All right. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Avery Dennison's 2024 Investor Day. I'm John Eble, Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations. It's great to see everybody today at the New York Stock Exchange. We're excited to outline our strategies and opportunities for the future today, and how we plan to continue making the success of Avery Dennison possible across the next horizon. Today's presentation materials are available at your tables and also posted to our investor relations website for anybody joining through the webcast. The presentation is being recorded, and the replay should be available later this afternoon. Before we begin, a quick reminder that throughout today's discussion, we'll be making references to non-GAAP financial measures. These measures are defined and reconciled in the appendix of the presentation.
We will be making predictive statements today that reflect our current views and estimates about our future performance and results. These forward-looking statements are made subject to the safe harbor statement that you see here on slide two. We've got a great agenda for you today. You'll be hearing from four members of our senior leadership team, breaking things up with a few videos and a couple opportunities to engage with our product and solutions in the bag provided for you today. Then, we're gonna go right into a thirty-minute Q&A session, followed by lunch and an opportunity to connect with the team. With that, I'm gonna turn the call over to Deon Stander, our President and CEO.
Thanks, John, and good morning, everyone. Our objective today is to provide a clear overview of the strengths of our portfolio, our compelling advantages and growth opportunities in each of our primary businesses, how these, our strategies, and our unique position in connecting physical items with digital identities positions us well to continue delivering GDP plus growth and top-quartile returns, and an update on our financial objectives over the next cycle. But first, let me just provide you a quick overview of our portfolio. Avery Dennison is an industry-leading global material science and digital identification solutions company. We provide a wide range of branding and information solutions across a diverse set of industries. Materials Group represents about roughly 70% of the company's revenue, as you can see here on the chart, and Solutions Group represents roughly the other 30%.
Importantly, you can see that our high-growth Intelligent Labels business, one that spans both across our Materials Group and our Solutions Group, is now a sizable part of the portfolio. The markets we serve are vast, diverse, and growing, and we see significant opportunity to further expand these through our Intelligent Label platform. Our primary businesses, Materials and Solutions, are the leaders in their industries. We have a proven track record of delivering superior value creation over the long term on the strength of our competitive advantages across the portfolio and the growth catalysts we have. Global scale allows us to provide solutions at lowest cost across the supply chain, no matter the geography, which is increasingly relevant as customers seek global partners to help address the challenges they face.
Our innovations, which are often proprietary and unique, span not just products and solutions, both physical and digital, but also how we manufacture and execute. At our core, a key strength of our company all started with Stan Avery's invention of the first self-adhesive label in 1935. Since Stan's invention, we have been the innovation leader in our space, both in terms of material science, leveraging our unique vertical integration adhesives, as well as process technology. We are well-positioned with combined benefits of our innovation leadership, our long history of operational and commercial excellence, and our scale advantage. Our success across cycles is underpinned by our consistent execution of our key strategies that I will walk through in a moment, and they are designed to deliver superior value over the long term.
We have been and will continue to be a disciplined EVA-focused company that generates strong cash flow, balancing the optimal mix of growth, margin, and capital efficiency over cycles. Our strategies have enabled us to deliver across cycles while expanding our opportunity for growth. Over the past decade, we have consistently improved margins, expanded EVA, and improved the quality of the portfolio with an increasing proportion of high-value categories. We have achieved these strong results in both of our primary businesses and during a very dynamic period, highlighting the agility, capability, and strength of our teams around the world. During this time, we have consistently delivered on the potential of our businesses and our portfolio. My role as the CEO over this next horizon is to further expand that potential, unlocking profitable new market growth and value.
As such, looking forward, we will continue to leverage our competitive advantages and our enterprise intelligent label capabilities to further strengthen our moats and market positions, importantly, increase our addressable market and unlock new growth, and further improve our portfolio, both organically and inorganically, to expand our differentiation and value creation. A key strength of our business is our broad market exposure, not only by end segment, but also by geography. This brings both growth opportunities, which you'll hear more about from Ryan and Francisco later on, but also resilience across cycles. Two key catalysts behind our ability to consistently deliver GDP plus growth and top quartile returns are faster than average growth within the high-value categories and our presence in faster-growing emerging markets.
In the emerging markets, in addition to the above GDP-average growth within these economies themselves, we continue to see further penetration of self-adhesive label materials due to the increased consumption of consumer packaged goods in those geographies. As to high-value categories, we distinguish a product or a solution as a high value when it serves a market with above-average growth potential, has large profit pools, and leverages our core capability. Examples that you know include specialty labels, a large proportion of our graphics and tapes businesses, Vestcom and Embelex, and of course, our intelligent labels business. As I mentioned, we continue to strengthen our portfolio with greater exposure to these high-value categories, not only for their growth and margins, but also to increase our competitive differentiation.
As you can see, we've increased the weight of these categories in our portfolio roughly 10 points over the last five years through a combination of both organic and inorganic growth, and we expect to continue to improve the portfolio as a catalyst for further growth and margin improvement over the long term. Our portfolio is strong, and it is a portfolio that we believe is positioned to further benefit from some of the significant mega trends as we look forward, and while there are a number of mega trends, we believe three in particular will define the industries and companies that will succeed in the decade ahead: the digitization of industries and businesses, sustainability and its related impacts, and the personalization, the me in the product and solution that consumers are increasingly expecting.
The digitization of industries and business has been driven by both new technologies and more recently, AI, and requires greater accuracy of data and connectivity across supply chains and within enterprises. Our Intelligent Labels platform is already proving to be a key enabler of this and will play an even greater role as we move forward, and I'll touch on this a bit more shortly. Sustainability is already a consumer expectation and a business imperative. It requires companies to increasingly deliver solutions that enable circularity, transparency, and end-of-life repurpose to maintain relevance as partners, posing both a risk and an opportunity. In this regard, we are leveraging our industry-leading material science innovation capability to help enable and increase recycling of packaging, and with our solutions capability, to provide visibility, transparency through digital identification, both of which are already resonating with customers now.
Lastly, the trend for more personalized and customized products and experiences continues, and we expect this to be a tailwind for our business, particularly for our Embelex platform, which you will hear more about later on. At Avery Dennison, we believe that in this more digitized world, every physical item will have a digital identity in life, and this is most likely to happen by items having a label or packaging with digital sensors embedded within it to enable that item-level visibility throughout its life, helping drive greater efficiencies across the supply chain and allowing for deeper, more frictionless consumer engagement. Historically, being able to address these challenges has been difficult because many identification technologies are limited by line of sight requirement, and data on that item is typically held at the SKU level, not at a unique item level.
We have already proven that being able to use a label with an integrated digital sensor makes each item uniquely identifiable and remotely capture every event across the life of that item, from its birth at source to in-store and the consumer, and to end of life. This is making real visibility, efficiency, and engagement possible. I'll now play a quick video that helps illustrate our belief in this area.
What if scanning your clothes could tell you their story? Or your sneakers could confirm their authenticity? What if your sushi could assure you of its freshness, or you could track ingredients from farm to fork? What if your football shirt made you more than just a fan, or your morning coffee lets you tip the farmer directly? What if your car could reflect your style as well as the sun from your face? What if your windows could save energy, and all of this got the thumbs up from the biggest voices on climate? What if a label could alert you when food is going bad, assure you a vaccine is safe, and stop clothing from going to landfill, and enable plastic to be recycled instead of becoming ocean waste? What if? What if we told you one company can help make all of this possible?
In this more digitized world that you just saw in that video, Avery Dennison is uniquely positioned to lead in connecting physical items with digital identities across multiple segments, giving the market-leading positions in our businesses and our core capabilities across the portfolio. Using our innovative material science capability in the materials group, we already provide the label material that helps companies brand and identify the majority of physical items in the world…. Our knowledge of adhesives, face stock, and optimizing label on all packaging is crucial in enabling sensors on every item and every label. Additionally, our converting partners touch almost every CPG and brand globally, making it possible to enable entire category for digital adoption. We're also the market leader and innovator in what is the best, most ubiquitous sensor in UHF RFID to enable that digital identity and life across our Intelligent Labels platform.
We have decades of direct partnership with retailers globally, and experience in managing vast amounts of data globally in our solutions business. We have developed a leading integrated digital identity platform in atma.io to ensure every physical item in that journey of the item is capable of being captured and provide actionable insights to help address some of the most challenging problems industries face. These elements, combined with our strategies and strong execution ability, will increasingly enable us to capture more value in the decades to come. We are already leveraging the strength of our portfolio to deliver products and solutions that help customers address these key challenges, and we expect this to be increasingly the case as we move forward. There are four main challenges that we believe are applicable across multiple market segments. First, optimizing labor and supply chain efficiency.
Our solutions help automate tasks, reducing repetitive, low-value tasks to drive productivity and free up supply chain and retail staff to focus on activities that add value to end consumers. Second, reducing waste. Our solutions play a crucial role in systematically improving visibility throughout the supply chain, creating opportunities to reduce waste and overproduction across multiple industries. Third, advancing sustainability, circularity, and transparency. Our solutions play a leading role in the visibility, transparency, circularity, and sustainability of physical items, enabling traceability across the entire lifecycle of item from source to recycle and end-of-life disposal. And finally, helping brands and consumers better connect. Our solutions help brands and consumers better connect and create more personalized experience. By providing a digital life to physical items, coupled with branding and enhanced shelf appeal, our solutions transform the customer journey, brand interaction, and point-of-sale experience.
Our focus on solving these challenges increasingly positions us to demonstrate the value we can create beyond the utility of the label or our customers across the supply chain. And this will allow us to not only capture more of this value, but also deepen our partnerships with our customers, further improving our competitive differentiation. The team will provide more opportunities on this later in the presentation. On our strategies, our strategies and the consistent execution of them help drive the differentiation I just mentioned. These strategies, what we do, combined with our values, how we do it, which is equally important, are proven and continue to evolve to reflect the opportunity ahead. The strategies taken together enable us to deliver GDP plus growth and top-quartile returns and strong EVA over cycles.
We will drive outsized growth in high-value categories to extend our differentiation and improve our portfolio mix, grow profitably in our base businesses to strengthen our competitive moat and leverage our scale advantage. Our more recently evolved third strategy to lead at the intersection of physical and digital is to capitalize on the strengths of our materials and solutions businesses as we build new moats and high-value solutions and products in a space that offers significant growth opportunity. Allocate capital effectively and focus relentlessly on productivity to further strengthen our competitive moat and drive top-quartile returns on capital, and lead in an environmentally and socially responsible manner to ensure our business endurance, expand our moat, and deliver for all of our stakeholders.
So stepping back, considering these key mega trends, the strength of the markets we serve and our positions within those industries, our team, our competitive advantages, and the profitable growth opportunities that lie ahead of us, our businesses taken together represent a unique opportunity for significant value creation in the years ahead. Materials Group is an industry-leading, proven GDP plus high-return EVA compounder across cycles, with a customer base that is crucial in a more digitized future. Solutions Group is an industry-leading, proven solid growth and margin business with strong data management and digital capabilities, and increasing points of differentiation, with further upside as the portfolio evolves. And we have the market-leading Intelligent Label platform, in which we have a uniquely advantaged position that leverages the core capabilities of the whole enterprise and presents a multi-decade growth opportunity in multiple segments, still nascent in their adoption.
Our portfolio of businesses together represents a very strong and compelling enterprise: attractive end markets, proven ability to deliver GDP plus growth, top-quartile returns, and strong EVA across cycles, unique capabilities to lead in connecting physical items with digital identities, and an increasing exposure to high-growth, profitable technology. So as I look forward, I have very strong conviction that Avery Dennison will play an increasingly important role in the industries we serve and significantly expand the value we create for all of our stakeholders. So with that, I'm now gonna hand over the presentation to our newly appointed President of the Materials Group, Ryan Yost.... Ryan has been with the company for 23 years and has spent time in both of our primary businesses, and more recently, leading our food and logistics-focused identification solutions and Vestcom businesses.
Thank you, Deon, and good morning, everyone. It's my pleasure to give you an update on our Materials Group business. We're at an interesting and very exciting time for the Materials Group businesses. We have a strong track record of significant EVA growth across cycles, and we recently turned the corner on the lingering impacts of inventory destocking in the primary industries we serve. We are now well-positioned to capitalize on the mega trends of digitization and sustainability, leveraging our core competitive advantages while executing on our growth strategies. In the coming slides, I will provide additional insight on the role Materials Group plays within Avery Dennison portfolio. Within that, I will cover our competitive advantages, our key strategies, and conviction for the future growth and returns of the business. Let's begin with an overview of the business.
Materials Group is roughly a $6 billion business, delivering GDP-plus growth, strong margins, and high capital efficiency, resulting in strong and consistent cash flow, high returns that are multiples of the cost of capital, and significant EVA. Label materials is roughly three-quarters of the business, where we are the clear industry leader, two and a half times larger than our nearest competitor. One of the ways that we maintain that leadership role is continually improving our value proposition. I will share more on that throughout the slides, along with consistently delivering top-quality products with greater productivity over time. The remaining 25% of our portfolio is our Graphics Solutions, Reflective Solutions, and Performance Tapes businesses, which are largely high-value categories. As you heard from Deon, high-value categories are a strategically important growth area for us.
These are categories that serve markets with above-average growth potential, have large profit pools, and leverage our core capabilities. Overall, high-value categories make up one-third of the Materials Group business. We are a top player in graphics and architecture, automotive segments, and in reflective materials. And as I'll touch on later, we capture growth opportunities in the premiumization and digitization of labels and packaging. We also serve very diverse markets from a geographic perspective, with roughly 60% of our revenue in developed markets and the remaining 40% in emerging markets, which are particularly attractive, with their strong growth potential and lower penetration of pressure-sensitive labels. Materials Group has built its leadership position in self-adhesive labels on a number of core strengths: our global scale and production capacity, enabling low-cost leadership with a strong local presence in each market we serve.
We maintain long-standing partnerships with more than 10,000 label converters worldwide. As I will cover later, this access creates a strong advantage in both delivering current and future innovative solutions to end markets in a very efficient way. We draw on nine decades of experience in material science and adhesives, where we are vertically integrated in the ongoing development of our products, and we embrace innovation across our businesses, from the materials we develop to the proprietary process technologies used in our operations. Today, we see a range of growth catalysts emerging in our businesses, as the macro trends Deon highlighted earlier are very relevant in the end markets we serve within Materials Group. As we look to address those trends, we remain confident our core strengths are more relevant than ever, giving us the right foundation to succeed.
Let me provide more detail on each of the growth catalysts we are seeing. These are opportunities that address unmet customer needs and benefit from our capabilities in material science, process technology, RFID, and the breadth and depth of our customer-converter channel access. I will start with e-commerce growth and supply chain transparency. We continue to see opportunities for growth in this space, as e-commerce will continue to grow as part of the omni-channel shopping evolution. The vast majority of variable information applications are driven by the need for efficient supply chains and transparent inventories, issues that are effectively addressed through pressure-sensitive label solutions because of the ease of application and speed and clarity of printing. The next catalyst, premiumization of packaging. On-shelf decoration is a major need for packaging for packaged goods.
This area is actually growing in importance as CPGs compete with lower-cost private label offerings. Leading brands continue to seek ways to connect with their consumers at the point of purchase. On-shelf appeal delivered through the label is a leading driver of sale conversion. Pressure-sensitive labels remain the leading way to deliver premier shelf appeal at the moment of truth, and as our recent research has shown, is a key enabler of a brand sustainability story. Next, strong presence in emerging markets. From our years of experience, we know that packaging and label use are closely tied to a region's economic development and growth in consumer packaged goods. We are well-positioned in the emerging economies to capitalize on the move of glue-applied labels to pressure-sensitive labels as markets mature. Finally, the digitization of packaging. Digitally enabled label and packaging is quickly becoming a reality.
Retailers are starting to generate demand across CPG manufacturers for digital labels. Materials Group is uniquely positioned to fulfill this demand, leveraging the Solutions Group intelligent labels leadership position and our strong relationships with the converter channel. Sustainability presents risk and opportunities for the labels and packaging industry. Innovation is key to unlock this opportunity, and for that reason, it sits at the center of our innovation pipeline. Our technical capabilities and material science expertise are a competitive edge in this area as we lead the industry with sustainable innovation. I will spend more time shortly on the innovation work taking place within our business to improve the recycling process, creating new sustainability growth opportunities for us. For the business overall, our competitive advantages and the growth catalyst I just outlined enable us to continue delivering strong growth in high-value categories and profitable growth in our base.
Our disciplined approach, balancing top-line growth, strong margins, and capital efficiency, enables us to deliver significant returns and EVA over cycles. Now, turning to our financial performance, our business is very resilient over various business cycles. As I mentioned on the earlier slide, our unique competitive advantages, coupled with our focus on continuous improvement, can be seen in these results. Despite some softness in demand for goods in developed regions as consumers grapple with the cumulative effects of inflation, as you can see, we continue to deliver GDP-plus growth over the long term. Over the past decade, we've increased margins significantly through a combination of improved mix, tied to our strategy of driving outsized growth in our high-value categories, and productivity improvements we delivered through our Enterprise Lean Sigma program.
Our scale and focus on process improvement drives ongoing efficiency benefits, allowing us to reduce costs, remain disciplined in spending, and improve our service, all of which resonates with our customers, expanding our market leadership, allowing for consistent margin growth. Pressure-sensitive is the lead technology for packaging decoration, remaining the largest share of label decorating options with almost 40% share of the market. Pressure-sensitive labels are more than an $11 billion dollar industry and growing. Roughly 80% of pressure-sensitive labels are used in food, beverage, and personal care, or for variable information applications in retail, pharma, and logistics, in particular, e-commerce. The stability of these markets and high weighting towards staples helps drive resiliency for both our business and the industry overall. Pressure-sensitive labels offer clear advantages, such as enhanced shelf appeal for brand visibility at the moment of truth.
Versatility, it can be applied in various shapes to almost all packaging types and substrates. Late-stage differentiation. For example, one packaging type can be used for different flavors, with the label serving as the indicator of actual package contents. Easy to dispense, do not require a large capital investment from the brand or contract packager. And superior economics, it offers the lowest total applied cost over a wide range of labeling speeds and batch sizes. Materials Group offers the broadest range and depth of fit-for-use, application-optimized, and premium high-end pressure-sensitive labels in the industry. Our market leadership is built on our significant, often proprietary, competitive advantages, including industry-leading material science, process technology, and operational excellence. Customers prefer partnering with us because our operational efficiency allows us to provide industry-leading quality and service. Our customers require speed and flexibility to meet the rising demands of end users.
A core element of our competitive advantage is using our scale and Enterprise Lean Sigma capabilities to continuously improve our processes in order to consistently and efficiently service our customers. Materials science is foundational to who we are, with an organization of over three hundred scientists working on solving tomorrow's challenges. Our core innovation platforms of adhesives, coatings, and wide web laminating are fundamental platforms for our businesses. Our R&D teams represent decades of experience in materials science and process innovation. We are regularly invited to partner with customers and end users in industry associations because of our specific knowledge and expertise. In addition, we have a broad range of application engineers with expertise on label application environments. This is extremely critical in commercializing our innovation.
Another key competitive advantage and source of differentiation is our market-driven innovation, leveraging the strength of our material science R&D and market insights, which creates real value for customers and end users. Our ability to convert unmet needs to commercial solutions is a core competitive advantage and something we look to capitalize on moving forward. Let me give you some examples. We differentiate with sustainable polymer materials, like labels that enable packaging recycling. I will share a specific example of this one later on. Just as exciting is our IP-protected solvent-free adhesives. This gives applications that used to use solvent and now to be able to leverage water-based adhesives. This creates both a sustainability advantage and a cost advantage. And finally, our proprietary films that can replace PVC. Again, this provides not just a sustainability advantage, and also a cost advantage to our customers.
Leveraging the capabilities of our industrial tapes business, we develop functional materials for a range of applications. For example, in EV batteries, we are commercializing solutions that provide for improved thermal insulation and ease of the assembly process. Finally, our customers use our materials to create a premium look, whether labels, car wraps, or decorative films. An example of this is the work we are doing with various automotive OEMs and dealers to allow more customization or paint protection of a consumer's automobile. This is becoming even more important as dealers look to find new avenues of service revenue as electric car growth continues. As you know, the drive towards a circular economy is reshaping the packaging industry. As we innovate, we are advancing the industry by providing more sustainable label materials.
Our focus is to use less raw materials, make packaging recyclable, increase recycled content, and make use of responsibly sourced materials. An example of our innovation in this area is our CleanFlake adhesive platform. Our CleanFlake adhesive technology for pressure-sensitive labels enables the recyclability of rigid PET and HDPE packaging, allowing the label to be cleanly removed from the container during the recycling process. It helps CPGs meet their sustainability targets, comply with regulations, and increase the availability of recycled resins. Pressure-sensitive labels with CleanFlake are highly sustainable decorative solutions with outstanding label adhesion, performance, clarity, and conversion. A majority of our pressure-sensitive materials going into the CPG market now use our proprietary CleanFlake adhesive platform. It is being well-received by the market.
One last point on CleanFlake: it has been recognized by the Association of Plastic Recyclers, RecyClass in Europe, and other bodies, to be compatible with standard rigid recycling streams such as HDPE and PET. These associations are utilized by many CPGs and brands to set their own packaging standards, so this is a significant milestone for our business. To summarize, sustainability is an imperative for our industry. We're extremely well-positioned on this front, due to our ability to innovate and create sustainable solutions that enable the increased levels of package recycling. We now have a complete portfolio of products that make this possible, creating new opportunities for us. Now, turning to our growth catalyst. One significant growth catalyst for us is our strong presence in emerging markets, which I stated earlier, accounts for roughly 40% of our label material sales.
Avery Dennison invested early in countries like China and India, training converters and helping create the pressure-sensitive label industry in these geographies. Here, you typically have stronger GDP growth than mature markets, and per capita consumption of packaged foods is increasing. In addition to this, we're seeing a shift from glue-applied labels to pressure-sensitive labels as the industry matures. Collectively, this leaves us with healthy, above-GDP growth in these regions. We are continuing to invest in developing these markets further to accelerate the adoption of pressure-sensitive labels and to maintain our share position. High-value categories are another major source of growth for us. They represent more than a third of the materials group sales today. It's a key area where we deploy our R&D and application engineering I spoke of earlier. Specialty labels are a good example of a high-value category.
One example would be in the wine and spirits category. Specialty papers are needed to create design options for a wine producer, ultimately creating a premium look to maximize shelf appeal for the brand. But shelf appeal is only part of the challenge. The label must also perform in a wide range of applications, including being applied on wet glass, while also maintaining adhesion performance under different environments, such as being soaked in an ice bucket. Another example of our specialty label would be our industry-leading reclosure solution, which can be found across various food packages. However, one specific category using this is the leafy greens category. The opportunity in leafy green category was for producers to create larger pack sizes, better manage freshness during packaging and shipping, but also ensure consumers have confidence in tamper resistance in addition to maintaining freshness by resealing packages after use.
Our specialty reclosure film solution met this need, meeting all requirements of the leafy green process that in production, shipping, retail display, and consumer requirements. Essentially, the label is delivering both a brand image and creating function to the package. Pharmaceutical manufacturers have an entirely different need. They must adhere to strict regulation when it comes to packaging changes and adhesion performance. We offer solutions that both meet regulations of permanent adherence across multiple substrates labeled to the pharmacy, reducing the complexity for the store staff. Beyond labels, there are additional growth opportunities for us, for example, in the decoration and personalization of cars, the replacement of mechanical fasteners within the tape space, and the creation of brighter, more visible, durable highway signs, all areas where we have unique solutions within our Graphics, Performance Tapes, and Reflectives businesses.
One of the biggest growth opportunities in the industry, in the industries we use is RFID technologies to create intelligent labels for the use in retail, food, pharma, and logistics applications... Driving the adoption of intelligent labels is a significant opportunity, as it requires both manufacturing and distribution capabilities at scale. We have been an innovator in this area from the beginning, and lead the industry in UHF RFID inlay and tag design, and production on a global scale. As retailers and segments outside of apparel begin adopting this technology, RFID solutions will be needed by CPGs and brands who currently leverage their label and packaging partners that provide existing analog label and packaging products.
Materials Group is extremely well-positioned to support our converting partners to fulfill this RFID demand, leveraging our strong technical experience in RFID rollouts, further strengthening our differentiation compared to our competitors, and driving our industry leadership in connecting the physical and digital. You will hear more about our Intelligent Label platform from Francisco. In summary, the Materials Group business is operating from a position of strength and industry leadership. We are actively expanding our position in high-value applications that leverage our material science and process innovation capabilities, but if I may leave you with one overriding message today: Materials Group remains the foundation of Avery Dennison. We will continue to deliver solid growth with exceptional returns and significant EVA. We are incredibly, incredibly motivated organization, excited about the future, and determined to continue to win in the industry segments which we compete. Thank you.
Now, I will hand it off to Francisco Melo, President of Solutions Group.
Good morning, everyone, and great to have you with us, and thank you, Ryan. I'm delighted to have the chance to provide you an update on how the Solutions Group will help Avery Dennison deliver on its vision to connect the physical and digital worlds, making possible a more sustainable, intelligent, and exciting place. Our Solutions Group is a leader in global branding and identification solutions, helping address key industry challenges, primarily within the global apparel, general retail, grocery, food, and logistics markets. Our portfolio includes intelligent labeling solutions, predominantly RFID, our connected product cloud platform we call Atma.io, variable data information for variable data solutions for apparel, data-integrated pricing and retail media solutions, and on-product branding and embellishments.
It is worth noting that while the majority of our revenue originate in the sourcing regions, we characterize our geographic sales by both where the end user resides and where the strategic decision-making happens. With double-digit growth CAGR over the past five years and a revenue of around $2.6 billion in 2023, we have a clear path for significant profitable growth moving forward. It is worth mentioning also that today, the high-value categories represent approximately 60% of our portfolio. Today, I will focus on providing an update on three key growth catalysts of Intelligent Labels, Vestcom, and Embelex. The Solutions Group offers a significant profitable growth opportunity as we unlock new value for customers.
We are market leaders in the areas where we operate, historically in our base apparel business, where we are more than three times the size of our next competitor in intelligent labels, where we are the world's largest UHF RFID integrated inlay player, and more recently, in external embellishments, the business we also call Embelex. This is based on our competitive advantages in three main areas. Number one, our global scale and footprint, as well as vertical integration capabilities with deep engineering and process technology, which provide a global service proposition at the lowest cost. Number two, our innovation leadership for material science to radio frequency design, where we have more than one thousand five hundred patents and applications in intelligent labels alone.
And number three, our market-leading capabilities to drive adoption of digital identification technology, including data management, that help address some of the world's most complex challenges while generating profitable growth. To further accelerate our innovation, we also scout and invest in new technologies, such as alternatives to traditional silicon RFID or broadening the range of future sensor technologies. We will continue to have a disciplined approach to profitable growth in the base business that provide key market access for the growth of our high-value categories. We've been able to deliver significant growth and expanded margins while continuing to invest for future growth. As you can see, we are accelerating our sales growth organically and through M&A. It is also important to highlight, it's the adjusted EBITDA margin improvement, where you can see a consistent improvement over the same period, despite the challenges faced in that period of time.
The evolution of our portfolio at the Solutions Group level gives us confidence in the path ahead to continue the growth journey while expanding our margins. This value creation is also reflected in and driven by the diversification and strengthening of our portfolio. As you can see, we have continued to shift the portfolio with high-value categories, representing approximately 60% of our revenue today, more than two times greater compared to five years ago. This will continue to be a driver for our growth as we move forward. Additionally, we have significantly expanded our position outside of apparel, both organically and through M&A, diversifying our end markets and reducing cyclicality. As we progress, our competitive advantages, as well as our legacy market access, will allow us to further unlock and accelerate growth in general retail, food, and logistics.
Market segments where RFID adoption is still nascent and offer a great opportunity for continued profitable growth as adoption expands. Our solutions help address challenges and deliver strong results for our customers. You heard Dion mention the mega trends of digitization, where we provide item-level identification, enabling every physical item to have a digital identity, a voice, even a life. He also mentioned sustainability, where we enable significant waste reduction across the board, and in particular, in perishable segments like food, and he also talked about personalization, where we create the ability to better connect brands and consumers through customization and digital engagement. While today's world is highly interconnected by digital networks, much of the economy still depends on moving physical items from A to B. Think from source to distribution, to retail, and of course, into the consumer hands.
All too often, these disconnects or inaccuracies between the information feeding, sourcing or promotion decisions, or increasingly advanced decision-making models and the famous artificial intelligence systems, and the real physical world, and this is where Avery Dennison solutions are increasingly addressing these disconnects and adding real value to our customers. I am a believer that solving the world's biggest problems creates the world's best business opportunities, and with that in mind, I thought it would be beneficial to depict how the industry problems we help address mapped to the segments we are targeting. The key takeaway is that the solutions we provide are increasingly broadening in scope as new use cases are unlocked, evolving from traditional source tagging and data management needs into addressing optimizing labor and supply chain efficiency, to new end-to-end solutions enabling the circular economy or helping brands and consumers better connect.
As an example, we're gradually starting to see more consumer connections requirements, where reuse, recycle, end of life, and circularity applications become key solution requirements. Globally, it's estimated that over a billion tons of food is wasted every year. In the U.S. alone, that amounts to between 30% to 40% of its total food supply. As a consequence, we continue to see acceleration of legislation as a tailwind, whether that being in E.U. with a Digital Product Passport, expected to start to be enforced in 2027, initially in apparel and eventually evolving, or in food, where the FDA, with the Food Safety Modernization Act, is going beyond food safety into traceability, adding additional record-keeping requirements throughout the supply chain. We can significantly reduce waste created by overproduction and perishability by using Intelligent Labels to create smart supply chains and improve visibility and accuracy in the food industry.
We believe reducing waste is both environmental and business imperative, and one that also presents a big opportunity for businesses and industries around the world. In the tote bag, you will find a bottle of wine, that I invite you to look at, and a bag of coffee beans. Both demonstrate how RFID can be utilized to improve efficiencies and visibilities throughout the supply chain, as well as to better connect the brand to the consumer through storytelling and with a much higher levels of transparency, accessed via the simple QR code you will see in the front. We will now play a video that illustrates the role Avery Dennison plays in helping to address the complex challenge of waste.
Environmental challenges are impacting businesses every day. Billions of dollars are lost each year due to overproduction and discarded inventory, and 30% of food is lost before even reaching the store. Annually, more than half of global businesses see 8% of inventory wasted due to items perishing, spoiling, or getting damaged, and 80% of brands struggle to make progress with their waste and recycling targets. What if we could make reducing waste possible? At Avery Dennison, through our innovative, sustainable solutions and recycling initiatives, we're helping drive systemic change across the entire supply chain.
Whether it's using our RFID solutions to improve inventory accuracy and traceability, leveraging consumer demand insights to drive sales and prevent overproduction, utilizing a product's digital twin to track where it was made, sold, and discarded, or using recycled, thinner, or liner-less materials to decrease raw material consumption, we make it possible to reduce waste, improve business performance, and comply with legislation in the drive towards greater sustainability and a healthier planet. Together, we connect the physical and digital to solve some of the world's most complex challenges.
Reducing waste is truly exciting and something that truly resonates with our customers as well. Let me give you a different example in apparel. When adoption first started in the apparel segment, it was all about on-shelf availability for brick and mortar. You know what you have and where you have it, so shoppers can find what they're looking for. In addition to improvements in labor savings and supply chain efficiency, they were extremely significant, often enabling the correction of in-store inventory accuracy from as low as 60% to 95% plus. Later, with e-commerce and online growth, omni-channel became key, enabling retailers to have a one view of their inventory, providing consistent consumer experience across all channels, starting with item-level availability, enabling buy online, pickup in store, ship from store, and other retail fulfillment strategies that are core to the success of retail in today's world.
We now see leading retailers like Zara, from the Inditex group, that have been reaping the benefits of RFID for years throughout the supply chain optimization, expand the use cases to improve customer experience and optimize labor productivity. In the Zara case, using Avery Dennison's patented TexTrace solutions, they have integrated the digital identity into the actual garment, be it on the seam or on the brand label. Zara is also now able to combine the inventory accuracy benefits of RFID with new use cases dealing with loss prevention, self-checkout, and creating additional significant business for their value for their business. Looking ahead, we see the opportunity to leverage our TexTrace solution to also aid circularity models.
For example, the unique digital ID can make a digital connection to our product-connected product cloud, atma.io, that stores information about materials, composition of the fabric, and that will help garment sorters and recyclers improve efficiencies and reduce the amount of clothing going to a landfill. You can see this technology in action sewn in also to your tote bag, now on the external side on a small brand label on the top right-hand side corner. If you scan the QR code, it will provide you more information about the bag, how to care for it, and what to do when it reaches its end of life. By combining UHF RFID with the QR code, you can extend those benefits further by connecting directly with the consumer.
Note that QR codes are just one example, alongside near-field communication, on how we help address and help connect brands to better connect with consumers. I will further elaborate on that when we cover our external embellishment platform, Embelex, as well as Vestcom Retail Media Solutions. There are numerous examples and proof points of how the RFID technology is helping address the four key challenges I showed earlier. Let me invite you to hear from two of our customers who are deploying leading RFID programs on how the technology adds value to their business.
in our industry. We're first to market. We're utilizing this technology to enhance our customer experience, while at the same time, having some operational benefit that we can take advantage of as a company.
RFID delivers value to our customers in several ways. It goes beyond just inventory accuracy in our stores. It really goes down to that customer experience. Here at Walmart, we are really the tip of the spear when it comes to innovating RFID and general merchandise. We're rolling out RFID in categories and product types and departments that simply just have not been done anywhere else in the world, and we rely on partners like Avery Dennison to really help us push those boundaries, innovate, come up with new tag designs, new solutions that are innovative and are simple to use, for either us as an end user, or our suppliers.
In the tote bag, you also have included... We have also included the UPS RFID label being used in their Smart Package, Smart Facility initiative you just heard them talk about. RFID is the leading technology for enabling digital identities on physical items today. It offers the most efficient and the most accurate stock-taking technology, enabling hundreds of items per second to be captured in a simple and effective way, not requiring a line of sight, and typically done by means of a simple or a handheld reader or fixed infrastructure. When you compare that with the accuracy of a highly operator-dependent barcode reads, it's not only significantly faster, but also more labor efficient and much more accurate.
Think about the time needed to open a box with, say, a hundred and fifty items, and manually barcode scan every item, and box them all again, versus scanning the face of the box to capture 100% of the reads in just a few seconds. In addition, RFID attributes a unique digital identity to every single item, meaning even if you read that item three times, you can only count it once, which solves an important challenge of traditional barcode systems, which are SKU level and causes significant distortions. From a sustainability perspective, Avery Dennison's Pure RFID inlays are made using an extremely low carbon footprint and are 100% plastic-free and do not impact the paper recycling stream. If you take a look in your tote bag again, we have provided a sample, and further information regarding this inlay design.
Again, invite you to look into that. RFID technology has also been proven at scale in multiple large deployments, and is today the most efficient way to digitize items, typically yielding an ROI that is significantly less than one year. We are targeting a large, untapped, and attractive market for intelligent labels, of which adds up to about three hundred and fifty billion units a year. For reference, this is around ten times what we believe the current worldwide volume to be of UHF RFID. Worth noting that the addressable space, while much smaller than the total space, will in itself expand as both the technology evolves and adoption progresses. Our teams have done a lot of work to define the sweet spot verticals based on its characteristics and on proven benefits the solutions can provide.
Apparel continues to be today the largest and the most penetrated segment for RFID adoption. Roughly 40% of the total available space is what we define as addressable in apparel, typically the largest retailers and brands in the world, with emphasis in the Western world, though we do cover also the large players in the new and emerging markets. This opportunity in all of these segments starts with the core benefit of item visibility. In apparel, beauty, food, and general retail, this supports end-to-end omni-channel execution, as I mentioned earlier, but also increasingly better shopping experiences. In industrial segments, such as logistics, automotive, and to some extent healthcare, the value tends to come more from efficiency and, in some cases, authenticity and safety. We have been able to demonstrate multiple proof points for these and have learned how each segment, its key characteristics, the ROI, and the deployment strategies.
In general retail, the range of consumer goods being tagged today is far broader than people realize. You can go to several hypermarket retail stores today here in the U.S. and see multiple items below $1 with RFID tags, from crayons to fishing hooks. The value of process standardization and end-to-end visibility to improve customer and associate experience is significant, even in low-priced items. One great example is the public proof points in logistics, with significant reduction in last-mile shipping errors, with corresponding customer experience improvements and significant savings related to labor and to error correction avoidance, as you heard earlier. Both expansion of the use cases in apparel and the initial expansion with validated multiple proof points in the other segments give us the high-level conviction of the opportunity ahead, and importantly, why Avery Dennison is uniquely positioned to capture it.
Our vertical integration across RFID technology ecosystem help us drive adoption and create value. The RFID ecosystem starts with a silicon chip that you see here all the way to the left, and then evolves into we inlay, design, and manufacture application to a material substrate that then can be convertible into multiple formats. Think about the labels we, I just asked you to look into earlier. This is the essence of our RFID inlay business, but it's also the essence of our radio frequency design and material science prowess, where we have, as I mentioned earlier, more than one thousand five hundred patents in intelligent labels alone. From there, we have data management and encoding, plus printing.
You see under the service bureau on the slide, that forms the digital identifier of the consumable, that it's truly applied to the product to make that product having a digital identity. You typically then have an infrastructure or readers plus service, say, a cloud or an on-premise software solutions, and of course, professional services that help define and deploy the appropriate solutions. As world leaders in intelligent labels and looking into the UHF RFID ecosystem, I wanted to emphasize the importance of partnership across the ecosystem. While we are uniquely positioned across all the nodes shown above, from base materials to inlay design and data management capabilities, it is, I believe, by engaging the broader ecosystem, that we can both have a bigger impact and enable the industry and ourselves to grow faster.
You heard Ryan earlier talk about the thousands of converting partners we serve worldwide that will increasingly become key in digitizing supply chains, raising the capabilities of all players in the ecosystem, investing together to innovate, and meet expanding customer needs to create new value. At Avery Dennison, we believe we have the broadest set of capabilities, the strongest market access, and the deepest ecosystem partnerships to drive adoption and maintain our leadership position. Our leading position in intelligent labels is delivering significant growth. Our competitive advantage spans three main areas: industry-leading design and innovation, including broadest product and IP portfolio in the industry, the most comprehensive product cloud platform as well, second, significant scale, delivering more inlays than all other manufacturers combined, using our high-speed proprietary processes at the lowest cost, and third, a unique go-to-market approach, both driving adoption and scaling the world's largest programs.
These competitive advantages enabled us to target and deliver 15%-20% growth in this business for many years. We increased our near-term growth target to 20+ by mid-2022, 2022, when a number of programs were moving through our pipeline. Late that year, as many of you know, apparel industry softened and retailers began destocking inventory that built up as a result of the post-pandemic supply chain challenges, which limited our ability to meet that objective. Stepping back, over the past eight years, we've delivered significant profitable growth in this business, with roughly a 17% organic growth rate annually, more than quadrupling the size of the business during that time. We expect to continue delivering significant sales growth in intelligent labels for many years.
Looking forward, we're targeting roughly 15 or more sales growth long term as we continue driving adoption of our solutions for many years to come. Looking at the composition of that growth target, we expect apparel and general retail combined to deliver double-digit growth, making up close to 50% of that growth of the overall platform, and the remaining portion coming from food, logistics, and the other categories. In food, we expect further expansion in quick service restaurants and initial adoption of item-level grocery fresh linked to perishable items. We're very confident this is to happen very soon. In logistics, we expect further industry adoption following our first successful rollout at the end of last year. Growth in specific time periods will be dependent on timing of pipeline conversion and is likely to be uneven. We are confident in delivering against this target over the long-term horizon.
Let's now turn to Vestcom, our industry-leading suite of productivity and media solutions for the retail shelf, shelf edge. Vestcom turns the shelf edge into a competitive advantage for retailers and CPG brands by engaging customers, driving sales, and reducing costs to deliver outsized return on investment to our partners. The Vestcom solution is powered by a robust data management capability that, through a proprietary process, allows us to ingest multiple complex data inputs from retailers, from planograms to pricing, and output store-specific, item-level pricing and targeted advertising on paper or electronic shelf labels across over 60,000 stores in North America. By consistently delivering on our value proposition, Vestcom has earned the business of over 70 retailers in grocery, drug, and dollar stores, and 800 CPG companies, and is today having around $475 million of revenue.
It is not only uniquely positioned to grow profitably based on the convergence of physical and digital on-the-shelf edge, it also serves as a unique platform for expansion of our intelligent label solutions, and in the future, will also be allowing us to connect inventory visibility with pricing and improving the consumer experience in a very unique way. Moving on to Embelex, our external embellishment platform, which is helping brands and consumers better connect. We have been delivering significant growth in this business, both inorganically and through four acquisitions over the last two years, as we continue to broaden our offering and reach, and through more than 50% organic growth annually over the last five-plus years. Looking forward, we expect to continue delivering strong growth in this business, driven by the performance and team sport segments.
With an addressable market opportunity of around ten times our current revenue, we have a strong right to win due to our unique differentiated position with the industry. Macro trends creating a tailwind for us with the demand for personalization that we heard earlier on, and customization on the rise, as brands and teams seek ways to drive unique connections with their fans and consumers. Active lifestyles are also driving purchase intent for performance apparel, with consumers also looking for ways to engage more with the brand and discover new experiences, gain access to product information, and better understand a brand's sustainability credentials. Our solutions help to unlock a new future for fan and consumer engagement, whether that be it in the stadium, at home, or in the gym. We have a distinct and broad competitive advantage, which we categorize into four key areas.
First, we have a broad portfolio of solutions and products, which provide a one-stop shop for brands and sports teams around the world. Our capabilities range from product development and design to product manufacturing and configuration to aftermarket application services. As an example, our heat transfer technology and embellishment solutions can be seen on team jerseys around the world, worn by both athletes and the fans. We're also making it possible to customize and personalize team merchandise at sporting venues across the globe, including the English Premier League, the San Francisco 49ers, and the Dallas Cowboys. Second, our ability to leverage our intelligent labels expertise to connect the physical products with digital capabilities and unlock unique consumer and fan experiences, supported by our Connected Product Cloud platform. Within your tote bag, you will find a New York Jets patch integrated with near-field communication, or NFC.
The patch should look something similar to what you see applied onto this jersey. This is the New York Jets jersey. If you tap the phone with your smartphone, you'll be able to open and enter the fan experience and experience that connectivity from the digital element. Also important to highlight is that not only we've done all the embellishments on this, all the names, numbers, and everything you see here, including, of course, the smart patch, but Avery Dennison has also done everything else you see here in terms of important connections to brand protection, pricing hang tags, back neck labels, and care and content labels that you can find in the jersey as well.
So that is the right I was referring to earlier on in terms of the right to play and the access we have by our base products to allow us to grow in our high-value categories. And third, our global scale and reach with a network spanning across the value chain, meaning we have one global team interacting with each part of the performance brand value chain, from factory to brand headquarters. I would now like to share a video with you that shines a light on the work we're doing with teams and leagues around the world today. In summary, the Solutions Group is well positioned to deliver continuous growth and margin expansion.
Across our businesses, our teams understand the problems our customers are trying to solve, enabling us to leverage our core capabilities and competitive advantages to be at the forefront of innovation and first to market with new solutions that help connect the physical and the digital world. I would now like to hand it over to Greg Lovins, our Chief Financial Officer.
Thank you, Francisco. Maybe next time we'll try to get you a Cleveland Browns jersey. I have the pleasure here this afternoon to be able to talk about the outcomes of all the exciting things that Ryan and Dion and Francisco just talked about. On the first slide here, I think as you all recall, we've been providing targets for our long-term financial performance since back in 2012, and we're now on our fourth set of long-term targets. The consistent execution of our key strategies that you've been hearing about today has enabled us to continue delivering against those targets, with an overriding focus of delivering GDP plus growth and top quartile returns on total capital over the long term.
Our targets are designed to deliver above-average EVA growth and superior total shareholder returns, and we're largely on track to deliver once again in our current cycle that goes through 2025. The details of that cycle are shown in slide 54 in the appendix. At a high level, though, through the first four years of this cycle, and based on our guidance for 2024, we're growing sales on a constant currency basis by roughly 7%, with organic growth of roughly 5% annually, achieving our objective of growing above GDP over this period, which has been closer to 3.5%. We're also expanding our margins, with EBITDA on track to be up more than a point versus 2020, and the historical high of roughly 16.5% this year.
Our adjusted earnings per share is also on track to be up about 9% annually, excluding currency translation, driven by both strong top-line growth and strong margin expansion. And our return on total capital remains strong, reflecting top quartile performance relative to our capital market peers. Our consistent progress towards achieving these long-term targets reflects the diversity of our end markets, the strength of our positions in those markets, the execution of our key strategies, and our resilience and our agility as an organization to adjust course when needed. On the next slide here, you can see the results of our balanced strategy that you heard today. You heard Dion and the business leaders talk about that we focus on balancing profitable growth with capital efficiency, and this is driving our very strong financial performance.
We've constantly delivered organic growth above GDP, and most recently growing organically roughly 5%, despite the destocking that occurred in 2023, and carried over into 2024 for the apparel markets in particular. At the same time, we've expanded our EBITDA margins over the period, particularly through rising gross profit margins, which have increased this year now that we're through most of that destocking. These margin improvements have been driven by our focus on productivity, as well as our growth in our higher value categories that you heard today. Our capital efficiency is in the top decile compared to our capital market peers. As you heard from Ryan, this is driven by our strong operational and process innovation teams, which continually find ways to make our assets more efficient and more productive.
This combination of growth, margins, and capital efficiency leads to value creation, compelling value creation, as you can see on the chart on the bottom right. We use EVA, or economic value added, throughout the company, from project assessments, asset allocation, measuring our business performance, and for our executives' long-term incentives. It's a key metric for us. It's highly correlated with total shareholder return over time. To illustrate this last point, our EVA creation algorithm is based on consistently delivering strong top-line growth, strong margins with capital efficiency, as I mentioned. Delivering on all three of these fronts allows us to generate significant EVA. Over the last decade, we've grown our EVA four times what it was in 2014. That represents a mid-teens annual growth rate in our EVA, and that correlates extremely well to a mid-teens annual growth rate in TSR over the same horizon.
This demonstrates how well, how well correlated our growth in EVA and TSR are, and we're going to continue to optimize our balance of growth, margins, and capital efficiency to grow EVA over time, with the goal of continuing to deliver superior TSR. Now, as you heard today, looking forward, we have a number of catalysts to continue delivering strong top-line growth. You can see here that the majority of our growth is coming from the high-value categories that you heard about today. Combined with intelligent labels and our total high-value growth categories should generate about four points of growth annually for us. As Francisco discussed, with intelligent labels expected to grow roughly 15% or more annually, that'll have a meaningful impact on the total company growth rate of a point and a half or more each year.
Our other high-value categories that you heard about today, specialty labels, graphics, industrial tapes, Embelex, Vestcom, to name a number of them, they've been growing at roughly a mid-single-digit pace, and that will contribute about two points to total company growth as well. In the base then, as you know, overall, we've been driving a shift towards intelligent labels, which sell at higher prices and higher margins per unit, and that's been happening particularly in the apparel segment. Therefore, we see less growth in the base apparel business as we shift those products to the higher margin intelligent labels. In the materials-based business, we continue to see low single-digit profitable growth continuing.
Overall then, in the base, we're adding roughly a point annually of growth for us, and we'll continue to look for acquisitions that accelerate our strategies for profitable growth, leading us to this target of 5% plus growth, excluding currency, over the next five years. And that leads us to our long-term financial framework, where we're going to continue driving our key strategies to deliver strong growth while expanding margins and maintaining our top quartile return on capital. Specifically, as I showed on the last slide, we continue to target sales growth of 5% or more annually, driven by strong growth in our high-value categories, as well as our leadership position in the faster-growing emerging regions, and profitable growth in our base businesses. And we continue to look for acquisition opportunities that will accelerate our strategy and continue to shift our portfolio to higher-value categories.
We're also continuing to focus on margin expansion, and we're targeting roughly two points of EBITDA margin expansion versus last year, some of which we're already delivering here in 2024. This will be driven by the impact of solid organic growth, including an increase in our mix of higher-value categories, and our continued relentless focus on productivity. Looking at the segments, Materials is growing EBITDA margins significantly in 2024 already, and we'll look to maintain or expand those over time, while we target to continue increasing our Solutions margins over the cycle. The combination of strong top line growth with continued margin expansion, in addition to the impact of M&A and share buybacks, should continue to drive double-digit adjusted earnings per share growth. As you can see, we're targeting to maintain our top quartile return on capital while continuing to invest in our business, both organically and through M&A.
Again, it's the combination of these factors, strong top-line growth, while expanding margins and delivering high capital efficiency, that work together to deliver superior EVA growth. I'll now shift to talk a little bit about capital allocation. In short here, we continue to execute our proven playbook, which includes ensuring a strong balance sheet and a strong leverage position, and maintaining our current credit rating. This enables us to ensure liquidity across a range of scenarios, gives us access to better financing, particularly in the commercial paper markets, and enables the lowest weighted average cost of capital across business cycles. We're in a strong position right now, and you can see we have ample capacity to support our investments, both organically and inorganically, and to return cash to shareholders.
Our approach to capital allocation continues to be relatively unchanged versus what I've described over the last number of years. As I've said earlier, we're currently below our targeted leverage, and we entered 2024 with nearly $500 million of debt capacity already. Our growth and margin targets over the next five years provide additional leverage capacity of well more than another billion dollars, and we'll continue driving strong cash generation, with a goal of 100% free cash flow conversion from net income, and that'll generate roughly $6 billion of operating cash flow over the five-year horizon.
And this all adds up to nearly $1 billion of available capital for us, and we expect to allocate that along a similar framework as we have in recent years, with a quarter or so of our available capital to reinvest in the business through capital spending and restructuring to drive fixed cost innovation. We continue to expect to raise the dividend at roughly the same pace as earnings growth, and that would use roughly 20% of our available capital. The remainder we have available for share repurchases and M&A, and that's more than a $4 billion pool of available capital. From a share buyback perspective, we look to generate a return, and as we've done in the past, we'll lean forward in periods when the shares are decelerating.
From an M&A perspective, we'll continue to be consistent in our strategy to find acquisition opportunities that accelerate our company strategy, particularly the shift of the portfolio towards high-value categories, which increase our growth rate and increase our margins. We'll continue to be disciplined, but you can see we have ample capacity to continue returning the cash to shareholders and to investing in our business through acquisitions and organically, all while maintaining a healthy balance sheet and a commitment to our credit rating. In addition to delivering for our shareholders, as I've been talking about, we're also focused on delivering for all of our key stakeholders, including our employees. We're focused on ensuring strong engagement, and our team has shown many, many times over the last number of years how strong their abilities are to meet any challenges that come their way.
We're focused on delivering for our customers, where we're driving innovation to help address the challenges that you heard about today, and of course, meet their near-term needs through excellent customer service and excellent quality. In our communities, we're focused on ensuring we deliver products that enable our industries and those we serve to be more sustainable, as you heard from both Ryan and Francisco. Our role on the leadership team here are to be stewards of our company, and to ensure the long-term success of our businesses, the industries we serve, and the communities where we operate. So in summary, we have large leading positions in large and growing markets. We have a number of key catalysts to continue driving strong top-line growth, while also generating strong returns.
We're focused on continuing to execute against our key strategies to further raise the bar and deliver for all of our stakeholders. With that, we have one more video to cap off our presentation, and then we're gonna open up the questions... or the meeting for your questions. ...
All right. All right, so we're gonna jump into Q&A, and then get to lunch, and get everybody back to the office before the Fed decision, I think. Hannah and Sarah are gonna be coming around with mics as people have questions, and I'll point to people. If you could state your name and your company, and also wait till you get the mic to make sure the people who are watching on the webcast can hear. But we've got 30 minutes, and we'll get to it.
So, we'll start here with Ghansham.
Hey, guys. Good morning, Ghansham Panjabi at Baird. First off, thanks for hosting us. On slide 46, where you have your long-term financial framework, I wanna focus on the 17% EBITDA margins by 2028. So slide 43 said, you know, showed that you're targeting 16.5% for this year. This is a year where your volumes are still below two years ago, so theoretically, it's below trend, if you will. The 5% sales growth is being driven by higher margin verticals, you know, Intelligent Labels and higher value categories. So shouldn't that margin be much higher than the 17-plus that you're targeting, which would propagate into earnings growth? And then while we have you, could you just give us any thoughts you can on 3Q relative to your initial guidance? Thanks.
All right, thank you, Ghansham. So I think when you look at our margin target this year, when you look at the two segments, Materials Group is already up quite a bit this year in EBITDA margins versus 2023. I think it's up nearly two points versus 2023 already this year. So when we think about our targets over the next number of years, our focus, I think, as I said earlier, is to continue to maintain or grow our strong margins that we have in Materials, while continuing to grow our margins in Solutions. And we would expect Solutions margins to get up higher into the higher teens, and that'll help drive that margin from the roughly 16.5% to over 17%. So our target is 17%-plus margins.
We'll continue being focused on that, and it's really Solutions where we see the biggest opportunity from 2024 levels to continue to grow our margins over the cycle. So that's, that's our focus there.
And then, Ghansham, just on your question of Q3, we're gonna be meeting in about a month's time, and we'll provide a business update on what our progress is at that point for everybody in the room at that stage.
George, down in the front.
Thanks so much. Appreciate the presentation. George Staphos, Bank of America. I also want to go to slide 46 and tie it perhaps to the intelligent label slide. Do you have a target in mind for return on total capital? In the past, the company's, I think, had a high teens, maybe 18%, range that it was shooting for. Certainly, the company's done a great job on EVA and return on capital and being in a top quartile over the years. What would your goal be? What are the implications if you only want to target top quartile as opposed to putting a, a number out there? And how is the composition of intelligent labels growth over time impacting your return total capital?
Are the new value-added categories maybe a little bit more capital-intensive to begin with, or do you more than compensate with a higher margin? Thank you so much.
You want to lead?
Yeah, George, so our, you know, our focus over the last decade or more, as you know, has been on delivering top quartile returns. So nothing's changed from that perspective. I don't think there's anything to read between the lines there. Our focus continues to be on delivering strong returns and top quartile returns among our peers. We really look at driving EVA, which again, is that combination of growth and margins, as well as capital efficiency to deliver growth in EVA. So we're gonna continue to be disciplined in our capital allocation and expect to continue delivering strong returns, to continue growing EVA, to drive that superior TSR that I talked about earlier.
I think when you look at the segment, Solutions business overall is a little more capital-intensive than the Materials business, so, and RFID is part of that, and we're gonna continue, as we've talked about for a number of years, investing ahead of the curve. We're the leader in the intelligent label space. We're gonna continue investing to maintain our strong leadership position there and capture this big growth opportunity that Francisco talked about. So we will be continuing to lean forward on our capital investments on the Solutions side.
George, let me just add, you know, when you think about our intelligent labels business, we've said, as Greg has indicated, that we have led this industry adoption, and we've invested significantly to drive the industry adoption. It's at the point now outside of apparel, where we're gonna see adoption accelerate. But we're gonna continue to invest in that regard, and because we believe it's the right thing for us to do. If you think about it from an EVA perspective, our still our focus is in driving this optimum balance of capital efficiency, growth, and margin acceleration. And across each part of our portfolio, we have a slightly different nuance to the approach, but ultimately, with the same objective at the end of the day, is driving delta EVA for the benefit of really driving TSR returns over the long period as well.
Mike, right here.
Thanks, everyone, for all the details. Michael Roxland, Truist Securities. Just two quick questions. One, if you could provide some more color around the cadence of growth in Intelligent Labels. Obviously, you've lowered the rate from 20% now down to 15%+. So can you help us understand how the business will ebb and flow, given the various pilots, trials, and rollouts, until you reach critical mass in some of these newer verticals? And the second part of the question is, can you talk about the competitive landscape? Dion, in the last earnings call, you mentioned a lot of capital being spent on other peers trying to make this, you know, trying to compete with you. What exactly are they producing? Do you feel any type of competitive threat from them?
Can you talk about your competitive position in terms of your intention. You know, I don't believe it was ever your intention to be a sole supplier to any of your companies. Can you talk about how these new competitors will affect your competitive position in terms of the newer verticals? Thank you.
Sure, Mike, and I'll address part of that, and then ask Francisco to weigh in on a couple of those points as well. Let me just start off by reiterating our conviction and confidence in the growth of intelligent labels across these new verticals. I've said a number of times that we are just at the nascent stage in some of these verticals of rapid growth to come, and our focus has been largely on making sure we're driving customers through pilot into adoption. Because when we get adoption, particularly in some of these new categories, we see an acceleration. We saw that in apparel. We expect to see that in an area like food, and we're starting to see that in logistics right now. I'll also say our conviction remains so high because of our market-leading position. We have created this industry.
We've invested to create the demand out there, and we're gonna continue to lean forward in that regard. When you think about the individual constituent components, their apparel is gonna continue, as you heard Francisco say, to roll out. And there's not only just adoption in new customers that have not yet taken on the technology, but also new use cases, and I'll ask Francisco to weigh in a bit. And we've seen the first adoption in logistics. One of the things that we have been historically focused on is can we drive an adoption where the ROI and the problem we're trying to solve is ubiquitous across the industry? Because that's when you get follow-on adoption, and we know that's now the case in logistics.
And what we've seen with our initial customer, Francisco can touch on exactly how we're seeing that play out with some other customers. And then finally, in food, the pilots that we're doing largely in grocery, but we already have rollouts in quick-service restaurants. The pilots in food, in grocery, have proven and are continuing to show really strong demonstrable returns. We are very confident in the adoption in the very near future in that category. Maybe, Francisco, you want to add any color to that?
Sure, Dion, happy to. I think it's important to put in perspective the leading role we have in this industry. So we're about five times our next competitor in terms of revenue. And we continue to see that our competitive advantages have us really sort of detached from everyone else. Now, is there competition? Yes. Is competition a good thing? Absolutely. It means the space is interesting, and obviously, it's an important place. It's an important element of market dynamics. Having said that, we do see ourselves being not only in the leading position for all the reasons we called out earlier, but also being able to continue to either hold on or potentially expand our margin as we move forward. As Dion said, we're driving adoption.
We have a solid pipeline, both in apparel, more as an evolution into sort of, let's say, the great players that haven't moved, and the expansion into examples like we gave with Zara, that has adopted for many, many years and is now evolving into something else that creates added value with differentiation. But also with elements around food, primarily, where we have very, very strong proof points where you can save more than 30% on waste reduction, significant labor savings, into an industry which is, you know, has razor-thin margins. And you might argue, you might question: Why, why hasn't it moved earlier? Well, apparel has taken also its time, and these things have to compete with competing priorities. But we do believe, and we have very, very strong conviction, that we're very, very close to having one of those pilots move.
And then in logistics, Deon touched on it, we continue to work with all the key players, and we continue to see the value that the technology brings, and we expect that to evolve as well.
And I'll also say, just finally closing it out, on this, on our ability to grow at this 15% plus for the years to come, we are going to see adoption play out in all of these segments that Francisco mentioned. Sometimes that adoption's gonna accelerate in certain years and quarters, and others it'll be slightly slower. The pace of adoption, we know from our own history with apparel, can sometimes be uneven, but our conviction that we will deliver this 15% plus rate because the market is going to grow there, because we are activating and driving that market growth, we have a high degree of confidence in that.
John?
Yeah, John McNulty, BMO. So can you comment on the Intelligent Label side, you've never given explicit margin guidance but you have given some color. I guess when you think about the long-term growth, the 15% targets that you're looking for, do you see the profitability outpacing that over time? And, or put another way, do you see the potential for margin expansion in your Intelligent Labels business as you look out over the next five years, as some of these bigger investments kind of reach that tipping point?
... So John, we've consistently said that our Intelligent Labels platform, like many of our other high-value segments, have above-segment margin profiles, which include the investments we continue to make to lean forward to drive adoption as well. As Intelligent Labels becomes a bigger part of the portfolio, we're going to see our mix, particularly largely within Solutions, continue to improve overall, and it's part of the reason why we see our Solutions margins improving over the horizon as well, so mix will play a big part of it, but absolute growth will play a part of it, and clearly, at a point in which Intelligent Labels gets to a substantive size, it'll many ways then mirror what the overall margin mix of the Solutions Group, and to some extent, more diluted on the enterprise level, will look like.
Matt?
Hey, good morning, everybody. Matt Roberts with Raymond James. Thank you for the presentation, and also appreciate the wine. If I could dig in a little bit deeper into what the gentleman from Truist was asking, in terms of the Intelligent Labels growth target. As certain legislation becomes more into focus, whether that's EU digital passport or food traceability, has that changed your visibility into new opportunities? Or, you know, just trying to think about, any, you know, timing or catalyst of when that could be. And Francisco, you mentioned, I think, very soon, opportunities in groceries. I mean, can you help define "very soon" or maybe size that? And what's really the impetus there for having that be very soon? Is it due to pending legislation or would it be something else?
Thank you all for taking the questions.
Yeah, Francisco.
Yeah. So, thank you for the question. I think, in terms of, what we mean by very soon, I mean, we've been... if you go back, you heard us talk about the pilots and what we're making, so obviously, that's been a little bit in the making, longer than what we would expected for, and we believe we're now, you know, at a very close position to do that. But I do think if you think beyond just what that means and you expand to the opportunity that you called the tailwinds that we have, from a legislation perspective, we do expect those to be, you know, obviously helping out with some of those decisions.
As you know, some of these things are, they get announced, they take their time, they get deployed, they don't get it. So obviously, you know, we basically, we're continuing to push adoption based on proven ROI, proven data from pilots and customers, and data that we can back up. Of course, when the tailwind from legislation comes, we're here for it. But obviously, we're not banking, quote-unquote, if you allow me the expression, on it, based on the expectation that this will be enforced on somebody. We just want it to be-
Mm
... driven by the value it delivers to our customers.
I think it's an important point. You know, at the end of the day, adoption of a technology will rely on, does it demonstrate demonstrable return on investment for customers? That's the primary piece of it. Legislation will be a tailwind.
Yep.
And I'll give you a real example. We knew that digital product passport was coming to bear in Europe a long time ago. We were part of the legislative process that went to thinking through how that would happen. And we built, in Francisco's business, we built the first example of how a digital product passport online service could work, and we've actually launched it with a couple of customers as well. So as the apparel piece and the European passport piece comes to light, we've already set for that. Other legislation relates to sustainability. We've done a similar thing in our materials business to make sure we're preempting that, being ready with innovation to lead.
Anthony?
Hey, Anthony Pettinari from Citi. I was wondering what percentage of your Intelligent Labels customers do you provide data management capabilities to? You know, is most of that under the umbrella of Vestcom? I'm just wondering if you could talk a little bit more about kind of the size, growth, margin characteristics of sort of the data management piece, and how big that could be separate from Intelligent Labels itself.
Francisco?
Yeah, I think if you look into... So specifically on the Intelligent Labels, Anthony, right? So, when you look at our portfolio on Intelligent Labels, I would say the vast majority, you know, 90-plus% of our apparel business, has an inherent data management play within it. So we actually manage and ingest all the data from retailers, whether that's price data, you know, SKU data. We create the electronic product code into every single item, and we manage that and encode, and so on. So we do quite the heavy lifting on the data side on, I would say, the majority of our business, as I said, primarily in apparel, not exclusively, but in apparel, certainly about all the volume is triggered with a data management element with it.
And out-
I think-
... outside of apparel, is it substantively different or lower, or it's handled in a different way, or?
No, I think it's somewhat similar. The point is, in some cases, let's take the logistics example. You actually providing the item on a box at a specific moment, while, let's say, in apparel, you actually attribute the code at the origin, right? So there's different segments lend themselves to different needs, if that makes sense, and that's the nuanced version. But other than that, I would say in many areas, including in food, we do see a data management play that comes with it as well.
Part of the adoption, Anthony, that we're seeing is we're also learning as we're going through. Some customers have an ability to manage their own data, particularly if it's in their four walls. So think about things like in logistics, DC management, when you go to source, when they go to where they want to tag from, then their data play becomes a lot more open to us. And I think food has very similar characteristics ultimately to apparel, where much of it is done at the source or where food is started and the data that needs to flow. And that's the reason why we've actually invested in some of those particular applications, where we know there have been gaps in the market.
I think I've talked in the past, we invested in Zippin because we knew in quick-service restaurants that there would be a data play as it relates to item-level RFID. And as we started to deploy, there wasn't an easily available piece of software that would help do inventory accuracy in quick service restaurants. We bought Zippin, we expanded that to be capable of. And then as a separate piece, and you heard Francisco and myself mention it, we know that in the future, as we move forward, capturing and holding the life cycle of every event that's happened in that item's journey is gonna require a digital identity database. And so we built atma.io from scratch because there was nothing in the market that could touch close to it.
We built it from scratch, and we're now leveraging that in many of these pilots and applications as we drive forward as well.
As you look at the, you know, next decade plus, are there any competing technologies to RFID that you're particularly watching? I know, like, cameras and AI in some contexts had been talked about. Just curious if there's anything that you see from a technology standpoint.
Yeah, I'm happy to address that. So, the answer is yes, we're absolutely looking and scouting and looking into the space to obviously monitor. If you ask me, is that a technology that I would expect in the next decade to disrupt RFID? I would say no. I do expect that there is a notion of sensor fusion, so we talked about cameras and computer vision, and you probably heard this say that the difference between saying if you have cameras in, say, a retail store, you create a smart retail. However, you know nothing about the product, where it came from, and you know nothing about the consumer, where it's taking the product to, and end of life, and so on. However, if you attribute the digital identity to the item, you create a smart supply chain.
So you actually have all the traceability all the way from origin, when the product is born, and as Dion was saying, you can keep track of everything that has happened to that product all the way to end of life, reuse, recycle, and so on. So the value of smart supply chains is really what we're bringing to bear with RFID. That's not to say that having a camera in a specific retail store won't help with specific use cases. Absolutely, but it's a different type of value. And of course, that value is exponentially higher as you get into perishable items, which obviously is one of the sweet spots we believe within the food space.
Jeffrey Zekauskas from J.P. Morgan. Three questions. If it turns out that the intelligent label growth over a longer period of time is 20% instead of 15%, what do you... How do you think the likely scenario would go? You know, that is, what would be the set of applications that would drive faster growth? Second, your market share is very high in intelligent labels. Can you talk about your presence in the Chinese market? And is your market share as high? Is it very low? Are the pricing dynamics very different? How do Chinese business people approach intelligent labels? And then lastly, for Greg, in your 5% sales growth ex currency that you project, is there an acquisition number in that number, or is the acquisition number zero?
So, Jeff, let me go through those three questions. I'll handle the first one. I think the second one I'll ask Francisco, and then-
Sure.
Then Greg can handle the third one.
Thank you.
I think... You know, if that's the reason we've pitched, you know, and said that we believe fundamentally that RFID, in terms of intelligent label platform, is going to grow at that 15% plus. Because there are possibilities where it grows significantly more than that as well, Jeffrey, and that's most likely to happen in particularly food and the adoption rate of food. To characterize, we know roughly what the adoption rate in apparel has been. It was lumpy initially, uneven at times, but as it became more ubiquitous, we're starting to have a cadence where we know what's going to happen. And so I think I've said before, the only decision retail executives now get to, they don't doubt the case for RFID, for inventory accuracy.
They just rank it in order of profile and importance of the other things they have to deal with: store fitting, ranging, ERP systems, and so forth. We know now that in logistics, we have a proven ubiquitous use case out there, and Francisco and the team are engaged with every other key logistics player at the moment in discussion about how that applies to their business and the timing of that as well, and I think the biggest variability is going to be in food, because it's, A, the biggest space, and B, the adoption rate is still its nascency. If the adoption rate goes quicker, so when we get the first series of adoptions happening in grocery, typically, you'd anticipate seeing more of a quicker follow-on, but that timing might be variable.
So if it tends to be greater than that, you'll see an outsized impact on our overall financial performance and our ability to continue to deliver across that as well. 'Cause I think the more adoptions happen, the more, particularly in the initial stages, I think I've said before, customers look for one global player to make sure that as they drive through this technology adoption, they can rely on somebody, and we are that player in that regard. Francisco, you maybe want to talk a little bit about the Chinese market and just what we see over there.
Sure. We characterize the Chinese market by two main areas, one as a sourcing region and one as an originating region, if you'd like, so meaning a China-for-China play and a China-for-export play. If you look into the volumes, the China-for-export play is significantly larger than the China-for-China play today. And obviously, we expect that to evolve as it progresses and the local market grows. But on the export play, it's really about our global presence, you know, with the brands in primarily Europe and North America, where we obviously have the lead position. So there, I'm, you know, I'm extremely comfortable that we are where we need to be, and we will continue to leverage all the competitive advantages we made earlier.
On the local market, we also created the team a few years back to address this sort of China for China and really understand those dynamics. I would characterize it as being still in the nascent stages, so there are projects. We ourselves have projects there, but it's all relatively early days. It has, you know, an interesting dynamic, and to be fair, we're still learning through it. Having said that, I think it is still way too small for us to put as any concern in terms of our global share position, worldwide.
... Yeah, and Jeff, on your last question, so when you look at that growth waterfall, that is primarily organic to get to that 5%. And when we talk about acquisitions and opportunity there, between the plus on the IL, 15% plus growth rate, and the plus on the 5%, that's where the acquisition growth would come in, kind of growing above that 5% level.
So it's a minimum of 5% organic? Is that the meaning of what you said?
If you look at that waterfall, it adds up to about four and a half points, I think, on that page. Then, you know, it would be organic, or, you know, driving continued growth in IL and other high-value categories, and then inorganic above that 5% mark.
Okay, thank you.
Anna, John?
Hello, good morning. John Harmon, Coresight Research. My question is about labeling food in food retail grocery stores. What is your vision about how deep item tags could go inside a grocery store? You talked about tags for labels for perishable items coming soon. Say, does it go as deep as individual food items, tagging an apple? Is that feasible, desirable, economical, allowed by health and safety regulations? How far is that going, and who is... Which retailers are leading the way in tagging items for better efficiency and reducing food waste, and so on? Thank you.
Francisco, do you want to weigh in on that?
Yeah, sure. So I think the, if you look into... Sorry, I'm just-
That's okay.
Can you just... I just lost the first part of the question, sorry, from... Apologies.
Which grocery items does it make?
Yep
... sense to put labels on?
Yeah, so that was the one I wanted to. Apologies. So yeah, so I think we talked about perishable items, and obviously, when we say item level, you have to, to your question about is it economical, is it feasible to put it on an apple, is it even desirable? You typically don't sort of transport an apple, right? So you don't, you know, when you go harvest something, you don't harvest apple by apple, right? You tend to have it on, say, totes or specific sort of minimum sort of transport items, and those would be the ones in fresh produce that we typically see as being the ones that would be tagged on that specific example, if that makes sense.
So let me just maybe elaborate a little bit further. If you think about the start of perishability, around the edge of a typical grocery store, you've got proteins, leafy greens, bakery, really. And the normal SKU that gets transported through is either a case, container or an individual item, and depending on that, we are at the point where we can tag those. Now, to your question, will that individual apple in a lot have a tag? It is possible in the future. As you heard, I think Francisco talk earlier about, we're now seeing in general merchandise items that are less than a dollar being tagged with RFID.
The practical reality of making it come to light right now for food adoption is probably further out, but the focus that we're seeing right now is on those items that are either a package or an individual, depending, for example, on protein itself. That could be that's an individual item, high, very high value, or at a case level, as it tracks through the supply chain. And I think the adoption of food is going to then differentiate by retailer and grocer and quick service restaurant and move forward. On your question of which customers are doing it, I'd say there are a number of leading retailers and grocers out there, and they're all engaged in discussion about how to optimize not only the supply chains, but their labor efficiency as well. It's the reason we're having those pilots and conversations.
Yeah, and I think to Deon's, just building on, and apologies, I think the element about item level on, say, protein, say, you know, a tray with meat, that will get tagged. It won't be the box of meat because you don't want to make sure you monitor that, because people are going- when you go to, say, a freezer, people move things around, and then therefore, you can't control expiry dates, and so on and so forth. So it has to be at item level. On the fresh produce element, again, it will vary.
To Dion's point, yes, there might be a future where it comes, but we do see line of sight of extremely, you know, great opportunity in terms of value creation and units in the units we can already tag item level versus the ones we will tag on tote or case level.
Okay, I think we've got time for one last question.
Sure.
Chris Perrella, UBS. For the growth profile for Intelligent Labels, with the organic 15% plus, how should we think about pricing and volume within that, and the cadence of that, both in the near term and the longer term?
Our 15% plus growth is based on the size of the market, where it stands, the opportunity, and our position within that, Chris, already, and I won't reiterate some of our competitive advantages. We are driving that market right now. Like all technology, there is going to be some price points that'll come down over time. We've talked about that. And I think that's a good thing over time as well, because as the technology cost comes down, we're able to open the aperture for ever bigger number of items as well. I'd say the thing that we are most focused on is the value that we create, and then the value we capture as part of that. And that's what is driving and sustaining our above-average segment margins.
As we lean forward in terms of both investment, we're going to continue to see that, and that margin expansion is a key part of our, both our solutions margin expansion over the next few years, as well as the company's growth as well.
Yeah, maybe if I may just build on it. So I think there's a couple dynamics there, because you do expect that volumes will, you know, typically be slightly larger than revenue, because it's a, it's an adopting technology, and as technology matures, you expect those cost curves to... Having said that, there is a counter to that, and the example I gave on Zara is a great one. So, you know, the Zara product is significantly more expensive than a traditional tag, which means you have an ASP mix that can be favorable as you differentiate and create more added value solutions on use case-specific elements. So it, it both play, again, hand in hand from that perspective.
All right, everybody, listen. I know we have an opportunity after this to connect with everybody for our lunch, but I just want to thank everybody for joining here physically and online as well. Thank you for the opportunity to talk about where Avery Dennison is headed as we move forward. I'll just reiterate the leadership's conviction, which I think you saw today, in the future of our company. I think we're ideally placed in a more digitized world to leverage the strengths of both of our businesses to enable the future for our customers as well. With that, I think we're going to continue. In fact, I know that we're going to continue to deliver outsized growth and margin accretion, driving EVA and ultimately delivering top quartile TSR as well. Thank you very much, everybody.
Thank you.