Okay, sure. Fantastic. Well, my next session, it's my pleasure to have here APi Group, you know, CFO, Kevin Krumm, Adam Fee in Investor Relations. So thanks very much, Kevin and Adam, for being here. I think, you know, first question, perhaps, now we'll just talk about recurring service is something that's been a big focus for APi Group since the IPO. You have that target of kind of 60%+ share of recurring service. I guess a couple of things on that point. You know, one is it's a term we hear from many companies here. It means slightly different things to different people. So what's APi's definition? And then what's the kind of strategy to get that share of the total recurring business up?
Yeah, sure. First, thanks for the invite.
Of course.
We appreciate being here. Appreciate your support. Yeah, you said since the IPO, the thing I would say is really, you know, the Service and growing Service as a percent of our overall revenue for APi Group has really been a core focus since the last financial crisis. Going into that financial crisis, APi Group probably had 15% of the revenue was Service, and about 85% was projects.
Yeah.
Obviously, going through that period of time, Russ and the leadership team realized the Service business is a better business to hold up through cycles. And so really, since then, they've been on a mission to continue to improve that mix. At the time of the Chubb transaction, so early 2022, and the close of Chubb, that moved that mix, that they moved from probably 15 back then to close to 40 in 2021. That mix now moved up to 50%. How they've been able to grow that or how we've been able to grow that over that period of time, was largely investing in our inspection first, go-to- market model. And that's unique for APi Group. So we go to market by selling statutorily required inspections first. For every inspection dollar that we generate, we generally generate $3-$4 of service.
Yeah.
And so when we talk about Service, we're talking about inspections, service, and monitoring. And so we made a significant investment in that, through that period of time, and now we have a sales force that's going out and selling those inspections. And so, if you look at our performance, 2020 till now we've been able to grow inspections at a double-digit clip every quarter, except for Q2 2020, which of course was the launch of the pandemic. And so that growth has allowed for pull-through Service growth in the high single digits and/or double digits every quarter. So, that flywheel, if you will, is working really well for us right now. It's allowing our Service business to continue to perform collectively, globally in the high single digits.
Yeah.
It's allowing us to be, therefore, really selective on the project work we do. And so as we go forward here, we see our Service business continuing to grow at that clip, projects business, probably less. Over time, that mix is gonna continue to improve. So early 2022, we're about 50%. We'll disclose it here coming up, but we obviously moved the needle on that as well, and we continue to do it through that equation.
Got it. And how does the sort of within the project side of things, you know, there's that de-emphasis there, then there's sort of another element of kind of general pruning of types of customer, perhaps, as well. So maybe when you think about, that pruning side and also project management or selectivity, you know, where are we on that? What's the sort of scale of revenue headwind, if it's possible to quantify kind of this year or next few years?
Yeah. So we really started the project pruning in earnest, late 2022, early 2023.
Yeah.
The focus was three areas. One was internationally, where we spent time in the Chubb business across their customer contract portfolio and realized there was areas and instances where we just needed to get out some of those contracts. We also HVAC, and especially on the project side of the business. And in those businesses, as we exited 2022, which was a period of obviously supply chain disruption and inflation, but also robust demand in those end markets.
We saw it as a great opportunity to continue to be really smart about where we spend our project hours, and really try to pivot more and more of those hours to service, and the hours that we were producing on the project side of the business to do it for the right customers in the right end markets with the right programs. And so, over that period of time, so late 2022, early 2023 we've been focused on doing that.
Yeah.
I expect we will lap most of that work in the first half of this year. And so what you'll see in the back half of this year will be improved growth rates on the project side of the business in HVAC, and specialty.
Got it. And how do you assess, sort of within those. You know, HVAC, I guess, is sort of easier to understand because it's a discrete kind of collection of products and assets, but, you know, the sort of competitive landscape in HVAC, specifically, you know, how you're thinking about sort of what you can do versus the traditional OEMs in that space. And then specialty, I guess, you know, by definition, it's a collection of different things. You know, any one or two areas within specialty you'd highlight as this is what APi is really good at?
Well, on the HVAC side, I would say that our Service offering continues to grow well. It differentiates us in the markets we're in. We have invested there too on Service, and our inspection model. Actually, on the HVAC business, is something in recent years we've invested in, and we've seen good growth. And so while inspections aren't necessarily statutorily required in that space, they are largely required because you don't want to be in a situation where, you know, your HVAC system breaks down. Whether it's really cold or really warm. And so we've seen an investment behind that, so we've seen good growth in that business. And again, we think that differentiates us versus our competitors and/or OEMs in that space.
Yeah.
Because the same success that we've had with that on the life safety side of the business, leading with it, pull through Service revenue, differentiates us in the marketplace, allows us to be really selective on the project side, is a flywheel, we think, and we're seeing benefit on in the HVAC business as well. On the specialty side, I think your question was, what areas in those businesses are we excited about?
Yeah.
Well, I would highlight, we have a specialty, a group of specialty contracting businesses. They'll do installation work, roofing work, heat trace work, some things like that.
I see.
And, a lot of that, too, is Service-related and/or smaller projects work. We've really seen those businesses continue to grow really well through this demand cycle that we're in. So we're excited about the growth and the margin prospects in those businesses as we move forward.
Perfect. And then, I guess a couple of other areas that investors kind of talk a lot about the growth opportunity more broadly is data center and power grid. You know, what's the sort of growth rate there for the company? And any sense of kind of percent of sales or scale of APi's exposure to DC and power grid?
Yeah, so from a data center perspective, it's 2022 is less than 10% of our sales, but it's- we've taken a meaningful step forward growing the business there. We haven't disclosed the growth rate by end market, but it's definitely punching above, you know, the overall company growth rate pretty significantly. In the data center, we expect demand to continue to be strong, just as, demand for data through AI and all the newest technological advances that are coming on the market.
I know that some of our customers have spending plans kind of going out through the end of this decade that will drive growth and opportunity for us. And it's not only on the safety services side, where we're installing and servicing the fire protection equipment, but our fabrication business on the specialty services side is also taking part in the build-out of these data centers throughout the country. Then on the electrical, kind of, the specialty side, I think the electrical grid upgrade is another area we feel excited about. It's, there's a pretty substantial amount of funding in the IIJA for that.
Yes.
Over $70 billion to upgrade the electrical grid to essentially support the electrification of, you know, cars and other technology.m And we haven't seen that funding hit the market yet, but that's, we believe it'll provide ample opportunity over the next few years.
Perfect. And more broadly on sort of IIJA or Inflation Reduction Act, have you seen across APi, not just in the grid business, but have you seen much of a tailwind already? And, you know, do you expect much of an extra tailwind future, or are we kind of in the run rate now from those two?
So I think it's actually at a similar stage as the electrical grid funding that I just mentioned, where our leaders in that business are beginning to see more proposal activity, and they think that'll accelerate in 2024, but they don't expect a real impact to the financials until 2025. It seems like this type of funding always moves a little slower than everyone hopes and expects. But that seems to be where our team leaders are seeing it right now.
Fantastic. And I think, you know, share gain is definitely something that's apparent. I guess if we take one of your sort of more traditional competitors, like a, you know, SimplexGrinnell, for example, you know, what do you think it is for APG that helps it take share consistently? Like a focused or reinvestment, what's some of the elements?
I mean, for sure, our largest driver there is a driver we talked about earlier in this discussion, which is our inspection business. You know, that differentiates us in the marketplace. The investment we've made in that business over the last decade is significant and it's bearing fruit. It, you know, what's really important when you're going to market and you're doing inspections and the following service work, is that you're, you know, you're there on time and you can get, the deficiency report turned around quickly such that you become the easy button for your customers. And if you think about that, just to be there on time, it's a highly integrated offering. So you are oftentimes working with the local engineer who's managing those facilities. You're with him or her all day, and so showing up on time for them matters a lot.
Oh, yeah.
And being the easy button for them matters a lot, which is being able to turn the deficiency report around in 48 hours and then being able to schedule the follow-on work quickly thereafter. And that takes a lot of back office infrastructure, routing, servicing, and training. And so we've invested in this space. It's how our inspection business or the result of that, has been the double-digit growth that we're seeing. And yeah, you pointed to it, a lot of that comes from Sharegain, because that inspection market is not growing that as fast as we are.
Yeah. Perfect. And then, you know, geographically, I guess, you know, up until sort of three, four years ago, very, very domestic centric business at APi. That changed a lot, particularly with Chubb, but a couple of other acquisitions as well in recent years. You know, what's the sort of satisfaction with how those non-U.S. assets are being managed? You know, how do we think about kind of profitability levels domestically versus international?
So, I think we should probably just talk about Chubb and how's the Chubb is going.
Yeah.
That's probably, probably the best way to tackle that one. So, you know, the thesis on the Chubb transaction was we believed it to be an under managed, somewhat overlooked asset inside of UTC and then Carrier. However, it was a branch-based Service business and we have a long long history of acquiring, and I'll say, improving and/or fixing branch-based Service businesses. And so the thesis was, this is a big transaction, but it's largely center of the fairway. As we've got into the business and now had it with us for the better part of two years, I would say things are going as we expected in our original thought process. We've gone in, we've introduced those group of businesses to our leadership approach and our culture, which, as you know, is real and tangible inside the company. We invest heavily behind it.
Yeah.
We've brought our leadership programs into that business with very high appreciation and satisfaction from the leaders in that business. They're frankly really excited to continue to pull that into their businesses, so we've been seeing that. Took the first year, really, to get the right set of leaders in place, which is done, as of sort of early 2023. So excited about the leadership team we have in place. Our idea as we went through this was we're going to tackle the costs first and quickly work on the commercial model, sort of, as we do it. The commercial model being, making sure that we're going to market with inspections and service sales first, and following with project business. So the conversion of that has gone well.
You saw recently, I guess, the increase our overall value capture target from $100 million to $125 million, which is largely a credit to the leadership team that we had in place. They kinda had their first lap around the track and identified additional opportunity to get after, I'll say, cost savings in that business, largely back office and operational and functional efficiency. And so that has been increased, and we feel good about that number. And largely, the business which came to us at 9% EBITDA margins in at least a five-year period, I believe of no growth has dramatically, every year since we've had it inside the APi Group. And EBITDA margins, that were at 9% that we committed to getting to 15%+ by 2025. I guess you could think of that as sort of a, a linear progression.
Yeah
We've been on that, line so far to date, sort of two years in. So it's gone well, and we feel good about it.
Okay, that's a very good summary. And the sort of, how much geographic, sort of, heavy lifting was there within Chubb? You know, exit certain countries, bulk up exposure in others. Kind of where are we on that process? Kind of figuring out, okay, this market is strong, it has a good local team. Let's put a lot more into X. You know, some other market, let's just pull out, it's not worth the energy and time.
You know, I would say we have largely not pulled out of any market. There's one small country in Southeast Asia where there was a very limited presence that we decided it didn't make sense to be there.
Yeah.
Would be the only place I'd speak to the fact that we pulled out of. I would say we remain excited about the markets they're in, especially when you think about sort of Western Europe, which is where the largest piece of their density is. You know, our growth algorithm, which is one part organic, one part inorganic is an algorithm we're excited about bringing into that business too. Now, we have $125 million reasons to get the initial work done first.
Yeah.
But when you think about that model, we've already sort of ramped up their organic profile, and we're seeing organic growth in that business. And when we get that platform right, primarily in Western Europe, we see it as a really fantastic opportunity to bring our inorganic model to it. Which for those not familiar with the story, is, you know, we're the largest player in the markets we're in, but we largely have, you know, at 5% of the market, so it's highly fragmented. And there's a significant opportunity to continue to do inorganic growth through bolt-on tuck-in M&A. And at that point, you're effectively buying these businesses and sort of dumping gas into the tank, right?
Yeah.
We see Western Europe and that platform in Western Europe in the market, because it's highly fragmented, it is a great opportunity to bring that equation to that business, so we're excited about that.
And just on the kind of cyclical point, which we haven't really talked much about, that there was a sort of an update to the numbers that you provided earlier in the week, so that there is that out there in public. But I guess, you know, people could have said, oh, European construction hasn't been particularly healthy since you bought Chubb. As you said, that your own business there, the growth has accelerated somehow. So, you know, there's a cyclical element that maybe investors, you know, still sort of figuring out. What are some of the levers there? There's some share gain, I suppose. There's the statutory aspect in certain industries.
There's pricing.
Yeah.
Right? So just pricing discipline and continuing to drive that discipline of that business. You know, margin expansive pricing on the Service side of the business is a discipline that our businesses have had for many, many years. It's a discipline that we're gonna lean on for many years going forward, almost regardless of what's going on from an inflationary standpoint. It's an approach we've brought into that business, too. So pricing has, I'll say improved significantly, sort of under our leadership versus prior ownership or leadership.
Yeah.
And then you talked about it. Yeah, I mean, it's the service element of that business is will stand up, like the legacy APi business, under almost any condition.n We've continued to invest in the Service side of the business, and we continue to see good, consistent growth and performance on that side of the business as well.
You know, on the sort of total margin from, you know, moving on to that, you've got that 13%+ sort of target for 2025 on EBITDA. You know, what's the sort of confidence level in hitting that? And I guess if we think about the sort of margin differential of, you know, projects versus recurring, where are we on that today?
So first on the 13%, you know, it's a number we still have out there, so you can expect that we still feel good about hitting it.
Yeah.
I think if, you know, you look to sort of at least the information we released this week, both on approximately where we closed 2023 and approximately where we're guiding to 2024. You can see that we've made sequential good steps forward in there really since 2021. So, we feel good about that number, and, the thing I like to highlight at this point, as we get closer and closer to 2025, is that is not an end state. You know, it is certainly, the beginning, its first phase, and as we get into 2025, we'll have a higher target because we believe our portfolio of businesses can continue and will continue to move north of that.
Your question on Service versus projects, I'll say we've seen good margin expansion on both sides of those businesses or in both of those offerings. I would say almost equivalent. You know, the Service business, through pricing, continuing to sell inspections, which come to us at a higher margin than sort of the service fleet have allowed us to expand margins on that side of the business. On the project side, the discipline project selection that we've had and some of the deflationary impacts of the pass-through that we were doing in 2022 have allowed margins to expand there. I mean, we've talked about the margin differential on this business which I think is the question you asked. It's stayed the same.
Okay.
And it's been about, you know, we see on the collective Service side of the business, we make 10 percentage margin points plus higher on that business than we do on the project side of the business.
That's helpful. Thank you. And, you know, as you said, pricing is kind of critical in a service or labor intensive business model, such as APi. You know, the ability, you think, say, in this year, wage inflation seems pretty sticky as materials inflation has eased. You know, what's the confidence in kind of offsetting inflation pressures on wages with pricing?
Yeah. So I think you talked about the dynamic well. I'll just reaffirm that really, you know, we've seen material costs subside. We've seen wages in our business continue to sort of go up. Now, what I would say around that is, it's not extraordinary to what we've seen over the last decade. You know about 50% of our workforce is under a Collective Bargaining Agreement and so that gives you good predictability as you go forward. A lot of these agreements are three to five years. In the U.S., obviously, that's the union structure. We have great relationships with our unions in the U.S. We have great visibility into those escalations, and they're not, I would say, above, significantly above, sort of where they've been historically.
Yeah.
We talked about a pricing muscle that we've had historically, and we feel good about our ability to continue to price through that. The one thing I would highlight is, whenever we talk about cost, wage cost, et cetera, the thing I like to highlight is one of the most expensive areas that you have when you think about wages is turnover. We've invested $30 million over the last five years in our leadership programs. Those programs aren't pointed at Adam and I. They're pointed at our men and women in the field who are going out every day and doing service work. So whether they're union or non-union, it's an element that differentiates us in the marketplace. It's an element that our employees love, that allows them to continue to grow and develop, and it's an element that's allowed us to have well below industry average attrition rates.
Yep.
I'm gonna say retention, but attrition rates.
Yeah.
And so that, too, is a huge factor when you think about cost of employees and cost of employees year in and year out.
Overall, you know, thinking about the margin rates, you said, you know, understandably, 13%+ is not a, a ceiling. So when we think about sort of overall operating leverage with Service being a higher, recurring revenue being a higher share of the total, are those sort of in the 20s, is that kind of the aspiration for drop through from revenue into EBITDA?
You mean, is this incremental question, or is this?
Incremental margin, yes.
No, 20%s is the right area. Over the last 12 months we've came in right around 30%.
Yeah.
But that's obviously been accelerated a bit by some of our pruning and some of the Chubb value capture. But we still feel like longer term, we can be punching above 20% on the incremental side. For all the reasons you said, as we grow the safety Service business and you know, add more revenue to our branches there under the same cost structure you’re gonna gain that operating leverage. Even at the corporate level, we've spent since the Chubb transaction building out a global corporate functioning and capability, and that investment's largely complete, and we'll start to kinda get operating leverage on that going forward.
Perfect. And then maybe, you know, sort of cash flow and balance sheet optionality. You know, sort of cash flow is, you know, without going down a rabbit hole, there's always. You know, there's some adjustments to it.
Yeah.
Sort of, how do we think about the free cash flow, sort of, cleaning up in terms of conversion rate to EBITDA? And, and I guess the M&A outlook, and how do you characterize your sort of pipeline right now and, and the, the ambition to kind of get back onto meaningful M&A this year?
Okay. So I'll hit, I'll hit those sequentially. So on the cash flow side, you know, our target's 80%. It's today, we guide to an adjusted free cash flow number.
Yes.
Those adjustments are largely there because of the work we're doing on the Chubb transaction and the platform work that has resulted from the Chubb transaction. We've talked about those adjustments. You know, our goal right now would be that those adjustments subside as the Chubb program subsides, and so that's 2025 is when we should be through those adjustments. And coming out of there, you know, that target will remain the same at 80%. So whether you're talking adjusted or unadjusted, I do like to highlight that the target is not something we're gonna hit every single year.
Sure.
Right? Because with free cash flow, your growth matters a lot.
Yeah.
And so years where we flex up to maybe 10%?
Yeah
You're gonna see a lower number. But that 80%, you know, based on the assumptions we have, is something that we think we can bounce around, once we get to that point. I think in 2021, we were, we were at 55%. 2022, even with some of the stuff we saw on supply chain and investing in working capital, we moved to 60%. This year, our target was 60. 2023, our target was 65. We talked when we announced that we beat that number.
Yeah.
As we go into 2024, I can tell you we're gonna take another step towards that 80% number. Working capital rate is gonna be a piece of it. As we've moved and continue to improve, it's allowed us to delever on the clip that we said we would. We ended the year inside of 2.5x. Over the last 12 months, approximately, we've spent $100 million on M&A, so we took 12-18 months off. Over the last 12 months, we've reinvested in those programs. It's largely in the bolt-on space, is where we're gonna continue to focus. As we go forward, you should expect over the next 12 months, a meaningful increase there.
Good.
We were able to keep our pipelines robust and warm as we went through that delevering cycle, and so we remain excited about what we see there. And we think that, you know, those smaller bolt-on tuck-in is gonna be our sweet spot as we move forward here, 'cause it presents a really great opportunity to add significant value to the business and to our shareholders.
Got it. And last one, sort of on that smaller bolt-ons point. So the smaller deals, you know, you're generally disciplined historically, so the multiples on that should be what, in that sort of?
Four to six, four to seven. They haven't moved much over the last two to three years.
Hmm. Great. Well, I think now we'll switch quickly to the audience response survey questions, please. So grab those gray devices. First question: do you currently own the stock? Generally, not much. Second question, really around sort of general bias to APi Group right now. Very positive. Thirdly, that's encouraging. Third one is, earnings growth for APi versus, the multi-industry, let's say, peer average, sort of medium term. Slightly above peers. Next question, is on usage of excess cash. So generally, bolt-on's preferred. Next question around, valuation, sort of year one PE. So mid-teens-ish is the sort of placeholder. And then, you know, the last question on sort of share price headwind, you know, why don't people own more of the stock? So mostly poor growth, question mark. Fantastic.
Awesome.
Well, thanks so much, Kevin and Adam, for being here.
Really appreciate it.
Thank you.
Thanks, Julian.
Thanks very much.