Auckland, New Zealand, where we've invested in an automated plating facility, the only electric plating facility in the country of New Zealand, we are operating at not only for the benefit of our customers, but for several of our customer partners as well in the country. In the middle, each of the green pins represent a facility where we have been investing in automation over the past several years.
What I want to do is actually show you a video that actually shows some of the tangible benefits that are coming from these innovation investments that we've been doing in our plants. Let's roll the tape.
Through strategic investments in automation, Allegion is paving the way for a future that is safer, more efficient, and more accessible, driving exceptional value for our customers.
Allegion has traditionally followed a region-to-region strategy. We are producing in the markets that we serve.
At our McKenzie, Tennessee facility, the new automated door line has transformed a decades-old process, improving safety, quality, and flexibility.
The most exciting thing about this project was seeing how we could take an old batching process that's the way it's been done for 20 years and transition to a new automated line that uses state-of-the-art technology.
What six people used to do, load and unload, load and unload, forklift moving, all that, it's all gone.
In Auckland, New Zealand, we've invested in a state-of-the-art electric plating plant to expand our manufacturing capabilities and meet growing customer demands.
When we began designing our new state-of-the-art building here in Auckland, we decided to develop a business case to expand our local manufacturing capability. We did that by investing in a leading-edge, fully automated electric plating plant. Having the most advanced processing equipment, it's better for the environment, it's safer for our staff, and it's ultimately more cost-efficient.
At our Indianapolis, Indiana facility, our die change automation has cut downtime from over an hour to just 12 minutes.
This was one of the higher-risk operations in the facility, and it involved manually placing and removing dies from the equipment, which put our operators at higher risk for potential injuries.
It improved our efficiency, and it eliminated a lot of the downtime that we did have in the past.
I love the fact that we're able to be more efficient and achieve a better price point for the markets that we're serving. I think that's great. I love the improvements in safety. I like the fact that we're able to move some of our work from manual to an automated environment. Those people are able to use their knowledge in assembly or providing a wider variety to the customers. More than that, it just allows us to increase the speed and reactivity to that customer. That's where we can really gain advantages. It's the breadth of the products that we can provide to our customer, melded with the speed of reaction time.
Investments that are driving improved capability in our organization and our capability to actually deliver just-in-time configured product to the local markets. Just because we're investing heavily in the automation of our facilities does not mean we're not investing in other areas. One of the other areas we are double down on is in areas of our business where we've already seen significantly strong growth over the years, and we are continuing to invest in those. In the international business, where 40% of our revenue is represented by software and electronic solutions, we've been putting our money where our mouth is in places like Interflex, who has a fantastic business model serving enterprise-class customers with access control solutions and workforce management capability.
We've been investing not only externally and inorganically with third parties, the acquisition of plano that put us on a path for workforce management that has allowed us to grow double digits in workforce management over the last several quarters. In addition to that, we've also been investing in cloud-based infrastructure and allowing our customers the optionality of moving from on-prem to in the cloud as they deem appropriate for their business. A lot of good annual recurring revenue growth also coming from the solutions business that we call Interflex in Germany. Simons Voss has been a great success story for Allegion. We continue to double down on our SimonsVoss business out of Germany as well. We've been investing heavily in a new product portfolio called FORTLOX that Bernhard is demonstrating out in front.
FORTLOX is a product portfolio that takes us into a completely new market segment, using our core technology, but doing it in a way that allows it to be more accessible, more friendly, the first and only battery-less technology that has a single-wire connectivity between the outer portion of the lock and the inner guts of the technology. A really fantastic product offer that will allow us to not only continue to grow in the DACH region, but extend our leadership position around the world. If I turn my attention briefly to the Americas, as Dave was talking about, something as simple as the indicator locks that are out there, those investments, along with the Von Duprin 70, open up great opportunities for our high-growth mechanical portfolio in the Americas.
We are continuing to invest in these platforms that are already accelerating in growth to provide even new opportunities for us to grow in the future. One of the big success stories in the international business that we've been chasing now for the last three years since I've been working with this team is actually how do we enhance the quality of the businesses that we have in our portfolio. Up here is two or three, sorry, representations of the work that we've been doing over the past several years to improve the quality of what we do in our markets. The first area is a business transformation area where we've been taking a disciplined approach to simplification and efficiency of our portfolio products that we have in each market, driving component standardization and appropriately driving supply chain efficiency where it can benefit us and our customers.
If I give you one example in CISA, CISA, Italy, our business in Italy, we took one product line and we reduced the number of components purchased by 80%, and we reduced the number of suppliers by 80%, all while keeping the portfolio identical in terms of the offer to the marketplace and pushing the customization of that product portfolio to the end of the manufacturing line, dramatically simplifying the overall supply chain. Better answers and better, quicker solutions for our customers, better efficiency and effectiveness from a supply chain perspective, and a better use of our working capital and inventory management and the like. I am really proud of the work that we've been doing there. A second example that John mentioned is Dorcas. Dorcas was a company that we acquired in Spain. Their primary focus is in electric strikes.
It was a natural extension to the existing demand creation engine that we had in Spain and essentially doubled the size of our business in Spain. It also gave us the basis of technology that we believe can expand our position in electric strikes across Europe, into the Americas, and over into Australia and New Zealand as well. Their core technology is capable of being deployed around the world, and we're looking forward to working with Pablo and his team on how we leverage that technology and build growth and capability across the world. Finally, in the international area, we've been looking at watching and working a lot on the portfolio management of our business, making sure that we are focused on driving profitable growth opportunities and ultimately exiting businesses that didn't meet our profitable goals.
An example of that would be China that we announced in one of our recent earnings calls. We exit ed China. We no longer felt like we could compete effectively there, and we are moving on to put our dollars and our capital to work in other markets where we feel like we've got a right to win and we have the opportunity to grow. Places like Dorcas, Boss Door Controls in the U.K., Leemar, an opportunity that we just recently closed in Australia that extended our position. Even in places like the Americas where the accessories business has been enjoying a good bit of investment in terms of a new facility as well as acquisitions with SOS to accelerate and drive their growth in what might be thought of as a sort of boring little category of product in the marketplace.
A tremendous amount of growth through this portfolio management and making sure that we're giving our businesses the opportunity to thrive and grow on a going-forward basis. Closing things up, I will just say that we're focused on giving more to our customers locally with less cost because we're driving things on a global basis and leveraging global capabilities. We've been investing in automation, which drives efficiency, quality, safety, and productivity and delivers a better product for our customers. We continue to invest in our growth platforms that have been serving us well over the years and will continue for many years going forward. We've been focusing on enhancing the quality and the capability of the business portfolio as a whole. Those efforts have been rewarded with almost a 300 basis point improvement in our enterprise EBITDA over the last three years alone.
Leaving you with that 300 basis point improvement, it's now time for our first break. Please enjoy a break right now. Thank you.
Our event will resume at 10:55.
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Our event will resume in one minute. Please find your way back to your seats.
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All right, welcome back. Hope that was enjoyable.
I was happy to see several people talking to our product demo leads out there again. We brought some great talent for you to interact with. Hope that was insightful. Let's dive into electronics a little bit. For a long time, we've talked about electronics being the key driver of our above-market growth entitlement. If you look at 2024, electronics and software, roughly 30% of the total business over the cycle, has been a high single-digit growth driver for Allegion. Over our history, it has driven about a point of average annual revenue outgrowth since spin. I'd say looking forward, we continue to have confidence that the electronics and electronic access control adoption continues to grow with new technology, new innovations. We'll talk about some of the things that Allegion is doing in that space.
You saw some good examples of what's driving adoption in Dave's video, some conversation that Dave and Tim both had in their presentations. Let's take a look at some key verticals and what is driving adoption and where Allegion is driving innovation and new products to meet those needs. When we look at K-12, it is all about increasing safety and security in both the perimeter of the facility, but also in the classroom itself. When you shift over to higher education and multifamily, if you talk to John Goodwin, you heard a lot about the value prop there. I have two slides to dive into Zentra a little bit more coming up.
Also on the video with Auburn University as a great customer, long-time Allegion customer, talking about modernizing their system driven by an experiential aspect of adopting electronic locking and electronic access control. That is just modernizing the student experience. You see that in multifamily, so a better tenant experience. In both cases, in those verticals, there are real quick-to-realize cost savings and cost efficiencies for either the university or the property management company. If I go all the way over to the far right in the enterprise space, this would really be focused on the Interflex business that we have in Germany and that is now expanding across Europe. Blue chip customer base, and they take Interflex with them all over the world.
There are literally millions of employees that badge in and out and have time and attendance and vacation days and all these things recorded from the Interflex system every single day. Leverage our core spec writing strength, expanding the software offerings like a bolt-on acquisition of plano directly into Interflex. This is where we want to keep driving electronics adoption. Two quick slides on Zentra. I encourage you, if you haven't already, spend some time with John Goodwin out in the display area and get a little bit deeper dive into it. This is our organically developed cloud-based electronic access control system focused initially on multifamily properties in the U.S. We view it to be a very large market. You can see there in the chart with just some illustrative numbers.
Admittedly, Class A properties in a metro area like New York City might have already adopted electronics a long time ago. I would tell you that's not the case for the majority of the market in the flyover states. If you talk Class B and C properties, much less adoption. Think garden-style apartments in suburbia in Florida or Texas or Kansas. In these places, lots of opportunity for electronics adoption. What's critical is that the system is flexible, it's easy to deploy, it's easy to operate, and you get significant savings very rapidly upon your adoption. As I go through the different elements here, an improved tenant experience. The tenant gets convenience. I get my credential just in my smartphone. I've got that with me all the time anyway. That gets me into my unit, gets me into the gym, other common areas, et cetera.
The leasing office gets immediate cost savings in terms of just easier to manage all their access control-related tasks. Showings, vendor management that come in, service personnel that come in can be managed literally down to the minute precision as to when their credential is good, where they can go, et cetera. You have data to help monitor that. In the future, I think there can be potential even for reduced time to turn properties and even higher rent potential. What I am about to do now is hand it over to our CTO, Vince Wenos, to talk some more of what is going on on product platforming and in our R&D space. Vince leads all our engineers.
What I would offer up to you is you saw on Tim's slide when he wrapped it up, and you've seen in our demonstrated results, the last three years, Allegion has improved our adjusted EBITDA margins by 280 basis points. Those few years we've done that. We've expanded margins in the right way. At the same time those operating margins were increasing, we were also investing more in the core business. Michael will show you this in his presentation, but suffice it to say, while our margins went up 280 basis points, we also took R&D rate as a percent of sales from about 2.5% to over 3%. So a lot more dollars because the sales have been growing, the rate's been growing.
Vince is going to come up and show you not only are we investing more, but we're also getting more out of every dollar we invest. Let's cue a video, and Vince, please come on up.
Good morning, and thanks again for being here. I think that's an awesome video. I think it's the best video we showed this morning. It gives me tremendous energy, and I hope it does the same for you. That might be the engineer in me talking as well, so you'll have to bear with me. As John mentioned, I'm going to build a little bit on what you saw in that video when it comes to platforming, and I'll explain what we mean by platforming in a moment. Our organic growth is paced by our ability to introduce new products and solutions that our customers value.
That's across our business globally. All the products, all the businesses we have have to do that to be successful. Electronics, no difference there. On the left-hand side of this page, taking in America's example, some of the product introductions that you see there have occurred since spin. The way we did our work when we were introducing those products was what I like to call a blank sheet of paper. Each of those project teams, when they were looking at the job to be done, the product they needed to introduce kind of started from scratch. Said, "Here's the problem I need to solve. I'm going to design everything about it: the embedded software, the electronics, the mechanics, everything. And then I'm going to test that, make sure it works, and I'm going to take it to market." That worked well.
I mean, these products are very robust, very reliable, serve our customers well. Some of them approaching a decade or more old. As we looked at the way we were doing work and the challenges that we have across the business to make sure that we're good stewards of R&D investment, we said there are better ways to do this. Platforming is that way for Allegion. Platforming is not new. That's not new to industry, but it was relatively new for us in terms of how we approached product design. What it means, and Tim alluded to this earlier, was we look for opportunities to create what we call them assets. Think of those building blocks, reuse modules that can be in embedded software, what we like to call firmware. It could be in electrical hardware.
It could be mechanical assets as well, mechanical aspects of the design that form the foundation for multiple designs. Not just one design, but multiple designs that allow our engineers then to focus on the differentiated piece of their offering, their product that addresses that market need, but take advantage of work that's already been done once. What does that do for us? Clearly, that gives us efficient utilization of resources. It reduces our time to market. As Tim talked about with automation relative to manufacturing operations, it gives us productivity in the new product development process. Like I mentioned earlier, it allows us to be very good stewards of that R&D investment that we've been given. Back in 2023, as was mentioned earlier, we had investor and analyst day in Carmel, Indiana. Hopefully, some of you were able to attend.
If you took the opportunity to also go see our Hague Road Technical Center, that's one of the largest engineering centers we have globally, happens to be located in Indianapolis. On that tour, we introduced the concept of platforming. The engineers are very excited to talk to all of you and tell you some of the vision, the goals we had for this initiative as we were starting to roll it out across the company. As we stand here today, I'm proud to say we're realizing all of those goals and more. I wanted to share a couple of those proof points with you. The first one, under efficiency gains, refers to a specific project where we were developing a new electronic lock for the commercial marketplace.
Compared to that blank sheet of paper approach I talked about, by leveraging platforming, we were able to reduce our development time by over 45% on that particular lock development. Similarly, second bullet point, resource optimization. This is for mechanical commercial lock. I talked electronics benefit. Now I'm going to show some of the benefit that comes from the mechanical side as well. The development effort was reduced by approximately 225 person months. You have less engineering effort going in, means lower investment, faster time to market, and in this particular case, also a significant reduction in the CapEx required to launch that product. Most exciting, I think, of all for Allegion, because we are a global business. As Tim alluded to, this isn't just a benefit to one product line, one region.
This is a benefit to all of our company, all of our various product organizations. Tim talked about the XE360. Hopefully, you had a chance to see it out there. If not, please stop by afterwards during lunch and learn more about it. The assets that were developed for that program are also deployed into locks in Australia, New Zealand, as well as France, as Tim mentioned. We are getting global impact from these development activities. As Tim is fond of saying, we are just getting started. That is one of his favorite terms, one that I happen to love. On the right-hand side, you can see why I say that.
From the end of 2024 until 2027, we will double the number of these assets or building blocks that are available to our global teams to continue to accelerate the introduction of electronics and our other products into the marketplace. Looking very much forward to that. To close out this section of the presentation this morning, I wanted to revisit a slide you saw back in 2019 if you were here. That shows some, not all, but some of the electronics products we've rolled out since the time of spin. A lot of these you're probably fairly familiar with, but I'll highlight just a couple. Under 2022, you see the Schlage Encode Plus. That builds on our Schlage Encode platform, very successful product for us.
What was cool about the Encode Plus, it was the first electronic deadbolt to be Apple HomeKey compatible so that you could use your iPhone, your Apple Watch to open up your door and get into your apartment or into your home. More recently, earlier this year at the 2025 Consumer Electronics Show, we introduced two new innovations, the Schlage Sense Pro and the Schlage Arrive products. Received a tremendous response at that show, generated on the order of 1.5 billion earned impressions. That's billion earned impressions, which is massive for us. It solidified Schlage as an innovation leader and America's most trusted lock brand. The last thing I'll point out, and hopefully many of you had a chance to see it already with Bern Sommer, is FORTLOX, as we like to call it.
It builds on the success we've had in the SimonsVoss business around e-cylinders or electronic cylinders. What's really cool about this, and many of you may know it now, is that this particular e-cylinder, unlike its predecessors, has no battery. The power for that device is provided by the key or the transponder when you approach it. If it sounds amazing, you've got to see it. I'd encourage you to see Bern over lunch and learn more about it. It really expands the types of applications we can serve. Imagine if you've got an e-cylinder somewhere where changing a battery is difficult, or worse yet, you show up to try and gain access to that space, and the battery's dead and you can't get in.
This opens up applications where that type of problem is not able to be tolerated, and it expands the market segments that Bern and the team at SimonsVoss are able to serve. Just some examples of some of the great innovation we continue to have at Allegion, and we look forward to more as the years go on. With that, I will close this section of the presentation, and I will turn it over to our Chief Financial Officer, Mike Wagnes.
Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. You heard John and the team talk to you about our strategy and why we're positioned well for growth. I'm going to incorporate that into our financial framework and our framework for value for long-term value creation for shareholders. I'll start the presentation with our framework, and this shouldn't be new.
Many of you who've been here over the years have seen this slide before. This is how we think about creating value for our shareholders. It starts with accelerating organic growth. It's driving that above-market organic growth. What you heard earlier today, that's electronics for us. Our big growth driver is electronics. We think that electronics will grow more than mechanical, more than markets, and that will give us the accelerated organic growth. With that growth, we're going to leverage the growth to drive improved operating margins and earnings. We're going to grow earnings faster than we grow top line. With that earnings growth, we're going to convert it to cash. We're going to be efficient in managing our working capital to drive earnings to cash and then deploy that cash effectively for you all to drive shareholder return.
For us, over the cycle, that's a double-digit EPS. If you've been following Allegion since we spun, we had low double-digit EPS CAGR since spin. This is something you'll see later as well. Think of us as a double-digit EPS growth company over the cycle. Our historical performance, I want to just kind of show our performance over the last three years, which is when this management team and John joined the company, and we've been running Allegion. On the organic growth side, mid-single digits. You'll see us mention this often, mid-single digit organic growth. With acquisitions, you see high single-digit growth. We're able to take the mid-single and then add to it with high single-digit growth. From a margin perspective, you've heard this multiple times, we're able to drive earnings growth more than top-line growth. That is from the margin expansion.
There are a couple of ways we were able to do that. Number one, we leverage volume well. We are blessed with a high variable contribution margin business, and we're able to leverage that volume. We also manage the inputs. Those who listen to our quarterly earnings call, you always hear us talk about pricing and productivity, how important it is for us. We manage the inputs such that pricing and productivity cover inflation and investment and kind of add to that margin expansion. It is something in the current environment. We know that inflation is higher when you think about the tariff environment. We are going to take the necessary pricing actions to cover inflation. Earnings growth. Over the last three years, we have that low double-digit earnings growth. That is part of our model as we think about on a long-term basis.
You see it here on the short and mid-term as well. The cash flow growing double-digit as well. What you saw on the first page has been illustrated here over the last three years. This slide right here is something that we've shown many times in every one of our investor days. It highlights the resiliency of our business. In the past, we've always shown a 20-year period and we have that same chart for 20 years in the appendix, 25 years in the appendix. This just shows our history since spin, since we became Allegion. I think some of the things that should be familiar with you is this term resiliency. This describes our business quite well. We have a resiliency to this business. You see it during all years that even the bad years, the troughs are not low.
They're hanging in there from a margin perspective. Over time, you see that margin growth. As you've seen, we've been able to expand our industry-leading margins, both from organically and inorganically growing the company and even managing through some headwinds. You see in 2021, we ran into supply chain challenges, quickly recovered, and then you see further up and to the right as you look at the chart. John talked about this a little earlier, and he talked about how we're investing in the business. This slide, the title is Bending the Curve on Growth Investments. We could have easily changed the title to Growing the Right Way. We're growing our earnings while investing in our business. You see over to the left, we've grown R&D one and a half times in total dollar amounts. We've been significant investments in the business.
This funds that future organic growth that we're talking about, especially in electronics. We've stepped up the growth, or as a percentage of revenue rather, from 2.5% to 3%. Expect that to continue. As you model this business, think of it as a 3%. I don't expect it to increase dramatically from here. We think we're in the right spot. That's the bending the curve. From an organic perspective, we'll always organically invest in our business. We think this is the right long-term decisions, and we'll continue to do that as we've shown. By driving the productivity, we're able to fund it so that we can get the margin expansion while investing in the business. Same on capital. CapEx has been stepped up from 1.5 points-2.5 points. That's 2x the spend.
Tim showed earlier today some of the efforts we have been putting in automation. Expect that to continue. We expect that from a percent of revenue, that 2.5% is probably the right percentage for us. Do not expect it to increase from here, but look for us to continue to invest in capital to drive that productivity, which permits us to then invest in the R&D. You can kind of understand the cycle here. I think one of the things I love about this is I do not think it was appreciated as much over the last three years, how much we have invested in our business while we were expanding margins. That margin growth did not come at the detriment of investments in the business. From a margin framework, the team talked a lot about growth this morning. I am a little more on the margin side.
I just want to kind of allow you to understand the framework as we move forward by looking at our history. When we started off, our margin rates in 2022 were about 22%, adjusted EBITDA. We came to you on our 2023 investor day, and we said 50 basis points-100 basis points a year. First two years, we got 230 basis points. We are positioned great. I would say for 2025, we know the environment is a little different at the start of the year. We are in a tariff environment where there is more inflationary pressure. For us, that means driving more pricing than we thought. We are going to cover that on a dollar basis. We talked about that extensively a couple of weeks ago at our earnings call. In 2025, the pricing and productivity will cover the inflationary pressures and the tariff pressures on a dollar amount.
Now moving forward in a normal environment. In a normal environment, we expect to get back to those core incrementals, 35%, mid-30%s core incremental growth, which drives the margin expansion. Being blessed with that high variable contribution margin allows us to leverage volume. You have seen that the last few quarters. Last few quarters, we have had some strong volume leverage with the non-residential growth. That is a trademark of our business. We expect that to continue. We always expect to manage the inputs where we take the pricing and the productivity, and we will ensure that we will cover the cost of the inflation and the investments. I am going to pivot a little now to capital deployment. John showed this slide earlier. I am just going to click a little deeper. I will start at the bottom, starting with our dividend policy.
When we first spun out, we had a very low dividend rate. We've increased it over time. The last few years, we're at about a 30% dividend payout ratio when you think of cash flow. We believe this is the right spot for us. When you think about Allegion, think of us growing the dividend, commensurate with earnings growth in the future, and maintaining that 30% dividend payout ratio. We also expect over time to deploy 100% of the cash flow. We're going to be good stewards and deploy capital to drive those EPS returns we talked about. For a three-year period, you could see that approximating $2 billion over the next three years. How we choose to do it besides dividend, we'll start with M&A. Think of M&A as 50%, similar to what you saw was 45% over the previous decade.
The swing factor is the 20%. We have about 20% that could either go to more M&A or share repurchase. We'll always offset the creep from management comp. Depending on the health of the pipeline, the M&A pipeline, you could see more M&A or more share repurchased on that component. Such that as you think about it from a framework perspective, at least 50% should be spent on M&A, the dividend of 30, and then you got the swing factor there. We also have an extremely healthy balance sheet. I'll show this on the next slide. Right now, we are under two turns of leverage, and I'll get to that in a second. If the opportunity comes and we need to add leverage to do acquisitions, we can.
On that leverage management, proven track record of managing the balance sheet responsibly while maintaining that investment-grade credit rating. We start with 2017 because that is when Allegion migrated from a non-investment-grade company up to investment-grade. As you see over that time, we've consistently been south of two times net leverage in the one and a half to two times, with the one exception being in 2022. In 2022, that's when we made the acquisition of Access Technologies. We had to borrow. The cash generation ability of our business allowed us to quickly deleverage right back down to the 1.8 x a year later. Illustrating that even if we do add some leverage, you see a quick deleverage. The takeaway here, I would say for you all, is responsibly managing the balance sheet and maintaining that investment-grade credit rating.
Which will bring me to concluding with the long-term framework that I started with. For us, it starts with accelerating organic growth and driving that above market growth. Electronics is the big driver of that. You see over to the left, we'll drive outsized growth from electronics again back to that mid-single digit growth. We'll leverage that top-line growth to drive high single-digit earnings growth and that core EPS growth. We'll effectively deploy capital. You see here that 3% in capital deployment to get to that double-digit EPS. Just like we did the last decade, we expect the future to be that way. With the additional balance sheet capacity, you could see even more returns by effectively managing leverage to drive more EPS growth to get to that low double-digit EPS growth.
With that, I'm going to ask John to come back and give his closing comments before we do Q&A.
Okay. Thanks, Mike. Thanks, everyone, for your attention. Just wanted to close with what I opened with. Very simple, very straightforward message that Allegion is uniquely advantaged and we're executing at a high level. You put the two of those things together, we are primed to grow faster. Simple, straightforward, and hopefully memorable message for you. What we need now is just about 60 seconds. Let us bring some stools up here. I'll invite the other presenters to come up. We'd be very happy to take your questions. I think we'll have mics that we can pass around throughout the room as needed. Josh, you can help us just kind of broker and emcee our way through this part of the program. All right.
Thanks very much. Let's get on to the questions.
Super. Thanks so much. We're going to put the best looking guy in the middle.
Let me get away from here.
All right. Thanks, everybody. We're going to move on to Q&A. I have no idea if this mic's even working. But you have Whitney and Joby throughout the room, so they'll be passing out mics. Can we just start over here with Tim? When you get the mic, please say your name and your firm name for the recording.
All right. I'm Tim from Baird. Two questions I had just on electronics. Over the next three to five years, do you think the composition of the growth within electronics changes in terms of I guess my question is really more, do you think the electronics growth is going to be supported more by the non-res market or the res market?
The second question is just what causes you to dip into the balance sheet for M&A? Is it the pace of acquisitions or is it the size?
Really good questions, Tim. I'll start. I'd say the composition of electronics between business segment or end market, I think we see good growth in both. Clearly, given the size of our non-res business versus our res business, I think in terms of the absolute dollar growth, obviously non-res is going to be a lot larger. I think pace of adoption would be pretty similar. I think the needs are the same. Personal safety and security plus convenience is going to continue to drive that in those verticals that we talked about on the non-res side and also on res. Vince mentioned at the tail end, the CES intros.
There was two, one super premium, one kind of mid-price point electronic lock for the resi side to kind of bracket the Encode family that we have in the market today. I think his comment on being paced by our new product launches definitely supports. We're going to get our fair share of that growth on the res side. On the non-res side, same thing. They're right out there, the family of XE360 commercial electronic locks. That's also going global. That's going into international as well. I think from the product side, from the channel side, we're positioned really well. Still, just given the scale of the non-res business, I think for us, for Allegion at least, that's where the majority of the electronics growth will happen. What would cause us to dip into the balance sheet for M&A?
I'd say we've done and really happy with the bolt-on acquisitions that we've done lately. I mean, high-quality companies, good businesses, good people fit right into one of our existing business units. I would say easy integration, quick path to synergies, and relatively low-risk way to grow Allegion. Are there larger assets of scale in those less consolidated buckets that we talked about on the page? Yes, they are. Those are rare. I'd say actionability on one of those larger targets might be a cause to do that. Or the pace to a smaller extent where, okay, you do a few bolt-ons in a row. We do draw on the revolver for a little bit and continue to fund most of it cash off the balance sheet.
What Mike had on that slide that I would say to us as the management team is sacred is that investment-grade rating. We are not putting that at risk. Thanks for the questions, Tim.
We'll go up to Joe in the front here next.
All right. Hi, thanks. It's Joe O'Dea at Wells Fargo. Can you start on the volume framework? When we think about what you talked about with 2014 to 2019, you saw like 4% volume growth. Then 2020 to 2024, it was negative. As you move forward, are you back to a framework where it's something in that kind of low single digit, maybe 2%? Talk about the transition to get there. To what degree is inflation kind of a unique impediment over the last four years? Are we getting to a point where that's no longer the case?
This is in particular the non-res America's market can grow back at that kind of low single digit volume.
Yeah, it's a really good question, Joe. I'd say our view right now is, one, given the current state, it's a bit premature for us to be making too precise forecasts for what the next year or two might hold. I would say if you look at the America's results for the last four quarters now, there has been a return to some volume growth in the non-res side. Just like Mike shared, I mean, the kind of incremental operating leverage we get on the non-res business is tremendous. That's helped continue the margin expansion that we've seen. Anybody's guess in terms of what the current trade and tariff environment turns into more sustained inflation that might have demand impacts?
I'd say right now, we would feel premature for us to make really any concrete forecasts of what that might look like. I think most important would be you see the kind of operating leverage we get when there is some volume growth in the non-res space. That is solid. That's good. I'd say you see the pace with which we're investing in new products and new product development that Vince talked about. I'd say in terms of growing with the market, 100%, what we want to see is continue to deliver above market growth, particularly in non-res America's.
Could you talk about the interplay of M&A and margin expansion and with a target to do a little bit more growth out of M&A, how you balance that with margin expansion goals?
I think, I mean, you've shown a willingness to take on assets where maybe there would be a little bit lower margin profile if we go back to Access Tech. Just how you're sort of balancing those or prioritizing those as you move forward.
Yeah, absolutely. What I would say is the comments, if you remember the door cutaway slide and the different product buckets there, and it's an oft-repeated phrase that this is a good industry, right? There are really only a couple of us that do what we do at scale globally. In those less consolidated product areas, if you will, there are some really high-quality companies. There are some high-growth specialty applications, niche-y type products that would be, you can understand, difficult for a full-line OEM to put R&D dollars towards something like that.
Acquisition is a much faster path to growth in those segments, and it accelerates your organic growth going forward. I think if you look at the results we put on the board in 2024 with five bolt-on acquisitions and, again, a core market that was kind of stable was the word we tended to describe it, still drove good top-line growth, still drove margin expansion. I think the combination of the synergies we can deliver, the combination of plugging these acquisitions because it's in our core, it is right down the fairway. It bolts onto an existing business unit structure in the company. The path to synergies is pretty quick. The path to integration is pretty quick.
If it happens to be somewhat less than Allegion's margins today, or even if it's accretive to Allegion's margins, we still feel we've got the operating model and the operating capability to expand the acquired target's margins over time too.
Take the next one from Joe in the middle. We'll stay with the Joes.
Thanks, Josh. Hi, Joe Richie, Goldman Sachs. The three verticals that you highlighted for the most electronic vertical penetration were K-12, higher ed, multifamily. They also happen to be three verticals that the market right now has some consternation over just regarding whether multifamily starts were down in 2024, ESSER funding may be coming to an end. As you think about your own growth trajectory in those verticals, how insulated are you from the market downturn because of potential additional penetration on the electronic side?
It's a good question, Joe.
Let me just first clarify the slide. We just use those as example verticals. I would not say they are more or less penetrated than others. Just examples to talk about how the value prop plays out. If you talk about multifamily, certainly new starts, new construction has been down for a while. I would put that in the bucket of mature bad news, right? It is not something that is about to happen. We have been dealing with it for a while. The point with something like Zentra plus the conversion to an electronic locking system, that has a value prop that plays as well in the aftermarket, maybe even better in the aftermarket to convert from a mechanical system to an electronic system than it does in new construction.
I would say the trends we're seeing on multifamily in the new construction space is a high adoption rate of from shovel in the ground, we're intending to go forward with an electronic access system in that property. We have great spec writing capability in that vertical. I think as starts come back, we're poised to continue to grow above market there. In education, I think it's all about safety and security. As you see outside in the lobby there with Mark Vigren, mechanical solutions can add a lot of value to school safety and security. That still plays a huge role. Safety and security there with ESSER, I don't think it was ever a big tailwind for a company like Allegion.
I think that was much more those funds seem to find their ways to help staffing levels, to help with remote learning technologies, to help with after-school programs and things, or mental health staffing and things like this. Do I know that none of those dollars ever found their way to pay for a lock? Not specifically, but I know those funds were deliberately aimed at other programs. It was not much of a tailwind. The end of it, I do not see as much of a headwind, to be perfectly honest. I would say just keep in mind the overall value prop of convenience and added security. In some of these verticals, real operating cost savings for the end user owner. That is what will drive adoption.
That is helpful. Just one follow-up, maybe for Tim.
In Dave's presentation, there was a lot of discussion around channel and owning the channel. I know that that's a little bit more difficult to do internationally. In your presentation, we heard a lot about what you're doing from a cost perspective, software perspective, automation, etc. As you kind of think about the margin profile of the international segment, what are you most excited about that can kind of help unlock additional value in your business?
Yeah, I think that to borrow that phrase that I often say, we're just getting started, honestly. There's a lot of opportunity. We've done a good job in improving the margins, mostly around the business portfolio side of things.
Now we're embracing a lot of the things we do in the Americas, as an example I gave in Australia, kind of structuring the commercial organization in Australia to look exactly like the model that we have here in the U.S. and driving own demand, which is changing the dialogue and dimension of conversations with general contractors and architects and end users. The addition of new electronic products that we couldn't afford to build for these markets in the past. You look at Italy, which is one of our best markets globally in terms of our position in the marketplace, relatively small, wouldn't be able to afford a standard platform for electronics in the Italian market. I can afford a 10%-15% cost add-on to a global platform to make it unique. That also gets me excited.
The continuation of the work we've been doing on productivity and businesses, the ability for us to create and own our own demand, our own destiny, and then the electronics portfolio. I think we're doing well. I think we've got an opportunity to do even better.
I'd add one thing, Joe, that one of the elements of the secret sauce here in the Americas is the end user demand generation, the specification writing capability. Tim and Vince in Vince's engineering center in Bangalore have built up a very professional, and think of it almost as a shared service spec writing organization that helps serve some of Dave's regional sales offices in the Americas, but also across Allegion International. Spec-driven business and use that to pull the product through the channel is something that under Tim's leadership has started to translate from the Americas into international.
Very excited about the potential there. Thanks for the questions.
Let's go to Julian up front.
Thanks. Julian Mitchell at Barclays. Maybe your first question just on the electronics business. Maybe talk a little bit about, do you expect any kind of penetration, sort of inflection or s-curve to be hit in any major geographies or markets anytime soon? When you're thinking about operating leverage for that piece of the company, firm-wide, it's a 35% target. What's sort of dialed in there for electronics and software? Is it fair to assume that should be 10 or 15 points higher?
That's a really good question, Julian. I'd say a couple of things. In terms of the traditional s-curve of adoption, I think the better way to think about it is kind of how we had it in the prepared remarks. I think that's what history has shown.
That is what we are confident to continue to deliver, that electronics and electronic access control will be a high single-digit growth driver for Allegion, high single to the low double range, but high single-digit growth driver over the cycle. That will contribute to about a point, like Mike showed there at the end, of average annual revenue outgrowth on margin rate and therefore the operating leverage. What you would see is our electronic products would have a similar incremental margin as what we talked about for Allegion as a whole. I would say the software side of our business, probably premature to talk too much about recurring revenue streams and things like this. I mean, Interflex is a rather sizable business. Zentra is just getting off the ground, but with startup-like growth.
We're very bullish about the future, but a bit premature to say too much too soon there on that side of it. Excited for us to take that software and drive more electronic lock adoption with it.
Great. Thanks. Just a second one around capital deployment and access tech. That deal's come up a couple of times. Maybe just update us, kind of how have the margins done since you bought it? What's been the organic growth rate? Any expectations around ROIC on that transaction? What's the appetite to do a deal of similar size in the next kind of year or two?
Absolutely. Really good question.
I think we remain very excited and very bullish about the STANLEY Access Technologies acquisition that filled, as you know, if you followed us for a while, a huge hole in the portfolio that Allegion had for a long time. It has been a great add. I would give Mark Vigren in the back, Dave Ilardi, a lot of credit. The front-end sales synergy and the integration into that demand generation engine and spec engine has gone very well. The growth has been very good. Top-line growth has been very good. Where we have lagged our own expectations a little bit is on the margin expansion side. I think that is upside still to be captured. We have been investing, like Tim's video showed, in the two primary manufacturing plants that we have with STANLEY Access Technologies.
The first benefits we've seen is just much better responsiveness to customers and the ability to grab some share in the aftermarket type discretionary repair replace for auto doors space. That is going better. The margin expansion, I think, is upside yet to be captured, but confident we're making the right investments. We just deployed a new ERP system to modernize a lot of office processes. The factory investments will take time, but will deliver productivity and cost reduction as well. Even something as small as Allegion-style pricing discipline, Mike played a big role in helping to just mature that organization there. The future's bright for that one. Now, wind the clock back. We would still say today that that was a very large acquisition for Allegion. Are there targets of a similar size in our space out there? Yes, but they're rare.
I'd say the right value, the right synergies, our right to win, our position as the rightful owner. Could we do something like that again? Yes, maybe so. I'd say in the near term, you can look for more quarters like we've been putting on the board and more bolt-ons to just be a treadmill of good value accretive right up the middle of the strategy acquisitions. Thanks for the question.
Here in the center of the room.
Thanks. David MAcGregor with Longbow Research. I guess, Tim, you had talked about leaning more into spec writing resources. I'm just wondering how the opportunity to grow in North America by adding spec resources compares with the other growth opportunities you'd have here.
Sorry.
Maybe as part of that as well, just curious on how AI is changing the spec writing process and how that factors into your decision to staff resources.
David, let me take that one first on AI. So Dave Ilardi had mentioned the Overtur tool and the integrations with Revit and other software that architects and GCs use to manage their project and change orders and all that. That is a tool we use to write the door hardware, door and door hardware design and schedules, and ultimately specifications. We have been putting effort into for many, many years, continuing to streamline and automate that tool and modernize that tool and improve the productivity of that tool. There's literally only one other competitor in the world that has something similar.
If anyone is going to figure out how to use AI in more productive ways for writing building specs, it'll be us because we got the knowledge and we've got the underlying data that would make an AI, excuse me, AI model actually work. I'll let Tim talk a little bit more maybe about specifications and international and the potential for growth there.
Yeah. As I've looked at the global marketplace, obviously the same types of players are involved in every market that we operate in. There's architects, there's general contractors, there's owners and things. The role each of them play is a little bit different globally.
We think that, and we have now experienced and proven that through a combination of local resources that are doing work very similar to what Dave's 100+ spec writers do here in North America, along with supplementing that with manufacturing specification writers out of our India, Bangalore facility, we can now start to own and drive the demand for our products in specifications across the world in all markets, who ultimately we need to influence, sometimes changes in the market that you're in. It could be there are markets where the channel has a bigger influence than maybe the architecture does or GC has a bigger influence. We adopt from there. I think the tools that we've developed and the adoption of tools like Overtur in the marketplaces has been really very beneficial for us. We think we can continue to leverage it.
Thanks for that. The follow-up is really if you could just update us on Allegion Ventures and the role that that portfolio plays in driving the growth ambitions here.
Absolutely. Appreciate the question. It was interesting coming in as a new CEO. I was admittedly a corporate venture skeptic. I've seen more companies screw that up than do it well. Allegion does it well. I'll be perfectly honest. Not just because I'm biased now in the seat that I'm in. The original impetus for it from my predecessor was to use ventures as a looking glass and to adjacent, like specifically adjacent technologies that might have a beneficial or disruptive impact on our core business. That was the mission they pursued.
As I came in, I wanted to pivot just a little bit more closer to the core to at least open up the option value so there could be an invest early and ultimately own something in that portfolio. Whether that comes to be, time will tell. Meanwhile, just in terms of return on investment, the portfolio has performed extremely well, I must say. Punctuated, I think, by the most recent investments that we made. One in particular, the largest investment Allegion Ventures ever made was in a company called Ambient.ai that uses very advanced AI tools and AI models, video language models, in fact, to analyze video streams from surveillance cameras of any brand and just help turn a building or a campus's security posture from reactive to proactive.
They like to very proudly describe themselves as the inevitable destination of physical security, which I don't think they're far from the truth. It's just what's the time access to get there. Really exciting company. I think Ventures remains an important part of the overall Allegion portfolio. We'll continue to fund it off balance sheet and operate it the way we do today. Thanks for the questions.
Chris Snyder, Morgan Stanley. I wanted to ask about the company's go-to-market approach around technology. I felt like in the past, Allegion tried to position itself as the partner of choice for technology or software companies looking to enter the space. Looking at the product showcase outside, it seems like there's a lot of Allegion technology, Allegion software. I would just kind of, how do you think about that build versus partner path to market on the technology side?
Yeah, Chris, it's a good question. Let me start and then pass it over to Dave and let Dave expand a little bit from the Americas perspective. I would say partner of choice is still one of our strategic pillars internally. That's one of the set of management objectives that we formulate in each long-range plan and each annual operating plan. Think about that as the large building automation enterprise kind of JCIs and Honeywells and these guys or Motorola even. We are a partner of choice with them. We do go-to-market and win projects together with them. We do take time, as Vince mentioned and Tim mentioned, to integrate our hardware with them. Think of us, think of Allegion as making products that plug into those single pane of glass guys. That, by and large, is electromechanical hardware. Could that also be a software module?
Yes, it could. It would still be something that would plug in as a partner of choice to them. I think they have their core competency. They have their piece of the overall solution stack. We have ours that works seamlessly with their piece. I mean, Dave, you have a lot of access control partners.
I can add on.
Maybe just expand a little bit on that.
To add on to John's comments, those relationships are really important because the business of access control for decades has been relying on those providers bringing access control solutions to market. They do it primarily at that enterprise level and down into a few niches. That is essentially where a lot of the adoption over the years has sort of stopped.
As new markets have started to grow their needs for electronics, as you get into interior of buildings, not just perimeter, you start to have seen some of these new technologies come to light, especially in the cloud space versus the on-prem space. What we continue to hear and see is there are segments and really subsegments of markets where sometimes that amount of investment is not really available and the teams to manage that are not there on site. Multifamily is a great example of that. You have high fragmentation. You have high turnover. To have someone there every day to manage an on-prem system is not really realistic. As the evolution of the market has occurred, we start to see opportunities to where really it's better to have a simplified solution.
This is where something like Zentra plays in that subsegment of multifamily, that class B and C that John talked about, where really a provider like us is the best that we believe is best positioned to provide that solution. You'll see us play in that area of the marketplace. Even in the multifamily area, when it starts to go to class A and those requirements get more complex, you'll actually still see us partner in that market too. It does create some complexity, no doubt. However, it all comes down to how are we solving the end user's needs? What's that user application really need? Are we able to do that better through a partnership or through a standalone solution? Well said. That'll be the key to kind of how we manage that going forward.
Thank you. I really appreciate that.
Maybe just following up on that, if we think about the access control market, maybe 20 or 30 years ago, it was like all mechanical. And then 20 -3 0 years from now, more software. I don't know what percentage, but I have to imagine that that's the way it's heading. Does that create risk around the ability to sustain the margins on hardware if the value of the ecosystem is maybe moving more towards software? And does that change how you guys think about bringing your own software to market and having control of that? Thank you.
Chris, really good question. I don't know if you had the opportunity to visit the Security Industry show, ISC West in Las Vegas a few weeks ago. It was pretty telling.
What I would say is the software itself, regardless of if it's a multifamily provided by Allegion or if it's a large enterprise provided by Honeywell or somebody like that, a line of code by itself is never going to lock or unlock a door. We do that. What we do is really hard. This idea of managing millions of SKUs right in the specifications that architects don't want to deal with anymore, that's really hard. End user demand generation, that's really hard. I don't buy into this default idea of the value accrues somewhere else. What we do is difficult. That is why there's only a couple of companies that do it. I feel very confident in our ability to sustain and grow the margins we have today. Appreciate that question. Great. I see that brings us to time.
For those of us joining online, that'll conclude our webcast for today. For folks in the room, hopefully you'll be able to stick around lunch and continue the conversation. Thanks for joining us. Thanks, everyone.
Thank you.