Okay, now we started. Thank you for joining us again. We're very excited to have APi Group with us. We've got Russ Becker, who is the CEO and President of APi, and then we've got Adam Fee, who is the VP of Investor Relations. Russ, as I walk over to you, it's been APi has been public now for almost five years. So maybe talk about what you're most proud of at the company. Has there been any big challenges that you've overcome? And then maybe talk about why APi is so unique and what competitively differentiates the company.
We're talking about specifically, thanks, hi, Andrew.
Hi, good to see you.
Yeah, thank you for having us. Are you talking specifically about what am I most proud of over the last five years?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
From kind of the day of being company founder.
From when you went public.
So I would say that we protected our culture. And for those of you that don't know the company very well, our culture is centered on our purpose, our enduring purpose. And our enduring purpose is building great leaders. And early in my APi Group career, I learned that we needed really good leadership at every level of our business, from the company president to the branch leaders to the department leaders. And we started a journey of leadership development in the company back probably in 2003. And as we moved into this period of time of being a public company, preserving our culture, in fact, maybe even enhancing that culture is something that I'm very proud of. And I do think that it is one of the things that makes APi a truly unique company.
And when you have 500 branches in 22 countries around the world, every one of those branches needs to have a great leader. Every one of those countries needs to have a great leader. Every one of our businesses needs to have a great leader. And it's something that's important. And I think that in the day-to-day grind of being a public company, I think you can lose track of that. And this whole idea of being able to keep your eye on the long term, it's easy to say when you're measured every single quarter. And so for us, I think that's one of the things I'm most proud of.
I also am proud of the fact that we've really, like with the acquisition of Chubb Fire & Security, which was a large transaction, and I think we had a lot of folks that were a little bit skeptical about our ability to not only acquire that business, but to acquire that business and integrate it and bring it along in our way, in the APi way, and instill our culture in that business and improve the results and grow the business organically and improve margins and all that stuff. And the fact that we've made as much progress as we've had has been really rewarding, and I was mentioning to you, when we were just catching up, I was recently in Hong Kong and Macau, China, visiting our teams in Asia Pacific.
I got a chance to spend a day and a half or so in the Hong Kong office. That's a very, very high-performing business. You walk out of there and the quality of people, it just, there's so much energy and it's just so fun to be around that. It's just like, you're like, I know why they kick ass. It's because of the quality of the people and the quality of the leadership that we have in that business. That's spread across all of our business. I didn't even tell you this, but yesterday I stopped in Texas on my way here. One of our larger North American safety businesses was having their branch leaders meeting. I got a chance to go in and spend some time with them and interact with them.
And it's like, there's a reason that that business does as well as it does. And it was really, really rewarding.
So, Russ, I think you're almost answering my next question, but I'll ask it to you and we'll see if it's the right answer. Is that, again, one of the questions I get often is the markets are growing at what they're growing at, but you seem to outperform and you seem to take share? So why is that? Why are you able to continuously take share? The algorithm for you guys, I think, is mid-single digit plus growth. We'll talk about that. But how do you get there, for instance, non-res is not growing that fast?
I think a big reason for that is really this whole idea of selling inspections first. Where we're spending our time, I mean, most firms in our space go after the inspection and service work the traditional way. They try to get the new building project. When the new building project is 90% complete, they try to get access to the owner, and then they go try to sell them a service contract. Where we have really focused on building out a sales team that is centered on selling into the already built environment. For those of you who don't know, a commercial office building, a building like this, is required by law to have their fire protection systems inspected at least annually. In a building like this, it's probably quarterly, would be my guess.
And their service pull-through comes from every one of those inspections. And for us, we have data that shows that we get $3-$4 of annual service pull-through for every $1 of inspection work that we do during the course of that year. And so for us, as we continue to build out that sales force, that's where we're really taking that share because you get the service pull-through. Then if you do a great job, you develop a really solid relationship with that customer. And when they do have project work, you're more than likely going to be negotiating with the customer for that work versus competing for it on price.
It's helpful, Russ. And so look, I should get out of the way now. You put out an update. So maybe Russ, you or Adam can answer these questions. But I just want to clarify a couple of things with the update. I took quick notes as I've kind of been up here. But you said you're in line with $890 million-$900 million in EBITDA, right? ex- currency. What is ex- currency? How much of an impact is that? Can I ask you that?
Yeah, you'll see the exact number in a week or so, but $2 million. The dollar strengthened from when we originally put out our guide at our Q3 earnings to today. And $2 million would be the FX currency part.
Okay, helpful. And then for 2025, you said $7.3 billion-$7.5 billion in revenue, right? $970 million-$1.02 billion in EBITDA. So I've got a lot of questions around cadence. So maybe any initial comments around cadence? Do we start off slower in organic growth and then speed up? And then embedded in that, because you didn't talk about organic versus inorganic, is kind of mid-single digits for the year, I would assume, because that's kind of what's in line with what we have. But do you start out slow and then kind of speed up to get there? Any thoughts on cadence would help?
Yeah, I think what you'll see is more return to normalcy. That's the way we've been framing it.
We haven't talked about that.
Where we do have some seasonality to our business. Q1 last year actually is a tough comp for us because we had abnormal seasonal temperatures to the good, where this year feels like it's more abnormal or more normal.
Colder.
Colder. Yeah. And so I think that's exactly what you're going to see. You're going to see us get back to more of a normal cadence. First quarters always our slowest quarter, and it's going to ramp up as we work our way through the year.
Got it. And colder impacts specialty more than safety or not?
Traditionally, it does. That's fair.
Okay. And growth rates for the year, kind of similar between the two segments for the year? Is that the way to think about it?
Yeah. And what we've shared, what we've been sharing pretty broadly with the group, and I think you see that in our guidance, is that we are pushing our businesses for high single-digit growth in the inspection service and monitoring. And specialty does have a services side of their business. And we want to see low single-digit growth in the project side of their business. And if you look at our revenue mix being around 54% in that inspection service and monitoring space, that averages into that mid-single digit organic growth. And that's what you really saw in that guide that we put out early this morning.
Very helpful, Russ. And then just stepping back a little bit, you've talked about some project delays in specialty. What's embedded in the guide for them? Or have you seen them kind of move forward and end? Or are there still some project delays that are impacting specialty in particular in the first half of the year?
I would say move forward and be smarter about it and understanding the nuances of your client. So I think we pointed to a government-owned public utility that's a customer of ours who, again, it's a government entity. And so you should anticipate that it's going to be a herky-jerky and not going to be smooth. And I don't know that we did a very good job of anticipating that last year as it relates to how we were planning our work and planning our business, which ultimately leads to your forecasting. And I think that we've gotten smarter about that. And we're working for this client right now, but it's playing out more like we learned that it's herky-jerky. And that's baked into our forecasts and the guidance that we've provided.
Yeah. So Russ, with the understanding that's baked in, that also probably doesn't help your profitability, right? So as you go forward, you can sort of think about that more too, because again, your profitability is good. We'll get to that. But generally, the fewer projects you have like that, the less interruption you have in quotes, it should help your profitability, right?
No question about it, and I mean, the reality of it is that on your project work, the smaller you can keep your crew size, impacts profitability, I mean, because it's more manageable. There's a lot of factors that go into what makes your project work. I mean, to be honest with you, there's a lot of factors going into what makes your service work profitable, and a lot of it has to do with who's your client, who's your customer. Not every one of them is the same working, but there's a lot of factors that go into affecting that.
Helpful. And so just kind of a little bit more color into the markets, right? I know that you're quite diverse, especially in safety, but maybe talk about what's driving growth in 2025. We've talked about data centers before, advanced manufacturing, healthcare. So I know you're not tied to any one market, but where's the growth going to come from in 2025, you think?
I mean, the end markets that we're serving really aren't changing. You just listed them. I mean, that's where our focus continues to be. I'll just continue to point you to the inspection-first mindset, and for us, it's continuing to grow those inspections at a double-digit clip. Like we've done for, I think, every quarter since COVID, we've grown our inspections at a double-digit pace, and we're seeing the service pull through, and if we can continue to do that, that's where you're going to continue to see the growth specifically in the safety business.
Russ, two things I want to clarify there. So inspections, you still think you can grow double digits, but inspection service the goals, high single digits. Is that?
That's correct.
Okay. And then domestic versus international, you said you were just in Hong Kong, right? So how is international growing these days? Chubb, as you've talked about, value capture has been very good. You were in the process of closing underperforming branches. So are you done with all that? Where do you think the growth is international in 2025?
We expect the international business to grow mid-single digit organic, just like the rest of our business. That's showing up in our plan as well. I mean, it's not being masked by the North American safety business by any stretch of the imagination. As it relates to value capture, I think we've identified $125 million of Chubb value capture. We're at, I think, we finished the year at $90 million. We've still got some work to do here in 2025. Some of that will probably drag into 2026, Andy. I'm really happy with where our international business has come. We're seeing, we've had organic growth in that business every quarter since we've owned it. We're kind of through our sales force transformation. We have a program there.
We call it GPS and Growing Performance through Sales, which is, I don't know, a corny acronym. I'm not big on all the acronyms, but they've got to call everything. It's got to have a name to it, as you see these days.
Easy to remember.
Actually, it's hard. For whatever reason, that one's hard for me to remember. Probably because I think it's bullshit, but. But our sales leader, our international sales leader, he's a competitive guy. And I love that about him. And he's done a really good job of transforming that sales team. So we have kind of a reinvigorated sales team. The work that they're doing is really good. The pruning, for the most part, of those poor performing contracts is, for the most part, done. Even some of the value capture, and I know that we still have some right sizing to do specific in our monitoring business in certain regions like Benelux and stuff that will continue to flow through as part of this Chubb value capture. But as far as I'm thinking about the business, I'm thinking about it like it's just business as usual.
Just go run your business, go lead your business, and here's what the expectations are, and this is what we have to do.
Helpful. So I think you guys are pretty insulated to sort of changing U.S. geopolitical environment, the new administration. But maybe talk about if we do have tariffs, we have them on China already, we have them on steel and aluminum, any sort of planning you guys are doing, anything that we should think about in terms of price versus cost. How do you think about that?
Yeah, well, I'll give you kind of the broader answer, and then Adam can add some color to it. But we've been talking about tariffs for a couple of months already with our business leaders. We've told them, you need to start protecting yourselves in your proposals. I would tell you on that 54% of our revenue that's inspection service and monitoring, we have very little risk there. On inspections, you basically have no materials. You just have labor. And then your service work, you're pricing it in real time. So as price increases come associated with tariffs, you're going to be passing that along kind of in real time. So it's really on your project work that you have to be really smart about it, and you need to make sure that you're building that and some of those potential cost increases into your proposal.
The biggest place for us to continue to keep our eye out on is pipe prices and how pipe prices are impacted. And we buy very little product that's manufactured in China. So some of that we're pretty immune to, but we need to keep our eye on pipe prices and how pipe prices continue to evolve. So I don't know if you.
No, I think you said it well. I think it's still too early to tell. Should there be any impact on prices, we would anticipate it playing out similar to coming out of COVID when there was inflation in our material costs where we would pass it through to the customer.
Right. It's a straight pass-through, right, Adam?
Correct.
Because pipe prices did go up a lot. You just passed it through.
Yep.
Now it's really dollar for dollar, right? It could impact margin in quotes, but it's dollar for dollar that you do it.
Yeah, exactly. You'd have a higher growth figure in the same gross profit dollars is the way to think about it.
Okay. That's helpful. And so I asked you already about inspection service. You seem quite confident about both sides of that business. You have that goal of reaching 60. I think you've said publicly that 60 is just a medium-term target. You could do more than that over time. So I think I get that. The only thing I'd ask you, Russ, is it's hard to maintain double-digit growth forever in inspection. So how do you keep reinventing yourself to do that? Because that is not easy to do. And same thing with high single-digit growth for inspection service. That's not easy. You know that.
Yeah, but I agree with you. But if you take a step back and you look at the markets that we serve, and then you look at the fragmentation in the market, but you look at the market, we are so underpenetrated in every market. So I look at Minneapolis, Saint Paul as an example, if you say that that's just a territory. And I think we have three inspection sales leaders in that marketplace. We should have probably six. And then you say to yourself, "Well, why don't you just go out, hire three?" And because if you hire three sales leaders, then you have to have probably four inspectors right behind them to be able to do the work.
And then if you're going to get $3-$4 worth of service work off of every $1 of inspection, that means you need to have someplace between 12 and 16 service technicians right behind them. And those folks don't grow on trees. And then there's this whole element of finding the right people so that you have a high-quality team and you have a really good team. And so as we think about our business and where our business is going to go over the next, say, three, four, five years, I'm confident that we can sell the inspections. It's making sure that we've got the right people coming along behind to actually do the work and do the work really well and service our clients. But there's so much opportunity, Andy, for us to continue to grow that aspect of it.
For sure, as the number keeps getting bigger, it gets harder to, you know what I mean? I get that.
You're doing a good job there. So I'm going to ask you one more question. I'll open up to the audience, and then we'll keep going. But embedded in your 2025 guidance clearly is that 13% plus target that you had for adjusted EBITDA. But it's been sort of a journey to get there, right? The balance between margin and growth, it's a balance. And so if I look over the last several quarters, you've had lower organic growth. That's margins have really spiked up. So you said at the beginning of this conversation, Russ, that this is going to be a more normal year, right? But can you balance continuing to grow margin and getting back to that mid to high single-digit growth that we're used to at this company?
Yes.
I knew you were going to say that, but do you want to say anything more?
I really got to like.
Like that? or do you just want to say that?
I mean, it's kind of a show me story, isn't it?
Right.
You know what I mean? I can sit up here and blow smoke up your ass all day long. At the end of the day, it's show me. I mean, I think our track record shows it. In one of Adam's presentations someplace, there's a slide that shows how the company performed between 2010 and 2020. We showed 7% organic growth through there. People, I think, lose track of the fact that when I came to APi, I know some of you people think I'm old, but I came to APi in 2002. We were a 3% business. You know what I mean? It's not like we haven't improved our margins over a period of time and grown this business both organically and inorganically.
So it's easy for me to sit up here and have confidence and say, "Yes, we can do that." But I also think that if you go back, do a little bit of work, look at the track record and the history of the company, you'll see that. And I would also say that a lot of you folks don't really know me that well, but I am a person who, when we make a commitment, I'm going to die trying to take that hill. And that's something that's just ingrained in me. I was giving a speech a week or so ago, and I was talking about my mother. And I said, "Not only is she a warrior and taught me perseverance and resilience, but I also said she raised me well." And that came from my mother. So Mom, I'm plugging you again.
Mother knows best.
I'm plugging you again.
All right. I like it. Any questions from the audience? Nobody wants to ask about how you were raised. Okay. So.
That's really not a great story.
Yeah. So let me ask you then about deal-making, right? Because M&A is a big part of the strategy as well. So we already talked about Chubb a bit. There's Elevated too. So maybe on the Elevated side, how do you think about that timeline? You've talked about it, $200 million plus platform, going to a billion. How do you think about the timeline to get that to a billion? How should we think about it?
I'm not going to sit up here and paint ourselves into a corner. That would be silly by me. So my goal for this year is pretty simple. We think that we see a market that's fragmented just like the fire, life, safety, and security space, right? But so my goal for this year, though, is I want to just see us execute one bolt-on, and I want to see how they integrate that bolt-on into their existing.
One bolt-on in elevator space.
In the elevator space. Now, if that happens, let's just say in April, and it goes really well, then I'd be open-minded to saying, "We're going to do another one in September." But as I'm sitting here, I'm just saying a reasonable goal for that would be if we can really do one this year and do it well. And there's a little bit of a show me story for them. They got to show us that they can do it. And that's important. We could go out and buy three elevator companies tomorrow and give them to the team at Elevated and just screw the whole thing up. And that's what we don't want to do. So that's just the way my brain is thinking, Andy, is like, "Let's do one. Let's do it really well.
And if it does go really well, then let's go to the next one and do the next one.
Got it. Are you happy with their performance so far as they've?
Yeah, in general, I would say that I am. I mean, I think that they're fighting the same stuff that everybody else is fighting. But in general, I think it's a great company, and I'm really excited about it, especially when I think about it, building some momentum and getting some actual scale there. 200 million is not that big.
Yeah, agreed. Okay. And I think fairly recently you called the M&A environment robust. So maybe elaborate on what you're seeing out there. Net leverage is 2.4 times, so balance sheet's in good shape. But as you look at 2025, you talked about the one bolt-on for Elevated, but do you see any transformational deals on the horizon, or do you not need to do that in 2025? How do you think about that?
We certainly don't have to do anything, right? We're in a really great spot. Our balance sheet is really strong. We've got a lot of flexibility to be really choosy and selective. And so I think that you're going to see us continue to take that approach. We're always kind of looking and digging on something and sticking our nose in on certain things. And if we find something that's really interesting to us, I suspect we would try to move it forward. Valuations on larger private equity-owned businesses continue to be outsized. There was one that was recently, it's not a huge company, $200 million business. I think it traded for 22 times or something like that. We didn't even get a book because we're not going to pay that kind of a multiple for a business. And excuse me.
And so it's not worth us putting any effort into something like that. So we're going to continue to be disciplined. And meanwhile, we'll just keep chipping away and plugging away at these small bolt-ons. We did roughly $250 million of bolt-on M&A last year. When you buy them, I think our average multiple last year was under six times. And so under six times, you're getting roughly $1 of revenue for every $1 of purchase price that you get. And that is a great model. And you create value with every one of those transactions that you do. And we continue to have a lot of opportunities. Our business leaders source most of those transactions. And so we do. We continue to have a lot of opportunity coming forward.
Russ, just one more question on that. Can you find deals still at close of those multiples out there? I think you've talked about white spaces in your portfolio, such as fire alarms. We talked about Elevated, maybe internationally. Can you find valuations at those multiples?
You can. Yes, for sure. 100%. I think if you go back to 2023, our average multiple was under six times. In 2024, the average multiple was under six times. In 2022, we didn't do anything because of Chubb, but historically, we've paid under six times, and so I suspect we'll continue to do that. Even with the entry of private equity into the fire, life, safety space, the reality of it is if that seller is so focused on price, they're not going to fit us from a culture, values, and fit perspective. The types of sellers that we are really focused on finding care about their legacy, and a lot of them care about the company name and those types of things, and they care about finding the right home for the people on their team.
And when you can find that alignment, it becomes less and less and less about price. They want to be paid a fair price, but it becomes less and less about price. And most of these people are just good, hardworking American people. You know what I mean? So I think we can continue to do it. We are turning our attention to our international business. As our results continue to improve there, we are feeling more and more confident. I wouldn't say that it's carte blanche every country that we have the same confidence in, but that's no different than what's happening here. Not every one of our companies has the same capability to handle the M&A. But we are looking at some opportunities internationally as well now.
So I know you suggested, I think publicly you talked about getting your international business to 15%, I think, by this year. But that begs the question in backing up to the company level about new margin targets. I mean, you probably don't want to tell me exactly now. You want to leave something for May. But at the same time, 60% of your sales are going to be high margin inspection or service, which tends to be much higher than project margin, 1,000 basis points, I think we've talked about in the past, is a target in the high teens reasonable for the company? You can answer or not answer the question. It's public forum.
I'll just say it's going to be better.
Okay. Good answer.
I'll let you.
Let me do the analytics.
I'll let you do the analytics, but it certainly will be better. And at our last investor day, we did lay out a target for Chubb to be at a 15% margin business by 2025. And we will be there this year.
Yeah, it's very good.
And then it'll keep going.
Excellent. So maybe just digging into specialty for a little for a minute or two, can you give us a little more color into that market? Obviously, we know it's big in utilities, telecom. We talked about the delays a little bit. Seems like it's going to resume growth here in 2025. But maybe talk about what you're seeing in the major end markets in that segment.
We see a tremendous amount of continued activity. I mean, obviously, with the new administration, I think that causes people some consternation on whether certain programs are going to get canceled or not get canceled. I don't know that that would have a direct impact on our business. I've long said that things like the infrastructure bill doesn't directly affect us, but it indirectly does because of this whole idea of rising tide floats all boats, and if the industry is seeing positive momentum, we'll see positive momentum because of that, but if you look at it from where our backlog sits as we entered 2025, it's significantly better than what it was in 2024. Proposal activity has remained really robust, so we feel really good about where we're positioned as we head into 2025.
Just one other question about specialty. You moved HVAC from safety to specialty. Maybe a little more color on what that is going to do or is doing for you, right? I think you've talked about streamlining your overall specialty business, adding shared service synergies, but color on impact to specialty and confidence level that specialty can be a mid-single digit plus grower over time and expand margin over time.
Yeah, I'm not concerned about specialty in general being able to grow mid-single digits and expand their margins. And we will continue to look at that portfolio of businesses. And if there's businesses that aren't going to be accretive to our long-term margin expansion goals, we will either fix them or we will do something else with them. Moving the HVAC business over there, I mean, there's a couple of reasons for it. It sets up the safety services business as more of a pure play services kind of segment, if you will. And I'd also tell you that the individual that leads our specialty services segment is much better equipped to help those HVAC businesses improve their performance. He kind of came from that space.
And so from a leadership perspective, we feel like he's going to be able to have a greater impact and add more value and help those businesses improve their performance more rapidly.
So Russ, I know you always get this question, but I'll ask you again. So your valuation has been languishing is maybe too strong, but it's been a little bit lower, partly because of specialty, because of these project delays. So how do you, as a management team or board, think about specialty with safety? Are there any synergies, especially since you moved HVAC over to specialty? How do you think about the long-term portfolio and the fit together?
Well, I think there are synergies for sure. And if you look at, say, Meta as an example, we have more revenue opportunities in our specialty services segment on a, say, Meta expansion than we do actually on a fire, life, safety, and security opportunity. So if you look at how we're trying to sell to the Metas of the world, we're selling all of our services, not just the fire protection or not just the security. So there's synergistic opportunities there. You also have to remember that our specialty services business covers a significant amount of our corporate expenses as it sits today. And it's not linear. So if you just lopped that branch off the tree, we would have a kind of a different challenge that we have.
You have stranded costs.
We would have to address. And I'm not saying that that's a reason to not. I'm just saying that that's a real challenge. And so as it sits today, we've chosen to prune and to look at the businesses in there that would be better off in a different home than where we are and what our goals and objectives are.
Makes total sense. And then just talking about cash flow, free cash flow conversion has been improving slowly but surely. Maybe talk about what's embedded in the 2025 guide because I don't think you really talked about cash for 2025. So would you expect continued improvement in conversion or maybe puts and takes around cash flow as you see it?
Adam can give a little bit more color. He's probably more of the number cruncher than me. We expect to see continued improvement in free cash flow conversion. I mean, there's lots of opportunity for us to continue to be better, and we continue to work towards our long-term goal of 80% free cash flow conversion as we define it, and we made really, I think, significant progress this year. I'd say the only, if I'm thinking about puts and takes, is that as we continue to grow revenue, I mean, that's the biggest source or use of cash, if you will, is funding receivables and receivable growth, and I would actually hope that would be a good problem to have. Do you want to add anything?
No, I think you said it well. We certainly will grow our free cash flow dollars every year. That's the plan there. Conversion will maybe bump around a little bit depending on how fast we grow on the top line.
Adam, is it fair to say that conversion will be better in 2025 than 2024?
We'll tell you in a week, but I think it'll be right in the same area.
Okay, and so last question, what are the top two or three innovations and structural changes affecting your company over the next five years? Are there any emerging industry trends that are perhaps being overlooked in the current discourse?
Oh, emerging trends. I mean, obviously, AI and the impact that AI can potentially, in a positive fashion, have on our business. I mean, that's something that I'm personally embracing. And we're actually resourcing AI differently, just a change that we've made within the last, what, few months. And we're trying to focus our AI efforts in the direction of how can we enable our field leaders to be more efficient as they continue to go out and do their jobs. So that would be probably the largest thing that we're trying to keep our eye on. I mean, there's obviously lots of other big issues, especially affecting the United States, like immigration. Our industry needs immigration and needs some resolution to our immigration policy in the country. So there's lots of challenges and issues there as well. And we probably could talk forever about other stuff too, Andy.
Very nice. Well, we are out of time. So, Russ, Adam, thank you very much for joining us.
Yeah, thank you for having us. So thank you for being here.