Hello, everyone. Good afternoon. Welcome to day two of the twenty-sixth annual Needham Growth Conference. My name is Chris Grenga. I'm a Research Associate on the Advanced Industrial Technology Team at Needham. We are pleased to have CTS Corporation with us here today. CTS designs and manufactures sensors, actuators, and electronic components in North America, Europe, and Asia. CTS provides solutions to OEMs in the Aerospace, Communications, Defense, Industrial, Information Technology, Medical, and Transportation Markets. The company is headquartered in Lisle, Illinois, and presenting from the company today is Kieran O'Sullivan, Chairman and CEO. Thank you for joining us, Kieran. Kieran will present an overview of the business, and then, time permitting, we will open it up for a Q&A. Without further ado, Kieran, take it away.
Great. Thanks, Chris. Good afternoon, everyone. I'll just move to the Safe Harbor statement. You can see it there. But, we're, we're a company at a very high level that's focused on a strategy around diversification and electrification in transportation markets. So that's the theme you'll hear through the whole presentation, and we've got a strong balance sheet that helps us with supporting that organic growth, but also the growth through acquisitions, and we've done about eight acquisitions over the last number of years as well. If you look at the profile of the company here, first of all, our strategy is focused on products that sense, connect, and move. That's where we deploy our capital. That's where we deploy our talent across the business.
So if you look on a last twelve-month basis, you can see here revenue $568 million, non-transportation at 47%. That was a little bit higher, and I'll come back to that, just with the change in market conditions. EBITDA margin in the last twelve months, 22%, and EPS of $2.20. You can see from a revenue perspective, geographically, North America just in the low 50s%, Europe just above 20%, and Asia in the mid-20s% or a little bit higher. Fluctuates just a little bit. The non-transportation revenue over the last number of years growing at a 14% rate. So again, I want to come back to the strategy. We love our transportation business, and we're focused on electrification, especially in the light vehicle market.
And at the same time, we're also looking to grow our non-transportation, which is industrial, medical, aerospace, and defense, at a faster rate. Because we believe over time, for investors, the quality of the earnings profile and the multiple valuation on the business will increase, and I'll come back and give you more clarity on that as we go through the presentation as well. Next slide, in terms of targeting 10% growth, 5% organic and 5% through acquisitions. Some years has been a little better than that, some years not as good. You can tell already for 2023, it was a more challenging year for us, as it was for some of our peer companies as well. As we managed through softness in non-transportation markets.
In our last earnings call, we talked about softness in industrial, we talked about softness in distribution, and we also touched on softness now in the CV market as we move forward as well. That's something we'll again talk about in our next earnings call in February. You can see here, deep customer relationships. We're a company that has deep engineering capability around the products that we provide. We believe the mega trends of automation, healthcare innovation, especially around non-invasive applications and electrifications, are the ones that are gonna give us stronger secular growth, and we've got a really good new product profile. We've talked about eBrake for two or three years, where we had a pre-development, and then earlier this...
Last year, I should say, we talked about the first win in this space. Textured piezo and new medical applications, whether it's with ultrasound or new ultrasound customers, intravascular applications, either for drug delivery or for the treatment of tumors and skincare. And then from an acquisition perspective, that focus on diversification. You will see us do acquisitions in transportation that are very focused to enhance our electrification focus. But most of our capital will be deployed in non-transportation markets, as we continue with that diversification. We've got a strong balance sheet, good cash flow, we're cash positive, and for us, it's very important to be very targeted in our acquisitions and what we want to achieve as well. Global footprint, we've got regional capabilities, very important to our customer base, that we can support them in all the regions of the world.
A strong leadership team. We've, we've got a strong record of performance in terms of growing sales, growing margin, and EBITDA. Again, I want to emphasize 2023, it's been a tough macro backdrop with inventories correcting in certain end markets, and we've a continuous focus on operational excellence. We talked about, in prior earnings calls, consolidating sites in Denmark, also making consolidations in Mexico, which are underway, and we said would be finished in, in the, 2024 period. And the other thing we have is a focus on four initiatives. Number one, driving profitable growth, not just on organic growth, but on acquisitions, making sure we're keeping a balanced approach there. Working closer with our sales teams, our application engineers, our engineering teams on being closer to the customer and deeper customer relationships so that we're solving their problems, being their partner in developing those smart solutions.
And then on the operational side, continuous improvement. Driving continuous improvement is imperative to us as a manufacturing company. You just have to be doing that. And then finally, on leadership, culture, and talent, as you know, coming out of the COVID period, making sure you don't lose that work culture, you don't lose your values and the business performance that you need to drive forward. Moving to the next slide, those mega trends or secular trends of automation, healthcare, and sustainability. So in terms of Industry 4.0, IoT applications are of interest to us, either through acquisition or using our piezo products. Passenger safety, we tend to be more in the passive safety side. Some of our products, like eBrake, will get linked into ADAS systems as we go forward as well.
In defense, in terms of underwater unmanned applications, it's an area where we've taken our technology and also taken our single crystal technology into new applications outside of medical as well. So you'll see us develop more in that area with new customers. On the healthcare side, it's improved diagnostics through medical ultrasound for imaging. Customers like Siemens, Samsung, GE, Philips, Mindray are just some of the customers we work with here and partner with. Minimally invasive applications, whether it's measuring the buildup of plaque, whether it's delivering drugs to the area of treatment, is something we partner with our customers on. Therapeutics, part of what came out of the Ferroperm acquisition with skin care and other applications.
And then the patient experience, it's either temperature in incubators right down to dental equipment in terms of what we do with ceramic products as well. And on the sustainability side, electrification. Obviously, it's a mega trend. I know you're hearing out there some markets are slowing down on electrification. We're not overly concerned about that. We're looking at our products in terms of not just full electric, but also hybrid applications as well. And our products are powertrain agnostic. If we look at some of our new products, whether the customers continue to electrify at a certain pace or not, our products are still gonna get deployed. You still need current sensing, if it's in a hybrid or a full EV. eBrake applications will apply to different architectures as well.
So we see that as something that's going to be good for us as we move forward. And then in terms of measuring scarce resources, we have transducers in terms of fluid metering. So as an example, some of the sensors and transducers out there have been mechanical impeller products that wear over time. We've come out with new products that use ultrasound waves as part of transducers, fly-by-wire, to measure the flow rate and the speed of what's happening within those delivery mechanisms. Moving along here, you can see this is a pretty busy slide. So at a macro level, if you look at the value we provide or the competence we have as a company, on one hand, it's magnetics. So... And that translates into position sensing, into packaging position sensing in safety-critical and harsh environments.
That's what we do mostly on the transportation side. Some in industrial applications as well, but mostly on the transportation side. That's where we have a deep engineering capability over many decades of working with our customers, and those safety-critical applications are not something you're gonna change very easily. You've got to have a very deep experience, not just from the design, but hysteresis and other engineering applications, to make it really, really do what our customers want. The other part of our business is mostly a materials business. So people come to us because of the quality of our material formulations. So if you go back 10 years ago, we just had one technology, a foundry in New Mexico for bulk processing. In that time since then, we've added tape casting, we've added single crystal applications, and then more recently, we did the Ferroperm acquisition.
So this gives us a combination of materials, technologies, and foundries around the globe to help us grow our business and scale with our customers as we go forward. So that's—you can see the different products here. I'm not going to go through them all, but it just gives you it does give you a picture of how diversified we are, and sometimes people tell us, "You're a more simplified company since you sold the largest business several years ago." Well, we're still kind a pretty diversified and a little bit complicated in terms of what we do here as well. Moving to the next slide, and this gets back to the investment thesis of we're a company that's diversifying.
We still love our transportation business and taking it through electrification growth, but growing the non-transportation side even faster, so that the quality of the earnings and the quality of the gross margin and growth profile will be healthier over time. And we believe that's a reason to invest in the company because we believe we will grow the multiple as we diversify at a faster rate in medical, industrial, and aerospace and defense. So if you go back to 2017, when we were $423 million in revenue, 65% of our business came from transportation. It says here that the current last twelve months is 53%. You're coming out of 2022, we were closer to 50/50, but because of the softness in industrial and distribution markets, now we have a slightly higher growth rate on the transportation sales.
We were very clear in our last earnings calls that this would impact our margins short term over a few quarters. But as the non-transportation side comes back from the inventory burn-off, we expect that margin profile to get back in range as the mix changes. But you can see here. Our long-term goal is to be at less than 50% transportation and grow that transportation side more than 50%, again, across medical, industrial, aerospace, and defense. Moving to the next slide, just to give you an insight into some of the end markets. You can see here on the industrial side, addressable market close to $3 billion, and compound annual growth rate over the last number of years of 12%.
You can see the drivers here of efficiency, materials, expertise, and the up integration into sensors and transducers. Some of the key areas here are sustainability in terms of what we're doing with HVAC and temperature sensing, micro positioning, that's applied in the semiconductor industry of some of our products, but on a larger scale, in micro actuation for packaging and industrial printing on ceramic tiles. And again, as I mentioned a moment ago, on measuring scarce resources like water, you can see here into fluid monitoring with our transducers, which is an ultrasonic based solution as well. So we feel we're on a good trend here. Obviously, again, some... In 2023, some headwinds in terms of inventory correction at our customers. Mid to long term, we feel very good about how we're gonna perform in this market.
Moving into the medical side here, you can see a number of things. Again, a $1.5 billion market, the compound growth rate of about 13%. The biggest part of this is the Ultrasound modality of how we operate here, but the superior material performance. We're one of the few companies in the world that has all three technologies in terms of Single Crystal, Bulk Processing, and Tape Casting, and in medical, it tends to be mostly Single Crystal. Whether it's Intravascular, going into the arteries to measure the buildup of plaque, highly precise medical Ultrasound for 3D visual and full video capabilities, and then as the Ultrasound environment changes from fixed into more transportable, Ultrasound, over time, you'll see that scale. We're also in pacemakers with...
for cardiac rhythm, eliminating the need for wires and giving a better enhanced recovery time for the patient. And then in drug delivery, where we're using our ultrasound technology with customers like Boston Scientific, to deliver the drugs to the area of treatment where it needs to be concentrated to have the maximum effect as well. So you can see here, this is a market that we have been growing. It was much lower single digits, and now we're up into the double-digit area of overall revenue for the company. And then moving into aerospace and defense, less than a billion cumulative growth rate here, a compound growth rate of 22%, mid-single-digit growth.
For us here, the focus is, the largest part is on sonar, with, with the Navy, with forward-looking arrays, with towed arrays, but then also on radar in terms of RF, in terms of anti-jamming capabilities. We talked in the past about having some programs that were going through a cycle, that would stay positive over time. And then reliability applications such as temperature and micro actuation into satellites, and then vibration monitoring as it goes into the aerospace applications, a smaller part of what we do. But both medical and aerospace, if you've listened to our earnings calls throughout 2023, performing solidly, good foundation for growth for the future as well. Moving along to, electrification and transportation, a $2.7 billion, almost $3 billion market. Revenue growth here, 2%.
I just want to point out that that growth rate looks abnormally low. That takes into account what happened during the COVID period. If you remember, in that period in 2020, our revenue dropped almost 40%-50% in the space of a month or two, and the one thing I want to point out is even with that decline, we were still profitable as a company. So we know how to flex our business and scale our business. On the first box here, you'll see accelerator modules, chassis ride height sensing, passive safety like seat belt or buckle switch, seat track, brake position, and belt tension. These are traditional products we've always had, go on ICE engines, go on hybrid engines, go on EV engines as well.
What I really want to talk about is more to the right-hand side in that green box, where we have 3-4 new products. And we've been working hard over the last two years to get that next generation of products here. And just to give you a little bit of perspective, eBrake, where we had our first win with an OEM, we were very clear, when we announced it earlier last year, you won't see revenue till late 2026, early 2027. That's our first win in a space. So if you think about accelerator modules, it's an $800-$900 million market, and we're one of the large players in that market. The brake is now going electronic. You're, over time, going to get rid of the mechanical linkages, the booster pumps, the hydraulic fluids.
It's gonna be brake-by-wire, just like we have acceleration-by-wire, which will link into the ADAS System. So we look at this and say, not just the first win that we've had that starts in 2027, let's call it, but as you go into 2030, the next decade, this is gonna be a growing market over a number of years, over several decades for us to scale the business. Have a first win. We're talking to several other OEMs, we'll keep you appraised on our earnings calls as how things go there. Our drive pad technology is something that goes into the footwell. It's an alternative to the accelerator pedal, and when you think about autonomous vehicles, the footwell becomes more important in terms of space and what you do.
This goes flush with the footwell and is a different type of technology where we've got patented capabilities here that we're showing and sharing with our customers as something as an advanced technology that could come into play later in this decade as well. Current sensing and motor sensing, you know that in earlier in 2023, we acquired maglab, a small company in Switzerland. We'd already been doing some things in current sensing, but we see this as a good growth area for us to scale another chunk of business. That business, we bought at literally no revenue. We've been winning programs there. The team's performing well, the acquisition is going well. And then on motor position sensing, two things here.
Last year, we announced our first win, a pre-development win, not a, a win in terms of revenue, but a development with a partner in this area. We're excited about it because measuring that motor position is important from an efficiency perspective, but also with what we're doing and what we got from the maglab acquisition, we have a technology that can do not just position sensing, but using software and algorithms to get into more accurate position sensing and torque it within the motor. So you now can measure efficiency for hybrid and electric vehicles at a much more granular rate, which is gonna become much more important over time.
You can see here the number of new EV wins we had back when we reported in Q3, and then we expect with this new portfolio of products on top of what we have, we add another $1 billion in market opportunity for us as we go forward as well. So feeling very good about a lot of the work that's been done here, and as we move forward as well. Just talking about us as a company in terms of operational efficiency, balance sheet, and strategic investments for growth, we've had a very strong improvement in our gross margin profile over the last number of years. You can see here 640 basis points.
Obviously, again, I wanna point out, we were very clear in the last earnings call that we're gonna have a little bit of headwinds because of the mix shift with the burning off of inventory and non-transportation markets that transportation will go a little higher. That's gonna pull us down a little bit lower in the gross margin. Something we will manage through, but that will correct over time as the mix changes. We've been very clear with a range of getting up as high as 37%-38%. For that to happen, we really need to make sure we accelerate the growth of our non-transportation products. We've streamlined SG&A, and as we scale the business, obviously, that's gonna become more important. Good balance sheet, good cash generation, 91% of operating cash flow.
That's in relation to Adjusted EBITDA, so you can see here that we're good on the cash conversion. And then in terms of investments for growth on an organic basis, really focusing and training a lot on the front end of the business in terms of our Sales Teams, our Applications Teams, but also our product engineering teams as well, being closer to the customers, investing in those aspects to enhance the organic growth profile as we go forward, too. Eight acquisitions, I'll come back to that in a second. You can see the capital allocation framework here, operating cash flow in the 15%-17% range, capital structure. We would be comfortable on an acquisition level, going up to 2.5 levels of leverage. We're a long ways away from that at the moment.
We're cash positive as a, as a company. Back in the third quarter, we reported $160 million of cash. From a growth perspective, 4% of CapEx is... 4% of sales is what we do in terms of CapEx. And then from a cash return to shareholder, we'd like to see somewhere north of 60% going into acquisitions. Didn't do that in the last year, and the rest going into dividends and buybacks in the 20%-40% range. We have an open buyback view. I think we reported it the, in the third quarter. We had north of $20 million, maybe $27-$28 million of left in the last buyback that we've announced previously.
The other thing we've been doing is from a systems perspective, we've been converting our sites over the last number of years to SAP. Our ERP systems were decades old. We're now moving into the phases of conversion, converting our last sites. So we're down to the last one or two. And, cyber side of things, this is very important to us as a company. We don't wanna have our customers disrupted. We're strengthening that, and as you know from an SEC perspective, there's more disclosures to come in that space as well. We've returned $173 million to shareholders since 2013, just to give you a framework on that. Acquisitions, you know, we said 5% target acquisition, organic growth, 5% through acquisitions.
You can see the different things here in terms of the enhanced technology, expanding our products, our geographic reach, and our customer base. But the other thing is we're pretty disciplined in acquisitions, making sure, number one, it gives a return on invested capital in the range we expect over a 3- to 5-year period, depending on the end market we're playing in. We would look at different multiples if we're buying a business in a small business in transportation versus something in medical. Expected to be accretive within the first 12 months, usually, and then looking for synergistic opportunities as we go through acquisitions as well. That's something we've always been very focused on. So you can see here we've got a strong focus in M&A, this is something where we will...
I'll show you in the next slide, just some examples of how we think about this as a company and how we execute. So to give you two examples, if you go back to 2000 and pre-2016, we were in ceramic technology and bulk processing, so our foundry operations here in the U.S. In 2016, we bought single crystal technology from HC Materials, and that was an acquisition that we paid up on in terms of an EBITDA multiple and a revenue multiple. It's been a very solid acquisition, growing in the medical space, not just in ultrasound, but in intravascular and other applications, and now moving into defense, and it's got a great margin profile for our company. In 2017, we acquired Noliac in Denmark.
That gave us the Tape Casting Technology that links in this space as well, and this is more applied to sensors and transducers and microactuators. And then in 2022, we acquired Ferroperm, which was a part of Meggitt when it was sold to Parker Hannifin. This was a business we were always interested in, and when that, um, acquisition was coming up with Parker, it was just the perfect time to make it fit into the CTS portfolio, and is performing well. So you can see here, the strategic thinking was: we know the ceramic space, we know the adjacent spaces. How do we build a platform and scale in this area on top of the organic that we have? And the teams have executed really well in this space. And then on the lower half, you look at sensors.
So you look at temperature sensing, and when we started acquiring in this space, people looked at us and said, "You're acquiring temperature? You know, isn't that a commodity?" And we were very careful to say, "Well, there's two things we want to explain about this. We're in the ceramics business. The temperature sensors we're acquiring are ceramic-based materials, so we understand the technology behind this. But we're not putting this technology into, as an example, Transportation HVAC, where you would get pretty miserable margins on it, and it's commoditized.
We're going into mission-critical applications, whether it's satellites, whether it's pool and spa, whether it's into HVAC applications, into medical applications in terms of, incubators and other areas in that area." So you can see here, we very carefully, first of all, acquired an industrial application, then we added Sensor Scientific with medical applications, and that also gave us a footprint into the Philippines, which we liked from a diversification of our manufacturing capabilities in Asia. And then in February of 2022, we acquired TEWA in Europe, which gave us an expansion into Europe, but also gave us an expansion into industrial in Europe. The one thing I forgot to mention on the top line is, with the foundries now in Denmark, we have a nice entry into defense applications in Europe. We do well in defense in North America.
Defense in Europe is a growth opportunity for us, where we've actually made progress with one customer, but we've more to do in that space as we go forward as well. So again, here, back to the investment thesis in CTS. Growing our electrification business, liking our transportation business, but growing our non-transportation business with a higher quality of earnings at a faster rate to get a stronger multiple turn on the valuation of the company over time. Guidance, you know from earlier this year, we guided down, so you can see the guidance here. We have our earnings call coming up on the later in the first week of February. I'm obviously not gonna say anything in terms of that, but you can see here, guiding in the $545 million-$555 million, and EPS in the $2.15-$2.25.
We were very clear on the last earnings call. We've got good position in aerospace and defense, good position in medical, good growth, a stable, stable perspective. We said softness in industrial, which has been a theme in 2023, not just for us, but for other companies as well, and the same goes for distribution with customers like Avnet, Digi-Key, and others. And we also said on the transportation side, we called out in our last earnings call, a softness in commercial vehicle. We saw a down cycle in commercial vehicle in 2019, where we're getting into the cyclical part of that. You're gonna see that, and all we said was, we expect that softness to continue into 2024.
We haven't said anything more about that, but we just wanted to be transparent in terms of saying, "Hey, here's what's going well, here's where it's challenging." And, as we look at the business overall, near term has been rather challenging for several, several companies in our space, but the mid to long-term prospects of what we're doing foundationally, we feel good about, and we have a strong balance sheet to complement our growth going forward as well. Starting to wrap it up a little bit. You can see here that the last twelve-month targets, you can see where we were in 2012, but the long-term target. So, good progress in some areas, more to do in other areas. Obviously, we'd like to be growing at a stronger rate than what we were in...
where we have been in 2023. We'll work on that. The gross margin profile, we've performed better than we've performed in 2023. It's a mixed issue at the moment, so we'll be driving that, and we're always driving operational improvements, where there's always opportunity as well. The R&D expense in the 5%-7% range, we're winning on some new programs. So we'll talk more about that as we go forward. And CapEx in the 4% range as a company as well. And then finally, just in terms of ESG initiatives, we've published our first sustainability report in the last year. We've got a strong board of directors, a diversified board, good tenure and experience and knowledge, and a mix of new experiences into the company as well.
We've got a good mix of products that support sustainability, that reduce emissions, advance electrification as we go forward, aid minimally invasive applications in medical innovation, and in terms of measuring scarce resources. So we feel good about what we're doing in the portfolio and what we'll do to advance our ESG initiatives. From a diversity perspective, we're also focused in terms of women in leadership, and what we're doing in the company is just one of the metrics we look at. So we feel good about what we're doing.
The one thing that CTS has done, probably for decades, that we've only started to talk about recently, is our sites across the globe, our teams, are active locally to give back to those in the community who are less fortunate than us, and we did a lot of work on that again in 2023, and we've new goals set for ourselves in 2024 that we'll talk about as we go forward as well. So that really concludes the presentation. I'll pause there and open it up for any questions.
Wonderful. Thank you for that overview. I'd like to open it up to the audience if there's any questions. If not, I have a few for myself.
Just on M&A, can you expand, like, how—what is the cash payback typically in terms of years? How long does it take? And then, what are the synergies that you extract from M&A?
So, cash payback, I'm probably gonna just give you a different frame of that. We look for a return on a weighted average cost of capital, ROIC, to be in excess of our weighted average cost of capital, somewhere in a 3- to 5-year timeframe, depending on the multiple we paid for the business. Because we'll pay up a little bit more for something, let's say, that's very high-margin medical or aerospace and defense. It would be different in auto or some other parts, so a 3- to 5-year period. And then, from a synergy perspective, we look at synergies in terms of sales, but also synergies in terms of cost structure. I just mentioned we consolidated locations in Denmark. They were two acquisitions from 2017 and 2022.
We brought them together. We tend to do some of that as well as driving material synergies and operational synergies.
Great.
So, Kieran, CTS has a good number of EV platform wins. Can you share insights into the distribution of geographic location of the EV platform wins?
Yeah, on the EV platform wins from a geographic perspective... If you think back, I think it's about a year ago, we said we shipped some first products on current sensing in the European market to a premium OEM. We've talked about wins in the North American market, and they're probably the primary ones we've talked about. We've also had some wins in Asia as well, so... But primarily, the biggest ones I think have been in North America and Europe.
And then, and then to piggyback on that, we are seeing local emerging Chinese EV players, and then their unit production is still small, but there's a hope that it can grow meaningfully. Do you see them as potential customers? If yes, do you think that it will take time, and it may be, like, beyond 2037?
Yeah. So, Henry, I'll give you two aspects in that. As well as the growth, we've been very clear on our last earnings call that, from a China market perspective, some of our Japanese OEMs were losing some share in China, so that was one thing we're managing through. On the other side of it, from a growth perspective, we've been growing with Chinese OEMs over the last number of years, both in ICE and in electrical and hybrid applications. But we've been very selective in the Chinese market because, you know, there was a lot of players, and who's gonna survive? So, that's something we've already had some progress on, and I would tell you, we're working to sharpen our focus in China as well because of the changing dynamics there.
Just help me understand the base technology of ceramics.
Yep.
What is the advantage of owning your own foundry for ceramics, right?
Yep.
Is it important to have your foundries close to a specific geography for you for some reason? Because you mentioned European foundry-
Yep
And now something in Europe.
Yeah. The foundry capability is core to what we do. And to give you a sense of that, we're buying a mix of powders, of different things. We're blending them together. We're mixing it, baking it, treating it, slicing, dicing, and shaping it for the application that our customers need. So, as an example, having a foundry in North America is pretty important, not just for our medical, but for our defense customers. When we go to Europe, they're not gonna be happy just if you're shipping everything else out of the U.S. So from a defense perspective, they'll like you to be located in Europe, and that's why the foundries and the locations are important, too. Plus, it gives us redundancy in terms of supply.
But the foundry is important because it gives you the secret sauce. The secret sauce is the quality of the material formulations. And if you look at anybody who competes in the ceramic space, they have unique formulations, unique applications for those, different types of components that we make. So if it's going into vibration in an aerospace, or it's going into a medical application, once it's designed in, it's usually designed in for multiple years. It's very sticky business. And the other side of it is, there's an aspect of vertical integration, which means you control your costs a lot more, which makes us a lot more efficient, too.
To what extent are you guys sole source on your products? And, maybe can you give us a sense for what your market share is across, just on average, if there's any place where it's extremely high or-
Yeah. So being sole sourced, I would tell you, you know, if you look across our business, transportation, you know, every OEM is gonna have at least two sources. That's what their goal is. If they're not there, they're always gonna be trying to get there. So we always look at transportation, saying, "You gotta be competitive, you gotta have good quality, on-time performance, and you better innovate and have new products, or your margin's gonna erode over time." So, that's the transportation side. We would have situations in the non-transportation, where we would be, in certain circumstances, sole sourced, in other areas, not.
But it's, I suppose, the way we go to market and the way the customers interact. In a lot of cases, once you have that material formulation, back to the prior question, it's designed for their process and their machinery, and you really got to screw up and do a bad job for them to say, "You're out." And we obviously never want to do that.
The market structures are typically like an oligopoly. It's you plus someone else?
In transportation, it's always... You always have... OEMs are always gonna have a second source.
They're not super fragmented, I guess, is my question?
I would say the fragmentation is much more evident in the non-transportation side. There, the markets can be... If you're looking at industrial printing versus maybe hearing aids, you know, two very different scales of markets, so it's very different.
For another ceramic foundry, how hard is it to reverse engineer the characteristics that your ceramics that you make?
Yeah. So I'm sure if you give enough time, it's kind of possible. But, you know, it's - we don't tend to have IP in the ceramic area. We have process know-how, and, you know, decades of knowledge. So it's that deep engineering experience and process know-how that help us win, and it's very hard to replicate that. You gotta - to reverse engineer it, it takes a lot of work. And, then, the other thing I would say, when we look at our Single Crystal technology, we have some proprietary processes that some of our competition may not have, that makes us more efficient as well, just as an example or two.