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Earnings Call: Q2 2022

Aug 4, 2022

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to APi Group's second quarter 2022 financial results conference call. All participants are now in a listen-only mode until the question and answer session. Please note this call is being recorded. I will be standing by should you need any assistance. I will now turn the call over to Olivia Walton, Vice President of Investor Relations at APi Group. Please go ahead.

Olivia Walton
VP of Investor Relations, APi Group

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our second quarter 2022 earnings conference call. Joining me on the call today are Russ Becker, our President and Chief Executive Officer, Kevin Krumm, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and Sir Martin Franklin and James Lillie. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that certain statements in the company's earnings press release announcement and on this call are forward-looking statements which are based on expectations, intentions, and projections regarding the company's future performance, anticipated events or trends, and other matters that are not historical facts. These statements are not a guarantee of future performance and are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements.

In our press release and filings with the SEC, we detail material risks that may cause our future results to differ from our expectations. Our statements are as of today, August 4th, and we have no obligation to update any forward-looking statement we may make. As a reminder we have posted a presentation detailing our second quarter financial performance on the investor relations page of our website. Our comments today will also include non-GAAP financial measures and other key operating metrics. The reconciliation of and other information regarding these items can be found in our press release and in our presentation. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Martin.

Martin Franklin
Co-Chair, APi Group

Thank you, Olivia, and good morning, everyone. APi delivered another strong quarter of results, including record net revenues, adjusted EBITDA, and adjusted diluted earnings per share in a volatile macro environment. Russ and Kevin will speak to the performance of the business in more detail, but I would add that in our view, APi's continued execution against its goals despite challenges faced in an uncertain macro environment speak to the strength of the company's recurring revenue, services-focused business model, and the discipline of the organization and its leadership team. With the enormous amount of opportunities in front of us, the efforts of each and every leader across our organization is contributing to the achievement of both short-term and long-term goals. I'd like to recognize their extraordinary effort in being integral to raising the bar of performance across the entire company.

As you can see from the company's significant organic progression, including growth in organic net revenues of 14% year to date for the legacy APi business, as well as Chubb delivering top-line growth and the go-to-market strategies are working. Margins are rising, and the proportion of the business in mandatorily required safety services continues to grow towards our raised goal of 60%+ of revenue coming from inspection service and monitoring. APi is a great company with great leaders in a great sector. I do not believe the public markets have remotely acknowledged this yet, but we are in the long game and know that over time this will change.

We believe APi has a clear path to make the most of the opportunities in front of the company, and we're excited about what lies ahead for the business as we continue to focus on shareholder value creation. With that, I'll hand over to Russ.

Russell Becker
President and CEO, APi Group

Thank you, Martin. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking the time to join our call this morning. During today's call, I will begin my remarks by commenting on our strong second quarter and year-to-date results, as well as our continued forward progress towards delivering on our stated strategic goals in a macro environment that continues to be volatile. I will then provide an update on our ongoing integration progress at Chubb and the positive momentum we have across the business before turning the call over to Kevin, who will walk through our financial results and guidance in more detail. As you have heard me say on prior calls, the safety, health, and well-being of each of our leaders remains our number one priority. This focus and other foundational priorities provide the platform from which we can continue to enhance shareholder value.

I am pleased with our strong record results for the second quarter and the first half of the year. Revenue and adjusted EBITDA outperformed expectations despite FX headwinds, inflationary cost pressure, and supply chain disruptions. We do not anticipate these macro headwinds subsiding in the second half of the year. Therefore, we are laser-focused on continuing the activities that help us deliver a strong first half of 2022, including pricing activities, focused growth in inspection, service, and monitoring, strong spend controls, and disciplined project and customer selection. Key highlights from our performance for the three months ended June 30, 2022, compared to the prior year period include the following. First, as expected, our revenue momentum continued into the second quarter, and we saw growth in net revenues on an organic basis of approximately 12% and 14% on a year-to-date basis.

As a quick reminder, the Chubb business will be excluded from our organic net revenues until 2023, one year following the completion of the acquisition. That being said, Chubb is experiencing organic growth and had solid organic growth in Q2. Importantly, and in line with our strategic initiatives, we saw a 20%+ increase in inspection service and monitoring revenue as we march towards our goal of 60%+ as a percentage of total net revenues. This is important because the gross margin on this type of work is higher than the fleet average, as I'll detail in a moment, and improving mix is one of our initiatives to drive overall EBITDA margins. Our consolidated backlog also continued to increase in the second quarter, providing us with a solid foundation for growth as we move through the rest of the year.

Second, adjusted gross margins grew by 282 basis points, driven by growing inspection, service and monitoring revenue, as mentioned previously, which we believe helps to build a more protected moat around the business. As a reminder, on average inspection and service revenue generates 10% + higher gross margin, and monitoring revenue generates 20% + higher gross margin than contract revenue. In addition, we continue to offset short-term margin pressures from inflationary cost increases and supply chain disruptions through pricing actions, fuel surcharges and procurement initiatives, all of which contributed to a solid quarter.

I am very pleased with how our teams have passed on inflationary cost items, and we'd like to remind everyone that our average project size in Safety Services is approximately $5,000, and the average durations of our projects is less than six months, which we believe allows us to reasonably manage inflationary variables in our supply chain. We believe these are competitive advantages as they allow us to stay focused on real-time pricing and operational efficiency to ensure true costs are reflected in the services we provide. Third, adjusted diluted earnings per share increased by 27.6% or $0.08, driven by strong operational performance and the anticipated accretion from the acquisition of Chubb.

Tactically, we continued to execute on initiatives in the quarter towards delivering on our key strategic objectives, such as disciplined project and customer selection, which we measure through our contract loss rate and maintaining a safety culture that's grounded in our goal of zero incidents. An example of a metric we track relating to safety is our total recordable incident rate, or TRIR, which was 1.01, including Chubb as of June 30. This compares to a U.S.-based industry average of 2.50. This is important not only from the human element, but also from the dollars and efficiency negatively impacted by these types of losses. Importantly, employee turnover remains lower than industry benchmarks, which supports operational efficiency, keeps retraining and hiring costs under control, and allows for growth from within.

Our historical and continuing investment in our people pays dividends in times like these when some companies see employees look for better opportunities. Our technicians and engineers have wage and benefit packages that are very competitive, and we invest in their future and growth, resulting in our turnover being historically modest. Next, Chubb. The ongoing integration efforts at Chubb are going well, and the business continues to perform in line with our expectations. We continued to build out the depth of our team during the second quarter, with new hires bringing significant international and integration experience. This includes adding Andrew White as Chief Executive Officer of Chubb, who joined us from Emerson Electric in early May. In Andrew's first 90 days with us, he visited 15 of the 17 countries in which Chubb operates, participated in 25 town halls, and conducted 50 detailed operating reviews where Chubb's transformation roadmap was discussed.

He also onboarded several new senior leaders, including new country leaders, to help ensure we are well positioned to drive value capture opportunities across our global footprint. We believe that a key part of the integration is developing an empowered leadership culture throughout the organization, as ultimately, great leaders make better decisions, and those decisions drive incremental profitability, lead to enhanced margins across our platform and create shareholder value. Our employees, technicians and engineers have careers, not jobs, and we believe this investment reduces turnover, as I discussed earlier, aligns communications and drives performance and productivity. Over the past several weeks, more than 2,200 Chubb employees have taken advantage of APi's I Am A Leader learning module. This is an online learning opportunity available in seven different languages that introduces APi's foundational leadership concepts.

You will hear from Andrew directly later this year at our investor update, when we detail many of the value capture opportunities we have identified and the actionable, measurable and executable multi-year plans to leverage our combined global platform. As we noted on our last earnings call, we believe we see a clear path to value capture opportunities that are at least $40 million, and we expect this figure to continue to evolve and grow as we learn more.

To that point in the second quarter, we initiated and executed the first step of a multi-year restructuring program, and including an initial charge of approximately $11 million relating to a G&A reduction in the removal of a significant amount of the above the branch costs across the business. Plans are also being developed that will achieve additional savings by consolidating multiple branches, and we have planned further savings opportunities relating to lease termination and other facility rationalization to name a few of the specific initiatives underway. We also believe that as we reduce organizational complexity and shift towards a more consistent branch-based operating model, we can capture savings through the elimination of duplicative costs. Progress isn't only about cutting costs and creating operational efficiency.

It's about building a team, developing a meaningful strategic plan, focusing on organic growth and mix, and developing a culture that believes in the path forward and works together as a team with a common purpose and focus. It's what is happening at Chubb, and we look forward to detailing our progress with you. As we look ahead to the remainder of 2022, although the macro environment remains volatile, we believe that the resiliency of our services-focused business model strengthens the protective moat around the business, enabling us to continue our growth and execute on our long-term goals. We have and will continue to focus our efforts on growing the essential recurring service revenue aspects of our portfolio.

We have intentionally shifted our mix of inspection, service, and monitoring revenue from approximately 15% of total net revenues in 2008 to 50%+ following the acquisition of Chubb. As you know, we are focused on driving towards 60%+. It is very encouraging to see strong underlying demand for our services as reflected in our organic revenue growth as well as our new record level backlog. This has given us momentum in the second quarter and provides us momentum as we move into the back half and plan for 2023. In summary, I am proud of our team and how we delivered on our commitments once again in the second quarter despite the many macro headwinds. Our field leaders continue to do amazing work for us. They drive our existence.

I am truly grateful for what each of them has done to get us where we are today. I would now like to hand the call over to Kevin to discuss our financial results and guidance in more detail. Kevin?

Kevin Krumm
EVP and CFO, APi Group

Thanks, Russell. Good morning, everyone. I will begin my remarks by reviewing our consolidated results and segment-level operating performance for the second quarter before turning to our guidance. Reported net revenues for the three months ended June 30, 2022 increased by 68.6% to $1.6 billion, compared to $978 million in the prior year period. This was driven by revenue from acquisitions completed in Safety Services and strong organic growth in Safety and Specialty Services. Adjusted gross margin for the three months ended June 30, 2022 was 26.7%, representing a 282 basis point increase compared to the prior year period, driven by an improved mix of inspection and service revenue and Safety Services, supplemented by acquisitions and Safety Services, as well as improved productivity and Specialty Services.

These factors were partially offset by supply chain disruptions and inflation, which caused downward pressure on margins. Adjusted EBITDA margin for the three months ended June 30, 2022 was 10.7% compared to prior year adjusted EBITDA margin of 10.8%. This was driven by an improved mix of inspection and service revenue and strong organic growth. This was offset by mix from completed acquisitions, supply chain disruptions, and inflation, which caused downward pressure on margins. As Russell mentioned earlier on the call, net revenues increased on an organic basis by approximately 12%. This was driven by 20%+ growth in inspection service and monitoring revenue in our legacy businesses. Approximately 2/3 of this growth was driven by price and pass-through of material and labor costs, and 1/3 was driven by volume, which we measured through labor hours.

Adjusted diluted earnings per share for the second quarter was $0.37, representing an $0.08 increase compared to the prior year period. This increase was driven primarily by strong organic growth in Safety Services and Specialty Services and the accretion from the acquisition of Chubb. I will now discuss our results in more detail for Safety Services. For the three months ended June 30, 2022, Safety Services reported net revenues increased by 124% to $1.1 billion, compared to $512 million in the prior year period, primarily driven by revenue from completed acquisitions. Net revenues increased on an organic basis 16% compared to the prior year period, driven by 20%+ increase in inspection service and monitoring revenue.

Adjusted gross margin for the three months ended June 30, 2022 was 30.6%, representing a 121 basis point decline compared to the prior year, driven primarily by margin declines on a construction contract revenue in our HVAC services business, which arose due to inflationary cost pressures on pre-existing longer duration in-place contracts where inflationary costs could not be absorbed or passed on. This reduction consumed strong gross margin expansion in our core life safety service offerings, which were helped by strong organic growth, pricing initiatives, and improved mix of inspection service and monitoring revenue.

EBITDA margins for the three months ended June 30, 2022, was 11.8%, representing a 287 basis point decline compared to the prior year, driven primarily by SG&A leverage impacts from completed acquisitions and the reasons provided in the review of gross margins. I will now discuss our results in more detail for Specialty Services. Specialty Services reported net revenues for the three months ended June 30, 2022, increased by 8.8% to $518 million compared to $476 million in the prior year period. This was driven by an increase in service revenue as well as increased demand at our infrastructure and utility businesses.

Adjusted gross margins for the three months ended June 30, 2022 was 17.4%, representing a 246 basis point increase compared to prior year driven primarily by improved productivity and improved mix of service revenue. These factors were partially offset by supply chain disruptions and inflation, which caused downward pressure on margins. Adjusted EBITDA margin for the three months ended June 30, 2022 was 11.6%, representing a 108 basis point increase compared to prior year due to leverage on higher volumes and improved mix of service revenue. These factors were partially offset by supply chain disruptions and inflation, which caused downward pressure on our margins. We continue to focus on driving strong free cash flow and our balance sheet and liquidity profile remain strong.

For the three months ended June 30, 2022, adjusted free cash flow was strong at $63 million, with strong sequential performance in Q2 relative to Q1, which is consistent with historical trends. As expected, operating cash flows in Q2 were primarily impacted by the increase in required levels of working capital investment to support our strong revenue growth. APi has historically generated the bulk of its free cash flow in the second half of the year, and we continue to anticipate most of this to be recovered by year-end and expect our adjusted free cash flow conversion for the year to be at or above 2021 levels on the way to our long-term adjusted free cash flow conversion target of approximately 80%.

Our net debt to EBITDA ratio at the end of the second quarter was approximately 3.9x, and the weighted average maturity of our debt was between five and six years, with the earliest maturity in 2026. During the second quarter, we entered into a forward starting swap arrangement to be effective January 2023 that will shift the mix of our fixed versus floating from approximately 50/50 to an estimated 70% fixed, 30% floating. I will now discuss our guidance for 2022. Before I get into the details, as a reminder, approximately 40% of our net revenues are generated outside of the United States following the acquisition of Chubb. Accordingly, going forward, we will provide details of our revenue and adjusted EBITDA on a constant currency basis and provide the impact of FX movements on our reported results and outlook.

Our underlying operational expectations have not changed since the guidance provided in our Q1 earnings call. However, the strengthening dollar has negatively impacted our full year outlook by approximately $90 million in net revenues and $10 million of adjusted EBITDA. Noting this and based on exchange rates as of the end of the second quarter, we now expect our full year guidance to range between $6.4 billion-$6.5 billion and expect adjusted EBITDA will range between $655 million-$675 million. Again, this is unchanged on a constant currency operational basis versus our prior guidance. We remain confident in our outlook of 8%-9% growth in net revenues on an organic basis.

For the third quarter, we expect net revenues to be between $1.675 billion-$1.725 billion and adjusted EBITDA to be between $175 million-$190 million. We expect adjusted free cash flow in the quarter to be between $110 million and $130 million. We anticipate interest expense for 2022 to be approximately $120 million, capital expenditures to be approximately $85 million and our adjusted effective cash tax rate to be approximately 24%. We expect depreciation for 2022 to be between $80 million-$85 million. From a capital allocation perspective, our near-term focus remains on de-leveraging through our asset-light, high free cash flow conversion operating model.

We anticipate reaching a net leverage ratio of below 3.5 x by year-end 2022 and approximately 2.5 as we move towards the end of 2023 and closer to our stated objective of 2x-2.5 x through reducing leverage by approximately one turn annually. We will also continue to repurchase shares when we believe our own company represents the best available investment opportunity. We expect our adjusted diluted weighted average share count for the third quarter to be approximately 270 million. I will now turn the call over to James.

James Lillie
Co-Chairman, APi Group

Thanks, Kevin. Good morning, everyone. We are very pleased with how the business is performing in this volatile environment. As I said on our last call during the Q&A, APi has been battling macro headwinds since its first day as a public company, yet continues to perform very well and continues to execute against its strategic plan. We look forward to seeing how the business gets to perform when it gets even the slightest macro tailwind. Mark and I were in London last month meeting with Russell and the leadership team of Chubb and getting a detailed review of the business and an update on the integration activity. Additionally, at our board of directors meeting earlier this week in Minneapolis, senior leaders from the business segments, including Chubb, detailed their year-to-date performance, outlook for the balance of the year, and long-term strategic plans.

Various new corporate leaders outlined their strategic plans to us in such areas as procurement, IT, tax, ESG, and other key areas of the business. We are pleased with the efforts to develop meaningful global one-company go-forward plans. As Russ mentioned, we plan to hold an integration update call with investors later this year and look forward to updating investors on our progress and plans. We look forward to detailing the specific actions that have been taken, the initiatives that are underway, the savings achieved, the efficiencies captured, and the planned steps across the various regions in which we operate that will occur over the months and years ahead to drive savings, efficiencies, and most importantly, to drive organic growth.

It's clear to us that our strategic focus on growing inspection, service, and monitoring revenue through our market-leading brands and work tirelessly to become more efficient in the way we do business is a winning formula, whether the macro environment is for you or against you. The results of APi over the last few years have proven this as the business has performed despite the challenges from navigating the COVID-19 pandemic to dealing with supply chain disruptions, inflationary cost pressures, or FX movements. The business has shown itself to be resilient in managing the macroeconomic challenges it has encountered over the last decade or so. Its business model has purposely evolved during that period of time, and it continues to be better positioned each year to macroeconomic volatility.

Should there be a recession or slowdown, we believe that the business is positioned well with a strong backlog and a leadership team that has done an excellent job maintaining a long-term strategic focus while also managing the business to navigate near-term volatility and deliver on our targets. While we are always planning for tomorrow, we are also looking for storm clouds overhead. While we are focused on integrating the Chubb acquisition, we remain opportunistic as we continually look at the business profile and are always evaluating opportunities before us to ensure that we are well-positioned to drive shareholder value. Before I turn the call back over to Russell, a little nuance change when we open the call for Q&A, but we're going to let the sell side as well as the buy side ask a few questions this time around.

Both sides should be prepared to let the operator know if you're interested in asking questions. With that, I will now turn the call back over to Russell.

Russell Becker
President and CEO, APi Group

Thank you, James. As we look ahead to the balance of the year, we will remain focused on continuing to deliver strong operating and financial performance while also executing on value capture opportunities in the beginning, the process of strategic planning, operational improvement, and budgeting process for 2023. I would now like to turn the call back over to the operator and open the call for Q&A.

Operator

Thank you. At this time, if you would like to ask a question, please press the star and one key on your touch tone phone. You may remove yourself from the queue at any time by pressing the pound key. Once again, that is star one to ask a question. Our first question will come from Andrew Obin with Bank of America.

David Ridley-Lane
VP and Senior Equity Analyst, Bank of America

Hi. Good morning. This is David Ridley-Lane standing in for Andrew Obin. Appreciate the commentary on Chubb's organic growth. Wanted to see how is that going versus your internal plans. Obviously there's a lot of talk about European macro. Anything that you're seeing in sort of pipelines or orders around that macro volatility there? Thank you.

Russell Becker
President and CEO, APi Group

Yeah, no. We're optimistic about what we see with Chubb. You know, Chubb has a large base of service and recurring revenue that is going to support the business through any sort of macro recessionary headwinds. We feel pretty good about it and where they're able to go. They've got pockets, you know, like our Hong Kong and China business was a bit behind year to date from a revenue perspective, but that was mostly driven by COVID. Forecasts look really solid for the second half of the year pending what potentially happens with Taiwan. We continue to watch that very closely. I would say that what we see inside Chubb has been very positive.

Just as a reminder you know, our focus as it relates to Chubb is number one is to separate from Carrier. Number two, to take advantage of, you know, some of the initial, above the branch cost reductions to, you know right-size the business. Then we are now starting to turn our attention to you know how do we grow? We see opportunities for us to continue to, you know grow the business. I'd say in line with expectations and optimistic about our ability to take the business forward.

David Ridley-Lane
VP and Senior Equity Analyst, Bank of America

Great. If I could ask one follow-up. How are you seeing the inflationary pressures trend in the last couple of months? You know, do you think of APi's overall pricing is keeping pace or maybe a step ahead of the cost inflation you're seeing? Thank you very much.

Russell Becker
President and CEO, APi Group

I mean, you know, on the service side of our business, we've done a very good job. In fact, I'd say that we've been out in front of inflation. We've seen actually margin improvements really across the entire portfolio, and that includes Chubb. That part of it's been very positive. We've seen a little bit of a drag on some of our contract-related work, that longer term contracts that we haven't been able to, you know, recover some of the increased costs. In general, I feel like we've done a really good job of keeping up to it. We expect to see some level of margin improvement as inflation subsides in certain products such as pipe.

We buy a lot of steel pipe, and we've seen the price of steel pipe start to decrease. But on the component side of the business, whether that's, you know, certain valves and sprinkler heads, et c., we have not seen any sort of reduction in the costs there yet. We'll continue to, you know, work hard to pass on those costs to our customers.

David Ridley-Lane
VP and Senior Equity Analyst, Bank of America

Great. Thank you very much.

Russell Becker
President and CEO, APi Group

Thank you.

Operator

Our next question will come from Andrew Kaplowitz with Citigroup.

Andrew Kaplowitz
Equity Research Analyst, Citigroup

Good morning, everyone.

Russell Becker
President and CEO, APi Group

Hey, Andrew.

Andrew Kaplowitz
Equity Research Analyst, Citigroup

Russell, it seems like you are still seeing good strength across your legacy business. Obviously, there are some concerns out there, you know, slowing markets and warehousing, but I think you've told us in the past, it's not a huge part of your business. Maybe you could give us a little more color into what you're seeing. What are the biggest areas of strength driving the, you know team's organic growth? And are you seeing any signs of weakness? How does your strong backlog position you for 2023?

Russell Becker
President and CEO, APi Group

Yeah. Our backlog is really strong for 2023, you know as we move into the second half. We continue to push the businesses to be super focused on customer and project selection to make sure that they're deploying the resources in the right place. I attribute that strength a lot to the end markets that we serve. Data Centers continue to be strong and robust. Semiconductor is very strong, robust. Healthcare, telecommunications, 5G, our public utility, private utility customers. The markets that we serve, you know, have seemed to just be super resilient and have pushed through any sort of headwind that's been forced on them. That part of it's been really positive.

You know, as it relates to the you know the Amazon effect of the world and what everybody's seen there, that has not been traditionally a big part of our business. We focus on the service side of those types of facilities. That's our number one focus. You know, our one manufacturing business that we have in Specialty Services has traditionally, you know, so to speak, done one project with them on an annual basis. So it's really just not a big deal for us as that end market slows down.

Andrew Kaplowitz
Equity Research Analyst, Citigroup

Helpful, Russell. Just wanna focus on the previous margin question in one sense. Like you mentioned, the lower HVAC services margins. Would you expect that contract-related pressure all year, these just contracts that you kinda reset at the end of the year? Maybe any more color around, you know, other. You mentioned sort of metals getting better, maybe. You know, how does that sorta trend over the next couple quarters? Should we see incremental improvements from there?

Russell Becker
President and CEO, APi Group

Well, as it relates to the margin drag from our legacy HVAC contract, we feel like that's essentially behind us. We'll probably still you know have to battle it a little bit, but we feel like in general, it's behind us. That shouldn't be, you know, a real issue for us going forward. We actually think that we should see some margin lift, you know, really specific to some of our Safety Services installation work because of especially in the domestic piece of our business that the mechanical side of the life safety space is a bigger part than it is say in Chubb. We expect to see some margin lift because of pipe prices coming down.

Again, I'll reiterate a lot of the components, you know, the heads, devices, valves, those types of things, we haven't seen any sort of pricing relief on those types of products that we purchase.

Andrew Kaplowitz
Equity Research Analyst, Citigroup

Maybe just a quick one for Kevin then. Like how heavy a lift is it to get cash flow at or above last year, this year in 2022, given where you're starting from the first half?

Russell Becker
President and CEO, APi Group

Yeah. Thanks, Andrew. We've talked about the first quarter and the first half of the year. Q1, you know, historically is our lowest quarter. We also invested in Q1 in working capital, both, you know, on the rate side. In the second quarter, it's also a lower quarter for us. Traditionally, you're gonna see the majority of our free cash flow be delivered in the back half of the year. In the second quarter, as we mentioned in the first quarter, we continued to work down working capital on the rate side, so we saw improvement there. The volume step up obviously consumed more investments. As we go into the back half of the year, we're gonna stay focused on working down the rate side of things.

You know, Q4 traditionally for us is from a seasonality perspective a lower quarter. Those two things together give us confidence in our ability to deliver the number in the back half of the year. Again, that's consistent with our historical profile of delivering the majority of our free cash flow in the back half of the year.

Andrew Kaplowitz
Equity Research Analyst, Citigroup

Appreciate all the color.

Russell Becker
President and CEO, APi Group

Thanks, Andrew.

Kevin Krumm
EVP and CFO, APi Group

Thanks, Andrew.

Operator

Our next question will come from Kathryn Thompson with Thompson Research Group.

Kathryn Thompson
Founding Partner and CEO, Thompson Research Group

Hi, thank you for taking my questions today. You pointed out in today's press release that monitoring business carries 20%+ higher margins versus contract revenues. A few questions on that monitoring business. What is the percentage of total sales, and do you have a bogey for this business as a percentage of total sales? How has this business performed through various cycles, and how are supply chain constraints impacting this business versus other segments? In other words, is it the same, better, worse? Thank you.

Russell Becker
President and CEO, APi Group

I didn't really get that. Oh, the monitoring as a percent of our total revenue, Kathryn? Your question didn't come through super clear on our end, so.

Kathryn Thompson
Founding Partner and CEO, Thompson Research Group

Okay. Yeah.

Russell Becker
President and CEO, APi Group

Is your question specific to monitoring?

Kathryn Thompson
Founding Partner and CEO, Thompson Research Group

Yes. For monitoring, what is it a percentage of total sales? What is your bogey for that segment in terms of meeting total sales? How has it performed through various cycles? Color on how it has been impacted by supply chain constraints.

Russell Becker
President and CEO, APi Group

I mean, the monitoring is included you know in basically in our service and inspection you know figures. We don't break those figures out. The margins, you know, are substantially higher than our contract work, approximately 20%. The reality of it is that business, that piece of our business hasn't been overly impacted by any sort of supply chain issues. You know, I think there's an opportunity for us as we look at Chubb's business and, you know, our domestic safety business to, you know potentially optimize the monitoring services that we currently are providing. You know, we have really kind of two different models.

Right now, our domestic life safety businesses, we typically use outsourced third-party services for our monitoring the work that we sell. Chubb has a self-perform capability, and we're continuing to look at both approaches and see what we can take advantage of to make sure that we're you know operating the monitoring piece of our business in the most efficient fashion that we possibly can.

Kathryn Thompson
Founding Partner and CEO, Thompson Research Group

Okay. And follow-up question is more on the macro, you know, concerns, be it a recession or just an extended period of sluggishness. When you look at your business, clarify the nature of your services that are required from a code standpoint, and can't be delayed versus some delays like where you can extend maintenance costs. Really, bifurcating that what can be kicked down the road and what is required when you look at your entire business and managing through a cycle?

Russell Becker
President and CEO, APi Group

Well I mean I think you know, our business model every day that goes by becomes more and more resilient, and it's because we continue to focus on growing you know the services you know, piece of the company. If you look at the business today versus what the business looked like in 2008, it's just dramatically different. You know, we're really 15%-20% of our business in 2008 was inspection service and monitoring. Today, you know, it's 50, almost 52%. We've continued to build that resiliency, you know, into the business. You know, a good data point for you, Kathryn, would be, you know, how did the business perform in 2020 when the pandemic hit us?

You know, our net revenues in 2020 were off less than 10%, and yet our EBITDA margins improved because the high variable cost structure that we have. We're able to, you know, really flex down very quickly when we see any sort of you know pressure on our revenues and the margin opportunities that we have with those revenues. I mean, I feel very good about the business and our business's ability to perform if we go into any sort of a recessionary time. It's really driven by the fact that we've improved mix, we have a strong backlog, and we play in the right end markets across the entire portfolio.

Kathryn Thompson
Founding Partner and CEO, Thompson Research Group

Okay, great. Thank you very much.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question will come from Julian Mitchell with Barclays.

Kiran Patel-O'Connor
Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Hi, this is Kiran Patel-O'Connor. Hey, this is Kiran on for Julian. I was hoping, wondering if you could give us some color on organic growth by region. You know, are you seeing any signs of a slowdown in Europe? I think it was noted that, you know, APi Group's, you know, geographic mix is now 40% international. It's just, you know, kind of hoping if you could give us some color on, you know, growth outside of the U.S.

Kevin Krumm
EVP and CFO, APi Group

Yeah Hi, Kiran, this is Kevin. Can talk a little bit you know we talked about the sequential improvement in Chubb results. Obviously, Chubb is not the entirety of our international business, but on the international segment we saw continued growth in the quarter. You asked about Western Europe, you know where our businesses in Western Europe also continue to perform well and improve sequentially versus Q1 in the quarter.

Kiran Patel-O'Connor
Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Got it. Thanks. Then, you know just kind of looking a little more longer term on infrastructure stimulus, you know, is APi seeing any signs of, you know, project or contract work, you know, picking up for that? Or when should APi start to see the impact, from the U.S. infrastructure stimulus bill? Thanks.

Russell Becker
President and CEO, APi Group

How I would answer that, Kiran, is that number one, you really haven't seen the dollars from the infrastructure bills start to flow through the system. That most likely will happen, you know, in 2023. You're seeing some impacts from a rural broadband perspective already, that's helping aspects of our business, you know, as the country tries to expand broadband capabilities to, you know, more remote parts of the country. You're seeing some of that, you know, flow through, you know, right now. The reality of it is that a lot of the infrastructure work that will come as a result of the infrastructure spending bill won't necessarily have a direct impact on our business.

It's more of an indirect impact. It'll create opportunities for other firms to pursue, which will create more opportunities for us with our existing customers as they flock towards some of that other work. We'll take advantage of taking share, you know, with some of our existing customers as some of our competitors look elsewhere for other opportunities. But I don't we won't see really those dollars flowing into the system in any sort of significant way until 2023.

Kiran Patel-O'Connor
Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Understood. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question will come from Jon Tanwanteng with CJS Securities.

Jon Tanwanteng
Managing Director, CJS Securities

Hi. Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. I was wondering if you could talk about the portfolio management opportunities enabled by the Chubb acquisition. You have a safety business with scale now. Is there potential to do something with the specialty business or maybe the old industrial business? How could synergies be leveraged or value unlocked somewhere else?

Russell Becker
President and CEO, APi Group

I think Jon, you know, as the way we've approached that is that every opportunity is an opportunity that we're going to continue to look at and review. We will do what's best for the business, whether that's you know, individual pruning, whether that's closing branches, whether that's optimizing other aspects of the business. We will continue to look at each and every opportunity and make good decisions and choices that are in the long term best interest of the shareholder. Everything is on the table, and we talked, we just had a board meeting. We had a lot of robust conversation and dialogue about, you know, what's best for the business strategically.

As our thinking continues to evolve, then we'll continue to take appropriate action, you know, in the business.

James Lillie
Co-Chairman, APi Group

Jon, it's James. The last sentence of my script was said, you know, while we're focused on integrating the Chubb acquisition, we remain opportunistic as we look at our business profile, and we are always evaluating opportunities before us. While I applaud you for trying to get us to make some Wall Street Journal announcement on our conference call, we're just not there.

Jon Tanwanteng
Managing Director, CJS Securities

Understood. Thank you, James. Kevin, I got a question for you. Just the expected swap from the fixed to the floating, that 70/30 mix, is that inclusive of the preferred that you issued to the Viking and Blackstone, or is that just on the straight debt only? And what is the rate that you're expecting to pay today?

Russell Becker
President and CEO, APi Group

That is exclusive, so that's just on our current debt. Your question is the rate, what our blended rate will be going forward?

Jon Tanwanteng
Managing Director, CJS Securities

Correct. When that swap occurs.

Russell Becker
President and CEO, APi Group

It's gonna be around 3.5%, Jon.

Jon Tanwanteng
Managing Director, CJS Securities

Great. Thank you so much, guys.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question will come from Justin Hauke with Baird.

Justin Hauke
Senior Research Analyst, Baird

Hi. Good morning, guys. I guess I wanted to go back to the restructuring program you guys talked about, the $11 million here in 2Q. I was just hoping you could elaborate on kind of what you're seeing as kind of the total cost of that program going forward, and then how much SG&A savings do you think there is to come from it? Then just confirming, is that incremental too or is it part of kind of the margin targets you've laid out over the next couple of years? Thank you.

Russell Becker
President and CEO, APi Group

Hey, Justin. I'll take this one. To start, you know, we've talked about value capture opportunities in the Chubb business, where we've discussed $40 million as the number that we have currently that we're continuing to assess as we continue to put together our plans. The $11 million charge that we took in the quarter, you can think of that as phase one in terms of getting after that value capture initiative. We expect that to be the majority of our phase one restructuring charge. We could see a little more on that phase one charge as we move through the year, you know, maybe $3 million-$4 million. Then, yeah, we're gonna continue to deliver against that initial number of $40 million.

With that, I would expect a further charge later as we continue to move against that value capture initiative.

Justin Hauke
Senior Research Analyst, Baird

Okay. That sounds like it's not incremental to as part of the $40 million that you guys laid out initially.

Russell Becker
President and CEO, APi Group

Yeah. Yeah, that charge was associated with actions to deliver that $40 million.

Justin Hauke
Senior Research Analyst, Baird

Got it. Then I guess my second question here is just on the pricing, the 2/3 of the organic growth that came from pricing. You know, that was similar to what it was, I guess, last quarter. Just trying to understand. You don't have any surcharges in that pricing. So I mean, that's more or less a permanent reset in terms of where your contract pricing is set. I just wanna understand how sustainable it is.

Russell Becker
President and CEO, APi Group

Yeah. I would tell you that some of that price increase is fuel surcharges. I wouldn't be able to, you know, give you an exact percentage of it and, but there is gonna be, you know, an incremental portion of it is gonna be fuel surcharges that, you know, assuming that fuel prices, you know, reduce to a more moderate level that we will, you know, it eventually eliminates them. But in general, we should, you know, that our pricing should be solid and it should, the price increases should stay in effect.

Justin Hauke
Senior Research Analyst, Baird

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Our next question will come from Adam Wyden with ADW Capital.

Adam Wyden
Chief Investment Officer and Founding Partner, ADW Capital

Hey guys. Thank you. I think a lot of the questions have been somewhat technical around inflation, and I guess my question is a little bit more qualitative. You know, as you know, we've been generalists for a long time, and we've studied a lot of your competitors you know, some of them smaller. I think the resounding kind of comment around inflation among your private competitors is that, you know, it provides a little bit of a headwind on your service business because you locked in, you know, one, two, three-years contracts. You know, those contracts are not all necessarily signed at the same time, and so there's effectively a waterfall where those roll over.

You know, in an inflationary environment, I think the at least the private consensus is that you're able to increase prices in excess of your costs such that your margins in service and, you know, other parts of your fire business might end up being higher than your pre-inflation margins. Can you talk a little bit about that kind of that dynamic in terms of near term and long term, and how you think about inflation affecting the margins of your business?

Russell Becker
President and CEO, APi Group

I guess in general, I agree with you, but to the one aspect of it, Adam, is that our margins in our safety business are up. You know we have done in my opinion a very good job of keeping up with inflation and passing on those inflationary costs to our customers on a I guess a faster basis if that's the right way to put it. You know, I do agree with you that we should see some margin lift because our prices are higher, and as inflation starts to slide we should see some margin improvement that's gonna come back and help the business.

In general, our service margins are up. Our businesses have done a nice job of taking price through a very difficult time, and that's positive. Where again, I said earlier where we've had the pressures on some of our more long-term installation work where we haven't been able to go back to our clients and recover some of the cost increases that we've had to deal with.

Adam Wyden
Chief Investment Officer and Founding Partner, ADW Capital

It's more on the fixed price installation front. Okay. That will reset eventually anyways, right? I mean, as you bid out new contracts and whatnot, those will reprice to the normal world. In a perfect world if inflation starts abating you guys should be able to you know, you won't have that kind of you know, kind of hamster wheel effect. Because, I mean, if I just look back at what your margins were in safety, and I know you bought Chubb, and that's a you know, great opportunity, but I mean, you guys were at 15% or 16%. So I mean, ultimately you will be able to catch up with this if things abate and kind of get back to those mid-teens margins.

Russell Becker
President and CEO, APi Group

Yes, I would. The way I would answer that we feel like as I mentioned earlier in the call, we feel like some of the impacts and the drag that we've seen on the margins in our installation work that we propose on, not bid, that we have that behind us. You know we'll probably have a few battles in front of us, but the big battles are behind us and, you know we should hopefully be seeing some improvement in margins on the installation work as well.

Adam Wyden
Chief Investment Officer and Founding Partner, ADW Capital

Well yeah look you know, recession people have to go back to the office and, you know, this is, this should be in general good for commercial building and office and whatnot. Appreciate all the time and hard work, and that's it for me.

Russell Becker
President and CEO, APi Group

Thank you, Adam.

Operator

At this time, there are no further questions in the queue. I would like to turn the call back over to Russell Becker for any additional or closing remarks.

Russell Becker
President and CEO, APi Group

Thank you very much. In closing, I would like to thank all of our team members for their continued support and dedication to our business. We believe our people are the foundation on which everything else is built. Without them, we do not exist. I'd also like to thank our long-term shareholders as well as those that have recently joined us for their support. We appreciate your ownership in APi and look forward to updating you on our progress throughout the remainder of the year. Thank you again, everybody, for taking the time to join the call this morning. We're pleased to share our strong second quarter results with you. Have a great day.

Operator

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This does conclude today's conference, and we appreciate your participation. You may disconnect at any time.

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