All right. Great. Moving along, I want to introduce one of our friends who have been with us on a number of occasions and a company that's been here over 40 years. Donaldson Company, based in Minneapolis, is a global technology company that centers on filters and filtration equipment. I have the company's Chairman, President, and CEO, Todd Carpenter here, who's been here for a number of years. And I'm going to give him the floor because there's a lot to talk about, and he's going to get right into his slides. Thanks, Todd.
All right. Appreciate that.
Are we going to get it here as well? Okay.
So I just want to quickly go through a Donaldson overview because some of you may be new to our story. There are five takeaways that I would like you to have through my presentation. First, we solve complex customer problems, which allows us to have deep customer relationships. We are a leader in our industry in filtration technology. Our strategy is to have the best-in-class technology. We sell proprietary razors to sell razor blades. We do it in the filtration industries. Our technology solutions enable a greener economy because they actually help our customer base meet their sustainability targets. We have a clear and balanced strategy, balanced between organic investment for growth in the company as well as acquisitions.
And then last, we have started a third leg of our company where we are investing and growing out a life sciences vertical. So with that, we are a 108-year-old company. Down on the lower right, you can see our last five years' performance, record revenue, and record EPS and profits. You could see on the lower left, I tell you, proprietary razors to sell razor blades. 65% of our revenue comes from replacement parts. 35% roughly comes from what we call first fit or project-based on the industrial applications. So that's truly the razor portion of our company. So we sell a lot of replacement parts. We have roughly 14,000 employees, 140 locations across the world. The patent number is important.
Between the years of 2019, when we held an investor day, and the year 2023, four years later, when we held our next investors' day, on average, somewhere in the world, Donaldson was granted a patent every day, so we are continuing to invest back into our corporation to invent cool things. I often joke that I should wear black turtlenecks, but that story had been taken. I probably should do it anyway because it'd make me look skinnier, but we invent cool things, and that's our strategy for the overall corporation. Geographically, 45% of our revenue is in the Americas, 10% in Latin America, 20% in APAC, and about 30% in Europe. Along the bottom, you see our end markets.
You can see how diverse the corporation is from an end market standpoint of view, with the light blue representing the replacement portion of our revenue in that market and the dark blue representing the first fit. Important, we are in 80% of the locations where our customers are. Also very important is our strategy is to build within region to support region. 75% of our manufacturing is consumed within region. For example, China. We do not import from China to the United States. We do import from China to Japan, so it stays within region, but we have never had a strong go-to low-cost country to import around the world type of a strategy as a corporation. So 75% of our revenue is built within region to support that particular region. Here are the financial highlights as well as our expectations this year.
You can see on sales, we expect to grow about 4%, setting new records as a corporation. Our adjusted operating margin expects to expand again this year on a path to 16.2%. Our investor day target in F26. And you can see we expect to leverage 13% EPS growth. So four on the top to get 13 on the bottom. Overall, our company, when you really think about us and our strategic advantages, I said we have a long history of filtration technology. We invent a lot of cool things. We have deep customer relationships. We have best-in-class operations. So we really take great pride to really take care of the customer, which also helps deepen those relationships. High aftermarket retention. And we have a very diversified portfolio of businesses across the corporation. We have three reporting segments.
Our mobile solutions segment, each of these three segments, by the way, has a chance to grow. I'll show you those growth expectations here on the last slide. Within mobile solutions, think construction, mining, agriculture, long-haul trucks. It is our longest-standing vertical inside the corporation. We have proprietary technology such as PowerCore and other activities that really help drive that razor blade solution for us. We've been at a number of years. We are number one in the world with still a lot of growth opportunities within our aftermarket opportunity as well as first fit. On industrial, we continue to have a wide-range portfolio. So think of industrial-based processes. Anytime you create a particulate of mist or a fume, we will take that away from either the operator or the machine. We'll collect that. That's in the industrial sector, as well as power generation is a good player for us.
They happen to be the largest filters in the company. You can have 1.2 million cu ft of ambient air per minute being filtered to protect the gas turbine somewhere in the world. Our newest vertical is our life sciences sector, cell and gene therapy expansion. We have a lot of great filtration opportunities in that particular sector. We're investing in that now moving forward. Here you can see our addressable market is about $50 billion via the recent addition of $21 billion to life sciences. Mobile solutions is about $15 billion. Again, we're between $2 billion and $2.5 billion of revenue in that market. You can see we have growth opportunities. In the industrial, it's about a $15 billion opportunity. We are just over $1 billion in that segment. Good growth opportunities.
Then in life sciences, you can see the five acquisitions that we have done here in the last four or five years, Purilogics and Isolere Bio being pre-revenue companies where we're looking to finalize that portfolio to bring those to market. The latest acquisition within last quarter was Medica. What does Medica do? Medica was a technology acquisition for us. If you think about filtration and you think of a straw, for example, your hair is about, for those of you that have it, not unlike me, your hair is about 10 microns in diameter. The inside diameter of the straw will be about 40 microns, and the actual wall will be 0.2 microns in thickness. So that when you go into biosciences and you really look at a thing called tangential flow filtration, it will filter out the bad, keep the good.
That is the line of products that we're using this technology to develop now to go into our life sciences-based applications. Medica is already about an $80 million business based out of Italy, and they are in kidney dialysis. So we're taking the dialysis technology, bringing it into biosciences in order to go forward. A terrific company. We own 49% of it with a path to get to 50% in short years ahead. Our use of cash over the last three years, you can see our number one capital priority is to invest back in the company. Number two is to buy companies. So both supporting our growth strategy. Three is dividends. We've paid a dividend for, oh, 60+ years straight. We are a proud member of the Dividend Aristocrats Fund, which means we have increased our dividend for a minimum of 20 years in a row.
And then last, we do share repurchases. Our share repurchases story is a consistent one. We look to buy back about 1% minimum every year, which offsets dilution. From a company standpoint of view, we have been averaging 2% over many years. And so when you look at where we are and how we view our parameters, we like to have a one-time net debt to EBITDA ratio. We are about 85% on a free cash flow. We have been running higher in the recent time. We have $800 million available, which all of these metrics allow us to be an acquirer of choice, really supporting our overall strategy as a corporation. And so when you look at our three-year targets, you can see on the upper left, we expect to grow 4%, expand our overall operating margin to 16.2 at the midpoint.
On the top right, you can see our current, where mobile solutions, we look to have it grow 4%. Industrial solutions look to grow 6%. And then we just adjusted our life sciences-based expectations. And that's really more of a market phenomenon. And you hear about that all the time in the industry. The market has not really bounced back as we would have expected it. Still very happy with the overall choice within life sciences. It's just going to take a little bit more time. That's Donaldson Company in a nutshell. And with that, I can open the floor for Brian.
No. There you go. Great. You answered some of my questions, certainly not all. I want to start with the engine business. This is an automotive conference. And while you're not necessarily an automotive supplier, you do touch commercial vehicle and off-highway markets.
So what are you seeing in terms of the aftermarket within these engine markets? Typically, investors can get a good understanding not only of what's going on with your business, but a lot of other industries by what's going on in various aftermarkets. So let's start with what you're seeing there.
Sure. So coming out of the supply chain correction period that we have seen in the last couple of years, overall OE-based activities really de-stocked. And we felt a number of pressures from that opportunity. The OEs won the game in stocking up as opposed to the independent channel across the world. The independents never really got to a place where they felt comfortable with their inventory levels. So now all of that correction is behind us from the OEs, the independents. Everybody's happy. It's clearly feeling like it's at a pull-through level. You'll see we have throughout that entire period, even though we went through some de-stocking, we continued to talk about the share gains that we're winning, particularly on the independent channel. It's no secret that now we support NAPA. We did put a press release on that.
But we have other share gains as well throughout the cycle, just simply because as we came out of supply chain disruptions, we take great pride in taking care of the customer. And we are back to pre-COVID supply levels of on-time deliveries. So we are at a very stable point. Now, I'm sure bubbles, blips come up, but that's kind of business as usual, even pre-COVID. And that has allowed us to really deepen those customer relationships and win share in the aftermarket period. Looking forward, clearly ag is a little bit of a headwind type of a situation in that. We do look for that to cycle and give us more growth opportunities on the backside.
One of the real tenets of the Donaldson value philosophy was the OE win followed by the aftermarket life cycle win, so maybe talk about some of the technologies within the engine space that you've enjoyed over the last few years that have helped you gain this market share that we've seen.
Yeah. So maybe just from a very basic standpoint of view, those of you that drive down the road and you see your Class A trucks, you'll see these two stainless steel air cleaners in front of them sometimes, right? We make those in Greeneville, Tennessee. Those particular stainless steel air cleaners are a long-standing product for Donaldson Company. They currently exist on truck models today because, well, frankly, the driver wants to look cool. But what really happens is that technology has been completely replaced and put under the hood so that you can get an aerodynamic design by all the OEs in the front. Now you'll see the newer-based trucks have more type of a nose in the front. There truly is aerodynamic. And we did that with PowerCore.
So we shrunk the size of that application by about 70% and gave the exact same functional performance, which allowed them to put it under the hood and really give a great example of the technologies that we have. That's something we've been building over time. More recently, when you look at what we have in the fuel sector, a new technology called Synteq XP. This is really important because what you do with diesel fuel is you take water and particulate out of it in order to help the engine run well. And so we've been winning new programs based on that. Interestingly, going forward to alternative fuels, what you have to do in hydrogen, for example, in Cummins' solution, if hydrogen goes into the combustion engine to replace diesel fuel, the thing you have to take out of hydrogen is particulate and water.
We're already number one in the world. The next thing you may have to take out, depending upon the engine, are different chemicals like sulfur dioxide and others. We already have been doing that for decades in our disc drive-based business. So we reach in and grab some of that chemical absorption type of technologies and bring that over into our engine-based technologies as well. We have one fuel cell-based programs, other alternative fuel programs. And so we're really engaged across the world with alternative fuel solutions of every type of end market that we particularly serve.
One of the things we've talked about with you and others in recent years is, from a technological standpoint, predictive maintenance and you working with OEMs and providing technologies that allow their customer base to better understand replacement cycles. Maybe talk about some of the technologies there that you're working on from a software standpoint.
Yeah. So it's really interesting, right? Because when I first started at Donaldson 20 years ago, 29 years ago, whatever it was, they used to have an indicator. It was red or green. It's good or change me. And that was about it. And so now the customer wants to know, "I have 32.7% of my filter life left." All right? They want to know exactly what it is, which means the next portion that became very important in our strategy is digitizing our solutions. And so we have invented sensors. And believe it or not, it is really complex to tell how much filter life is left being air or liquid because in the past, it was always about pressure drop, right? So what is stopping whatever you're filtering to get through? Now it's more complex than that. It depends upon what type of particulate you're trying to stop.
And so we actually have patented algorithms on how to build those solutions and invented our own sensors in order to come forward to trace water and fuel and things like that. And so we're bringing forward those solutions in order to help the maintenance cycle across all the vehicle platforms.
Any questions? Okay. Staying within your engine end markets, traditionally been more of an air filtration company as opposed to fuel and lube, although you certainly have positions there. Are those markets that you potentially want to expand in? Is there anything from an electrification side that would potentially make you shy away from that? Maybe talk about just the mix of filtration within an engine.
Yeah. So we are primarily air. We have been winning on fuel for the reason I had described to you. Overall, hydraulics is next. So if you think about a construction excavator, right? You got this big arm. It runs on hydraulics. Well, you have a big oil tank on the back of that. It's full of air. So the reason the oil tank is the size it is and weighs as much as it is is because they can't get the air out of the oil, and they got to get it. So we have a product that we've invented that's now come out, and it's called de-aeration filtration. And so we can take the air out of the product, which allows you to shrink that oil tank in the back half of whatever excavator or whatever platform you want as much as in half or 40%.
And that's a big value proposition to the overall customer base because you can take weight out and therefore fuel efficiencies and so on and so forth. So that's a real cool one. They all take time to actually implement. And the reason they take time is because you need the platform to change at the OE in order for it to be adopted. But we continue to have ongoing programs there. We continue to quote that. It continues to get really good reception. That's a real cool one that'll help us really drive hydraulics over time. And so hydraulics, really, fuel are the two liquid opportunities. Lubrication, so your oil filter for your car or, frankly, for all of our particular markets, that's a commoditized filter. We do that because the customers really want us to do that. It's pretty simple.
It filters out big things like rats and rain. That's about it. It's very commoditized, and it's just out of convenience that we do it, so the fun part for us as a bunch of filtration geeks is really that we want to go after hydraulics, and we want to go after fuel.
Going to go ahead, Mario.
Yeah. Slide up there. Medica in life sciences or in filtration?
It's in life sciences.
Right. So now let's go back to your earlier comments about the speed bump. Okay. So you've had some issues. You're changing your dynamics, but yet you're willing to put incremental value and time and energy. But isn't this a great opportunity for you for the next five years? And why wouldn't you step up if there's other Medicas in the world?
It's really interesting. I mean, at the macro, if we all ride the elevator, look down at our company, 40,000 sq ft level, right, or the 40,000-foot level, and we look down, we've just, for the last five years, put up record earnings, record growth, okay, and invested back in a company into a new segment called life sciences. It's early innings for us as a corporation in that segment, and there are tremendous growth opportunities that we're bringing forward. We look at that particular segment differently than a lot of people because we do look at filtration. For example, let me give you one example. GLP-1 drugs. GLP-1 drugs, we have a partner here in Southern California, and they're making GLP-1s. They have to use in the chromatography, which is the polishing of that, they have to use a solvent called acetonitrile.
Acetonitrile comes from Western Europe or China primarily. In one chromatography column, they have 2 million liters of waste, and they can't reuse it. So what they do is they buy it from Europe, boat it across, truck it across the United States. Every week, 5,000 liters goes into a tanker truck, gets driven to Mexico, and incinerated. If we could reclaim the acetonitrile, it would really be helpful and save them millions. Donaldson Company now owns the patents, and the products are people were able to do it. In short, we filter it, we filter it, we distill it, and we filter it. But the filtration is really complicated. We can restore that to 99% purity. No one in the world has ever been able to do it higher than 85%.
Now, it's going to take us a while to really ramp that up because to build those systems takes some time. They're all stainless steel. They're quite complicated. But we didn't present that solution at the last healthcare conference in Boston. Our customer did. And so that really shows our overall model, the depth of the customer relations, solving the complex problems. We do that in our mobile solutions business for 108 years. We're just bringing that to life sciences. And that's what really excites us about this opportunity. We just see different things.
Staying within this life sciences opportunity, you still have a balance sheet in amazing shape. What is the pipeline like for M&A, and how big would you be willing to go on a potential target?
So the pipeline looks good. It's strong. It's very strategic, targeted. Clearly, our process identifies companies that we knock on the door. In Medica, Luciano and Andrea are fantastic people. I got to know them over the last three and a half to four years before we actually acquired the company. It just takes that long in order to be able to get that. We do have targeted acquisitions for a number of different strategic initiatives. One's technology, the other could be the channel, the customer relationships, etc., etc. We continue to analyze those. If an auction, say, comes through the door and involves filtration, we look at all of them. Our process is very robust. We will continue to look at all of them. It's the responsible thing to do. We'll continue to do that. And then it's how high would we go? Depends upon the opportunity, right?
Clearly, we talk about going to three times would make us very comfortable because we have enough cash flow in order to pay it down. We also have the lever we can always pull, and that is to hold back on share buyback. So whatever we did, if we'd even go higher than three, we'd put a plan together to drive down the overall leverage. But it would have to be really a strategic positive for Donaldson Company to do it.
Understood. We have about four minutes left here. I want to ask a couple of questions about the industrial business. Do we have one? Okay. You know what? Go ahead, Brian.
So my question was pretty simplistic, but how does the competitive set look in life sciences versus your core business?
Yeah. So in life sciences, you really have Pall, Repligen, Sartorius out of Germany. Those are the upper echelon companies. We always play there. Okay? That's who we're really going after. We're very comfortable competing against them because, as I said, we're not necessarily saying, "Hey, let's just go give more of what they give," right? We're taking a look at the overall process that they do in cell and gene therapy manufacturing and say, "Where are our opportunities? Acetonitrile reclamation, nobody could do this. Why were we able to do it?" Because we're filtration geeks. We just look at it differently, right? And we had the core technologies across our company. We apply them, and we get it done. It's really cool. We've also invented a brand new way of making orange juice with no preservatives that actually tastes like fresh squeezed orange juice. Okay?
It's going to take us a long time. We have all the patents on that too. These are inventions that we have right now with the technology pipeline that is really fun in our company, and they all take time because you're planting seeds for future growth each time in order to grow those out, but that's how we look at it. We have a right to play, and we will win.
Last one or two here. Aerospace has been a great source of growth for your business on the OE side. What does the aftermarket for an aerospace customer look like?
Yeah. So aerospace is really the longest sales cycle in the company. It could be eight, nine, 10 years. The H-53K helicopter, for example, took us about 11 years to win that program. But when you win that program, it's 40, 50 years' worth of revenue. And it keeps on coming back because they don't really resource you because technologically, it's really a complicated situation. So it's the longest sales cycle. You've seen growth in our company right now in this particular moment for all the obvious reasons. But it's really about capturing longer-term programs and making sure that we continue to do that at the overall aerospace and defense manufacturers. The programs that really have driven growth at this point in time are really the ground-based vehicles that we support across the defense platform as well as the aerospace platforms.
In the interest of time, Todd, I think we're going to wrap it there about 45 seconds early. But I want to thank you very much for being here and Sarika. Thank you for joining us for the first time. And I guess just one more comment. You've got a new CFO announcement. So maybe take 30 seconds on that.
Yeah. So Scott Robinson has been with the company almost 10 years. He recently retired to go catch trophy fish and get a lot of trophies in the hunting application. He grew up in Northern Minnesota. And so he's really an avid outdoorsman. And I suspect he's even hunting ducks today. So we have a new CFO who started at the end of our first quarter. That's why the November 1st date was chosen. Many of you may know Brad Pogalz. He had Sarika's job long, long ago a nd.
He's been here.
Yeah.
He's been here.
Yeah. Yeah. He has been at this conference. He has been in Europe for the last almost five years running our European finance organization. And so he knows Donaldson Company very, very well. It'll be a seamless transition.