Ready? Let's go ahead and get started. I'd like to welcome everybody to the Columbus McKinnon session this afternoon. I'd like to introduce the management team that's here. We have David Wilson, who's the CEO; Greg Rustowicz, who's the CFO; and Kristy Moser in the front row, who's the treasurer and VP, IR. The way we'll do this session is David will say a few words, just a few minutes, and then we'll move into a question-and-answer session. David, I'll turn it over to you.
Great. Thank you, Kirk. I appreciate everybody being here. Thanks for your interest in Columbus McKinnon. We are a company that is leading the market in intelligent motion solutions for material handling. We have a 150-year history, and about four years ago, we embarked on a journey to begin transforming the company from a history as a leader in lifting solutions for material handling to a leader in intelligent motion solutions for material handling. As we did that, we mapped out a strategic framework that was really centered around being customer-centric, market-led, and operationally excellent. Moving on from that foundation, we focused on a growth framework that was balanced in terms of the way that it looked at growing organically as well as through accretive M&A opportunities.
As we've been executing on that strategy, we've been transforming the business into this intelligent motion solutions enterprise with a focus on more secular, growth-oriented end markets that are very attractive and have attractive margin profiles. So we provide products that help our customers to increase their productivity, their safety, and their uptime. We help them solve complex problems in material handling.
When you think about the market that we're in, one where manufacturers are investing in new capacity in region for regional manufacturing, and they're dealing with labor scarcity challenges, we're in a position to really capitalize on what we think is a super cycle around investment to support advanced and automated material handling for manufacturing and distribution needs. With healthier supply chain dynamics in our business over the last 12 months, we've done a lot of improvements in areas that matter most to our customers.
So we're really focusing on improving the customer experience. We've realized double-digit score improvements in our Net Promoter Score with our customers, and we're leaning in to capture more wallet share from customers. Customers that we maintain, but customers that there's an opportunity for us to do more business with as we improve these performance characteristics. We also believe that there'll be a tailwind in terms of growth opportunities for us as we head into the next year, given the fact that we've been improving in those key areas. Over the last 12 months, and in fiscal 2024, we delivered record results in the business. It was kind of a second year of record performance for the business. In fiscal 2024, which we just ended in March, we delivered 8% growth.
About 3% or a little more than 3% of that was through acquisitive actions, and the balance was through the core business. We delivered a—I was going to check my notes here so I don't mix these up. It was 80 basis points of gross margin expansion and 60 basis points of EBITDA margin expansion, both netting to records in those collected areas and results for the period. And so as we advance through fiscal 2024 and into 2025, or through calendar 2024, which is our fiscal 2025, we believe that it's an exciting time for Columbus McKinnon and an exciting time for you to learn more about the opportunities to invest in our company.
Great. Thank you. I guess I'd like to start off maybe with some questions. You made several comments about growth, right? So order growth in the fourth quarter was pretty strong. I think it was sort of 5% growth. What are you seeing on the demand side now, and how's the funnel evolving from the standpoint of orders?
Honestly, it's been robust. We've been very encouraged with the funnel that we're looking at right now in the business. Demand for conveyance solutions in the fourth quarter that we just reported on was up 20+% . That included our acquisition of Montratec , but demand was up 13%. When I say demand, I'm talking about orders. Orders were up 13% in the quarter. Our lifting business, which is the kind of legacy portion of the portfolio, was up 7%, and 17% in the Americas, which is an area that's benefiting from, we think, some of those super cycle activities around growth.
One thing that I mentioned in our prepared remarks during the—or actually in response to a question during our earnings call—was that demand through April was up, and demand thus far, or at that point through May, was slightly down off of a tougher comparison.
I want to clarify or just bring to your attention that demand through April and May is now positive from a year-over-year perspective, and we're feeling pretty good about the bookings activity in the quarter. And so as we think about that May reference, it was a reference to a tougher compare versus last year, and I'm not sure that I articulated that as clearly as I'm able to right now.
Okay. Thanks. Another aspect of growth. So you've been evolving the company over the last few years, and you mentioned a focus on secular growth and end markets with secular growth. So what are the end markets where you're seeing that kind of growth, and where's the most strength you're seeing now?
Yeah. Thanks. Great question, Kirk. I would say that we are targeting growth in areas like life sciences, in areas of e-commerce and electrification. We are seeing nice, attractive tailwinds in the food and beverage space. Then in general, we see a lot of demand around industrial activity, which you wouldn't traditionally tie to a secular growth label.
But I do believe that given that investment in manufacturing capacity, the scarcity of labor, and the opportunity for us to provide automated material handling solutions into our markets, we're well positioned to continue to see demand that'll drive growth for the business in that area. Seeing some nice developments in the areas that I mentioned and a continuing resiliency in demand around those lifting solutions.
Yeah. David, I'll just add on. So we also saw really good growth in defense spend, aerospace, oil, and gas is another market that's doing well. And then surprisingly, our heavy OEM business, so Caterpillar and Deere are investing as well.
Thanks, Kirk.
Question about the Precision Conveyance business, the newer platform that you've been developing from beyond the legacy business. How's that business been performing, and what do you think the potential is? Where will you go with that business over time?
Yeah. We're really excited about the investments that we've made into that space. We basically went from being leaders in lifting. So if you think about us being experts and leaders in the vertical, we moved now to the horizontal in terms of material handling in our customers' environments. So being able to precisely move and position materials both in the vertical and in the horizontal and wrap that all up in automation is something that's really critical to the effectiveness of our customer solutions and their new manufacturing investment areas. So the precision conveyance business is an area that we're seeing attractive performance and demand. Back in fiscal 2021, and then at the end of 2021, we acquired Garvey. Then more recently, in May of last year, we acquired Montratec .
Those investments brought us precision belted conveyor solutions, brought us accumulation technologies that are market-leading, and brought us asynchronous conveyance solutions in the most recent acquisition with Montratec . Really pleased with those acquisitions and the way that they've positioned us to partner or marry technologies for material handling solutions in our customers' environments. And as we advance, there's a fragmented landscape of opportunities within that market. The market's about $5 billion.
We added about $5 billion to our total TAM, taking it from about $15 billion to about $20 billion in total TAM. And really, we see that business continuing to grow for us organically. The organic growth rates in that business are expected to be double-digit growth rates from a precision conveyance perspective over time. The market grows at about 6%-8%, and we're targeting double-digit growth for that segment over time.
And then through acquisitions and the fragmented landscape, we believe that we can scale that business into a material level of contribution to the total portfolio. So if we're a 60% lifting, 40% what we might characterize as precision conveyance, linear motion, automation, I would see that shifting over time to being more 40/60.
Can I just ask for precision conveyance versus regular conveyance? Just for the audience, everyone understands what you mean by that, because there are things that it means and things that are not part of conveyance, right?
Right. Right. Right. Yeah. So when we got into this evaluation of where Columbus McKinnon could grow through M&A activities, we looked at the industrial technology landscape, and we analyzed that massive space, multi- or trillion-plus dollar space. And we said, "How do we boil this down into pockets or micro-segments that we think are most attractive for Columbus McKinnon? Where do we think we have a right to play? Where is the differentiable technology? Where's the profit pooling? What makes sense for us to consider?" We identified precision conveyance as one of those areas. And we were targeting technology-differentiated areas where you could defend your position and precisely position material so that other automated processes could interface with where you position that material in a conveyance application.
And so doing that repeatedly over time very well and with technology differentiation that's protected that allows you to maintain your position as a differentiated offering is something that we were targeting. So this is not gravity-fed roller conveyance solutions. This is very precise movement where through our technologies, we can interface with a number of different process steps and automated equipment that we're able to increase productivity, safety, and uptime for our customers by doing so.
Thanks. Very helpful. As it relates to precision conveyance, the last acquisition you did was Montratec . Talk a little bit about that. How's that doing? How's it add to the portfolio? What does that do for you?
Yeah. Great business. Very, very excited about the technology, the team, the potential. We acquired the business. It's a $30 million business. We said that over the course of three years, we're going to double the business. We're on track to do that. Through the first 10 months of ownership, we've delivered $32.5 million or thereabouts in revenue. On an annualized basis, that's right around $39 million. So we're on track for that 30% growth target per annum, if you will. Gross margins in the business were in the low 40% range, 42%+ in that first 10 months of ownership. So overall, performing as we expected it to. There is some lumpiness in the performance quarter-to-quarter because it is a project-oriented business. So that's something that I would anticipate as we do go forward.
But we see tremendous opportunity to scale this business. This is a business where, on a monorail construction track, we're able to move shuttles along that track. Those shuttles are powered via the power that's delivered from the rail itself to the shuttle. The shuttles can move. You put multiple shuttles on the rail. They can move in different directions. They can go forward and backwards. They can move at different speeds. They can be communicating with other machines via machine-to-machine communication while they're moving and be redirected. They're powered via the rail, so they can power testing applications or other applications that you can think of that might be driven via power while you're in between process steps. So you think about something that might need testing as it's moving between one step and another.
You can test for the work that you just completed before it arrives at the next station for additional assembly activity, which cuts a lot of the time aspect out. We have clean room certifications with this product. There's a tremendous amount of growth potential. And we're really just beginning to scratch the surface in terms of the application-specific advantages we can deliver for our customers by marrying the Dorner precision conveyance, the Garvey accumulation, and the Montratec asynchronous conveyance applications.
Thank you. Let's maybe move on to financial performance and opportunity in the space. In your prepared remarks, you talked about gross margin improvement and EBITDA margin expansion over the past few years. You've laid out a plan to improve another 270 basis points of gross margin and 450 basis points of EBITDA margin over the next three years, right? So what's going to drive that?
Did you want to take that, Greg?
Sure. So as we think about our gross margins, we just made a significant investment in Monterrey, Mexico, which we believe will generate about 200 basis points of margin improvement. It relates to labor arbitrage opportunities in Mexico, as well as being able to consolidate four factories into one and saving the overhead costs associated with that. So that'll be a big driver of our gross margin. In addition, we always get price in excess of material costs. So we would expect our pricing to be also a part of the margin expansion from a gross margin perspective. Getting to EBITDA, besides driving our gross margins to 40%, we expect to lower our SG&A costs to about 20% of sales.
And that's going to come from scale as well as efficiencies coming from a number of investments we've been making in technology to become more efficient in our back office and our customer service areas and areas like that. And then in addition, we are also an 80/20 company. And over the last 4 years, we've generated over $50 million of incremental operating income. And we continue to progress with 80/20. Right now, our major focus is on product platforming, which we think will drive a lot of efficiencies in our manufacturing operations as we consolidate our product offering down to a more manageable level.
Great. Thanks. Your business is generating cash, and your leverage is a little bit higher than your target is right now, and you're moving closer towards it. How do we think about how you're going to be allocating capital as time goes forward here?
So from a capital allocation standpoint, we're primarily focused on growth. That growth is primarily organic growth from a prioritization standpoint. So we're targeting organic growth and investment in that. Then we would focus on making sure that we're paying down debt. We've been demonstrating that in a disciplined way. The last year, we paid down $60 million of debt, and we just forecasted that we'd pay down $50 million of debt this year or more if performance in the markets allow. Those are our top two priorities. Beyond that, we're focused on advancing our strategy to grow programmatically through M&A. That's been clear in our strategic objectives. We do have a dividend as a part of our capital allocation approach. That dividend over time is expected to be stable and growing.
Yeah. Let me add on. We do generate a significant amount of cash. So our free cash flow conversion is roughly 100% or greater. And so that gives us a lot of flexibility from a cash perspective to pay down debt, to invest in the business, as well as to utilize our dry powder for future M&A. From a capital structure perspective, our leverage today sits at about 2.4x .
On a covenant basis, we have a covenant-like capital structure with a Term Loan B. And we think we've got interest rate swaps in place that are right now significantly in our advantage. I think our overall cost of debt is around just under 7%, 6.6%. So we think we're in good shape from a balance sheet perspective, and we have lots of flexibility for what we decide to do in the future.
You both have mentioned M&A as part of the strategy. What does the pipeline look like right now?
Yeah. Well, as part of our ongoing pipeline management process, we're in constant touch with candidates and building relationships. We've got a targeted set of opportunities that would bridge gaps that exist in our portfolio of conveyance primarily. But we'd also look at linear motion and automation and motion control-related assets. We are interested in continuing to programmatically develop and evolve our portfolio through M&A actions as well as organic growth and have demonstrated an ability to be agile and to move swiftly and be successful in a way that is both prudent but also productive. And I think we would continue to do that as we move forward. We've got a mix of opportunities in the pipeline that range in terms of size and scale and opportunity.
But all of those opportunities that we would be targeting would drive performance that leads us to the outcomes that we're talking about in our strategic plan. And so what we talked to investors a couple of years ago about and the targets that we set is that's very much the outcome that we're driving to through our organic actions. We're controlling what we can control. We're being very disciplined with our approach to this process. And when we do choose to act and proceed with an M&A opportunity, that opportunity we're confident would be an opportunity that would lead to the outcomes that we're targeting through our strategic planning process.
Great. Maybe I'll just turn for a second. Any questions from the audience that anyone has? I'm happy to go on, but I'll ask a question about geography, I guess. Talk about your business from kind of where you are now from a geographic perspective and perspectives on where are you where you want to be? Do you want to evolve differently than where you are right now? Just talk about how you approach your business from that standpoint.
Yeah. Sure. So we are, I would say, 65% North American, 25% what we call European, and then 10% split between Latin America and Asia. And so we have, I would say, an underrepresentation of the business today in geographies like Latin America and notably Asia. But since I joined the company four years ago, I joined in June of 2020, just in the heels of the onset of the COVID pandemic.
And we were very much in the mode of initially responding to the pandemic and then responding in the wake of demand resurgence to the demand that was growing for us and pursuing opportunities that were kind of nearer in terms of reach than further. And so there's what we believe is that there's enough really attractive opportunity in those markets where we're strongest today to continue to develop and to achieve our strategic outcomes.
That's where we're focused. But we do believe that over time, and that's one of the things that's attractive about the bone structure, if you will, of Columbus McKinnon's, we have a global presence. We have entities in Malaysia and in China. We have a position in Latin America and scale that we can begin to leverage or a footprint that we can begin to leverage for additional scale as we acquire companies and bring them into the fold for Columbus McKinnon to continue to develop and grow. And over time, I lived and worked abroad for many years. I lived in Asia for 6+ years, and I lived in Europe for a couple and believe that there are great opportunities for us to continue to scale this business in areas where we're underrepresented over time.
Great. One thing I forgot to ask before was I think there's a plan around footprint simplification. That's supposed to, I think you've publicly said there's 200 basis points of margin expansion that should come from that.
That's right.
Talk about what's involved there and where you are in that process.
Absolutely. So as part of 80/20, product line simplification, footprint simplification, and then making the right products in the right place is very much a focus for what we're trying to achieve. And we've made a significant investment in Monterrey, Mexico, and have a nice brand new facility there that we're operating from a manufacturing center of excellence perspective today. But there's opportunities over time for us to continue to simplify and improve our cost position in the region for the region, if you will.
And so we anticipate that over time, we're going to be better positioned to deliver competitive offerings for the North American market given this investment. And over time, as we've outlined in the bridge that we've presented, we believe there's 200 basis points of margin expansion on a $1.5 billion revenue level that we'll deliver through that activity.
We'll communicate more about that as is appropriate. We're well into the process of the work that's necessary to achieve those outcomes and feel confident in those outcomes over the planning horizon that we outlined, which is basically through fiscal 2027. Today, by the way, we're in our fiscal 2025. We're a March-ending company, fiscal calendar year. This April, we begin our fiscal 2025 period.
Okay. You've referenced 80/20. That's a big part of how you approach the business. It's actually you've achieved a lot over the last few years using that approach. Over the next, as you look forward, what are the key areas you look at as you apply 80/20 to the business?
Yeah. Absolutely. So I think the team's done a terrific job at realizing the benefits that we've been able to achieve thus far. I do think that as we stabilize the business further in the wake of the pandemic and further address product line simplification and the footprint simplification initiatives that we just talked about, there'll be a nice opportunity for us to realize further margin expansion and growth opportunities.
Again, the right product in the right environment produced in a way that's very competitively and then targeting our best customers with the products that we're targeting for them. I think there's a great opportunity for us to be very selective and continue to grow and grow in ways that shift the mix as well as the performance of the business in a direction that'll help us create value for our shareholders as well as for our customers.
Great. I guess my last question would be, what haven't we asked you about? What haven't I asked you about that you haven't had a chance to talk about, about the company and how it's doing or the opportunities in front of you for kind of a freebie?
Thanks, Kirk. Greg, please jump in if there's something that I don't cover. What I would say is Columbus McKinnon is a company that is transforming itself. Four years ago, we started this journey. I think we've made great progress. We've demonstratively improved the performance of the company. We eclipsed $1 billion for the first time in the history of our company this past year, growing 8%. We reached record levels of gross margin, record levels of EBITDA margin. We are advancing with that transformation plan and in an environment that's been very challenging have delivered positive results. We believe that over the next three years, we'll continue down that path and execute to deliver on the outcomes that we've targeted. We're a company that generates cash.
We're a company that has been able to deliberately and in a focused way reinvest that cash in a way that will drive the kind of returns that we're targeting for our investors over time. We want to be a compounder of value for investors. So we think this is a great time to be in discussions around our company. We're really excited about the future. Thank you for your interest.
Any final questions? David, Greg, Kristy, thank you for joining us. Enjoy the rest of the day. Thank you for all of you for coming.
Thank you, Kirk.