Good morning. Welcome to Allient's Inaugural Investor Day, now trading under the ticker on the Nasdaq, ALNT. I'm Deborah Pawlowski, Investor Relations for Allient, and we're really pleased that you're joining us here today. You should have seen the releases that went out this morning. One of them announcing some of the information that we plan on presenting to you. The other one noting that we did open under the ticker ALNT. Now, before we begin, I will remind you that we will make forward-looking statements today during the presentations as well as during the Q&A. These statements apply to future events that are subject to risks and uncertainties, as well as other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from what is stated here today.
These risks and uncertainties and other factors are provided in documents that we file with the SEC on our website. I could pause and let you all read this slide if you'd like to, I won't do that. We will also today discuss some non-GAAP measures. These non-GAAP measures, historical non-GAAP measures are reconciled in the slide deck that is available on our website. Forward-looking non-GAAP measures are not, we're not able to reconcile, you should not consider them without also considering GAAP. Now, as you can see, we have an extremely full agenda for you today, during which we believe we will help you learn more about why Allient and what the nexus of our technologies are drawing, creating for us.
We will be breaking, for those of you on the web, we will be breaking for lunch at about 11:55, and then restarting promptly back up at 12:30. Those here in the room are gonna have a great lunch. I hope you on the web can enjoy yours as well. We will be having a Q&A session after all of the formal presentations. On the web, you can submit your questions via the portal, and we will engage those questions as well as the, the live questions here in the room. After the Q&A, those that are with us here are going to be joining us as we ring the closing bell on the Nasdaq today under our new ticker, ALNT.
When you complete the viewing of our Investor Day today, a survey will pop up for you. We ask that you complete that survey. It's very important for us to get the information and the feedback so that we can always improve upon what we're presenting and where we go. We have a great lineup of speakers for you. You'll see, a lot of the key members from our leadership team presenting a great amount of information. And I hope you get the chance to, for those of you that are here physically, get the chance to meet the team as well. Before I introduce Dick Warzala, our Chairman, President, and CEO, I'm going to let you watch a little video.
Surface of Mars to the depths of the ocean, from a farmer's field to a factory's assembly line, from the front lines of defense to the critical moments on an operating table. When seconds matter, our products affect far more than the bottom line. At the core of global innovation throughout motion, controls, and power quality, Allient connects customers to cutting-edge solutions that improve lives. Across aerospace and defense, medical, agriculture, industrial, vehicles, electronics, and more. Allient, connecting what matters.
Excellent. With that, let me turn it over to Dick Warzala, Chairman, President, and CEO of Allient.
Let's find this little table here. Folds out. We'll see if I can make it through without spilling it. What do you think? Well, I'd like to thank all of you for attending, and certainly welcome to our first Investor Day. It's kind of interesting standing out in the crowd and getting some comments about, "Are you gonna give us a little more information than you have in the past?" Yeah, we'll give you a little bit more. Okay. Anyways, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna give you a little bit of an overview of where the company came from, where we are today, and where we're headed for the future. Let's start with the roots.
The roots of the company, which goes back to 1939, and when they were at a kind of an inflection point in the late 90s, trying to decide what it is that they were gonna become. I was brought in and asked to take a look at the operations and perhaps provide some guidance to the board, as far as what the direction of the company should be into the future. I went around, I met management, I saw some of the operations, and really what I found was that it was a small, unprofitable, very fragmented company dealing in a couple business segments.
After the review, the board asked me to come in and present my findings, and so here's what we started with. What I did is painted a, a vision for them, and that's back in 2001. Basically, the vision said that what you should do is be focused in the motion business, and that there was a great opportunity to grow that business and become a global leader in the motion industry. I know it's hard for someone who, you know, been around for 60+ years, and you had said you can, you could significantly grow this business, but, you know, past history showed that we could do that with other companies. Well, why not with Hathaway?
During the review process, really, what we saw was the culture. The culture needed to change. It was a small company, but it was very fragmented. They operated in silos. That really, for the long term, wasn't going to work. We had to define a new culture for the company, and that was presented to the board as well. Another key element, the three elements here: the vision, the culture, and set a strategy. Company was operating without a strategy. Was operating, as I said, fragmented silos. To be successful, we felt that it was, it was important to get all the people aligned, and we'll talk about the steps that we went through and what we decided needed to be done to achieve that vision.
Here's the starting point. We go back in the fiscal year-end, June 2002, motion revenue, primarily motors, $15.7 million. Losing money, EBITDA, just over $1 million. Okay? Stock price of $1.18 and a market cap of $8.5 million. That's all we had to do, was take that and grow it. There's the culture. As I mentioned, fragmented silos. If they were gonna be successful, they couldn't do that as independent business or companies. They had to do it as a company. We created the culture, which basically is based on three words: VIA, value, integrity, and AST. Create value on everything you did. Didn't matter what your job was.
Every day you came to work, create value. As far as integrity goes, this small, fragmented company didn't show respect for their fellow workers. There was a lot of tension inside the company. We had to fix that. We said, you were going to deal openly, honestly, and with respect for all stakeholders. That's became a, a core element of our culture and still there today. AST, Allied Systematic Tools, is what we called it back then. How did that differ than a Toyota Production System? Toyota Production System was at the heart of that and the foundation for it, but from a production standpoint. Allient was different. We brought in strategic thinking.
I had worked with multiple companies, found that people talk strategy, but they really talk deployment, not about the strategic thinking, not about what really the direction of the company should be and get everyone aligned, but then execute and deploy. Okay? We also talked about back then, it was QDC, quality, quality, delivery, and cost. We added the growth and innovation. Right out of the shoots, our AST toolkit was different than the toolkits that you found in many companies back then, which was called Lean. Our strategy, five bullet points defining what the key elements of our strategy were. Through the strategic thinking process, we defined ourselves as a technology know-how company.
If you're a technology know-how company, the key to success is engineering. It's engineering, engineering, engineering. You had to continue to feed the engineering element so that you could engage in competition, be better than your competition, and have knowledge that your customers and your markets could utilize. We have absolutely set out, and we put a program in place then to upgrade engineering capabilities, and we also felt that the long-term growth would be driven through with the right talent internally, complementary acquisitions externally. We'll get into more of that history as we go further through the presentation. We couldn't be all things to all people, therefore, target niche markets.
Those niche markets, many of them came through our acquisitions, and we would focus on that. Key to success, target niche markets. Get it down to the lowest level of field of application you could, make sure you did it better than anyone else. The innovation is part of AST. Innovate leading-edge products and solutions. Right? Look at that, solutions back in 2001. Here we were, looking at this, saying, "Well, it's a motor company." No, we were a motor company. We're working on a solutions provider way back then. That's that was in the strategy. Develop the culture of Lean. I've talked about Lean.
Geoff will talk about Lean to a much greater extent and show some examples of how it's impacted our company. It's continuously improve in every aspect of the business, not just manufacturing, but every aspect of the business, and that's our Lean culture. We also use our AST toolkit to train and develop the next generation, the succession plan for our leadership. It's worked extremely well. If you take a look around the company and you say, you know, people have moved on, they've retired, you'll see the people who have that have replaced them, have been developed, in most cases, from within. I would attribute that to our common language that we had under AST and Lean.
You know, the summary line there says, "We aligned the entire company to achieve our stated strategic goals and objectives." How did we do? Well, I guess there's many ways to measure how we did. Okay? This is a statement for me. This is what I believe. We executed our strategy, and we did become a well-diversified global motion solutions company. We're operating with a one-team mentality, okay. A llied has created significant value for its stakeholders. We wanted to be a global company. Why was that important? Well, for us, it meant that would certainly expand our addressable market, but there's other things that were a part of this becoming a global market.
I will tell you, diversity and diversification. Diversification of cultures, diversification of mentality, diversification of technology, products, geographic markets, and vertical market opportunities. Important part of our culture. When we brought that Allied team together, whether, you know, it was an entire team or partial team, you literally could see the respect in the room for each other. To me, that was important because it didn't matter where you came from. You were part of the family. Very important. Well, what I also want to point out, we got all these dots up there. What the heck do these dots mean? Well, right over here, we say technology unit.
Our technology unit is what somebody would call a business unit or a company. We just named it differently. We wanted the mindset, technology. You're responsible for that technology. You own it. Production unit. As we continued to grow the company, we found a need to become much more competitive, and we did that through focused production units, and we have them globally. Direct sales offices around there. We expanded our sales network, and that sales network began bringing the concept of One Allied. Sell all products. It was the connecting point between our different technology units.
Solution Center, the beginning of we need to develop solutions that take advantage of all of the technology sitting with Allied, and we need to do it in a place where a customer could call, and they could find an individual that could get them the right solution, or at least direct them in the, you know, in the right direction here. You'll see the Solution Center, the sales force, very important to beginning the concept of One Allied, and you'll see how that's expanding more into the future as we go through what the next steps are. M&A. 16 acquisitions over 20 years. You know, our goal was one a year.
We didn't quite achieve that, anyways, the key here when we talk about M&A is we were building. Remember, the strategy said solutions from the first day. Complementary acquisitions, another key element of the success within Allied. You know, I know I've worked for companies where it was uncomfortable because through acquisitions, many times, you bought companies that were competing directly with your other companies. Well, we competed from a technology standpoint, but best solution would win for the customer. We didn't attempt to duplicate what we had. We attempt to supplement, to enhance, okay? Create the competition internally that your solution could address the widest available market and let the best solution win. I think, again, that's another key success.
As we walk through here, you'll get more information on this later on the acquisitions. You'll start to see at some point, we started making acquisitions that would lead us to where we are today and where we're headed in the future, Allient. That'll be pointed out to you. This, this, this just didn't happen. There was some thought process behind it, again, like our strategy for solutions, same thing has occurred for Allient. There's where we were, there's where we are today. These are financial measures that so say, "Did we succeed?" Right.
Revenue of $15 million to $557 million. EBITDA, just over $1 million, over $23 million, trailing 12 months, June, okay? Stock price is $33. No, it's higher today. I don't know what happened, but it's $34, so we can say the market cap is over $550 million now, right? I guess from a financial measure, you would say, you know, it's, it was fairly successful. We are an, an integrated solutions provider, but we are taking it to the next level. What's next? We call it, Debbie started out with a new Nexus. Allient is short for Allied Nexus Technologies. You heard the tagline, "Connecting what matters."
We have a unique set of technology that we're calling pillars, and you'll see more information on that, that we need to connect together and create a unique value proposition for our customers in the market. Starts out with some natural evolution, but the natural evolution occurred through our strategy. Okay. I think this is the next important statement to make, and I think, you know, we're an environmentally and socially responsible company. Now, many companies talk about it, but you have to look and see what the activities are and what the functions of some of our products and what they do in the marketplace to drive that environmental and social responsibility. The presentations that will follow, you'll see that.
They're not gonna call it out and say, "Hey, look at how... Here's our social. Here's our environmental." You're gonna hear things that actually do help in both environment and socially responsibility. Market focus, that's Allient. That's what's layering on top of what our core company already is, a strong vertical market focus that expands our solution set beyond integrated solutions, but more complete, full solutions, create more content, more value. We believe the success we had in motion, we can replicate that on our other pillars now, controls and power. That takes us from an addressable market that we had with motion to grow to where we are today and almost doubles it.
To me, motion, power, and controls, Allient, gives us that opportunity with an addressable market that's more than, well, about 2x the size of what we have today. The strong vertical, the, the strong foundation here of our technology units. When we're looking at what we needed to do here in the next level, we, we needed to ensure that that foundation stayed in place. It was critical. It built the success of the company. We did not want to destroy it. Part of our success is also accountability, P&L responsibility at each of these units. We drive it down to the lowest possible level. We give them ownership, and we hold them accountable.
They have a job to ensure that they take their technology and their products, and they promote it globally, and continue to grow their business in terms of both revenue and improved profitability. Here's where we come with Allient. It's an expansion. I don't want this to sound like this is an idea that hit one day, we just flipped the switch and said, "Here we go!" No, this was building. It was building, again, through our acquisitions. We had acquired a few companies that had a really strong vertical market focus. We found that they would bring more value to the customer, increase the value opportunity that we had.
We started to become aware that, you know, how do we take these individual units that are dealing from a component or product level? We have this general-purpose solution center. We saw some successes. How do we accelerate that success? To us, this is what Allient does. It layers on a strong vertical market focus on top of the technology pillars that we have. We call this the House of Allient. We had to refine our strategy. In February, we brought a team together and said, "Okay, we've got to get ready for this. What is it that we need to do?" It became, I guess you could call it, a more sophisticated company.
We had to find ways to make sure that this all could blend together. We weren't tearing apart our current structure. We were layering on. We were making an investment in, okay? Again, this is an exciting... You're gonna see vertical markets that we have, that we're working on today, that the rest of the team will show you. Go back to the strategy. With our leader that helped us in the strategic thinking process, okay, he would always say, "Listen to the music. What are the words that keep coming through over and over and over as people are working through their strategy? The highlighted or the, you know, the bold items here was the music.
We said, create a simplified and focused, a really more focused organization, positioned to win in our target markets. Simplified, focused, win, target markets. Important. Next, upgrade corporate marketing. We have corporate marketing, I would tell you that, you know, many of you had mentioned to me in the past that you guys needed to do more to get your image out there and improve upon that. We felt this was a perfect time to really do that, to really enhance and develop that, come up with. You'll see some more as, as you go through the presentations about what some of that is, and you'll hear more about our corporate marketing program.
It's, it's extended down now, so these vertical market solution owners have got a marketing responsibility as well. They know their markets, their verticals, better than anyone else. They have to be part of it, all under the umbrella of Allient. What's the goal there? Accelerate. Accelerated growth in sales and profitability. There's multiple ways to do it, and I'll let our team tell you some of those ways that they're planning. To do this, too, we had to continue to strengthen our leadership, and we had to build focus and accountability into all areas of our business. Allient doesn't just run off and spend all kinds of money, go to, you know, spend money on marketing, go to trade shows, okay, hire more people.
No, they're held accountable as a business. Key to the functions of our business, held accountable for growth and profitability. They have the accountability for the vertical. They pull in all the technology from the pillars. They bring the solutions and own the solutions. We're now attacking from the top, not just the bottom. We're gonna continue to leverage AST Toolkit. That's gonna be a part of our culture forever. When we get better, we're gonna get better yet. When we get better yet, we're gonna continue to get better. That's the mindset and the mentality, part of our culture. M&A, you know, many questions about what are we gonna do with M&A? I mean.
M&A is gonna be a function of continuing to build the company to meet our goals. It's gonna enhance our opportunity to get there. Okay? The key mantra coming out of there was simplify to accelerate. Everything we talked about, we said, "Let's simplify." We're becoming more sophisticated. We have to find ways so that it's easier for customers to do business with us. We have to find ways to leverage our talent to get there faster, and the only way we know how to do that is simplify things. Make it simple for people to do business with us. Make it simple internally for our people to understand what they're being asked to do.
Simplify to accelerate. You're gonna hear a lot of that in the future. Everything we do, if it's become before complex, it's wrong. Simplify. Driving to the next level. That's where we started, that's where we are today. Where are we headed for the future? We believe we can continue to grow. Our organic growth rates are faster than the industry rates. Why? It was part of our culture and our toolkit starting right out. Innovation, growth, it's not going away. Acquisitions are to continue to complement growth. Here's what we expect to deliver. What's our next set of goals? Some of you have already mentioned it, you kind of knew it.
Revenue of $1 billion, 100 basis points of annual margin improvement. Now, that's gonna include both gross margin. Mike will get into more details here about managing OpEx and operating expenses. Keep generating, it's 100 basis points a year of improvement. Operating margins in the mid-teens and adjusted EBITDA margins in the high teens. Well, what's the question you're gonna ask me is: Well, when are you gonna do this, right? When are you gonna do it? I'll turn that back out there. Our team went from a company with $15 million. We set a target of $100 million. We did, we did it. I'll guarantee you, there was more people skeptical in that room than there are today of taking this next step.
We set $250 million. We achieved it. We set $500 million. We achieved that. We're saying $1 billion. When? If all of you can tell me what the impacts, what's gonna happen in the world. We can have another pandemic. We can have supply chain crisis. What's inflation gonna be? All I'll tell you is we'll manage through those. Those, those things will happen. We'll manage through those like we have in the past, and we will achieve this goal. Don't bet against this team. I'm confident we're gonna get it done. Allient, connecting what matters. Top of the house, vertical market solutions. Bottom of the house, our core technology units.
What's next? You've heard enough from me for many years. You want to hear from the rest of the team, and we've had the great opportunity, with the bell ringing today, to bring several members of our leadership team that does represent our company. More could be here. There are some sitting here that don't have presentations. Dad wouldn't let us. Anyway, what you're gonna hear, Ken May's standing there. He can't wait to go, coach. Come on, let me up here. Technologies and products. You're gonna hear our business development. What's that mean?
Not just M&A, but that whole level of lift in corporate marketing. Selected verticals. I'm gonna caution you here on the verticals. We're not gonna spend a lot of time on the verticals that you're well aware of, that have built us to where we are today. Those are given. You've been asking questions about those for many years. We're gonna focus on some new things that we think you're gonna be interested in. AST, HR and Talent, Financial, and then the Q&A. All right? With that, let me turn it over to Ken.
Thank you . Good morning. My name is Ken May, I am the Chief Technology Officer based out of our corporate offices in Buffalo, New York. I've been with Allient 4.5 years now. Before that, I spent 23 years in aerospace and defense, before that, about eight years in automotive and powertrain in particular. I've always been around electromechanical actuation systems, that's my passion as an engineer. I'd like to talk to you today about our strong engineering capabilities and how we use them to deliver technologies and solutions to our customers. We consider ourselves an innovative company that leverages our global engineering resources to create creative solutions to solve our customers' difficult problems.
Each and every solution can draw upon the wide spectrum of the corporate capabilities. We apply engine application experience and market knowledge to design systems and solutions that leverage the full breadth of the company in terms of products, technologies, and manufacturing capabilities. What I'd like to start out with is to go over some, we call them mega technology trends. These are trends that are going on in the industry that cross over all of our products and markets. The first is what I'll call electrification, and this is. In general, this is electrification of everything and anything. We think a lot about vehicles, and, yeah, that's a big part of it, but we're not talking about passenger vehicles.
For example, we are working with the defense industry to, to, electrify the next generation of fighting vehicles. Electrification here means, for example, replacing the systems and subsystems that might represent legacy actuation technologies like hydraulics and pneumatics, replacing them with more efficient electrical technologies. Also, as these vehicles go more toward hybrid and all electric, We'll be seeing increasingly higher voltage systems as well. The next major trend is that of increased or improved energy efficiency. First and foremost, that means, for example, us increasing the efficiency of the parts that we put into our systems: motors, control, gearing systems. By increasing the efficiency of our part, we increase the efficiency of the system.
One interesting observation is that in the world today, about 40% of all global electricity consumption is through a motor. Fascinating number. Even minor increases in improvement in the efficiency of a motor, the drive, and the gearing system can make a big difference in global energy consumption. The next thing I'd like to talk about is, briefly, is power quality. By improving power quality, we also improve the efficiency of the system. Talk more about that in a minute. Lastly, by lightweighting anything that moves, we also reduce power consumption. This could obviously mean body panels. It also means lightening, while maintaining strength and durability, of moving parts in a motion control system or robotics, for example.
The next major trend is more and more industrial automation, and this is right up our alley. This is driven by two things, fundamentally, the increasing scarcity of skilled labor in industrialized countries, as well as talked about the ever escalating costs that go along with it. Enablers here include more robotics, more autonomous and semi-autonomous systems, more intelligent systems, also more Internet of Things. The connectivity of the bits we make and how we communicate with the factory in terms of preventative maintenance and performance metrics. Anything that can improve throughput. How many widgets per hour can I make? Turn the speed up. Availability. Is the system up? What's the uptime of the system?
Flexible manufacturing, sometimes called soft tooling, the ability to reconfigure the factory. Finally, better accuracy, better resolution, and here, too, power quality improves industrial automation. More of it needs more electricity, more power quality, opportunity as well. The thing I would challenge you to think about as you talk— we talk through the afternoon here, is all of the opportunities that align the, the markets that align very well with these trends and the three pillars of Allient and how we support them quite well. As a technology know-how company, engineering is at the core of everything we do. We consider engineering expertise a core competency and a competitive advantage.
Shown here are some of the examples of good engineering design due diligence that we've created over the years and tailored to our products that help us to get it right the first time. That's the goal, get it right the first time. We also still, of course, do rigorous testing as we have to build the product, build it as a system, and test it in its natural environments and under the use conditions of the real world. The point here is that this is all good engineering workflow. As a core competency, we continue to evolve it and improve it to maintain that competitive advantage.
The core foundation of Allient is motion and controls, consisting of motion control, drives, motors, and gearing. As Dick mentioned, motors are kind of the genesis of Allied Motion. Not all motors are created equal, so there's opportunity to have different motor types and technologies, depending on the application, and so we've grown that portfolio both through both acquisition and organic growth, and we've applied that same methodology to motion control, drives, and gearing as well. What I'm showing here is how all of these systems can come together in a multi-axis system. Two of the most recent acquisitions include some really exciting new capability that pull it all together.
That system right there is an eight-axis tool set, and if we had it to do today, it would be for Allient. If we had this to do today or build something similar, all of the content can be Allient product, which is really neat. Another key message to get across here is we own all the intellectual property here. We own the software, the electronics design, the motor magnetics design, the gearing design, and in this case, the really sophisticated algorithms and know-how that make that system work. Highly synchronized, multi-axis motion control is very tricky, and we've brought in a lot of expertise that gets us there.
By having the intellectual property and the ability and the fact that we're vertically integrated, we can put these all together in a way that a lot of our competition either can't or won't do. This is a competitive advantage, and with the right business case, we can sell systems like this at a very attractive margin as well. Critical applications. Critical applications can run the gamut from the vertical positioning of a manned rocket to the assembly cells to put together a large winged aircraft and pull all the, the panels together in just the right time and sequence and positions, basically, to weld them together. We have examples of that.
On the other end of the spectrum would be like a fully automated turnkey manufacturing cell, where the focus is on throughput, the focus is on uptime, the focus is on the critical elements to that factory, which, for example, if it's putting out more vaccine or pharmaceutical, 24/7 operation, high reliability, high uptime, very critical. I guess, in summary, we run the gamut of critical from man-rated life critical to process critical. The means and methods that we apply, apply across that spectrum of applications. I'd like you to consider of the way of putting together a single axis of motion control. For example, taking a filter, a drive, a motor, and a gearing system and kind of bolting them together.
At Allient, we go one step further. For the right customer, the right environment, the right business case, we like to do what we call fully integrated assemblies or fully integrated systems. They provide the advantages I lay out there, which I can summarize as saying, better fit, better function, and better form, better fit, better function. Generally, at a lower price and with a lower lifecycle cost to the customer. This is a variety of five other integrated solution platforms that we have at Allient, and I wanted to give you examples of value added to the customer beyond the obvious here.
One is a integrated traction drive system we put together from a mobility application, where our system is so much more efficient than the incumbent system, the battery can be fit 20% smaller. 20% smaller, lighter, less expensive. Another one is a material handling fork truck application, where that's this one here, where the integrated solution is so much smaller, one SKU can fit in, like, 12 different vehicles. It, it doesn't have to be the vehicle doesn't have to be reconfigured or redesigned around our steer-by-wire actuator, that one actuator can fit into as many as 12 different vehicles. Good for the customer, good for us.
Another unit shown here is a, we'll call it a steer-by-wire system for GPS, autonomous agricultural vehicle, like a combine or harvester, that where our integrated assembly enables the positioning of the of the vehicle. Lastly, as an example, an industrial actuator could be used in an autonomous guided vehicle, could be used in a robotic application, where the simplified cabling, in this case, means at the system level, there's fewer cables and fewer connectors. What? Not only is that less expensive, connectors and cables, especially in moving devices, are a cause of unreliability or lack of reliability. By implementing several of these in the system, we improve the reliability of the system for the customer as well.
Now we'll add in the third pillar that is Allied Power and Power Quality. Starting with the elements of motion and control that we've talked about already, we're now gonna drop in the building blocks or the elements of power quality. It's starting at the front end, harmonic power quality mitigation, I'll call it the back end or downstream, the output filter. In combination, we like to say that these, these clean up the power quality. People ask, "What does that mean? Is there dirty power?" Yeah, there is dirty power. A dirty power is an artifact of power generation that means noise.
It means higher frequency noise. That means the systems are gonna run hotter and less efficient. In this case, in a factory, by cleaning up the power quality, you also reduce the electric bill. The net power required energy to, to build 1,000 widgets an hour or whatever, will actually go down, okay? That's a very strong competitive advantage. On the filter side, an advantage here is that the filter will filter out some of the noise and the energy spikes that actually degrade the motors without it. What's not shown here, but some of these factories have half megawatt motors, and they're very expensive, very long lead time, hard to repair.
Being able to extend the life of these is a big deal for keeping a factory running. Lastly, one I think is interesting, what's the opposite of clean power? Dirty power. Dirty power can cause unexpected consequences elsewhere in the factory. For example, another line could go down or the facility down the street could have a power quality impact as well. That's an added benefit. Now, Ashish, this afternoon, is gonna talk at length about power quality systems and the value proposition to our customers and how we compete. Manoj is gonna talk about how we're gonna roll power quality into the values equation with our ground vehicle customers, as we look to electrify the next generation of fighting vehicle.
In summary, the future is exciting, and we're very excited about the future. The future for Allient is very bright. We believe we have a long runway of exciting opportunities that line up very well with the Allient structure. We are driving our future, and we can expect greater market share by continuing to build on our capabilities through the integration of breadth of products, our engineering capabilities, our knowledge in motion control and power, by capitalizing on those three trends of electrification, more energy efficiency, and more industrial automation. In summary, our focus on innovation, our global operations, breadth of expertise, means speed to market, unique solutions, and deep engagement with our customers. With that, I'll turn it over to Steve.
Good morning. Thank you, Ken. Appreciate that. We appreciate all of you for joining us, for here, for this momentous milestone. I see some familiar faces in the room if you're here today, and some new ones, so we look forward to meeting many of you I haven't yet today, and those joining you virtually as well. I'm Steve Warzala, the Director of Strategic Business Development for Allied Motion. That's me. I started the company 13 years ago, back in 2010. Started in marketing, and then about a year later, our Director of Sales, Rudy Caldwell, stole me out of the marketing team and put me into the regional sales role, which I held for eight years until joining the business development side of things.
When you look at our M&A side, you heard Dick talk about the ethos of Allied and where it came from when it was founded 20 years ago. This is a look at how we applied that strategy for our growth from a $15 million operation to over $500 million in that 20-year span. Over that time, Dick's vision has come to bear, whereas five years ago, we made the acquisition to TCI, propelling Allied into an entirely new market, the power quality market, which changed us from simply a motion control company to a control motion company. A slight change in nomenclature, but one that had a big impact for us as a company.
That foresight was the impetus as we shifted our trends in our product-focused markets. It continued as our portfolio grew with additional controls and IO companies. Those small pieces, setting the stage for our next phase of transformation. As part of our strategy, we've been cultivating for the last five years, eventually landing or expanding our new horizon as Allied metamorphosizes into the phoenix that becomes Allient. Now, the House of Allient, as you'll see more of today, is a pictorial pantheon of our market-focused strategy. From the top of the house, or the new nexus, is where we can pull from our technology pillars of motion, controls, and power, truly connecting what matters in order to create the quintessential solution for our customers.
We plan to continue our stellar growth by monitoring each vertical market and pillar with its own P&L responsibility to ensure ownership and accountability, allowing our subsidiaries to maintain their TU integrity. With that, we expanded our addressable market. As we embark into new markets, it allows us to double our current addressable market. Previously, we focused on motion aspects of technology. We now open the doors to controls and power quality. As you can see by the numbers, there's a large piece of the pie we're excited to further take a bite out of.
Each pillar will have its own dedicated sales force. Like the products, there may be some overlap within certain projects, but that allows Allient to provide larger systems, a base scope of our customers within each pillar. We have 20 years in the motion industry, that's been our predominant focus for that time period, bringing along decades of experience in that sector. One of our key success, as Dick touched on in the beginning, was speed of play to our customers. That was the strategy that was put forth so many years ago. As we continue to grow, we have to keep that simplified to accelerate mindset to ensure we don't lose focus of our key principles.
Helmut will have more on that in the motion pillar and market vertical after lunch. Controls. Already reaching heavily into the industrial and vehicle markets, the last seven acquisitions for Allient have helped improve our market share in both the defense and medical sectors. It has also bolstered our stable of engineering and engineering services offered across the company to our customers. You'll hear more about this later from Simon Rees and some more from Manoj Mehta as they get into their presentations. From motion control to controlled motion, the power quality market allows Allient to leverage additional relationships within these industries we did not have access to in the past.
Additionally, opening the door to a more service-based model income stream. Ashish Bendre will touch more on that later in some additional slides. We talk about our M&A strategy. We look at our key objectives when it goes into how we look to acquire a company. We start by enhancing—it has to, sort of, the company we look at must enhance solution offerings with complementary adjacent technologies. Go back. Must drive geographic expansion in attractive markets. It must expand our customer base in those target markets. We look at that, we go through our strategic filters on how we acquire the companies. It must enhance the financial profile of Allient. It must have a solid management team.
It must provide significant upside potential, and it must meet our internal rate of return and create long-term shareholder. I skipped the middle one, but that's for a reason, because those key elements, we find an acquisition, but that's not the only focus. Allient is not simply looking for assets that will help our bottom line. They need to be the right fit, and that comes with a good cultural fit. Now, technology is paramount, don't get me wrong, but our search also requires the people within those companies to be part of that fit. Now, we know why those companies are successful, and it's our goal to come in and keep the full complement of resources and experience intact.
Allient's a global corporation with a focus on international business culture, and that is what has made us so successful in our growth over the years. When you look around the room at the management team who's here today, you got all varying different countries, different styles, different methods, and we're excited that that's part of our culture. Up next, you're gonna see this image a lot going forward, the House of Allient. That is the nexus to connecting what matters. With this comes unique selling organization and expansion of our marketing capabilities, a new website launch, adding to our corporate marketing team, a full-scale training university, and lastly, improving our overall marketing capabilities.
Additionally, like I said, there's a lot of people in this room who've been instrumental in the growth and success of this company. Today, you're seeing a select few of those presentations, as Dick mentioned. There could have been a lot more, but we made sure we didn't have too many. We wanted to focus on some of our new capabilities for those of you, watching at home and as well in the room. It's been great to work with these folks in this room, spent a lot of time with them, and it's been fantastic. I continue to do that in the future. Up next, after that, after lunch, Helmut will begin, and others will follow, connecting you to Allient's vertical market focus. With that, put the best person in charge, and I wish you all a good lunch.
I'll ask everybody to find your way to your seat. We have two minutes to start time, just so you know. Is everyone enjoying the presentation so far? Yes. Very good. All right. We've got, we've got a lot more to give you, and then we've got, I'm hoping it's going to be a good hour or so.
Well, I hope everybody enjoyed your lunches. I can tell you that we certainly did here. The food was excellent. We will now get started on the second half of the Allient Investor Day.
Overcoming the challenges faced by the world's most critical industries, impacting the products we rely on every day, and pushing the boundaries of science, technology, and innovation, calls for an organization that can harness the power, control the process, and move the pieces that make the most meaningful difference. It calls for Allient, a family of companies that provide state-of-the-art solutions in motion, controls, and power quality that support customers throughout aerospace and defense, medical, agriculture, industrial, vehicles, electronics, and more. Allient offers unparalleled product diversity and engineering expertise. Our pillars include motors, controls, drives, gearing, encoders, lightweighting, and electrification technologies. We go beyond providing just components and strive to develop vertically integrated systems that utilize multiple Allient technologies to create a competitive advantage.
System capabilities range from advanced automation systems found in industrial packaging and manufacturing plants, to precision medical robotics, vehicle steering systems, and motors with integrated drive electronics. From the surface of Mars to the depths of the ocean. From a farmer's field to a factory's assembly line, from the front lines of defense to the critical moments on an operating table. When seconds matter, our products affect far more than the bottom line. Allient, connecting what matters.
Just, just so you know, that's Steve Warzala's voice, that did the voice over on that. Let me now introduce Helmut Pirthauer. I had to get the Pirt out in the German form. He will, he will now start on the Motion Solutions for Europe.
Hello, everybody, and welcome in the world of Motion Solutions. Motion Solutions is an industrial optimization megatrends. My name is Helmut Pirthauer. This is now right, and maybe we can hear on my pronouncements, on my pronunciation. I'm from Germany, and under consideration, this headline, Motion Solutions, we can say I'm from the motor of Europe. I live in Kelheim, and it is a city between Munich and Nuremberg. Now you can take out your headphone, your headsets. We change to German language. Okay, I see you understand me, then I can go ahead. I joined the Allied Motion company through the acquisition in 2016.
It's now seven years, and I'm now the Vice President of the Corporate and Group President of Europe Operation. In the Allied company, we have three pillars: Dick, Steve, and also in the video, you saw the three pillars. In my part, I will talk about Allied Motion, the vertical of Allied Motion Markets. If we talk about Allied Motion, then only for your understanding, we produce motors, different kind of motors, induction motors, three-phase motors, servo motors, brushless motors, brush motors. We produce gears, different gears, helicopter gears, planetary gears, worm gearboxes. We produce integrated drives, external drives, and also encoders.
A huge and a big range of application of motors and drives. This megatrends, the industrial optimization. Industrial optimization is ongoing. You saw in a video, and the question is, why we do it? Why we need it, industrial optimization? What is the reason for this? The reason is we have to reduce the production cost. This is written. We have to increase the productivity, and we have also to improve the quality. You saw now six markets on the video, and we have much more markets. We have different markets, robotic, medical, we have agriculture and you saw this already. We have to consider on which market we work.
You saw the map from Dick Warzala. We work in North America, we work in Europe, also in Asia. The robot market is ongoing in Asia, very strong, and we fight also in Europe and also in U.S., in North America, and this is also our market. What is driven this megatrends? We have now two trends. If you see the world population from now up to 2050, about 25–27 years. The world population grows by two million people in 25 years. We have also a second trend. The second trend is that in all industry countries, the skilled workers, the engineers, are not grow so fast.
The demographic change is coming in Europe, maybe in the U.S., in the end, the population grows, the world is limited and the world is not growing with the people. In the end, it means we have to do the industrial optimization to fulfill all what we need, what 10 million people need in the world: foods, clothes, transportation, and so on. It means we have to invest, and we have to find the solution for industrial optimization. Only some numbers. The markets, the Grand View Research company in U.S., this is U.S. numbers from the market, industrial optimization. Now, in 2023. We have a total revenue of $185 billion revenue.
From now on, over the next seven years, not 25 years, over the next seven years, this market will grow up to $380 billion. It's a double in seven years. Double in seven years. Only that you see on which projects we work. We have, you can see on the left side, on top, six arm robots. It's running automatically, and you need for each arm, one servo motor. One robot, minimum six servo motors. On the other side, you can see a three-axle handling system, a pick-and-place system, only to bring parts from one point to the other point, or pick-and-place application. You need three axes.
Also, a new market grow, a new market in the food industry. It means that the servo motors is not allowed to paint the servo motors. You need servo motors in a total new housing, in a stainless steel housing, in a high protection class. Also, on the last picture, you can see that in the package industry, to scrape the paper, you need helping tools, you need machines to be very faster and much less cost. I will only show you one sample. What is ongoing over the last 70 years in automatization. On the first picture, you can see a man.
He's a milking man, a farmer. In 2050, all is done by hands. The cow in the morning, maybe the farmer is coming, and he can do in one hour, five, six, seven cows. 30 years later, the farmer invested in a machinery. It's only a pumping system. The farmer has to put the caps on the teats, and that thing is ongoing automatically. No cleaning system, no measuring of the pH value. In 2020, a full automatically running system. You can see a circle where up to 128 cows running in a circle, and you have seen, or you can see, that the arm is coming out, it's cleaning the teats, it's measuring the pH of the milk, and it's pumping the milk full automatically.
Process over 70 years. If we talk now about material handling, this is what you need. If you produce more parts, you have to handle this, in the purchase department, also in a warehouse system. Here we can also see from 2023, we have a market revenue of $60 billion. Also, this market will grow over the next seven years, up to $150 billion. It's also nearly a double. Two markets, we have a double revenue in seven years. Also, here you can see some application. Ken May mentioned already that we have a System Solution, motors, gearboxes, integrated drives, encoders, cabling, and so on. In the end, you have a small housing.
You can see not what is really inside. It's a plug-and-play solution. You put in the system, you come with the cable, with the power supply, and the lift truck is running full automatically. It's a steering application. On the other side, you can see the trucks. Many years ago, hydraulic pumps works. Now, the electrification of the hydraulic pump, it means servo motor, integrated drives, integrated encoders, and you have a different solution. Electrification of the trucks, it's a future market. On the last two pictures, you can see application with AGVs. What is AGV? It's a fully automatic, automatic guide vehicles. We have different solution.
We have parts to integrate in a wheel. We have a full system, servo motors with integrated electronic on top. Wheel system, only also, it's also a system for a plug and play. Put in, only mount the system, plug the cable, the system is running. Here you can see the customers where we have a very great partnership and opportunities. You cannot do this with small customers. You need blue chips customer to invest in the future, to invest in this partners. This is what we have done in the Allied Motion pillar for industrial automatization and material handling. If we go a little bit back, I will only talk about 140 years.
What is started in 1880s? In 1880 started the industrialization of 1.0. What mean 1.0? It's the mechanization. This is the industry, started the mechanization, 1880s. In 1920s, Industry 2.0 started the mechanization. The, the electrification. It means at first, mechanization, electrification. 1970s, the automation started, and in 2014, about nine years ago, the digitalization started. You can find this in each documentation, is a standard worldwide. What is ongoing? What is coming over the next years? It's coming faster and faster. We have new markets, collaboration. It means human, person, computer, and robot. It means cobots, new markets. We have cloud computing. We have Internet of Things. We have also digital twins.
It means the engineer can put very easy system solution in his machines and can start, and he can create a computer system. What is a twin? It's a digital computer system, and in the end, it's very easy. This creates huge opportunities. We can say why we win better as our competition, this is always the key questions: Why we win? We have a broad range of products, not only servo motors, not only torque motors. We have a broad range. This is very important. If you talk with the customer, you have not to sell only the products what you have. No, what the customer needs. This is important, and this is what Dick decided many years ago with broad range.
We have all in our hands. We can offer what really the customer needs. In all organization, we have significant manufacturing—oh , sorry. Yeah. We have significant manufacturing experience and know-how because, and consider, please, we are not a startup company. We have a long history. We have many, many companies with a long history. Some companies, more is 80 years, or is in Europe, 80–85 years. Therefore, we have a high culture of quality and service understanding. This is important. You have to understand your customer, what the customer needs. Dick mentioned already, we have AST tools. Yes, it's important to have the right tools for the right process.
With our international engineering team, Dick mentioned also already, we have 450 engineers worldwide, North America, Europe, and Asia. Then with this part, this is the reason why we win: We create opportunities. We have great sourcing and sales opportunities because we have many leads regarding to all acquisitions. The markets, we talked about the market growth, mostly driven by Industry 4.0 and 5.0, and new markets grow. We talked also about new markets. Food industry grow, AGVs grow. For more examples, I have to create only a short video that you can see which projects we won and on which projects we work. It's only projects what we have in hands.
Thank you very much for your attention. Enjoy the video. Motion Solution for industrial automation. Thank you for listening, and now I will turn over to Simon Rees. Now, it's your stage.
Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Simon Rees. I'm the managing director of the Dynamic Controls Technology unit based in New Zealand, and that business is a recognized leader in control solutions for medical technology or medical mobility technology, I should say. I've been working in that business for the last 15 years and joined the Allient family in 2020 as part of the acquisition. My role today is really to talk about the technology and solutions in a broader medical context. What I aim to do today is give you an understanding of some of our successes to date, the opportunity that we see in medical going forward, and some of the ways in which we're going to address those opportunities.
If I start with where we are today, already, medical industry, medical markets are an active space for us, and we're enjoying some success in those areas. We, broad terms, we view the market in two main categories. The first of those is Surgical Solutions, and the second is Medical Devices and Equipment. If you drill down into those categories, we start to get into a very, very broad range of applications, and you can see that we are active in surgical robotics, medical instrumentation, programmable pumps, which has applications ranging from dialysis through anesthesia to oxygen therapy.
We're into prosthetics and power wheelchairs, medical mobility, patient handling. It's a huge list, but there's one thing that links all of those things, and that is that they are solutions or problems of high clinical value. High clinical value is something that really gives us the opportunity to enhance our value proposition. Couple of other points to make, just on the current state is we are a very specialized leading supplier of solutions into medical surgical robotics. Since 2020, I know I may be biased, but we've been leveraging the Dynamic Controls acquisition into the medical markets that we serve.
Moving on to sort of why we like the medical industry, and there are some megatrends that are behind that. First of all, whichever way you come at it, the global healthcare spending is a huge figure. According to the World Health Organization, it's set to reach $9 trillion, which is a staggering number. I think it's well documented that there's an aging population that is contributing to that need significantly, but also amongst that aging population, there's also, you know, increasing expectations. When we put all that together, we've got a sort of melting pot of complex and costly problems that give us a target for our innovation.
Then further to that, the way that healthcare is delivered is changing, and there's many, many trends, but there's three that I think are directly relevant to us that I'd just like to touch on. The first is hospital to home. This is getting people out of hospital quicker, allowing them to undertake medical treatments at home. One of the key factors in facilitating that is less invasive surgery, and that links directly to our surgical robotics activity. Another key trend is around prevention versus cure. That's driving towards greater need for diagnostics and imaging, again, another area where we play strongly. Technology advancements are a huge element in healthcare generally, but some specifics for us are around automation of processes, increasing electronic controls and connectivity, so that's data-enabled products.
I think it's also worth adding that there is growing investment in this industry, particularly post COVID, and that's driving R&D programs, investment in medical facilities and acquisition of equipment. For the next couple of minutes, I just want to go a little deeper into a couple of applications that are of specific interest to us. The first of these is surgical robotics, and to date, we've had or enjoyed a reasonable amount of success in surgical robotics, and that's really through the fact that we have our solutions embedded with the market leaders as they are today. It takes more than just being embedded with the leaders. It's a really sort of particular approach that drives our success here.
The technology is a critical part of it, and we do have specialist technologies in terms of high torque density motors, high speed motors, high precision motors that are utilized in this space. Really, the winning formula is the combination of the technology, the deep connection that we have with our customers' engineering teams, add to that customization and integration, and that's kind of how we win there. It makes sense when you think about it, because emulating a surgeon's hand is a pretty challenging engineering product, and we've all got to work pretty closely to, to get there.
In terms of the market for surgical robotics, it's moving fast, and whilst it's been around for a while, so not entirely new, I think it's fair to say it's still in the early life cycle, and that's reflected in the CAGR that we're seeing around 18% predicted through to 2030. In terms of the other drivers there, surgical robotic systems are getting increasingly or increasing regulatory approval. I think once we see these regulatory approvals coming through, the regulatory bodies getting more comfortable with the technology, then we would expect that to, to accelerate. Then that links to strategic initiatives that we're seeing amongst key players.
That's in terms of significant R&D programs, acquisition, consolidation in that space, and then technologies continuing to advance, which is really making more and more surgeries feasible through robotics. Then circling back, you know, where we are today or within the market, motion products, and specifically brushless motors, are a critical component of these robotic systems, and there are multiple motors per product. If we move on and think about the, or look at the future opportunities, I think it really, for us, falls into three main aspects. The first is really around consolidating what we've got and keep doing what we are doing, and that's maintaining the relationships we have with the market leaders.
But it’s also further strengthening them and getting further embedded with their design teams, and then taking a platform approach from a technology perspective.
This means that we— as we get deeper into these solutions, we don't have to keep reinventing the wheel. We can actually leverage the platforms and the technology that we've got. Then when it comes to further R&D investment, this is where we start to look at how do we get a bigger slice of the action. I mentioned earlier that the focus has been on motion products to date, but the opportunity for us is to leverage the technologies that we have across the group and move from motors to motors, plus drives, plus encoders, plus controls, and then really capitalize on the, the full complement of technologies that we can bring to this market.
And finally, there is an opportunity here in terms of expanding geographic presence. There's a number of comments around the market for surgical robotics that suggests that the Asia-Pacific region is actually seeing stronger growth than other areas, you know, driven by increasing number of surgeries taking place in the region, significant investment in healthcare, healthcare facilities, and the equipment associated with it. Moving on from surgical robotics, I'm gonna talk about something quite different now, and that is medical mobility. We take a completely different approach to this. I think we're unique in so much as we have a technology unit that is dedicated to servicing this market, and that technology unit is driven by a strong social purpose.
The purpose is to enhance the lives of people who live with disabilities. When we come to serving that purpose, we draw on three core principles: insight-driven, One Allient, and innovation in drive, connectivity, and health. When we say insight-driven, this has to link back to our purpose, and, you know, really, if we're gonna say something so bold as we're gonna enhance someone's life, then we really better take steps to actually understand their lives. That flows on to look at our wider value chain, that the people who design the equipment, the providers who deliver it to the end user, and the clinicians who, who prescribe it. It's really about understanding that whole ecosystem.
One Allient is pretty straightforward. This is really leveraging the power of the technologies across the group to solve problems for our customers in this market in ways that no one else can. Innovation in drive, connectivity, and health are three areas that our users have given us feedback on to say that's important to them. These bubble up as features in our products, and it's probably best served if I give you a couple of examples. When we talk about drive, this might refer to the drive algorithms that control the motors, that provide a smooth, safe drive experience that makes our users feel safe and secure.
From a connectivity perspective, the type of things we talk about here are the wireless connectivity within our Control Solutions that enable wireless programming. Health might be around the seating Control Solutions that are incorporated into the system that drive towards better health outcomes for the users. From a market perspective, it's a very different story to surgical robotics, but it's still attractive for us, and there are some similarities. If we look at the market drivers, current stage is it is a much more stable, conservative market than, say, surgical robotics, but it is growing, and it's growing at a steady rate, and it also has strong drivers associated with it.
I've talked about the aging population, I've talked about greater expectations around activity and well-being, but also increasing need for diversity and inclusion, and accessibility is driving a need for equipment in this space, and as a recurring theme, technological advances. They perhaps look a little bit different in this market, in so much as it's more about how do we deploy the latest existing technology to these applications, because this market is typically underserved. As we talk about future opportunities, you start to see some recurring themes here. First and foremost, we need to drive and continue to drive our market share with the market leaders.
We leverage One Allient, which is really about greater slice of the action here, and we expand our solutions from the Control Solutions that we have today, but we incorporate motors, we incorporate gears, and then we also have an eye on other complementary technologies to that scenario that could drive opportunity for future acquisitions. Ultimately, we expand the electronic Control Solution content on the chair. Today, typically, we sit at between 5% and 10% of a finished device, and we would like to be able to grow that, and I believe we can grow that to around 15%. We've talked a little bit about current state of what we do.
I've talked a little bit about two markets specifically that are attractive to us, talked about the healthcare trends that are driving the opportunity here. I thought just to close out, I'd like to talk about some of the reasons why we win. We can apply these to the whole medical industry. It doesn't have to be just about surgical robotics or medical mobility. The first thing is our strong foundation. In all the markets in which we play in medical, we have a strong customer base, and we have mature, close working relationships with those customers. The second reason we win is back to the technology, and there's some specific attributes for medical that are important.
High performance, yes, high quality is hugely significant in this space, which flows through to our ability to be compliant or help our customers achieve compliance. Then we need to customize to meet the needs of different markets from a common platform. Then finally, you've heard us talk in other presentations today about our engineering capability, and this plays out in the medical space as well. We have earned recognition as an innovator in this space as a result of that engineering expertise. When we talk about engineering expertise for medical customers, it's not just about simple subject matter expertise, it's actually about how we work as well.
Key to how we work to be successful in medical markets is around collaboration and working together, partnering with our customers, and ultimately connecting what matters. That is the end of my presentation. Thank you very much for taking the time to listen. I'll hand over now to Ashish.
Hi. Good afternoon. My name is Ashish Bendre. I'm a Corporate Vice President and Group President, located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with our TCI technology unit. I have about 25 years of experience in high power, you know, power conversion, primarily high power. At TCI for 12 years, and then joined the Allient family.
I have to.
Hear me okay? All right. My name is Ashish Bendre. Just to repeat, I am located in Milwaukee, part of the TCI technology unit. I'm a Group President at Allient. Joined the Allient family, have led the TCI business for 12 years, we joined the Allient family in 2018. If you look at what I'm gonna talk about today, start out with power quality, connect the dots back to what Ken said, the mega trends that Ken had mentioned earlier, how power quality is kind of the forefront of that. Look at a few markets, some critical markets that we serve, why power quality is so important in those markets.
Then I'll talk a little bit about why we win, what makes us, you know, what, what makes us stand apart from our competition. Then lastly, I'll finish with some growth opportunities. There's some new markets, new areas, and close out with that. Again, you've seen the House of Allient, and we have the three pillars: motion, controls, and power. I'm gonna focus on the power pillar. Again, our entry into this was through the acquisition in 2018 of TCI, as Steve mentioned. TCI has a long history in, in this area, 50-year established company, long relationships with critical electrical and machinery OEMs in our target markets.
That's the TCI side. Going back to the mega trends that are driving power quality. Ken mentioned electrification, right? Electrification of basically anything that's moving, whether it's vehicles, whether it's pumps, motors. You have energy efficiency. What does that do? That essentially is a driver towards electronics. Now you have this combination of lot electric loads, electrification, and electronic drives, that the issue with this is it causes harmonic problems and power quality problems, both when you connect to the grid as well as when you connect down to the motors. Right?
These are the, you know, as efficiency is great, you're, you're saving 60% when you go to a, to a motor drive combination, but the backside is, it has an impact on the grid. What power quality, improving power quality allows, you know, enables, is you can take your existing grid infrastructure, existing assets, and use them to their fullest capacity. Right? If you have bad power quality, you're sort of wasting available space on the grid. You know, that, that's not useful power. That's a critical feature. You can always add infrastructure, right? Make your infrastructure bigger, but that's got a pretty bad environmental footprint.
It's better to get more, the most out of your existing assets. That's sort of the driver with the big mega trends, how that's influencing power quality, 'cause as the grid gets stacked with EVs, with electrification, and you'll see some of the industries I talk about, that those trends are there embedded in those, in those industries. The first one I'm gonna talk about is data centers, right? This is, clearly a big boom industry. It started out with work at home, with during COVID, and has then just snowballed, right? With, AI, with big data, analytics. What's happening inside a data center?
Inside a data center, data are getting bigger, so massive installations, and the end product of a data center is heat, right? There is no real output, productive output, it's just heat from the servers. Where we are attached to this is the cooling systems for data centers are getting larger, bigger, and again, are smarter. They're electronic, which means they have a big impact on the grid. A big piece. For example, turbo compressors are now regularly 600–900 horsepower, right? These are massive machines, and there's multiple of these in a typical data center. You could have up to 10, right? You realize the level of power and the effect on power quality. This is where our solutions come in.
A big piece here is packaging, the, the ability to actually take our products and integrate them right into the end users, whether it's compressors, air handlers, solutions. I'll mention this, PQConnect. This is a differentiating technology for, for our business. All our products have intelligence, connectivity built in into the products. Essentially, it's really useful for this industry and pretty much across all of our market sectors. This is what separates us. Our competition has products. We have connected devices. Next area that we have a long history with and has enjoyed really good, good penetration, is natural resources. A characteristic of this industry is remote locations, which means your transmission lines are really long, which means power quality is really important.
The other thing we are seeing in this industry is the wells are deeper, which means the power quality of the motor is important. You need filtering on the output side. As these things get deeper, the horsepower levels are climbing, right? I mean, what used to be 50, 75 horsepower is now 600 horsepower, right? You need good power quality solutions to enable these things to work. Big driver here is clearly domestic production. Looking at another sort of what separates us in this market is we offer our product to the large players in this, in this space in the form of kits, right?
They're component kits that they can integrate into their packages. A lot of times when you look at your established natural resources companies, inside their cabinets, there'll be our product. PQConnect, the thing I mentioned earlier, is really important here because these locations are remote. Having the ability to get data, predictive maintenance, just operational data is absolutely critical. The last market area I'm going to touch on is water. If you look at the water infrastructure in, in the United States, you know, they're aging treatment plants, and with infrastructure investment upcoming, there is a lot of activity in this area.
A lot of these are located in, you know, sort of, kind of fixed, densely populated urban areas, where you're upgrading, you know, water treatment plants to the latest and greatest technologies. Downside effect to this is the latest and greatest means big electronic loads. You need harmonic solutions, or it'll affect power quality for all your neighbors in that dense urban area. These are public projects. There's a big uptick due to the infrastructure investments. What really helps us here is there are sort of two broad categories of solutions: active and passive. Depending on where your water treatment facility is located, your end solution could be a combination.
It could be active, could be passive, or it could be a combination of the two. This really enables sort of all communities to have clean water and allow those plants to be located really in dense neighborhoods. Why we win? I would say the critical differentiator for us is PQConnect. It's patented, proprietary intellectual property that takes our devices, and they are truly smart and connected devices. I talked a little bit about having the combination. We're the only U.S. supplier of passive and active filters. When a customer approaches us, especially in water-specific applications, we can give them the best solution. It's, we're not sort of locked into one technology or the other.
The last thing, and this I think is really important, especially as electrification accelerates, is the size, right. We, our products have the highest power ratings across the technologies, which means for a customer, it's a single-point solution. You know, the, the larger filters you can provide, you can get a one-stop shop, one installation that solves your problem. I mentioned packaging. Talk a little bit about growth strategies and expansion. Steve mentioned the complementary acquisition philosophy. Power quality is a global problem, right. It's, it's across the world, across the globe, and there's lots of target-rich, you know, acquisition opportunities to pick up geographic business.
New products and technologies that are, you know, dynamic voltage regulator, UPSs, these are very adjacent to, to the markets, the technologies we have today. Medium voltage, right? As these loads are getting bigger, the power levels, technology is transitioning to higher voltages. That's another opportunity. Lastly, the biggest thing here is as we focu into the vertical markets and think about connecting what matters with, with Allient. In those three verticals, there's tremendous opportunity to bring in technologies from other pillars within, within Allient. One market I do wanna touch on, and it's expected to have phenomenal growth moving forward, is chargers, EV chargers.
If you think about EV chargers, especially the large ones, they're gonna be located by interstates in the middle of nowhere, right? That's where people gonna pull in and charge their cars within 20 minutes. You think about the electrical footprint of it, it's a lot like our natural resources industry. These are remote locations with very high power levels. I believe that market's on the horizon, and as EV charging, as that industry takes off, at some point, there's gonna be a big opportunity for power quality. With that, turn it over to Manoj.
All right. Well, good afternoon, everyone. My name is Manoj Mehta. I'm the President of FPH. I've been at the helm of FPH since 2017. We're a recent vertical market acquisition, at Allient here in 2022. I'm excited to be here today to speak to you about the defense vehicle market and how the technologies that we're able to bring to bear makes us sort of that vertical market that's the nexus of technologies as part of the Allient family, through our light-weighting electrification solutions. We've grown as a company by being very innovative and an integrator of innovative products, and solutions that go on to that end customer base, the defense market.
Our deep understanding of the industry, as well as our dedicated engineering and manufacturing teams, they really set us apart, along with our deep, deep relationships with our customers. It's a new sales channel opportunity that we are able to bring to bear as part of the Allient family, where we're able to leverage all three pillars, of the allied markets, of the Allied Controls, Power, and Motion Systems for the industry needs now and in the future. By becoming part of Allient now, we have access to a whole new universe of products, which we're able to bring to bear into this industry.
The world is moving more towards electric vehicles. I know we've talked about that a few times in earlier presentations, the defense industry is no different. Our electronic fan systems and our electronic ram drive systems, which I'll be talking about in a little more detail shortly, are two great examples of bringing different members of the Allient family of technologies together into an integrated solution for the end customer. That, along with our lightweight material, our advanced materials, technology, it really makes an excellent complement to some of the other base technologies that we're able to bring from other parts of the Allient family.
It really makes us a pure play to our customers because the solutions are so unique, combining these different types of technologies that give them multidimensional benefits. The U.S. Army plans to reduce vehicle emissions on their, on their on their vehicle products by 2035, through hybrid systems and electric vehicles.
Beyond that, they have a target to get to zero emissions by 2050. Programs like StrykerX and AbramsX are good examples of high-voltage systems, 600 + V systems, that are in the future. These initiatives really fit perfectly with what we are able to produce as an integrated system, now that we have access as part of the Allient family. When we look at electrification and why it's so important to our end customers, especially for the future of our defense forces, I think it's really important that we first look at some of the technology that we're replacing in the older hydraulic systems. They tend to require more heat management, they have limited precision control, higher failure rates due to lines and hoses.
The engine is required to be running to run those systems, which has an environmental impact, and it also gives the vehicle a high noise profile. There's also secondary environmental issues that go along with hydraulics, with regards to the dirty nature of the fuels and some of the parts that are in their systems. With electrification, we're able to overcome these challenges and do even much more than that. For example, our solutions are lighter weight. They take up less space claim. Inside the vehicle architecture, they're far, far less complex. They have higher reliability because you're using cables instead of hoses.
We've reduced logistics by going electrification. For hydraulics, you know, there's a large maintenance component to that, which adds costs to the end user. For example, the U.S. Army. You gotta purge systems, you've gotta manage the particulate in the fluids that come out of those systems, where we don't have to do that with our electrification. Our systems can operate with power on demand, the customer just basically pushes a button, and the vehicle batteries can operate our systems. It gives us a secondary tactical benefit, where, if you know, the vehicle is disabled or the engine's not capable of running, you can still open and close, say, one of our ramp door products to allow troops to evacuate to safety.
Beyond that, with the engine not having to function with ours and ours running off the battery systems, we're capable of giving another tactical advantage, which is stealth mode. The vehicle can actually operate under stealth mode without having to have the engine run. If you're moving into, you know, a, a battle situation or a, a covert operation, you can park the vehicle, not have it running, you can deploy for the mission, and you can open and close the ramp door as an example, to allow troops to come back in without creating a noise footprint for the opposition to target. I'm gonna take a closer look at ramp drive systems. Again, replacing legacy parts, like the hydraulic systems that are currently in a lot of ground-based vehicles.
We became part of Allient in 2022 as an acquisition, but our relationship as a strategic partner goes back to 2012, and this is one of the first product lines that we worked on together, where we were able to put together this upper-level integrated solution. Basically, we started with standard motors, then we moved down the value chain by continuing to add things like gearing, brakes, bringing it to a more complex assembly. At that point, we would take that and militarize those components to meet all the mil standards required in industry. Then from there, we take the next step, and we go on to integrate it into a full solution that can actuate the ramp door.
Really, our customers simply push a button, and then we take over from there. Our software controls the unlocking and locking of the pins. It controls coordinating the motors and the electromechanical systems to actuate a 500+ kg door at whatever speed is required by the military in regards to opening and closing that ramp door. All the while, reducing space, reducing weight, improving reliability, and then adding the fail-safe capability, as well as the stealth mode capability. Another example is the electric fan system, and I think this is another good one to talk about, because it's an example of taking a different set of technologies from a different set of TUs inside the Allient family and bringing them together into another integrated solution for our customers.
We use our advanced materials TU, producing products that can manage airflow. These products are, again, lightweight, reduced space claim, and because we're able to create these very complex geometries, can improve performance of the system. That, along with another technology, our ThinGap TU, creates a high-performance, non-cogging motor, and that's also another recent acquisition that we were able to draw technology from. It's a proven technology, and it's a fielded technology, and we're able to take that, and as the motor moves at higher speeds, it performs, it actually improves performance, which is a significant differential advantage. We're able to combine those two technologies into our electric fan system.
We package the solution together, and it improves performance for the unit itself and the vehicle. In addition to, because these technologies are already fielded and proven, it's a very low risk, high reward type of situation for our customers. In the military, that's extremely important to them. They need reliability, you know, 'cause failure is not an option, and that's why these technologies are so important when we're able to combine the two together. Why do we win? I think it's pretty clear from the two examples that I gave, but we really create that fully integrated solution where our customers can rely on them. We produce greater tactical advantages for the vehicle with those products.
We improve reliability, and we reduce weight and space claim, all the while driving towards the Army's aggressive initiatives for zero net emissions. Another technology I want to talk a little bit about today was our Advanced Materials Group. I touched on them a little bit with the fan, but I wanted to go in a little more detail. Again, in this technology base, we're able to replace traditional technologies like metallics with leading-edge advanced materials that reduce the overall mass of the component, thereby reducing the mass of the vehicle while increasing strength and durability. These things can be 2–3x stronger than the existing, old, old metallics.
Why this is important? Well, because there's no military vehicle out there right now that's too light. Vehicles can be prohibited based on their weight from accessing certain geographic areas because of bridge loads, air transport, air drop. We're able to help them overcome these challenges by removing weight from the vehicle. It gives them secondary benefits like improving fuel efficiency, getting better range out of the vehicle, especially when you're planning operational missions. They have the ability to take that weight savings and use it for whatever they need, adding more armor, adding other technology to give them an advantage over the opposition out on the field of battle. Increases mobility and maneuverability as well.
Some of our formulas, we have the ability to create EMI shielding or electromagnetic shielding. What that can do is mask a component's electromagnetic signature that prevents it from being targeted by the opposition. I'm gonna play a short video here. It's a great example that demonstrates how we're on the cutting edge with our advanced materials. We provided the Army with a white paper as part of the Army Futures Command's call out to industry, looking for advancements in weight reduction and survivability. We won the award for innovative materials. It led to a further award and a further development of new product lines that are currently being applied to multiple programs across the Army's vehicle base.
Of 82 white paper submissions as part of the Army Futures Command Innovation Combine, FPH U.S.A. was selected to assist the Army Futures Command in providing the army with advanced lightweight materials with improved survivability.
Our desire to reach out to you and find innovation and really find some phenomenal ideas and technologies that really help not only the Army, but the country move forward.
As an industry leader in lightweighting technologies, FPH is honored to have been awarded this opportunity to utilize our already proven and fielded materials and expand upon its capabilities by adding additional survivability properties.
It's my privilege to announce the winners of the 2020 Army Futures Command Innovation Combine. I'll say in the category of Novel Materials for Weight Reduction and Survivability, the winning company is FPH U.S.A. from Roseville, Michigan. recognizes there is no vehicle too light, we always increase the need to maximize survivability on manned and unmanned ground vehicles. FPH U.S.A, lighter, faster, stronger. Tomorrow's technology, today.
I'll tell you, I get excited every time I see that video. Well, with our advanced materials, why do we win, right? Well, we can do virtually any shape, the complex geometries. We reduce weight while increasing strength, another huge advantage. We can make anything at nominal dimensions. It's basically perfect every time. And again, the new application of EMI shielding is a significant differentiator for us out on the battlefield. The breadth of capability, along with our rapid prototyping, married with this new range of technologies that we now have access to as being part of the Allient family, helps us develop new solutions very quickly and get them to market quicker.
Which is, again, keeping us in front of the competition and keeping our military in front of the opposition. When we talk a little bit about the nexus of technology, I think I've hit on that a couple of times, but when we look at the mid to long range market opportunities, we are positioned perfectly, right, to win these opportunities based on our lightweighting, as well as our electrification technologies and integrated solutions with our base level IP that we own. We also can leverage our past performance and our past relationships, 'cause we have very strong relationships with our customer base, the primes, as well as direct to government, on proven, fielded products.
Many of the programs on the horizon that we're seeing right now, we're already working with our prime customers in developing solutions in the early stages of these programs, which takes us to the next level when it comes to actually putting these on fielded units. Well, I'm trigger happy there. No pun intended. When we look at the future opportunities, there's three of them that I'm gonna touch on in a little more detail right now. The first one, these are, these are some opportunities where we're really seeing some opportunity for additional growth. The OPFOR program, these are training simulators of opposition vehicles.
The targeted production volumes are gonna be over 450 units. There's some additional variants that we're looking at beyond the first initial production runs. With service and the new variants, we're talking a program that can go all the way to 2050. With the current technologies that we have developed and ready to put on vehicle right now, and only the current technologies, we see an opportunity of over $140 million of revenues on the production runs alone. The next program is the XM30, formerly known as the Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle. Some of you may have heard of that. This is a program that fits underneath the Army's next generation combat vehicle platforms.
When we look at this program, we're looking at production runs starting around 2030. We're talking 4,000 plus vehicles. It's the replacement for the M2 Bradley. Again, it falls under that next generation combat vehicle platform. Again, with our current technology, so nothing new that we have in development right now, we're targeting over $435 million of opportunity on the production runs alone. The final one is the Robotic Combat Vehicle, the RCV. It falls under the NGCV program umbrella as well. These are vehicles that are completely autonomous, controlled by one of the, like an XM30 or a main manned vehicle.
They're like scout vehicles or escort vehicles, so they can prevent things like ambushes, deter them anyways, and guard the flanks of these manned vehicles as well. Production runs are targeting for around 2027. Again, with our current technology alone, we're seeing $30+ million of opportunity. When you look at these three programs alone, we're looking at $600 million+ of opportunity in our future. When you incorporate the opportunity we have to develop even new technologies that we have kind of in our hopper right now, as well as several other programs that I haven't highlighted here that we're also working on, we see being well north of $1 billion of opportunity in our future.
I wanna thank everybody for their attention. Really excited about the opportunity to speak to you today and go through some of the things that we're gonna be seeing into our future. The future's very bright in this sector, and we're really excited to be a part of it as part of the Allient family. With that, I'll hand it off to Geoff. I left it on.
Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Geoff Rondeau. I'm Allient's Vice President of Operational Excellence. I'm a 25-year veteran in the motion industry, the last 10 with Allied, now Allient. Through the, of course, the next couple of slides, I'm gonna take you through an overview of AST and how we're deploying that through a couple of recent examples, case studies, how we're deploying AST into the organization to drive operational outcomes. As Dick mentioned earlier, you know, we view AST, Allient Systematic Tools, as part of our core values, as part of our culture. You say, "Well, what is that?" It's pretty simple, right?
It's just a set of tools, processes that we use to eliminate waste in the business, simplify our business, simplify our processes, drive rapid, continuous improvement. If I take you through an overview and talk about, you know, how we leverage AST to drive operational excellence in the business, we've got a set of core tools. Like a lot of companies, we'll focus those tools on productivity, improvements in quality, delivery, cost. We drive that mentality not only on a shop floor, but in the front office as well, and talk about efficiencies in our transactional processes and driving improvements there. I'll take you through an example on a coming slide about how we also deploy Lean or AST into our footprint rationalization efforts in consolidating businesses.
What I really want to emphasize, though, Dick mentioned it earlier, but part of what makes Allied, Allient, different in terms of their approach to Lean is a much larger emphasis on bringing Lean AST into the growth side of the business. We use something like our seven alternatives process to be able to bring together a large group of people cutting across technology platforms, different functional areas of the business, and bring them together to brainstorm around new product development efforts. It's a really significant technology innovations for us. This also ensures that we're driving design for manufacturability, design for reliability into our processes, and puts our team into a situation where we really challenge them to consider creative solutions prior to major investments in capital.
I think in terms of what makes us successful with AST in the organization, it's really about our ability to deploy. The way that we do that is via our academy. We've got an online training module available to the global Allient employee population. If I take a snapshot and think about where we are today, at any given time, we have as many as 200 employees involved in the academy, across as many as 10, 15 global organizations. They're all learning AST in one common language. We're able to control the way in which the information is presented to the employees, right? We're not reliant on third-party facilitators.
So people are learning in a fairly common sense language, and it really helps us to drive a learning organization. Alice will talk about this. I think we, we also view it as, as a vehicle for talent development, right? This is the ability for people to grab hold of these initiatives, drive improvement in the business by taking a, an ownership position with AST. Okay, so a couple of case studies. The first here is kind of working capital oriented, and it's a recent example of how we used our plan for every part process to drive improvements in working capital in our mercare... Excuse me, in our mechanical steering product line.
To provide some context, our mechanical steering product's pretty material intensive, and from a, a backlog and a build material standpoint, it's pretty dynamic. We supply as many as 120 unique finished good items to customers with a very short three-week lead time. If you look at the current state, in prior to this effort, delivery rates are relatively poor, inventory levels are high, fairly complex planning process. Our approach to that problem is to put together a cross-functional team in a Kaizen format. That team then went and looked at what was really important in terms of driving the performance of that product line in an 80/20 rule.
We used our PFEP process to develop a combined management program. If you look at the outcome from that, we ended up focusing on 29 finished goods and 50 component parts that really drove that product line. In nine months post-implementation, we saw a 40% reduction in net inventory, eliminated a significant amount of square footage, 170 pallets from warehousing, and drove our on-time delivery performance from 78%-98%. This is an example of a fairly significant effort. A major initiative. We've got, you know, one or two of these ongoing in the business at any given time, drive 10 or more events like this in a given year.
Then below that, we've got just as many events going on at kind of the operational or TU level, driving similar initiatives. Ultimately, our goal is, as the organization matures, to really make these types of efforts part of how we manage the business on a daily basis. Okay? The last slide, my second example is a recent, is a recent consolidation effort to rationalize footprint and drive operating leverage. We have two businesses, two manufacturing locations in the business, both kind of mechanical in nature, both vertically integrated, making a lot of their own parts. Between the two, one in Twinsburg, Ohio, and another in Northern New York, consuming 160,000 sq ft of manufacturing space with over 90 employees.
In this case, we're able to deploy our operational excellence team to support the plant-level teams, develop a plan for consolidation, and use some of our tools from the AST toolkit, things like 5S. I talked about our PFEP program, driving point-of- use inventory to develop space to facilitate the consolidation. So if you look back at that project, it was a six-month burn for us to go, to move and consolidate those operations.
Post-implementation, we're now generating improvements with a 20% increase in sales per employee, a little more than 50% increase in sales per square foot, and we're generating, excuse me, we're generating incremental operating income that offset the project expense of that consolidation with a six-month return on investment. Okay. With that, I'll thank you for your attention, and I'll turn it over to Alex.
Thank you, Geoff. Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Alex Collichio. I'm the General Counsel, as well as Director of Corporate Human Resources here at Allient. I've been a member of Allient since 2022, and I'm a practicing New York State attorney as well for a very long period of time, at least long enough for my hair to match the color of my suit. As you've heard today anyway, that Allient is primarily a production and engineering company. Our industry is heavily dependent on ensuring that we're creating a quality product, ensuring that we're creating new technologies. This creates a reciprocal dependence on making sure that we're attracting and growing talent.
It's our employees that develop new technologies. It's our employees that produce our products. It's our employees that find the solutions for our customers. We have to ensure that we're growing and maintaining that talent. Today, I'd like to talk to you about how we're adapting Allient's talent strategy to the expectations of the workforce. Over the past couple of years, we've seen a global labor shortage. Now, this has been exacerbated by an aging population, as well as a greater inclination for the new generation to switch employers if they are presented with greater opportunities. All these factors combined have created a candidate market. With greater options, come greater expectations of employers by employees and candidates.
Candidates nowadays don't want to simply be hired into a job. They want to be hired into a career. They want investment in development from the employer, and with that investment development, they want advancement potential. They wanna make sure that they're not languishing in jobs for long periods of time. If you try to limit the ambitions of your employees, you will lose your employees. A lot of employers have found that out the hard way. Now, that doesn't mean that you have to put an employee in a position that they're not qualified for. That simply means you have to show a transparent career pathway for that employee to attain their personal career goals.
The question a lot of times is: How do we understand those career goals of these employees? Well, that's through engagement. The employees want to be engaged by their managers. They want to be able to be heard. They want to be able to feel that level of support from management. With those expectations, the question is: How is Allient's talent strategy meeting those expectations? How is Allient's talent strategy different from its competitors? That differentiation starts with our different elements of our talent strategy you see here on the slide. I'll start with recruitment, 'cause it all starts with recruitment, attracting talent to come to Allient. We are a global corporation. We've been extremely successful, we've been growing.
Our net revenue growth over the last 20 years has been enormous. Driven people want to come to a growing company. They want to be part of a winning team. With that growth, too, also comes advancement opportunities. Dick talked about the next generation of leadership. We have to make sure that we have an emphasis on skills development, make sure we're providing that investment to our employees, make sure that they're aware of that investment. Dick mentioned paying for value. Value is a key component of our culture. It's a key component of our promotional philosophy as well. We wanna make sure we're paying for value, not just tenure. We have a reciprocal value relationship with our employees.
They provide value to the company through new technologies, through their work ethic, through their creativity. We reciprocate by providing value in their career to them. Again, we can't talk enough about our culture as well. Dick talked about our One Allient, One-Team culture. That's a non-negotiable for us. We wanna make sure that we're attracting individuals that are a cultural fit for us. That means that there's no individuals. There's One-Team. We have to look at success as a shared outcome, a shared perspective. We don't want any office politics. We don't want any bureaucracy. We want One-Team striving for the same successful outcome.
Now, the question is: how do we foster that culture? How do we maintain it? Well, that leads me to my next element, which is engagement. We have to ensure that we, our employees, are engaged. We have to make sure that we're having a centralized and strategic engagement with our employees. Now, we can talk about our work and our diverse technologies. Now, that caters to the creativity of our employees. That makes sure that they're engaged, that gives them different options in their careers. We have nano-precision technology. We have all kinds of technologies that you heard today. If you're an engineer, that perks your ears up, that makes you wanna join Allient.
One of the central pillars of our engagement philosophy is our managerial philosophy. We want to make sure that we have a coaching and mentor relationship with our employees. We want them to view our managers as an asset to them, that the manager is providing value to the employees. We don't want the traditional view of managers, that they're simply out to control employees, that they're out to mitigate the risk of employees. We want the employees to view the manager as an asset. The manager has to have a regular communication. They have to build that trust and security.
They have to gauge the personal career goals of our employees. They have to ensure that there's skills gaps, that we're creating an advancement plan to reduce those skills gaps, making sure they're training not just for their current job, but for their next job, because, again, we want people within the Allient family to continue. The third pillar is growth. We obviously want to train our employees. We want to ensure that they have a career pathway into the next job, and we wanna make sure that they are understanding, and we have a transparent plan as to where that next level is to go. That's why we have transparent promotional ladders.
We wanna make sure that employees know what the next step in their career is. We wanna make sure that they know the next step, but also they know how to close that skills gap. We wanna make sure that we're creating those advancement opportunities for our employees. This is one of our unique promotional ladders here. I picked engineering for a reason. With engineering, our growth is highly dependent on making sure that our engineers are aware of their promotional lines, and this gives, again, different options to our employees. I won't go too into depth with this promotional line, but it's unique.
It's something that gives us competitive advantage. It shows employees growth. It shows employees the next step in their careers. Key takeaways about our value proposition to candidates as well as our employees. One our culture, One Allient, One-Team. You've been hearing that a lot lately, but that's non-negotiable for us. Two, a variety of interesting technologies. There's a lot of different potential and different career pathways and career fields that our engineers can go into, as well as other employees. Training, development, investment. We will invest in our employees. We'll make sure that they reach their full potential. Retention. We wanna focus on growth from within.
We wanna train the next generation of our leadership and have that managerial philosophy of serving as a coach and mentor. Again, our transparent career pathways that enable investment, that show exactly what the next step is, so there's no surprises for our employees. With that, I'd like to pass it over to our next speaker, Mike Leach.
Thank you, Alex, and welcome to everybody today. It's great to see so many familiar faces, faces in the audience today. For those that don't know me, I'm Mike Leach. I am Allient's Chief Financial Officer and Senior Vice President with oversight for most of the administrative functions within the company. I've been with Allient by approximately eight years now, a little over eght years, and prior to Allient, I—with a variety of organizations in financial leadership roles, but always with companies that were global, highly acquisitive, and focused on growth and continuous improvement. Let's quickly circle back to where Dick left off earlier this morning and who we are today and what we are gonna be in the future.
Certainly, I think everybody's relatively familiar with our financial profile. Allied or Allient is roughly a $560 million revenue company, generating over $23 million in net income and just shy of $76 million in adjusted EBITDA. Where are we headed in the future? We're very confident in our ability to drive growth to be a $1 billion company. We've been very public about talking about 100 basis points, annual margin improvement. Feel good about that, to the point where we think we can drive operating margins into the mid-teens and adjusted EBITDA into the high teens. How we accomplish that?
I think the playbook remains the same as what we've seen in the past, relative to driving organic growth at and above industry averages and rates. I think if you look back on Allient's success over the last five years from an organic growth perspective, you'll see that even during the pandemic period, the last five years, we've averaged about 8% or a little bit more of organic growth on an annual basis. Certainly, you know, it's critical to our strategy to be driving growth through strategic acquisitions. It's important to our growth, important to our margins, and it's important to what our technological offerings are as well.
Moving on directly to revenue, I think we have clearly, as an organization, demonstrated an ability to grow the top line, and we're very, very confident that we can continue a similar trajectory on a go-forward basis. As I just touched on, you know, a big piece of that will be organic growth beyond industry average rates. I think I referenced where we've been in the past, and just for your reference, industry rates from an absolute dollar basis in the motion control business, at least, has averaged about 3%-3.5%, so we've significantly outperformed. On a go-go forward basis, we think we can continue that with mid to high single-digit growth on a go-forward basis.
That growth in revenue and frankly, in margins, may not be linear, so I would caution you on that. That's, you know, alludes to what Dick touched on, to the various macroeconomic reasons and drivers that, again, not linear, but confident in the trajectory, overall trajectory. From a strategic acquisition standpoint, we've invested substantially over the last three or four years to build a team to execute our strategy. Steve, as you heard from earlier today, is a key part of that. I think, we've demonstrated that team's nimbleness and ability to execute with 10 acquisitions in the last six years and six just in the last two years.
Critical to that team's processes, as we've mentioned earlier today, has been a filter that we go through when we're analyzing opportunities. Again, we fully expect them to be margin enhancing, EPS enhancing, and cash accretive as well. We certainly expect what's core to our filter is that we're adding technologies for us to be able to drive higher mlevel solutions across the business. Certainly geographic expansion, where appropriate. Back in 2016, when we acquired Heidrive, is a perfect example of that. You know, we had a hole in our offerings in, let's call it, the Germanic region, that filled that hole nicely. Certainly expanding our customer base in target markets, especially in things like aerospace, medical, and what I'll call specialized or high-end industrial.
Touching on those last two points, I think, you know, our success in strategic acquisitions over the last few years being mostly focused on motion, is because it was a fragmented market. I think we see that same fragmentation within the power industry and the controls industry. We think the playbook applies to those pillars as well, and our ability to move forward in a target-rich environment for those type of opportunities. All right, let's talk about margins. How do we get there? Certainly, we think just sheer growth and volume will, you know, leverage the fixed manufacturing cost that exists within the business. We do have capacity in our facilities.
Sometimes it is constrained by lines and equipment, but we also have capital funding as a priority to expand those things where necessary and leverage the fixed costs that exist within the business with prudent capital expenditures. We'll continue to penetrate the niche markets that offer growth and higher margins. I just referenced them, right? We feel good about all the verticals that we operate in, and there are opportunities within all those verticals for enhanced margins. Again, A&D, medical, and specialty industrial offer the best opportunities we think that fit our technology the best right now. Certainly, again, I referenced margin accretive acquisitions.
Again, margins, EPS, and cash, and driving complementary technology that allow us to offer these higher-level solutions. You see that in recent acquisitions with Airex and ALIO, all fitting to that nature and driving opportunities for us to climb that ladder, if you will, from a solutions offering perspective. Jeff talked just recently here about AST and driving waste and cost out of the business. Certainly think we have plenty of opportunity to continue to do that. We have further opportunities to rationalize our manufacturing footprints. We have a long list of discrete projects at each of the TUs that we could drive.
In an area that we don't talk about as much, we think there's efficiencies and improvements to be made in the back end of the business that is rich with opportunity as well. As we grow, we're going to have additional buying power and enhance our strategic sourcing capabilities. This is another area where we've made investments over the last three, four years, building a strategic sourcing team. Unfortunately, we had to deal with the pandemic and the supply chain environment over the last couple of years. That team was very focused, fortunately for us, on ensuring supply, making sure we are able to deliver our customers, qualifying new sources, and finding alternative supply.
On a go-forward basis, while that is still present, I think they unlock our potential, if you will, to leverage our buying power as a broader group. They'll have a focus there. It's interesting, too, that there's a relationship to our engineering group as well, because you'd be surprised at how much time, effort, and energy the energy groups within our organization, and engineering groups within our organization had to focus on the similar problems, and that's alternative sourcing, requalifications with our, with our customers and the like. They're now unleashed to focus on what we want to drive here from a growth perspective to a much higher level.
We talk about leveraging our operating expenses to help drive margin as well. Certainly, I just referenced a number of those investments, also, you know, strengthening our support functions, adding systems capabilities to our group, and adding talent to the organization. A lot of that is on has been going on for the last three, four years, and we think we've built the platform, if you will, to absorb the next $100 million-$2 00 million in growth. We will not have to spend in those areas as aggressively as we have in the past to accomplish that growth. One caveat I'll make to that is that in engineering, we consider engineering the lifeblood of the company.
I think it'll be critical for us to continue investing in engineering at a pace similar to what we have done in the past. Lastly, I think there's opportunities, and we have discrete projects within our playbook here for the future to more effectively manage and optimize our tax rate and reduce borrowing costs, if you will, from a capital structure perspective, and delevering to improve our net income as well. Moving on here to cash generation, I think Allient has been incredibly strong from a cash generation in the past. Obviously, there's been a significant hiccup, if you will, here in recent months or the last couple of years with, with regard to supply chain disruptions and the pandemic.
We are seeing those improvements. As, as I stated earlier in the supply chain, we're seeing a more return to normal. There's still a ways to go, based on what we've seen in 2023 and what we're expecting to see the back half of this year in 2024, we're confident in our ability to drive into the future with, you know, cash flow conversion at greater than 95%. We'll continue to drive free cash flow growth with, you know, just simple revenue expansion. I think that's going to be incredibly powerful when we look at our projections, incredibly powerful.
As I mentioned, our supply chain improvements, you know, freight reductions, expedited freight reductions, pricing power, reducing lead times, all factors in driving bottom line improvements and improving our working capital situation. I think we've seen a 10% improvement in our working capital or in, excuse me, our inventory turns here in the last couple of quarters. I think in the short term, there's another 10% opportunity based on what we're seeing in supply chain. In the mid to long term, there's significant opportunities to improve inventory turns, and again, that will be the engine working capital improvements to drive the cash flow conversion I'm referencing here.
We have opportunities relative to DSO and DPOs. That fluctuates depending on our customers and who we're dealing with. However, I think we as an organization need to do a better job of matching our customer's expectation onto us, onto our suppliers, right? I think, I think there's power there in being able to leverage that situation more equally. That's so we're not the bank of Allied, if you will, for our customers. Lastly, I just wanted to point out that I don't think we're a very capital-intensive business, nor do we expect to be on a go-forward basis. We're typically spending 3%-4% of our revenue on capital expenditures.
Only 1% of that revenue level is really spent on maintenance CapEx. From a balance sheet perspective, I think we've demonstrated our ability to generate cash in the past, as I've said, and what we've done with that cash is delever the balance sheet. I think you're gonna find that we're gonna continue to do that. With cash flow improving, improving, I think you'll see a, a quick deleveraging of the balance sheet, particularly with our growing EBITDA power. We are very comfortable operating the business at 3x leverage. This is where we are now, given our cash flow dynamics. We certainly want to target to be at 2.5x or lower.
That said, our credit agreement does allow us to go to 4x leverage. I think that provides us flexibility, if you will, if the right acquisition or strategic opportunity comes along. Future cash flow projections, again, I think it's going to be very powerful, and it's highly supportive of this strategy on a go-forward basis. As we continue to grow in size and mature as a company, certainly other capital structures will become available to us, perhaps provide more efficient access to the market and allow us to execute strategy better than we are now. I'd also point out that we have been using equity increasingly as part of our deals.
We think that is critical, number one, to maintaining a healthy balance sheet, and number two, retention of the talent that we acquire, and getting buy-in relative to the One Allient culture and making integrations go more smoothly as well. Capital allocation, from my perspective, I think is pretty straightforward, with the priority being, you know, managing it responsibly to enable our strategy, and that strategy, obviously, is prioritizing growth. Again, generating cash and deleveraging the balance sheet is, is kind of mission number one, and that allows us to fund organic growth.
We talked about capital expenditures earlier, 75% of what we spend in CapEx is, is growth driven, a project in support of our customers with projects or new product wins. I think that level of growth expenditures you can expect in the future as well on a go-forward basis. The other place we as I mentioned, that we fund growth is through our operating expenses on the engineering line as well. M&A will be remain a critical priority for us to execute our strategy. It's critical to our growth. Of course, you know, I think we have a strong track record that we wanna maintain, of being very mindful of heavily using our strategic filter, being particularly diligent in what we pay from a multiples perspective.
I think you'll see that continue in order to provide maximum return to our shareholders with that utilization of capital. Lastly, I think we have, we'll maintain what we would consider a modest dividend program now and into the future, and that will be appropriately sized based on the size and the shape of the company. Wrapping up real quickly here, just kind of the key takeaways here. Driving growth to $1 billion in revenue. This is gonna be done through further penetration of the very attractive markets that you've heard everybody speak about today. Continuing to drive above average industry growth rates from an organic perspective, and being very focused on margin, EPS, and cash accretive acquisitions.
Two, just as importantly, continuing to drive our overall margins with 100 basis point improvements on an annual basis. We're going to accomplish that through improving our gross margins themselves and continuing to leverage our operating expenses, using the tools like Jeff talked about, Allied Systematic Tools, driving towards higher level solutions and focusing on margin accretive market verticals as well.
Lastly, we want to be nimble and financially flexible with regards to our balance sheet, and we're very confident of the powerful cash flow generation that is to come, and that we think that will allow us to prudently manage our balance sheet, while still providing the critical funding that we need to grow the company. I thank you for your attention. On that, I'll turn this over back over to Dick.
We're just going to really just kind of rehighlight- highlight for you, what you've heard today and so forth. I know we've had 12 presenters up here, 10 from the company. Deb counts twice. That's the 12. Okay. Just before we get, we'll quickly here, just to summarize for you here, as I—we mentioned the words earlier, the bold part of it, simplify to accelerate. You know, and you've heard some of that throughout the day. It get— becomes more sophisticated, simplified, and accelerate to make sure that we, you know, achieve the goals that we're setting out for the next generation here, within the company and for the Allient as we kick it off today.
Like, you may be like me, I went on the, looked at the stock to see how it was doing today, I couldn't find it. I was going, "What the heck happened?" It did move. The symbol's different, so. Speed of play, critical. Strengthen our balance sheet. Mike talked about that. We continue to work on that, develop that, we do think, as you can see here, the next step up is really the next step up in revenues, next step up in profitability that we see ourselves creating. Key takeaways from the House of Allient, expanded breadth and depth of our solutions. Hope you saw some of that today. It's very exciting.
Expanded content, that message kept coming through. Opportunity to continue to expand content in these target verticals. Core technology unit structure. The foundation was built off the core technology unit structure. That's gonna be retained as we layer on top the vertical market solutions. Create highly focused vertical markets. You've heard some of those, and as I mentioned earlier, we didn't repeat many that you've heard several times in the past that have helped us build the success of the company and will continue in the future. With this change and with this next step forward in the evolution of the company, we do believe that the revenue growth is going to occur.
We will meet those projections we gave you, and I'm very confident with the team that we have here, that, again, once again, we'll, we'll be up here celebrating our success. Now, before I turn it over to Deb, and she takes the rest of the time on us, I'd just like to say thank you to the entire Allient team. Thank you to you taking time out of August here in New York City to come and participate with us, everyone online. I'd just like you to give a little applause for those guys that worked so hard. All right. Go ahead.
Okay, before, before we. We're gonna start the Q&A session now. I will remind those that are on the web, that you can ask questions through the web portal, and we will be entertaining them here. We've got a quick stage changeout that we need to be doing. I need my leadership team up here now. I just lost my CEO.
She left.
Can I do a camera check on my CFO? He's on the stage. Camera.
Can my production crew move the camera to catch my CFO on the stage? It's not panning. Hmm? Now I see it. Okay. All right, very good. If I can find my CEO. I'm not seeing any questions yet through the web. Somebody did ask about the size of Ken May's shoulders and whether or not he's a football player.
Had to be urgent.
I'll remind my, my guests here in our physical audience that, please wait until the microphone gets to you to ask a question so that, you can be heard on the webcast as well. All right, our starting question is over here, as you would imagine. Yes. Greg?
Thanks. Greg Palm and Craig -Hallum. First off, I remember the days of little or no information disclosure, so the fact that we're sitting here at a investor analyst day with a 115 page slide deck is pretty amazing. Thanks for all the useful information. I wanted to start with growth a little bit and that kind of bridge to $1 billion and focus first on the organic side of things. Help us understand the opportunities, you know, for, you know, new customer growth, for, you know, wallet share expansion in your existing customer base. Then, you know, maybe just a little bit about certain end markets or verticals that you think you're best positioned for, you know, some of that outside growth.
Sure. I'll let Mike, you know, go through the high-level math of the organic growth and where that takes us, and then what has to be built, and then we'll reach out to several of the individuals here and let them talk specifically about some of those opportunities.
Yeah, from an organic growth perspective, again, I think it's going, you know, the, the playbook is repeating what we've done in the past on a go-forward basis. So, you know, I think 50%-60% of that growth will come from organic growth, and much like the past, 40%-50% of it will come from acquisitive growth.
You talked about a lot of growth. We'll start with you, Manoj.
Yeah. Again, as part of the defense sector, what we're seeing some of the programs that we talked about, again, they just kind of scratch the surface for us. There's several other programs that we're also on with our customers. I think one of the big benefits that we have is we're more of a unique play in the market, where we are able to kind of combine non-traditional technologies to provide additional advantages. Where that positions us on those programs, it gives us that opportunity to get in early and to grow content as we move forward, and that's been one of our strategies from the beginning of the company. We use those sales channels to bring in other technologies.
We may start off with a certain content on a vehicle, and then we generally expand it to 2– 3x more. We're seeing more and more programs coming online now with kind of the condition of where things are in the world right now, and how militaries are expanding their spending and governments are expanding their spending. You can see that in the programs that we talked about, but there's other ones that are coming up. Again, I didn't cover today, but they're all in the public domain that you can look at. That's ground-based alone. Beyond ground-based, we also have, as part of Allient, significant penetration in other areas of the military market, and also geographically, now we're starting to see some expansion of growth.
I think we're really being, to somewhat of a degree, a little conservative in what our estimates are. I think that there's even more opportunity out there than what we talked about today.
Go ahead, Helmut.
Yeah, I can talk a little bit about Europe. I'm from Germany. You know, where is the situation in Germany? Where is the situation in Europe? We have to say we have to be better as the normal competition, because we have a war, of course, and we have a critical situation in Europe, but we worked over the last years to be better. You saw our investments, and I can say I'm be with with Mike. My understanding is, for Europe, our chance, what we have in Stockholm, what we have in Porto, what we have in, in German, we can grow much better because we invested already over the last three, four five years.
All what I show, the projects, is not done by one or two years develop. We invested for trucks, electronics for trucks. We invested over the last five, six, seven years. The success will start over the next month and maybe half or one year. This is the reason why I will say a little bit, maybe 60%-70% is from the Europe standpoint, so internal growth.
I think from a, a medical perspective, the, the organic growth is, is really looking at. Can you hear me? Oh, there we go. Sorry.
Yeah, from a medical perspective, organic growth, I think, is really focused on, on market share and that continued engagement with the leaders in the sector, and just share shift in that perspective. The second piece of it, I think, goes to how we, you know, leverage the group to sort of bring more technologies into that same space. The third piece of it, I think there is a regional element. Those, you know, medical applications that are pretty broad, there are some specific regions that I think we're underrepresented, and then we have the opportunity to expand through those.
I mean, clearly, there's share expansion, right? Which is, if you look at data centers, getting more of the primes on board. To do that, you actually have to offer something that's different. I believe we have that with, with PQConnect. That ability to essentially have a smart device, be able to monitor and control remotely, I think that's what's gonna unlock that traditional market share. The industries we are in are growing and are stable. It's a combination of being in stable, growing industries and with having something that really gives you a pathway to attracting more, a larger customer base.
I guess, that, that's all helpful. Thanks. On the non-organic side of things, as I think back, a lot of your acquisitions have been done in this, you know, era of very low interest rates. I'm curious, in this, you know, period of higher interest rates, higher cost of capital, does that change your appetite at all, or maybe how you think about funding future acquisitions?
Sure. Go ahead. I like doing that.
Well, you know, well, I, I referenced earlier, right, we're using equity as a larger component of what we've done in the past, so certainly that's a path there. I think the other thing I would point out that's important, particularly as we de-lever, that even at current debt levels, we have approximately 45%-50% of our debt hedged at levels from two years ago, so low, the low points in the interest rate market. That won't last forever, but, you know, there's another two, three years of runway on those hedge positions that, you know, will enab-enable at least in that period of time, maintaining that lower cost debt structure.
I guess I would just add to it that as interest rates have gone up, we've also seen multiples begin to trend down. I think there is the balance. It's, if you look at it over the long term, a balance of the capital allocation as well as the multiple of what you're paying.
Anyone else? Ted.
It's Ted Jackson from Northland, I'm just gonna take it to the margin levels, since we talked about growth. You know, you're talking about adding 100 basis points of margin on an annual basis going out over the longer term. When you look at that margin, and you talk about the different drivers, some of it was better capacity utilization, better leverage. Are there any particular end markets or pillars where you see the bigger drivers of that margin coming from?
Sure. Well, I would say to you that we've mentioned that our most recent acquisitions are all have all been margin accretive. That doesn't mean they've all come out of the chutes doing that, and that we do have some. You know, there's a, there's a little bit of a gap, and, you know, we go back to, we talked about Spectrum. You know, Spectrum has gone up into a big supply chain issue last year. Spectrum kicked in this year. Margins and utilization of basically leveraging your fixed manufacturing overhead to generate those margins, we see a big uptick there.
I would tell you that, you know, one of the real bright spots from an acquisition standpoint, where we do think margins are gonna have an uptick, and it's because of content, program size, maximizing program size is in the A&D business. I think Manoj talked quite a bit about that and the opportunity there and see that what's in front of us. It's in front of us. It definitely, the margins we're looking at there, because of the content and the IP that we're bringing, and we're leveraging into those applications, will definitely drive it up. We tend to look at specialty applications within certain markets as well.
If you get into... Again, come back from where the company was founded. We started out as a motor company, and weren't necessarily able to generate those types of margins. I think as we continue to develop and evolve, you know, we're less concerned about landing the big order, more concerned about landing a better quality order. That's part of our efforts today, is looking at what's the quality of the margin that's being generated? You know, what's the CapEx that's being required to invest in it to get the return we're looking for?
With the programs that you heard today, and that we're, we're laying out here, and the increased pull-through, I think we have the ability to increase margins in almost every aspect of our business, both from the gross and the operating level standpoint.
Then a follow-up would be on the M&A. You know, you highlighted medical, aerospace, and high-end industrial as, you know, key target markets for you with regards to go forward M&A. When you look at those and you find, and, I'd like maybe a better, a deeper discussion into why each of them is attractive. Is it, you know, is it market size? Is it margin structure? Is it, you know, just maybe a little more color around with each one of them. You know, why have you selected those three verticals as the really kind of the most attractive and, and most important to you? Thanks.
Great question. First off, I think we have to clarify that it's not that we don't see all of them as being attractive, but we talked about diversification. I think diversification was a very important part of what we were looking for in the next acquisitions that we had, had, had taken on in the last few years. You go back, I don't know, four or five years ago, and you look at the percentage of sales in the vehicle market, it was overweighted for our portfolio. We decided at that point in time that we wanted—i world, would sit there and say we have 25% of our business from those four operating business sectors, let's call them.
From vehicle, and some of that gets camouflaged. Manoj talked about ground-based vehicles. Where do we put that? Is that defense or is that vehicle? The technology that's being utilized in ground-based vehicles is coming from the commercial side, so we're leveraging that as well. It really was a conscious effort to say: Let's level this thing out. Let's be able to ride through the ups and downs of the individual markets and weather them. All, ideally, 25% in all, higher level of sophistication in the applications, more content. Some of it, it's just we will dig them out. We'll work on digging them out. Let Steve talk about how he does that.
How do we dig out applications? How do we identify, you know, like, the process we went through after we acquired TCI, how many companies we looked at, what our, you know, the profile looks like? We can talk about that, then how we work our way through to finding those that we truly want to go get. You'll see many times that we will dig out those acquisitions, and we will groom them over a number of years. Of course, we get some that come to us through the investment banking community and some we've read itself. Talk about a little bit the process of how we will look at particular, you know, for example, like TCI came on board.
What did we go through there? Just maybe give them an idea of how many companies and profiles we looked at, and why we decided to go after Sierramotion.
Sure. Just pre-COVID, right before everything hit, is when I stepped into the role, and myself, Dick, Ashish, and a few other team members sat down, and we had a targeted list of about 120 companies on the targeted list. We went through the list, and we ranked them A through Z, and we decided to start calling and getting attention from these companies. "Hey, listen, we're out here. We're looking and seeing what the, the market is and what you guys are interested in, and talking about what the future may be for a partnership with the companies." Some went very well. Some were like, "We're not interested at this time," but the process continued.
I think depending on the market, and where we were, and then when COVID happened, everything shut down, right? Everyone saw that. There was not a lot of action going on. When it came back, the multiples were so high that we weren't interested a lot of the time in participating in some of those discussions because they were just astronomical. That's some of the ones that we've attacked just from an internal standpoint. There have been ones that have come to us. Spectrum has been one of them, a couple other ones. I think my favorite example is the FPH that, that we got with Manoj and Dave and the team over at FPH, and that's been a 10-year partnership between our, our companies.
We sat down one day and just had a discussion about what does the future hold for our companies from a partnership standpoint. That fell down the road of, "Hey, maybe we should become One-Team, as we're partners, but let's become under one roof." That worked out very well for us and into that sector that we want to stay a little more on the defense side. When it comes to the controls and, and the motion, there's not specific one sector we're saying, "Hey, we're going to focus just on this."
If, if something comes our way or we see something out there that we'd like to go attack, we will. It's just kind of timing a lot of the times. Like I said, at one point or another, there's four to five different opportunities on our plate at any point in time, and we decide when the right time is to pull the trigger.
The other reason for FPH is we thought they were making way more money than us, so we tried to get some of that profit.
We were doing all of the work, they were making all the money.
Yeah, that's, that's, that's our, that's our.
So...
Hi, I'm Joe Hanzlik with Confluence. We're just an investor in you guys. Just as far as when you look at your, your organic growth rates, you mentioned mid, mid-single digits in there. I've heard, you know, different folks, it obviously looks like there's a lot of tailwinds with defense, obviously with the medical side, with some of the double digits sort of growth rates there. What's growing slower on the other side? What part of industrial or auto is just, is, is bringing that growth rate down?
Well, he's the one who mentioned this, so he can answer again.
Yeah, again, a vehicle is a good example, again, you got to get really specific relative to the subvertical or the niche that you're operating in, right? I would tell you that the last year or two, certainly commercial automotive has been down significantly. I think we've publicly stated, you know, some pretty substantial contract wins in that specific space with ramp-up periods that just haven't yet occurred, right? We're starting to see it now. We're confident, this year into next year, we'll be at full, for full production ramp rates. In the past, like we're talking, to talk about the last couple of years, there's something that was a drag on it. there's been periods for aerospace, has a drag both on the commercial side, again, that was impacted by the pandemic.
Then I think in defense, you know, it's, you're subject to some product, program timing and budget. You know, you'd be surprised how much pent-up demand exists because of, the conflict in the Ukraine right now, but how much has yet to release, right? We've seen tremendous amount of activity relative to quoting, both current programs and future programs. I think there's so much struggle out there in the market with the primes being able to produce and manufacture some of that demand, and sometimes it just doesn't flow down into our marketplace. We're starting to see that come back, and again, as I said, the level of activity is tremendous, and certainly, you know, a tailwind from a non-organic standpoint exists as well.
Great. Thanks. If you were to look forward, like, three to five years and just, you know, obviously, medical is pretty small yet. You've got aerospace and defense is still pretty small relative to the other size of the other two pieces. What's your biggest one? Is industrial still your, your big one? Is it A&D? You know, what's that look like that mix, do you think?
Well, as I said, industrial is the largest today, and it surpassed vehicle. That happened through acquisition. Vehicle's number two, I think, medical is number three, and aerospace and defense is number four. As I said, our goal would be, in an ideal world, to have those all equal, that's where some of the emphasis was said. We're underweighted in medical, we're underweighted in defense. We were maybe a little underweighted in industrial. We put a little more emphasis there and said, "Let's get that balance within the company." I would tell you, that's, that's what you should expect here. Mike is 100% correct about the tailwinds that I think are yet to come. We've been known to be a little bit conservative in, you know, what we go out and state.
I would, I would tell you that, you know, with the munitions programs, for example, those got to kick in. They're using them, they're using them at a pretty rapid pace here. At some point, there's been a significant amount of quoting, matter of fact, you remind me, after this meeting, I will ask Phil about how that's going. Hey, Phil. He's in the back.
Last thing I've got is just on the, on the margin improvement. You guys have had the 100 basis point annual margin improvement expectation. Obviously, the, the COVID supply chain issues have hit you as hard as, as has hit all the other manufacturers. How much of that's gonna come from gross margin versus on the operating side?
What do you want to do? Half and half?
Yeah, I think, I think half and half, and where I referenced organic growth versus acquisitive growth, I think margin dynamics probably slip a little bit, right? 60% of the growth may come from organic growth, but I think maybe 40% of the margin improvement will come from organic growth opportunities versus as, you know, as focused as we are on margin accretive deals, right? I think the power of that growth that comes from acquisitive growth is gonna provide a nice lift to margins, much like, you know, we saw with the recent acquisitions in the last, let's call it 18 months.
I didn't mean to be flippant by saying: What do you want to do, half and half? I would say to you that Mike has mentioned this in, in the past, too. Mix does play a big role. As the tailwinds in some of the higher margin areas for us start to kick in, you can see that shift. Gross could be greater, but if it's not kicking in and we're doing more of the lower margin business, it's gonna, it's gonna drag it down. Over time, the balance, I don't think it's unfair to say it's gonna come, you know, half from gross and half from operating leverage.
Hi, Brett Kearney from Gabelli Funds. Thanks for the event today, and thanks for, the depth of talent you've brought.
Thank you, Brett.
Question, you know, a lot of the mega trends we've spoken about today are present globally, but probably arguably most pronounced in North America. I think some, some of your recent acquisitions have probably strengthened your position in North America. I guess my question is: How do you think about some of the geographic expansion opportunities that are out there for the business relative to the risks in the more uncertain geopolitical environment?
Great question. Let's start with APAC. We assigned Simon to really lead up and take a look at that region, and we'll start off by saying, you know, our business in Asia is, is not. It's maybe 5%. We do think there's still significant growth opportunities there. We have two facilities in China, but we do need leadership, and as we look at the size of the company and the need and the requirement for us to have people wear multiple hats as we expand into, from a size standpoint, and to the requirements of support, he now has APAC. Maybe you can fill us in what your thoughts are on what's going on over there?
Sure. I guess, in part, to build on what, what Dick was just, just saying, you know, leadership, in, in the region is, is one part of it, but I think the other piece that's really important is, is focus. When you, when you look at a region like, like Asia, it's easy to think of it as one region, and everything is the same, but actually, it, it's multiple countries. You know, China is not Asia, Asia is not China. It's, it's a, it's a mix of, of, of countries, all have different drivers, and it creates a, a mix of, of opportunities.
I think, for us, it's about really focusing on what matters where, and then aligning all of the things that you've heard about in the portfolio today to the opportunities in the places where they actually, you know, make the most difference to us.
Maybe Helmut wants to, do you understand the question about expansion in Europe?
Yes, the expansion into, in Europe. I can say we talked already about the margin. I can also talk also for Europe and what we did and what we do currently, we reduce the automotive value. We increase industry. We have a company in Portugal, it's more a low-cost region. We have also in Europe a production company in Czech Republic. It's also low-cost regions that we increase the industry, like in Stockholm, like in Dordrecht, in Netherlands. We bring the production in this facility to Czech Republic and also to Porto.
That we say, in the end, we reduce a little bit the automotive because the margin is not so high, and we increase the industry. This is a clear strategy, what we go on and do very strong. Only, for example, two years ago, maybe two and a half years ago, we had in Porto 100% automotive. End of this year, 40% is only for industry. This helps to increase our margin, not only to increase the price and go to the customer, because in the end, we are not alone in the world. We cannot always increase the price and price. We have to find the right strategy.
In which location we produce which products, and increase and change a little bit from lower margin projects to higher margin. This is the strategy, what we do very strong in Europe and also in North America. We have also changes from North America to Mexico. I cannot say, or I will not say too much because this is more your business, but we are always in discussion, and this is really a point what we drive very, very fast.
I think just to add on to that a little bit, I mean, and there's, again, it goes back to the gross margin question and the operating margin question, because if you're dealing in, let's call a market like automotive, with high volumes and high revenue, your operating profits can be fine, but your gross margin profile is gonna be challenged. You have to work the balance, and that's why we sit there and say: There really needs to be a balance here and understanding that they can both be good. The profile is gonna be slightly different.
Great. Then maybe one for Steven. I guess, given your level of engagement, with business owners out there, what are you seeing now in terms of, folks' willingness to, I guess, engage and, potentially transact? Obviously, it's, we're through COVID, but still pretty uncertain environment. It sounds like for the type of assets you go after, you know, very proprietary relationships, less well picked over, who do you compete against? I guess availability and then competition for deals.
It's a good question, Brett. I think when, when we're up against someone, I guess we don't always know who we're up against. We see sometimes if we're... I'll tell you this. So far, if we want to attack something, we haven't lost it. If we really want it, we're gonna go after it, and we're gonna win it. We have a team behind us that, you know. I jokingly say, "Mike's job is to bring the money in, my job is to spend it." We haven't so far in that process, going after someone that we've lost, that we really want.
Certainly, during the time for us, when the multiples were through the roof, we were in the, we were in the room talking to them, said, "Okay, well, this is no longer for us." When it comes to who we're targeting, I believe that's what you asked, is, is it kind of depends on where we are. Timing is everything in this. We reach out, and sometimes... ThinGap is a great example. We first reached out prior to COVID. Talking to John Baumann and the team there, there was some interest, and then obviously, things fell off for a little bit. Two to three years later, we come back to the table, have another conversation, and the process starts over again. It's cyclical.
Sometimes they're ready to go, and sometimes they're, you know, on the back burner for a little bit. Also, where we are at times. Did we just do another acquisition? There was, you know, our first of the six, you know, Simon came before that with DCL. They came in 2020. That was the start. Then, as we kind of rolled through, we did back-to-back days. ORMEC was on a Wednesday, and then ALIO was on a Thursday. Our legal team, prior to Alex taking over and the rest of our team, were up for 24 almost straight hours to accomplish these deals. So it's all about timing, really, and when you're in the market, you're talking to people left and right, and you know, where are the callbacks coming from?
Who are the groups you're working with at the time? We do have stuff that comes to us, and I think it all depends on, you know, the timing of the things as well. We are talking to people regularly. I mean, we could probably turn around tomorrow if we wanted to and acquire another company. Just it's all based on timing and where we are at the current time. I got to double-check with Mike and Dick to make sure that.
Well, I would-
We're okay to do it.
I would add, what, what I have to add to this is he's talking about timing, but and he's saying that we could do something tomorrow. I will tell you, he gets many people contacting him, and they're interested to do deals with us. It's more about, like he said, "Are we ready? Do we want to do that deal?" The other thing that sets us apart, and I want to say this, this is a really strong element and has been of our acquisition strategy. It goes back to the first acquisition we did, and to the next one and the next one, and it keeps following, especially when you did acquisitions in Europe. The U.S. companies didn't necessarily have the, you know, a lot of they, they weren't respected in Europe.
They would come in, and they would impose their will on companies. They would change everything. Even Helmut, when we can go back to 2016, when Helmut said he's not gonna come to work for us. He would never work for an American company. It's, it's the culture that we have within the company and the building, the relationship with the seller. In many cases, we're buying private companies who the founder started. I will tell you, you have to play that family piece with them very strongly, and we can do that. We have a track record and a history. We can show that we didn't walk in here, buy you 1 day and close you the next. Okay? We gave you the chance to run the company. We left cultures in place. We have a long track record of that.
In Europe, that's played out fairly well for us, and not just Europe, but even in North America. He didn't get into that side of, you know, the family side of it, of why we would win versus others. They could make their choice.
Even at a lower, excuse me, even at a lower multiple...
Correct.
Because of that factor in many cases.
Correct. Yeah, we see it, we see it today. I mean, you know, he talked one before COVID. There were several before COVID, and some that are coming to fruition now. Literally, it's what's gonna set us apart. The price might be the same. We may be even a little lower, but I tell you, if it's the founder and he really wants a legacy, he sees Ally, Allient. Mike told me to say that. No. Allient, then, then it will, then it will, you know, we, we, we, we can gain a competitive advantage. He downplays that. He didn't downplay it. He didn't mention that, but I think it's pretty, it's a pretty strong element.
Thanks, guys.
We got Helmut now. Incredible.
Yeah. I can only add it here. It's definitely true. I was never, ever interested to work with U.S. companies because U.S. companies has not the best name...
Reputation.
Reputation in German or in Europe. Mostly, the German and Europe companies are like more to work with Sana, not with my heart, definitely not. I can definitely say Allied Motion seven years ago, and now Allient is different. I can definitely say from my heart, this company is different. Definitely.
Hey, guys, back here. Tyler [Ecksin] wanted to ask you, you, you made the comment earlier about not all acquisitions coming out, you know, kind of at those higher margins that you project. When would you expect all the acquisitions that, you know, you made within the last year or so to be in that high 30% gross margin, you know, high-teen EBITDA margin? The way it looks to me is that, that seems to have been the biggest drag in terms of the first half of the year.
Sure. Yeah, that's Tyler and I have had this discussion a few times. I think what we have to remember is we're acquiring these companies. There is a downside that you're acquiring all these small companies, and you have this overhead layer that's in there. You know, you wanna maintain the integrity of the company, but you have to figure out somehow how to leverage an operating profit. We could have very high gross margin, but we find our operating margin being challenged because of the overhead structure. There's only a couple of ways out of that.
You either grow the revenues and keep the gross margins the same to expand that level of business, and, you know, that's a little slower process, but that's underway today, even in some of the current acquisitions, or you have to find a way to leverage the OpEx, and we're doing that as well. I don't think there's one answer for everything. You know, we are completing a move of a facility that was in New Hampshire that we acquired. That will be finished in, you know, let's say, early fourth quarter. That clearly, the leverage of the OpEx there is gonna be very strong. Their, their gross margins were good. They were better than average, but because of the size and that operating structure, and it, it pulls down the overall margin.
There's two ways to do it: Grow with it over time, feed it, get the revenue growth, maintain margins, don't bring OpEx in, operating expenses in at the same level, and just start to generate a higher level of actual operating income because of the gross margin. Go ahead.
I was just gonna say that, yeah, we're not firing on all cylinders with that collective group. I won't get into the specifics, but, you know, I think where we're not, I think the potential for improvement in growth is massive, right? I think there's, as we said, a lot of sort of upside, not just in that business, but the broader business as well.
Sure. But to go through the entire group, you know, we, we, we combine them all together just to not have to deal with small units and what's this one doing versus this one and that one and that one. I would say to you, though, that the directional, directionally, we're in good shape here to move those things along. What we're missing in some of that is the pull-through from the systems level as well. They're all. You know, Mike's right, they're not all firing on all cylinders. Last year, Spectrum was a real drag on us, and this year they're kicking in. Okay? We won't get into the rest, but I will say to you that directionally, we believe we're on the right track, and so let's either that operating leverage or drive that top line.
Just throughout this entire day, right? I mean, sounds like supply chain is getting better. It sounds like there's a lot of progress on the solutions or the systems side. Obviously, these acquisitions, there's room for improvement. It all seems to tie together into perhaps more margin upside than the 100 basis points. The question I still have that, that kind of lingers is, you know, what are the drags, right? I mean, what, what are the, the other things that we're not talking about that, that, that you all are working through?
Yeah. One I mentioned to you, and I think we mentioned in the, in the last conference call, is that we have a drag on long-term contracts. Long-term contracts, we were well protected on commodity pricing. We weren't well protected on the overhead cost increase, labor cost increases. There was never a reason to be concerned about those for many, many years, and now you've got mandates coming through for labor cost increases. You've got, you know, fuel surcharges. You've got all kinds of things that have occurred that are driving those costs. And I would say, it's not just direct labor increases, it's all labor increases. That's some of what we have to work through. They're not just sitting back and saying: Okay, we understand what you're saying.
We'll pay you more money, because that then is a direct hit on them. They've got to go to the end customer. That's a process that's going to take some time to unwind. I would say to you, if we were able to just pass our... pass our cost through of what we hit there, we wouldn't be talking about, you know, why are you slowing down in your gross margin improvement? We would be seeing that pull-through occurring. It's, it's. Bill can address that really well. He gets the automotive, he gets powersports, and he can address that extremely well, that, you know, it's a battle to go in there and say: Hey, we had a 17% labor cost increase mandated to us in Portugal, in a low-cost region. That sounds low. Mexico's 2x, okay? How do we get it?
How do we recover that? Well, electronic components was another one. Be honest with you that those costs were driving down over how many years? Power devices, electronic, microcontrollers, memory devices, all always shifting down. Well, they took a big turn. Some of those weren't covered in the commodity price increases. It was metals, you know, basically, that you're talking about. I would say to you that they're still there. We're working through them, and we will get through them. You know, we're, we're doing a heck of a lot better job now understanding product profitability and product line profitability. It starts there. If we didn't get that data and have that data, we wouldn't understand where to go attack to get that, move that up.
If we can push the, the, the higher margin products, I mean, there's a lot more room for when you're dealing with a non-long-term contract, your order-by-order base, okay? Your costs are all coming through, and you're passing it on. It's either you place it or you don't place it. But it's to undo and unwind some of those long-term contracts to get paid for our true cost is, is the challenge.
Just generically, we're still seeing rising raw material input prices going up. The environment in terms of passing those along to customers, aside from the overhead labor issues that Dick mentioned in discrete orders, has gotten tougher. I mean, you had a ton of leverage 6, 9, 12 months ago, if you had supply to get any price you wanted to get that through, because people were desperate for product. As that's loosened, there are, let's call them macroeconomic tensions, people are resisting increases to a much more significant degree today than they were just 9 months ago.
Yeah. If you do the math, if all you are allowed to do is pass it through, and you're selling a product for $100, and you've got a $2 increase in your commodities, material cost, you now sell it for $102, and now you got a $42 cost instead of a $40 cost. Your margin, gross margin, is going to come down because of that. It's, you know, that's some of the battles we're fighting. We look at the margin profiles of what we've acquired. They're all accretive to what we were doing, okay? There's nothing that says to us today that they're not going to continue to be or even accelerate that, as well as the emphasis on internal product lines that could certainly generate higher gross margins. Those are part of the drag. I told you that before.
I'm not sure if, if I clarified that a little bit more here, if that helps you, if there's more questions, Tyler, that you have.
No, that. That's good. I just wanted to-- I mean, the big thing obviously is just kind of seeing some of that leverage that, you know-
Sure
you and I have been talking about for years starting to flow, flow through. If I'm hearing you right, it sounds like it's all right there. It just, you know, it's-
Yeah.
It's about execution at this point.
We got some work to do.
Yeah.
Settle the contracts, move things forward, sell. This is what has to be done, and quite frankly, at the end of the day, if, you know, as we built the company to this size, we need to select the customers and markets that allow us to make a fair and reasonable profit.
Yeah. How, how much of your business, your book of business today, would you say, you know, has this element of, like, tough pricing discussions?
The, the, the problem when you say how much, you're talking about relative as a percentage of sales. The long-term contracts typically are, you know, higher amounts, because you don't sign a long-term contract for really low price, you know, product. I would say, and maybe Mike, and he can help me if I'm off base, but I would tell you that maybe 20%-30% would be these long-term contracts that we, we have more effort to do to get price passed through, or cost passed through.
I was gonna say 25 to 30.
Okay. Thanks.
Any more questions? Going once.
Oh, there we go. How are we doing time-wise? Good? Nope. Yeah.
Hi, Stefan Myk from Graceland Capital. I think this is probably for Simon. Just, medical pre-pandemic had been one of the faster organic growth end markets, then, you know, during the pandemic, you had, like, you know, these spikes and now has been a little slower. How long do you think? You laid out some really nice, like, cases, you know, use cases that are high growth. How long before medical kind of gets back on to that higher growth track and normalizes from all the pandemic, impacts?
Yeah, I think it's a really difficult thing to put a timeframe on it, but...
Q3 or Q4?
Which, which, yeah. I, I think, I think the, the, the things to look at in that medical space, and I, I kind of touched on it in the presentation, was in the applications. The fact is that those applications are very, very broad, and they, they move, and they, they, they fluctuate. You've got things like, you know, the medical mobility. It's, it's solid, it's stable, it's moving. It, it's been, you know, largely unaffected by, the last couple of years. You've got the surgical robotics, which is, high growth, and then the, the other, the other elements, it, it sort of... I, I guess we have this sort of portfolio approach going on so that the whole thing is sort of balancing out.
I think, you know, long story short, it's hard to put a specific timeframe on when it, you know, if something's gonna change. I think it's, it's sort of happening all the time, but under the surface.
Yeah, and let's add to that. If we go back to the COVID period, we were fortunate we had business in respirators and, you know, so forth. Where that business kicked in when the other business dropped off. The normalization, just wanna call it normalization, where our medical instrumentation, our surgical robots, and diagnostic equipment has kind of stabilized and is starting to move on that growth trajectory. Mobility went down for a while, but now it's kind of stabilized. I mean, you can answer that better than me, but it's the other side of that business that really ticked up and then came down, so the offset was there. He isn't, he, that's not his business. That's different. He has to answer for it, but I guess, but it's not his business.
More helmets in Europe than anything else.
Maybe I can give you a detailed example. In Europe, in Germany, we have two companies. One is 100% medical, the other company is, I would say, 70%-80% industry. Covid started, on the medical side, we increased the revenue by 2.5 x. The industry goes down by 25%-30%. Now I can say from a European standpoint, we are back because we have now the same revenue on the medical company, a little bit higher, of course, as before Covid, and on the industry, we increase. I can say the German companies, together with Czech Republic, through the pandemic, we increase. We had no problems with pandemic from the German and Czech Republic standpoint. Only from my side.
Combined. The combined entity of those businesses.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That speaks to the diversification that we've been saying.
Right.
throughout the day is, is our desired target.
Yeah, one of the other companies, he responsible. He's responsible for the Netherlands as well, and they saw that same swing. They saw the same swing.
Well, that appears to be all the questions that we have today, and so, Dick, you can say goodbye.
She's telling me goodbye. I told you she counts two times. Listen, I know in August, and we were warned to do this in August, was a very difficult timeframe, and I can't thank you enough for taking the time in August to show up here for our first Investor Day. Again, the questions you asked really help us improve. I mean, sometimes we, you know, we answer them, and we're vague in some of the answers at the points in times, you know, anytime, please feel free to call, and we'll have discussions on these. We're not afraid. We tell you a little bit more than we used to. Right, Greg? Anyways, thanks again.
I can't thank you enough, and to the Allient team and the entire Allient team that's out there, I mean, thanks for all your, all you do and all your efforts, and I look forward for a continued and bright future here. That's it.