Our corporate office and really just a summary of the company. We are a metal coatings provider based here in Fort Worth, Texas, as Mark mentioned. We only serve the North American market through two segments that I'll go into detail on a little bit later: a metal coatings segment that provides hot-dip galvanizing, and a coil coating business called Precoat Metals that provides coil coating solutions to the North American market. As you work through the presentation with me today, you'll see that we have been growing both sales and margins. We've got some fantastic multi-year secular drivers in place, generating a lot of free cash flow, and do that while providing some environmentally friendly solutions, with ESG being a focus as well, to the market.
When you look at our capital allocation strategy, and we'll talk a little bit about that, we do have a very focused capital allocation strategy that's based, first and foremost, on reducing debt. I'll explain the reasons why as we go through that, and talk through the strategic transformation that we completed a couple of years ago. Improving our leverage ratio, focusing on some high ROIC investments, and returning capital to shareholders. We do have a strong commitment to EPS growth, and I think as you'll see as we go through it, it's a pretty good investment opportunity for you to consider, so real quick, high level, just some numbers. Not going to spend a whole lot of time here.
We had sales through our fiscal year 2024, which ended in February of this year, of $1.5 billion. We had an Adjusted EBITDA of $334 million, including corporate costs, at a rate of 21.7% Adjusted EBITDA margin. The company has 48 locations on the metal coatings side of the business, which we'll get into a little bit later, and 13 coil coating locations. If you look on the left side of your screen, you can see the light blue and the dark blue dots that show you visually kind of where we're located throughout North America. Won't spend a whole lot of time on this slide.
Just a couple of points I want to point out to you, starting in the middle, that FY 2019 through FY 2024, that was really a period of time that, as I mentioned, we worked on our strategic transformation. In doing so, we divested a lot of resources. We added in Precoat Metals just two years ago, and, you know, have been diligently reducing our debt. When we took on the Precoat Metals acquisition for over $1.2 billion, it moved our leverage ratio up to 4.2 times. As we talk today, we're now down to 2.8 times. So we've been working very hard at that and very proud at the results thus far.
Moving up just to the right of that, and you can see, you know, FY 2025 and beyond, we're really focused now as a metal coatings company. We'll talk a little bit about our aluminum coil line that we're adding in Washington, Missouri, and talk about some of the other things, the long-term drivers, the investments in technology, et cetera, that we're making. This slide, real quick, you can read through it. Just a few things that I want to point out.
Again, we're very committed to stating some commitments when we took on the Precoat Metals acquisition and transformed the company, and as I had mentioned, but worked very diligently down the list here, and you can see we've checked all the boxes on all the things that we said we would go do and have delivered those to our investors, which I think has really just strengthened our credibility within the investment community, that we're a very sound, you know, investment choice and backed by a very strong management team. And speaking of the team, here they are. Tom Ferguson, our CEO, has been with the company for over 11 years , as have I. And then we've got Jason Crawford, our Chief Financial Officer, who came to us through the Precoat Metals acquisition.
He's been with the company here at AZZ for two years, but with Precoat for more than eight. We have two very strong and seasoned leaders of each of the segments, and then Tara is our CLO, and Chris runs BD for the team. But we've all been together for a number of years, and like I said, very solid, solid team. Wanted to just touch real quickly on end markets. On the bottom left pie chart, you can see our sales by end market. Construction is our largest end market, representing about 55% of our total sales in fiscal year 2024, followed by industrial, transportation, consumer, electrical, and then an other category.
I just compare and contrast that to the pie chart that's just above it, which comes from World Steel and just shows you what the typical end markets for steel in North America is. So we represent the market pretty closely, and we'll talk a little bit about all those in more detail. Couple of things just on, you know, some secular tailwinds that really enhance the outlook and are making us more optimistic as we move forward. One of them is the investment that I think, you know, we've all seen in infrastructure as well as renewables in North America. Certainly as a leading provider of galvanized steel and coil-coating steel, that's certainly something that we're right in the middle of and are benefiting from.
Likewise, the reshoring of manufacturing coming back from overseas is also something that is benefiting us because that just means more buildings are being built, particularly on the construction side and in the manufacturing or non-residential sector, and so we're benefiting from that as well, just as we are, some of the other things you see listed here, the pre-painted steel and aluminum migration, and the conversion that's happening in the consumer sector, where consumers are now starting to make more of a choice and choose aluminum products on the shelves. For instance, canned water that's in an aluminum container versus plastics, 'cause they're concerned about, you know, microplastics and things that might be leaching into their water, so again, something that is benefiting the business.
I won't spend a whole lot of time on this slide. This just, again, shows you across the spectrum some of the areas that, we're benefiting from as a result of the, IIJA Act and, and the investment that's taking place, associated with roads and bridges, clean energy and power, and then water, airports, and, and other. Wanna quickly just, if you're, again, not familiar with the company, and this is your first introduction to it, give you a quick rundown on, the two segments in the business. So we, we have two segments that we go to market in. One is a metal coatings business. You can see the sales for the last twelve months there, and then our Precoat Metals business.
To kind of compare and contrast those really quick, the metal coatings business, what it's doing is it's galvanizing fabricated steel. So the steel is leaving a mill or a service center, it's being shipped out to that steel fabricator. They're forming it into its end use. It might be a bridge beam, it could be a lattice tower for transmission distribution, it could be poles and light fixtures for along highways and byways, it could be boat trailers. Just a number of different things that you see as you drive down the road, you probably don't notice them that much. It's that gray steel that's kind of all around you. That's what we do.
We make it gray, which is the galvanizing, and it makes it last for, you know, fifty to a hundred years without without rusting. That market size is about $2.2 billion in the U.S. We have a 27% share, number one market position. We're 2X the nearest competitor, and likewise, when you look at Precoat Metals, a little bit different process. What we're doing there, we're taking that coiled steel. It's a very large, big, heavy coils that can weigh up to 46,000 lbs.
That's being sent to us from the manufacturer, and we're unrolling it, running it through an automated process, painting, rolling paint across the top of it, drying it, and rolling it back up, and then sending it to the manufacturer, who then fabricates that into its end use. Again, market size there is twice the size as our metal coatings business. Again, a number one market share position and a 20% share. Couple of things just real quickly on why these businesses make sense together. You know, both, as I kind of mentioned or alluded to, is that they're standout leaders and best-in-class financials and strong market position in their categories. Both are tolling businesses, and I think this is an important thing to know.
You know, AZZ, we do not purchase steel. We do not have commodity risk associated with steel or aluminum. That is something that our customers are procuring, again, from a mill or a service center and then shipping to us, and we only have it briefly in our hands while we're providing our value-added solutions to it, whether it's galvanizing or coil coating. So, so we are absolutely insulated from any price volatility associated with steel because we're not purchasing it. Both have a lot of technology that we've employed into the business and a very service-driven culture. We monitor customer satisfaction through our CSG scores and use Net Promoter Score for that, and also very focused again on some ESG initiatives.
Given the time, I'll skip through the value props of these things, as well as the historical financials. I think we kinda covered the financials pretty good up front in the presentation, so no need to really dive into those within each segment. I do wanna spend a little bit of time just also talking about how we're investing in growth. We do have a $125 million investment that we've been making in a new greenfield facility being built outside Washington, Missouri. It will be online and active by the end of this fiscal year. I've just been there three weeks ago. It's coming along terrific. It's on track and under budget, so we feel really good about where it's at.
The other thing that's really important about this is it's the reason we chose to invest in this was not only the secular drivers that we see in the aluminum space, and this will be a facility that's dedicated to coating aluminum for the container industry, but it's also backed by a $50 million per year contract with a customer over the period of seven years. So, certainly a great investment, and that $50 million, by the way, is only for 75% of the capacity of the facility. Technology, again, I won't spend a lot of time here in the interest of time, because I wanna get to questions. But, as I mentioned, we have invested in technology both on...
in our Digital Galvanizing System for our Metal Coatings business, as well as the Precoat platform, which is called CoilZone, which really creates a big advantage and a strategic advantage to us versus our nearest competitors in the marketplace. Real quickly on sustainability, you know, I think the main points here on this slide are we are essential and environmentally friendly, as I kinda mentioned up front. We do have a lot of sustainability initiatives and reporting already in place, and certainly, we also focus on diversity. And, when you look at AZZ, 52% of the workforce is considered diverse. Here's a real quick, five-year look at historical sales and EBITDA.
So again, you can see, you know, a nice growth there over the period in both, and very, you know, a robust margin profile as well in the business. Kind of rounding things out, just a couple more slides, and we'll get to questions. You know, one of the things that we often get asked is, you know, "How do I comp you and look at you vis-a-vis, you know, others in the industry?" And, you know, we are a little unique, so one of the things that we've done is kind of taken out some of the guesswork for you.
If you look at AZZ on the far left, and you compare us either to coatings, building products, service centers, or steel mills, take your pick which one, and you look at revenue growth, Adjusted EBITDA margin, or net working capital, as you can see, you know, we're pretty much a standout amongst any way you wanna, you wanna comp us. So again, I think it just lends credence to our strength and where we're going. I did mention the leverage ratio coming down. As we speak today, we're actually sitting at 2.8x . This slide refers to the preferred. The preferred's actually been taken out, so our balance sheet's become not only simpler and cleaner but stronger, and so we feel really good about where we're at.
And again, capital allocation priorities. Very quickly you can see, we're focused on deploying capital on high ROIC investments. We've got 'em listed there, reducing the leverage, and returning the capital through dividends. We are a consistent dividend payer and have been a consistent dividend payer for decades. Really quickly, I'll end up on some guidance for the year, and then we can jump to questions. Our guidance for this year is sales of $1.525 billion-$1.625 billion, adjusted EBITDA of $310 million-$360 million, and an EPS range of $4.50-$5. So with that, you know, I'll pause, and we can open it up for questions and throw it back to Mark. Mark?
Thank you, David. I wanted to begin by discussing the market structure of each of AZZ's business, you know, i.e., whether they're fragmented, concentrated, and what differentiates the company from its competitors, and what are AZZ's chief competitive advantages, in your view?
Yeah, great question. So, you know, as I was talking about those two segments that we have, the metal coatings and the Precoat Metals segment, I think, you know, as you look at both of those businesses, they're both still, those segments, they're both still operating in relatively fragmented, you know, industries. The metal coatings industry, there's about 140-160 different locations out there, including captive kettles and individual tolling providers like us. As I mentioned, we have about 41 of those locations today, so still very fragmented industry. And then likewise, on the Precoat side, I think there's about 160 coil coating lines in North America as well.
We're operating thirteen of them today, so again, you know, very fragmented industry. You know, and as you look at either one of them, kind of talking about our strategic advantages and why people would choose us, I think number one is gonna be our footprint. You know, I mentioned that we're the largest in North America, so 41 galvanizing locations. Like I said, we're twice the size of our nearest competitor, so having 41 locations puts us very close to the manufacturing base, and we can quote turnaround times that are typically in a three-to-five-day timeline, which provides a big advantage for customers, particularly if they're working on steel that's part of a maybe on the critical path of a large project that needs to be completed.
We've got the technology that we've invested in as well, Digital Galvanizing System. It's kind of the peak Domino's Pizza tracker, for lack of a better word, of the industry. So we've invented that. We've got that in place. It allows us to communicate with customers real-time, give them real-time status updates, as does our CoilZone solution on the Precoat side. Precoat, very similar, the same scenario there. They have 13 coil coating locations strategically located either near mills or service centers or along ports and waterways. So that just allows us to better serve the customer base as well, and again, the kind of ditto on the technology.
In your presentation, you mentioned some of the tailwinds that support an attractive organic growth profile, but in terms of potential acquisitions, what are the company's investment criteria?
Yeah, you know, great question. So, two things to, to kind of note there. You know, we have been. We had taken a pause on, on M&A for a good two years, after acquiring the Precoat business and, you know, had made that commitment, to the market that, you know, before we would even entertain, any further, you know, M&A and, growth, in inorganic, we would first de-lever and get in the range of kind of two and a half to three times debt to EBITDA, and we felt that would be a more comfortable, you know, place to operate. We're now there. We're in the 2.8x , as I mentioned.
We've kind of signaled to the market we're back in the game. We're looking for you know strategic opportunities that fit within the two segments that we operate. What can we bolt on you know in the Metal Coatings segment, or what can we bolt on in Precoat that just you know further strengthens those businesses? That's kind of what we're looking at on a high level. You know the investment criteria for us. You know, we're looking at adjacent markets and kind of filling in white space, and then you know from a financial standpoint obviously they've got to be accretive and you know we're looking at returns in excess of our weighted average cost of capital.
And then, we also look at things through an ROIC lens as well, and have certain metrics around, you know, an ROIC target. That also cascades through the executive team and, you know, our compensation package.
... Within the Precoat Metals segment, AZZ targets Adjusted EBITDA margins in the range of 17%-22%. What impact do you think the new facility in Washington, Missouri, will have on the margins for that segment?
Yeah, thanks for that. So as you said, Precoat Metals, the stated range, 17%-22%. We've been running right in the middle of that, you know, kinda high 19%, low 20%. So we feel that we're, you know, kinda right in the middle of the range. The nice thing about that new plant that we talked about is that the contract associated with that that I mentioned will allow us to have an EBITDA when it's running at full capacity and full production on the high end of that range. So it will be nicely accretive to the margins.
In fiscal 2025, capital expenditures are expected to be in the range of $100 million-$120 million. A portion of that is due to this new facility. Yeah ... [crosstalk] absent acquisitions, what do you think is a normalized capital spending range?
Yeah, a normalized CapEx for the, you know, the business on a whole is gonna be about $60 million, probably $30 million spent equally between each of the two segments. And, you know, I think that's just, again, part of the, you know, what makes this story so exciting is that, you know, generating a significant amount of free cash flow already that's allowed us to pay for the facility in cash, allowed us to continue to de-lever the business. And now, you know, once we get past that, we're gonna have, you know, the inflows of cash coming from the new facility, and then, you know, also the lower CapEx associated with that. You know, it's really just setting us up to have a really nice storyline going forward.
Do you expect to execute any additional contracts for the remaining capacity?
Yeah, we do. We've got a couple of options ahead of us. You know, the current customer that we have under contract, who we unfortunately can't name yet 'cause they haven't allowed us to share that, we would be more than happy of taking actually 100% of the capacity. We've only held back on that because what we felt is that, again, as I mentioned, it's a seven-year contract. We didn't wanna necessarily be in a position seven years from now where, you know, the entire facility is being consumed by one customer. We think, you know, having a couple other customers in there will be great, and we do have line of sight to that, so no concern at all filling the balance of the capacity one way or the other.
Well, you touched on ESG, and so I don't wanna leave that topic unchecked, but could you just briefly touch on the company's ESG oversight structure, I guess, starting at the board level, and the company's efforts to promote sustainability and high ESG standards?
Sure, yeah. A couple of things there. So we've been really making a lot of strides on ESG. You know, we do have Tara Mackey, who I mentioned, you know, on the slide with. She's our Chief Legal Officer, also heads up all of our sustainability efforts and ESG efforts. And you know, you kind of call her the chief sustainability officer in addition to Chief Legal Officer. The board regularly gets updates on ESG and ESG initiatives, so you know, Tara does a quarterly update with them on that.
A few things, you know, I kinda glanced over that on that slide, but as we went kind of a level deeper, if we had the time, we've been reporting on things like Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions now for over three years. We've been very diligent about putting an ESG report out, very comprehensive. You know, I encourage folks who are interested in ESG and that's, you know, part of their investment criteria. Please visit our website. Go up to the top, you'll see a link to sustainability, and you can pull down those ESG reports and see everything that we're doing there. But a lot of great work being done, and I think it's being recognized too.
Newsweek Magazine has twice, two years in a row now, ranked us as one of most, you know, America's most sustainable companies. So we're really proud of that. A lot of effort goes into it, and, you know, we think, it, it's just also kind of the right thing to do, and you operate in a, an environmentally sound, manner, and then, you know, also the diversity lens. As I mentioned, very diverse business.
Now, you've mentioned the expanding use of customer-centric technologies, and I was wondering what impact you expect new technologies, whether that be artificial intelligence or others, to have on your business over the next several years?
Yeah. You know, it's interesting. So a few things there. Number one, we'll continue to invest in technology. You know, we take a very pragmatic approach to it, and you know, where it can help us either on improving customer relations or helping us out in the operations, you know, we're always keen on those things. We have a partnership in place today with Texas A&M University, just in terms of technology and different types of initiatives there. So that helps us out because, you know, we get first-mover advantage of any research findings that they come up with, and then I can deploy them into the business.
The other thing too is, I, you know, I was just at a conference with our CEO, and we were, the conference was equally split between CEOs of the business, of businesses that were there and, and the, the academic, you know, universe. And a lot of folks from Stanford, from Yale, from Duke, and so we listened to some interesting presentations from them, as well as also some AI companies on artificial intelligence, good and bad, and also things like quantum computing and others. So I think there's some applicability there. We're looking at a few things.
Nothing really to announce yet, but you know, we do believe that you know, AI will play a role in you know, the business as we move forward.
And then just lastly, the company typically reports their second quarter earnings in October. Are there any other things that investors should keep an eye on during the remainder of the year?
Yeah, you know, it will be out in early October, as you said, with Q2 results. And you know, as we kind of progress through the year, I think, you know, look for us, you know, not only as participating in your conference now, but you know, we look to see everybody again, you know, back in December at NobleCon down in Miami, so that's gonna be another touch point. I'm looking forward to that. I'll be there. So if anybody wants to talk real time and dive deeper on AZZ, be happy to do that.
David, thank you for your presentation and AZZ's participation in Noble's Basic Materials Conference.
My pleasure. Always good seeing you, Mark. Take care, and thanks everyone for your interest.