Good morning, everyone, and welcome to DuPont's Investor Day 2025. We are thrilled to have you here with us, whether in person or virtually, as we embark on a day of insight, vision, and strategy. For those of you in the room, we hope you had the opportunity to spend some time this morning with our products and displays. What you will hear consistently throughout the day today is a theme around transformation, innovation, and acceleration. These words reflect not only our ambition, but the momentum we are building as we reshape DuPont for the future. Before we begin, during today's presentation, we will make forward-looking statements regarding our expectations for the future. Because these statements are based on current assumptions and factors that involve risks and uncertainties, our actual results may differ. Please refer to our SEC filings for a description of these risks.
From a financial perspective, the basis for today's presentation will be the new DuPont on a pro forma basis, giving effect to the spin-off of Delrin and the recently announced divestiture of our Aramids business. We have included a description of our non-GAAP measures in the appendix to today's presentation, which has also been filed on our Investor Relations website. DuPont is entering a new chapter, one that is defined by focus and agility. Following the spin-off of Delrin and the separation of the Aramids business, we are sharpening our portfolio around healthcare and water technologies and diversified industrials, which will be our reporting segments going forward. You will hear from the management team later today, but just a brief reminder on the timeline that we expect the spin-off to occur on November 1 and the divestiture of the Aramids business to be completed in the first quarter of 2026.
Now to today's agenda. You will hear from Lori Koch, our CEO, who will share her strategy and vision for the new DuPont and how we are activating change in order to maximize value. Jeroen Bloemhard, President of our Healthcare and Water Technologies business, will highlight the key secular trends driving growth within these markets and how we are well-positioned to win. Beth Ferrera, President of Diversified Industrials, will give a deeper dive into these businesses and the markets we serve, as well as our overall growth strategy. Antonella Franzen, our CFO, will bring this all together with a comprehensive financial overview, including our medium-term targets. We'll wrap with closing remarks from Lori and...
No one knows what the future brings. We only know what it demands: innovation, grit, determination. Because challenges don't wait, and neither can we. No one knows what the future brings. We only know how fast it moves and what staying a step ahead requires, working harder, smarter, faster. We don't chase opportunity, we seize it. We don't ask for respect, we earn it. We're judged by results, not promises. No one knows what the future brings. We only know to whom it belongs: the thinkers, the doers, the brilliant. That is us leading the way, letting what we do do the talking for us in a place where big needs and big ideas join hands, boldly tackling big problems with even bigger solutions, shaping what comes next to leave the world stronger than we found it. Who knows what the future brings? We do.
Please welcome our Chief Executive Officer, Lori Koch.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. I'm excited to be here with you to share how we are continuing to reshape DuPont into a more agile, focused, and high-performing company that is driving decisive and aggressive actions to firmly establish ourselves as a premier multi-industrial. Alongside me this morning are a few members of our leadership team, many of which are new to DuPont. Since I became CEO, I've been highly focused on ensuring that we have the right talent to deliver on our strategy, and I'm thrilled with the optimal balance of internal and external talent that we've assembled to take us to the next level. Our team is energized to continue to drive value from a strong set of businesses and build a culture focused on driving growth and continuous improvement every day.
Our goal for the day is to build momentum for the new DuPont and prove that we have the right leaders, the right strategy, and the right vision to continue to drive value for you, our shareholders. With that, let's get started. To guide our discussion and show how we will deliver, I will focus on five key messages. First, we are executing a transformation at DuPont, both from a portfolio perspective as well as an operational one. We've made a lot of moves over the past decade to drive simplification and reduce cyclicality. We're excited about the portfolio we have today and recognize that there is still opportunity to optimize.
Second, we are focused on excellence and are codifying our long-standing innovation excellence, our recent success in OpEx, and the beginnings of a commercial excellence framework into an overall business system that will not only advance these key pillars, but build the important fundamentals and cultural elements that will be critical to our success. Third, we are poised for growth acceleration. We have been intent on driving to a more focused portfolio while also ensuring that all of our businesses are well-positioned to compete and drive growth. Today, about half of our businesses are well-positioned in end markets that are growing above GDP and will continue to differentially invest in these areas to ensure that we are maintaining our leading positions. All of our businesses will lean on strong innovation engines and deep customer relationships to win.
Fourth, we will continue to drive a disciplined capital allocation model, one that will focus on delivering strong returns for our shareholders. Finally, we will enhance our culture, building on the strong foundation of our core values of safety and respect, and enhancing it with a focus on driving growth and continuous improvement. Our portfolio evolution tells a powerful story. We are adept at executing transactions and have never been hesitant to tackle difficult issues. This best owner mindset has enabled us to be a much simpler, more focused, and less cyclical company today.
This is highlighted by our recent decision to divest our Aramids business, which not only instantly increases our revenue growth by about 50 basis points and expands our margin by about 90 basis points, but will also generate about $1.2 billion at closing in cash proceeds that we will, of course, deploy in a manner that creates value. You can be confident that we are constantly assessing our businesses from a shareholder's perspective and determining whether we have the scale, differentiation, and capabilities to drive value for every asset in our portfolio. DuPont for centuries has been synonymous with innovation, and we are a leading advanced solutions provider. Our innovations are crucial to our customers' growth and delivery of their technology pipelines. We are truly viewed as trusted partners based on decades of deep engagement and constant collaboration.
We rely on a local presence to work side by side with our customers to solve their technical challenges, and our global scale ensures that we are capitalizing on market trends. You've heard us talk for quite some time about our industry positioning and how our portfolio and our performance mirror that of a multi-industrial. This slide puts an exclamation point on that message. Our revenue growth, EBITDA margins, and free cash flow conversion sit firmly with the multi-industrial peer set. We have strategically repositioned the company, divesting many of our chemical and cyclical assets, and have proven that we have the portfolio and the performance aligned with our multi-peers. Our leadership team is focused on ensuring that we are making the right shifts in both capabilities as well as the way we operate in order to drive strong growth and consistent performance.
We have taken significant complexity out of the portfolio and are driving a robust differential investment model to ensure that all of our capital is being invested in the highest return opportunities. We also continue to drive accountability and push full P&L responsibility down into the business. This decentralized approach allows our businesses to act with more speed and agility, as well as ensuring full ownership of results. We have been driving a standardized approach to innovation, operational, and commercial excellence, and the next step is codifying this into a business system. I'll get deeper into this in a few slides, but I can tell you that aside from driving growth, this is personally one of the areas that I'm most excited about.
I'm confident that having a consistent framework, rigorous tracking of our core KPIs, and a relentless focus on continuous improvement is key to driving a high-performance culture and ultimately achievement of our financial goals. Let's dive a little bit deeper into our businesses and end markets. We are strategically positioned in three core businesses. Healthcare, representing about 25% of our sales, is a comprehensive portfolio of med device, med packaging, biopharma, and protective garments. We are a trusted partner, and over 90% of the top 25 U.S. med device companies rely on DuPont technologies to power their most advanced innovations. From biopharma to protective garments, our solutions are critical to performance and safety. Water, also representing about 25% of our sales, is a leading global filtration player with the most comprehensive technology portfolio and is critical to solving our customers' needs.
Our expansive reach not only highlights our exceptional reputation but also cements our position as a partner of choice, setting the benchmark for innovation and excellence. Diversified industrials, comprising the remaining 50% of our portfolio, is our broadest segment and primarily serves the construction, automotive, including EV, and aerospace end markets. We have long tenured and valuable partnerships with our customers, and these relationships truly set us apart, as evidenced by our best bell parts being used in over 97% of the aircraft flown today. These proof points are not just statistics; they are a testament to our innovation, customer trust, and industry expertise. Let's talk about market opportunity and growth on this slide. As shown, we are a key player in a combined addressable market of more than $40 billion.
The majority of our portfolio is aligned to where the growth is, with about half our sales coming from end markets that are outgrowing GDP. We expect to outperform in these end markets, driven by a combination of share gains as well as being favorably positioned in subsegments that are outgrowing the market average. Subsegments like critical care components in the med device space and ultra-pure water in the semiconductor space. Underpinning these strong growth rates are a key focus on sustainability and a growing population. Jeroen and Beth will dive deeper into their businesses and focus on why we are uniquely positioned to win and continue to drive value for our customers and our shareholders. Innovation has always been core to DuPont and will continue to be a key competitive advantage for us.
Our customers rely on us to develop solutions that allow them to deliver their technology roadmaps and grow their businesses. This approach allows us to realize a high return on our investment, as evidenced by our robust vitality index of 30%, which has been steadily improving. Our investments are focused on both top-line growth as well as ensuring that the base stays intact and competitive. Ensuring this balance between grow and renew is critical. Today, our new product sales are about 40% growth and 60% renew, and we have plans in place to shift more towards growth to ensure that we're meeting our top-line commitments. Also impactful from our R&D investments is the solid improvement in product margins that we realize from our new product sales.
This stems not only from better pricing on our newer developments, but also a targeted effort by our technical teams to qualify new raw materials, leading to procurement savings, and a strong focus on value engineering, leading to overall a reduction in product costs. Our commitment to commercial excellence is a cornerstone of our strategy to drive sustainable growth. We are in the early phases of building a robust framework, and the foundational elements are now in place. We are actively scaling our approach to ensure long-term impact across commercial enablement, sales effectiveness, and strategic marketing. For commercial enablement, delivering a seamless customer experience is critical. We're optimizing order entry, leveraging AI, and focusing on returns, quality, and on-time delivery to ensure that every customer interaction reinforces trust and reliability.
For sales effectiveness, we are driving better allocation of resources and improving account, pipeline, and distributor branding to not only ensure that we are capturing demand and driving pricing, but also expanding our share of wallet and driving repeat business. For strategic marketing, we are capitalizing on market opportunities by optimizing our route to market design to ensure that our innovations reach the right customers through the right channels with the right value proposition. We're also actively looking for new applications and seeking new markets for existing products in order to expand our TAM and drive above-market growth. A great example of this is the direct lithium extraction opportunity in our water business, which Jeroen Bloemhard will discuss. As we continue to implement the overall framework, we are focused on three priority areas to see short-term gain. They are pipeline discipline, performance management, and customer and product optimization.
As we continue to focus on our operating culture, we have a clear vision of building a world-class operating model with a performance scorecard and culture to match. This requires building on the strong foundation that we've laid out the past few years and expanding our efforts to create a sustainable flywheel of continuous improvement. We see clear opportunities to accelerate performance by continuing to invest in key capabilities while also bringing a renewed focus on lean fundamentals and increased rigor around our management standards. The foundation that we are building over the next 12 to 18 months will be critical as we think about our full transformation and inflecting our performance across our key focus areas of safety, quality, supply chain, manufacturing, and reliability.
As we look to implement our overall business system, it is critical that we're not thinking about the individual excellence frameworks in isolation, but rather as a holistic system of continuous improvement that defines our culture and, more importantly, how we operate. This will allow us to drive a much more focused improvement engine and enable us to see opportunities and act on them with more speed and agility. Our leadership team sees this effort as a core element of our transformation. A critical first step will be a refreshed set of management standards aimed at driving performance across our core set of KPIs. These standards will serve as a baseline for how we measure our own performance against industry benchmarks and provide a platform for us to access a constantly expanding toolkit.
These improvements are being driven today and will take shape over the coming months with full support from all layers of the organization. We have a proven capital allocation model that enables both consistent investments and high-return organic opportunities, as well as bolting on to existing businesses with M&A to enable even greater returns. Low leverage is a priority for us. We've consistently been at or below 2 times and will continue to target that level. In order to drive growth and ensure that we are delivering for our customers, we will reinvest in our businesses. We'll stay in line with our current metric with respect to R&D as a percent of sales and aim to reduce CapEx over time to be more in line with our multi-industrial peers.
We will continue to target a dividend payout ratio of 35 to 45%, as shareholder remuneration will continue to be a centerpiece of our model. We believe our business model is designed to generate strong, stable cash flow, and after servicing our dividend, ensuring a strong balance sheet, and investing in our businesses, we anticipate having sizable excess cash and will continue to target a balanced approach to buybacks and M&A. With respect to M&A, we have a robust pipeline of targets and are actively scouting new opportunities. Our sweet spot is in adding additional capabilities in order to take advantage of outsized growth opportunities and extend our value proposition to new and existing customers. The Spectrum and Donatella acquisitions were great examples of that. We'll continue to be disciplined with our approach and search for targets which offer accretive growth, low capital intensity, and low cyclicality.
Of course, a clear opportunity to drive scale and capture synergies will be key to ensuring a strong return. Throughout this presentation, you've heard me talk about the need to build a culture focused on growth and continuous improvement. Critical to our success is ensuring that we have the right talent in place to take us to the next level, and I couldn't be happier with who we have on the field today. Soon, you'll get to meet two of our newer members, Jeroen and Beth. I'm confident that their excellent history with driving growth and transformation, coupled with great experiences at very well-run companies, will enable us to achieve our goals. I'm also really excited about the addition of Dave Koch, no relation, by the way.
As we progress on our journey to build a robust business system, his experience from spending 15 years at Danaher in both the business system office as well as ops leadership roles will prove invaluable. The team has really gelled, and I look forward to helping each leader enable their organizations to reach their full potential. Putting this all together, I am confident in our ability to deliver a 3 to 4% organic growth CAGR and drive margin improvement, leading to margin expansion of 150 to 200 basis points by 2028 and grow our EPS by 8 to 10%. Driving a culture that puts this as the expectation is the centerpiece of our new leadership team. Over the next three years, consistent delivery of these targets will enable a top line of about $8 billion and an EBITDA margin profile of 25 to 25.5%.
Altogether, this will yield an attractive 8 to 10% EPS growth CAGR. It's important to note that all of these targets are without the additional upside from capital deployment. I'll wrap up on this slide as it summarizes well the key value drivers of the new DuPont. We have successfully repositioned ourselves and have a streamlined portfolio of leading businesses. We have opportunities for margin improvement, and much of our portfolio is aligned to secular end markets, which will drive strong organic growth. A strong foundation in OpEx, implementation of a business system, and a refreshed culture will enable us to realize our full potential. We will continue to enhance shareholder value through disciplined capital decisions and, of course, consistent delivery of growth and margin expansion.
We are a leading advanced solutions provider, and our commitment to excellence will continue to drive value for our employees, our customers, and you, our investors. Now we're going to transition to the business reviews, and we'll get started with a quick video on healthcare and water technologies.
No one knows what the future will bring, but we know what it takes to lead the charge, redefining what's possible with transformative materials and technology, advancing healthcare solutions that enable the most complex devices, elevating our capabilities with groundbreaking polymer science and engineering, providing mission-critical protection, packaging products that ensure patient safety with sustainability that preserves the planet, manufacturing life-changing impact, one tiny piece at a time, addressing clean water and wastewater change. Marking the power to transform communities and the world. No one knows what the future will bring, but as for who will bring it, we do. DuPont.
Please help me welcome Jeroen Bloemhard, President of the Healthcare and Water Technologies business.
Good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining us here today. I'm excited to speak about the Healthcare and Water Technology segment, a segment that is truly at the forefront of solving some of the world's most pressing challenges. Maybe as a brief background to myself, I joined DuPont in 2018, coming from Dow Corning, the global silicon technology leader. While I was at Dow Corning, I led specialty growth businesses where innovation at the intersection of material science and application engineering created a competitive advantage. That's exactly what we're doing in the Healthcare and Water segment as well. Our intent for this segment is very clear: capitalize on the growth that the healthcare and water industries offer through both organic and inorganic opportunities.
Having recently led the water business myself, I'm extremely excited about the position that we have in the industry today and the growth that is still in front of us. Now also more deeply looking into the healthcare business, I'm excited about the position that we have already built for the business, how much we can still expand upon it, and then the growth that that will deliver for the company. In Healthcare and Water, we hold leadership positions as trusted partners of choice for our customers, delivering solutions that are critical to the growth of our customers. Let me highlight why we are so excited to be in this space and, more importantly, why we think we are uniquely positioned to deliver on those challenges that our customers have.
First of all, the water and healthcare industries are very large and very attractive from an opportunity size perspective, but also from a market growth rate perspective. The megatrends that we see in these industries align very well with the portfolio of offerings that we have for these industries. Second, our innovation leadership is central. Our ability to create differentiated technology to meet today's and tomorrow's performance requirements, coupled with in-depth application expertise, makes our customers choose us to develop their next-generation products with. Third, we have a very strong global presence, being able to serve our customers wherever they are. We have people and development centers on the ground to work side by side with our customers and help them be successful in their technology advancements. These three elements together create our winning formula for the Healthcare and Water Technology segment.
The operating EBITDA margin is very healthy, expected to come in at about 30% for the year. Overall, we are expecting the Healthcare and Water segment to grow above market in the mid-single-digit range. The Healthcare business offers specialized materials, product design, prototyping, and manufacturing services for high-growth markets where continuously advancing technology matters and where quality and performance can never be questioned. Those are the two things that we excel at. The Water business is a pure-play filtration and separation provider with strong secular growth drivers, a best-in-class portfolio. Let's dive a little deeper into these businesses, starting with the Healthcare business. This is a $1.7 billion business with a strong presence in medical devices, biopharma, and pharma through our Spectrum, Donatella, and Livio businesses, and in sterile packaging and PPE through our Tyvek business.
Our broad set of offerings, including design, specialty materials, application expertise, and precision manufacturing capabilities, set us up extremely well to deliver value to our customers. Leading medical device OEMs choose to work with us for exactly those reasons, allowing us to capture that innovation-driven growth. More and more OEMs are looking for suppliers who can provide end-to-end services covering design, material selection, rapid prototyping, and manufacturing scale-up. Our portfolio is unique in that respect. Whether that is through our Spectrum and Donatella CDMO offering, our Tyvek medical packaging offering, or our Livio silicones and elastomers, our expertise is deep, and that's why we are the partner of choice for these OEMs. Let me focus on two examples from this slide here.
The design, material selection, prototyping, and precision molding and assembly capabilities of our Spectrum and Donatella businesses are at the heart of why medical device OEMs want to work side by side with us because they know that we are uniquely capable to cover that end-to-end process entirely with them. Our Tyvek technology, as a second example, is extremely well known for the protection and sterility requirements necessary for the packaging of medical devices. In fact, Tyvek is used in packaging. We are excited about high-growth therapeutics like electrophysiology, neurovascular, and structural heart. With minimal invasive surgery procedures on the rise, these medical devices are becoming smaller and smaller and becoming more and more complex. That trend towards med device miniaturization and the use of higher performance materials creates a sweet spot for our offering in the healthcare business.
In addition, the aging global population and the rising prevalence of chronic disease, coupled with the increased penetration of biopharma single-use systems, create an exciting opportunity for us in the biopharma and pharma space, where we have recently increased our relevance by combining the Spectrum CDMO and our Livio materials business, focusing on the development of custom tubing opportunities that are contributing already now to the growth of our Livio business. In healthcare, we are experiencing consistent mid-single-digit growth driven by increasing demand for advanced medical devices and through our increased penetration in biopharma markets with biopharma single-use systems. We have made strategic investments in this space already by acquiring Spectrum and acquiring Donatella, as well as making selective investments in expanding capacity in our network.
These investments have significantly broadened our offering to the industry and will help us deliver on the opportunities of growth that we see in front of us. To give you another example of that, we've been able to leverage Spectrum's injection molding and tooling expertise to accelerate the development of our innovative ultra-low temperature overmold assemblies in the Livio business. These overmold assemblies are used in cold storage biopharma single-use systems. Our ongoing commitment to developing new technology, along with a focus on application development, will ensure our above-market mid-single-digit organic growth rate. Here's a great example of how this in-depth customer collaboration leads to new growth. They're a partner of choice to help them overcome these challenges.
We were able to come in and to rapidly design and scale a manufacturing process, triple the throughput, and improve final yield quality by 55%, enabling cost savings for the customer, as well as allowing them to meet their global demand. This strong customer collaboration led us to being awarded a next-generation program and also earned us the recognition of one of their top suppliers. We were able to accomplish this because we have the strength of capability. We have an in-house design team, we have rapid prototyping capabilities, and we have the manufacturing expertise to scale quickly from small trial volumes into large commercial volumes without jeopardizing quality. This is why customers select to work with us, and it's key to our leadership position in the industry. We are broadly recognized for our differentiated technology, and we are deeply embedded in our customers' growth and innovation cycles.
Our best-in-class material science and device manufacturing know-how allow us to meet stringent customer specifications and enable us to provide full-service solutions to our customers. We are deeply committed to customer collaboration. Top medical device OEMs and leading biopharma companies want to partner with us because they know together we can effectively link their development needs with our expertise in product and applications. Our own R&D and manufacturing footprint is carefully designed to be near the R&D and manufacturing hubs of our customers. This local presence ensures that we can deliver our innovative solutions wherever our customers need them to be. Lastly, our commitment to innovation and quality has made us a recognized leader in the design, manufacturing, and protection of complex medical devices. It has earned us the trust of our customers and makes them come back to work with us on their next-generation opportunities.
By leveraging these strengths and with continued focus on innovation, we are uniquely positioned to deliver long-term value for our customers and for our investors. Now let's transition to water. We are the clear leader focused on the most attractive part of the industry with technology and capabilities that we have built over the last 80 years. This is now a $1.5 billion filtration and separation business, primarily focused on the industrial, municipal, and life sciences markets. Our multi-technology portfolio is the broadest in the industry and includes reverse osmosis, ultrafiltration, and ion exchange resins as our key pillars. We have industry-leading brands with best-in-class technology and deep application expertise. Our innovations have had real impact solving the world's most pressing water challenges already for decades and decades.
The great part of this business is that it has a very large portion of recurring revenue through the replacement of our current installations. I will discuss the breadth of our technology participation in this slide as it enables our position being the partner of choice for our customers. Having access to a broad technology portfolio matters because most water plants use a variety of filtration techniques as part of their total water management system. Our ability to participate in more than one step is an advantage to our customers as they specify and design their plans. In fact, more than 60% of our revenue comes from customers who buy two or more of our technologies for their projects. First of all, our MABR and MBR technologies are at the forefront of biological processes and are critical in the wastewater management space.
We've been in the MBR space for more than 40 years. Next, our ultrafiltration systems are designed to filter particles and macromolecules, and these systems are crucial for a variety of industrial and municipal applications. We have a leading position in the U.S. market. Our nanofiltration and reverse osmosis technology is the most effective in removing organic and inorganic molecules, as well as bacteria and viruses. This technology is widely used in desalination and in industrial applications where high-purity water is required. We are the clear leaders in the RO industry, and we have 60 years of experience advancing RO performance. Lastly, our ion exchange resins are designed for the most advanced purification steps, and we can selectively remove metals and ions amongst other contaminants. Same as for RO, we are the technology leader in IER, and we participated in this space for 80 years.
This portfolio is the broadest in the industry, and our products are known to be the premium offering that our customers select not only for the performance benefits, but also for their durability in use. In water, we are leaders in a $7 billion addressable market where global water demand is rising, driven by industrial needs, aging infrastructure, and a growing population. Water scarcity and the increasing regulatory requirements governing wastewater present the two most favorable macro trends in the industry, and our portfolio lines up perfectly to serve those. These trends play out in both the industrial and in municipal markets, and without our specialized high-performance filtration solutions, these trends cannot be met. An aging population and a desire for healthier lifestyles create growth opportunities in our life science and specialty segment of the business.
Think about healthy sugars or drug delivery carriers that are enabled through our IER technology. There's more to come. The increasing demand for lithium, driven by the growth in electric vehicles, opens up an exciting opportunity in direct lithium extraction for us. Our NF membranes are designed to pre-filter and to concentrate the brine that contains the lithium, and our ion exchange resins selectively extract that lithium from that brine. We are extremely well positioned to capitalize on that daily opportunity. Today, our water business is driving consistent mid-single-digit growth, enabled by a large replacement business contributing over 70% of our revenue annually. Continued constraints on water availability and increasing regulatory requirements drive the need for more and higher performance filtration and drive our inherent growth.
We are investing in advancing membrane technology for even higher performance, even higher filtration performance at lower energy consumption, creating clear performance differentiation from competition and offering new benefits to our customers. We also invest in continued capacity expansion for our ion exchange resins that are used to create ultra-pure water used in the semiconductor fabrication process. As the semiconductor industry grows, the demand for our ion exchange resins will grow as well. As I said earlier, our filtration technologies are also being used to address challenges in food and beverage, dairy, pharma, and bioprocessing, adding to our opportunity for above-market growth. Here's an example of how increased regulatory requirements drive new opportunities of growth for us. Industrial customers face increasingly stringent regulations on the amount of. Our performance has allowed us to introduce 15 new products since 2017, specifically designed to meet these challenges of minimal liquid discharge.
Our reputation for durability in use and for continuous innovation has been a key differentiator in the market and has earned us the recognition of the market's total solution provider. Between 2017 and 2024, the revenue from these MOD products has grown by approximately 10 times, underscoring the broad customer adoption of these technologies. We continuously innovate for this application on an ongoing basis. Let me recap why we are the partners of choice for our customers and why we are so well positioned to win in the water industry. We are known to have the highest performance products in the industry and have thousands of touchpoints across the value chain that give us early access to new projects and allow us to understand the diverse needs of our customers. Our application expertise is based on decades of participation in the industry and exceptional testing capabilities.
This ensures that we can provide highly reliable and high-quality solutions that we know will work for our customers because we have pre-tested them. Our long-term and deep customer relationships are a clear testament to our commitment to the water industry, and we are able to serve our customers wherever they are located in the world. Our trusted reputation in the industry is built around category-leading technologies and brands, our thought leadership in the industry, and our continued external recognition that we are receiving for our technologies and the inventions that we bring forward to the market. We are very well positioned to grow above market rates. We have the leading position today. We have the required capabilities, and most importantly, the critical customer relationships to win. I'm excited to continue to deliver that growth for us. Thank you for your attention.
In inventive new directions, forging new heights of performance, powering the wheels of progress. Constructing new avenues for energy efficiency, both at work and in the home, delivering safer, sustainable solutions, enabling a healthier planet, making cars lighter and safer, propelling EV advances, enabling tomorrow's mobility, turning packaging and performance into a thing of beauty. No one knows what the future will bring, but as for who will bring it, we do.
DuPont.
Thank you, everyone. I'm thrilled to be here to showcase the Diversified Industrials segment. Perhaps a little bit about me to start. I've had the privilege of leading businesses in some great companies. Most recently at IMI, I led a customer-first transformation to unlock growth. At ITW, I learned the power of 80/20 and simplification. At Belden, I managed businesses in a really strong lean framework. I also currently serve on the board of SKF. These experiences have taught me how to unlock speed, drive accountability, and improve margins across a quite diverse mix of businesses. I joined DuPont just 12 weeks ago, and I've spent that time immersing myself in the Diversified Industrials businesses, listening, learning, and walking the floor with the teams who know it best. What I've discovered is a great portfolio of products that are all around us.
They're found in the walls of our homes, in our cars, and even in the engines of planes, all playing essential parts in our daily lives. Today, I'll show you how we're delivering value in Diversified Industrials and why this strong foundation and our renewed focus on execution give me confidence in our ability to deliver value for DuPont. We're well positioned to succeed. Our brands are trusted, our technologies are proven, and our teams are deeply committed. You can see our leadership and the way we work across our different sectors. Our commitment to innovation means that we're often the first to bring new energy-saving solutions to the table. We'll enhance these efforts with rigor and operational excellence and simplification and commercial discipline to ensure margin expansion.
These are key principles that have guided the businesses that I've led in the past, and I think it's a great opportunity for this business. I'll give you a snapshot. Diversified Industrials is a $3.6 billion business with 22% operating margin. We operate in two main sectors: building technologies and industrial technology. We're leaders in construction, and we're deeply embedded with OEMs across automotive, aerospace, industrials, and printing and packaging. We work side by side with customers to solve their toughest challenges, from delivering fast and easy-to-install construction solutions to assisting in the development of next-gen EV batteries. I'll share more on these shortly. Today, I'll show you that the underlying drivers in our markets are solid. We're positioned to drive margin expansion through disciplined execution and a focus on what we can control.
I bring a new perspective into DuPont built around my experience deploying performance models like 80/20 and lean. By streamlining the way we work, we can cut complexity and give our teams the ability to make decisions and drive outcomes because I've seen firsthand that these principles consistently deliver real, measurable results. This is the opportunity for Diversified Industrials. With our market leadership and customer-driven innovation, together with simplification and rigorous application of the excellence frameworks that Lori outlined, we can ensure growth and, more importantly, expand margins. Our approach isn't about waiting for the market to improve; it's about sharpening our edge and delivering consistent performance. I'm really excited to work with our team on this because I believe that combining these proven principles with our disciplined strategy will really generate value for DuPont.
Our building technologies business has about $1.6 billion in sales, and we serve all aspects of construction: non-residential, residential, and repair and remodel. Our integrated systems improve energy efficiency, durability, and comfort. What really sets us apart and positions us to win is the trust that we've built with our customers, along with our focus on performance and technical expertise. We're confident that our scale and strong relationships with our customers will position us well for future growth. Imagine a contractor walking onto a job site with fewer skilled workers than expected, rising material costs, and a tight deadline. That's the reality for many of our customers. In fact, 80% of construction firms in the U.S. report difficulty filling open roles. In this environment, builders are seeking products that make installation faster and less complex. At the same time, the housing supply gap continues to widen.
New inventory isn't keeping pace with demand, so the need to upgrade and improve existing buildings is only accelerating. I actually got to experience some of these challenges personally in my family's recent move back to the U.S. with DuPont. Not only did I see the lack of available housing, but I'm seeing firsthand how sharply costs have risen as we renovate our home. At DuPont, we're responding with solutions that meet these converging needs, making construction simpler, more cost-effective, safer, and more attractive, all while helping our customers succeed in this challenging and changing market. Across building technologies, we continue to lead with solutions that mark in their category. On this slide, you can see examples of where we participate in the non-residential space. Our products are designed to endure the full life of a structure.
Continuous installation helps cut thermal leaks, wall systems reduce mold risk, and our interior finishes are ultra-hygienic and flexible, perfect for healthcare and high-traffic spaces. You would see a similar view to this in houses as well. On the residential side, our insulation and air sealing solutions are powerful tools that can reduce heating and cooling costs by an impressive 30%. We really stand out with our expertise in sustainability. Our insulation and weatherization systems are recognized in customer sustainability reports, including Builders First Source and WhiteCap. That kind of visibility reinforces our relevance and shows that our leadership in the market is not just legacy, it's active and it's valued. At the heart of our approach is a deep commitment to understanding and solving our customers' problems, and this is a great example.
Insulation Pros told us that they wanted the coverage of two-component foam with the simplicity of our Great Stuff product. We listened. We integrated their feedback into our innovation process using lean innovation techniques and 3D-printed prototypes. This effort led to the creation of a fast, portable spray foam that exceeds their expectations. Our product launched successfully at Lowe's, selling 25,000 units in just two months, and now we're expanding into Home Depot. What's more, our spray foam is fire-rated, it cures in just 24 hours, and is easily painted or sanded, providing practical solutions for professionals. By addressing real issues, we're not only enhancing the efficiency of their work, but we're also fostering long-term loyalty and driving repeat business. Now let's shift into industrial technologies with about $2 billion in revenues.
We serve a diverse set of industries with core strengths in automotive and aerospace, alongside established leadership in printing, packaging, and other industrial markets. Our segmentation reflects where our technologies deliver the most impact, from enabling lighter, safer, more energy-efficient vehicles to supporting next-gen aircraft performance and reliability. We have over $100,000 of opportunity per commercial aircraft with Vespel® parts & shapes, Tedlar, and MOLYKOTE® HP-300 Grease offerings. For example, Vespel® is featured in critical applications in engines that power planes such as the Airbus A320neo, the Boeing 737, and China's COMAC C919. In automotive, our adhesives and thermal management solutions are critical to electrification, from hybrids to full battery electric. In today's industrial landscape, megatrends like electrification, automation, and sustainability are transforming our end markets. In the automotive sector, the transition to electric vehicles is significant.
OEMs need to stay competitive in performance, safety, and cost, and our battery adhesives like Betaforce can help improve battery performance and reduce cost by simplifying EV battery design. Our battery adhesive offerings are 100% incremental to our base automotive business, and they've grown at a 65% CAGR over the last five years. Aerospace is also evolving with a focus on high-performance, durable materials. Our offerings improve engine efficiency and enhance safety in air travel by reducing friction, wear, and the risk of component failure. In packaging, our Cyrel Fast technology has achieved a 98% reduction in emissions, and our Artistri water-based inks enable customers to reach their sustainability goals while maintaining quality and vibrancy. As these trends evolve, they drive growth and innovation in our end markets, and we are at the forefront of this change. As the auto industry shifts toward electrification, we're really well positioned to grow.
Our technologies span the vehicle, from body and interior to battery systems. These solutions help OEMs meet the needs for lightweighting, durability, safety, and range, all critical factors for the modern vehicle. We're focused on making cars easier to assemble and longer lasting. That's not just good engineering; it's our strategic advantage. Our adhesives simplify battery integration, control battery temperature, and improve crash safety. Our wear and abrasion solutions support thermal management and reduce friction. The growth opportunity is clear. Our content opportunity per vehicle nearly doubles from $50 to $100 in electric vehicles, and the demand for adhesive is triple that of a traditional car. As a reminder, our non-battery products are powertrain agnostic, so even as the market shifts from ICE vehicles to EVs, they'll remain unaffected.
We're well embedded in this industry, and we're already specced in across many global OEMs and Tier 1s, giving us a strong foundation to expand as electrification scales. Now I'd like to focus on where we're really leaning in across Diversified. It's durable value. Using this framework, we expect to drive continued margin improvement and unlock growth opportunities. Let's take each one in turn. First, operational excellence. We're embedding discipline, standardizing best practices, focusing on waste reduction, and using daily management routines and KPIs to keep performance visible and accountable. We already see some great examples of operations excellence within our organization. For instance, our Parlin, New Jersey, manufacturing team increased uptime by 17% over the last two years through Kaizen efforts like SMED. This allowed the plant to meet increasing market demand without the need for additional capacity investments.
Likewise, our adhesives plant in China increased its overall equipment effectiveness, or OEE, by 10% this year by reducing waste through value stream mapping and 5S. As you'll see in a story that I'll tell in a moment, the integration of automation can further enhance these improvements, driving even greater efficiency and productivity. This rigor and discipline in OpEx sets us up for strong results in safety, quality, delivery, and cost. For innovation excellence, we're accelerating product development by embedding customer feedback earlier and using digital tools for rapid prototyping and simulation. This means faster cycles, better alignment, and more breakthrough solutions. In commercial excellence, we're sharpening our market approach with strategic marketing, stronger sales enablement, and better tools. Our teams will be equipped to deliver tailored solutions, respond faster, and deepen relationships, driving growth and margin expansion. Together, these frameworks are how we will outperform, not just compete.
They're how we will scale excellence and deliver consistent, high-quality results across the portfolio. Here's a great example of how we're applying these excellence frameworks to unlock new growth opportunities. Vespel® has been pivotal in aerospace and defense since the Apollo missions, renowned for its ability to withstand extreme heat and pressure without failure. Unlike metals that corrode or plastics that deform, we provide longer-lasting parts, exactly what OEMs require in demanding aerospace environments. Today, we leverage our advanced material expertise to expand high-performance solutions into higher volume transportation and industrial applications. Our new resin ring exemplifies this innovation. It's a versatile component that meets stringent requirements, but now, thanks to innovation in our operations process, it can be produced on a larger scale, in this case, 80 million pieces.
By adapting technology initially developed for space, we're unlocking new growth opportunities while still preserving the quality and reliability synonymous with Vespel®. We have the right formula to win. We're trusted by our customers. Our products lead their categories. They combine global scale with local agility. Across our portfolio, you can see that we're a leader in sustainability and innovation. Where are we headed? We'll continue to lead in our markets. We'll grow by solving real problems. We have a renewed focus on excellence to drive value creation. We'll apply the business model excellence and frameworks that we've discussed today, decentralizing for accountability, simplifying for agility, and operating with excellence and rigor. With these principles and intentional focus on what drives value, we're not only poised to grow with GDP, but also expand margins, ensuring consistent performance for DuPont.
We're building a portfolio that performs today and is positioned to continue to lead tomorrow. Thank you again for your time. I'm really excited to keep building with this incredible team at DuPont.
Please welcome Antonella Franzen, Chief Financial Officer.
Thank you, everyone, for joining us. Both here in person, it's really nice to see some familiar faces and via webcast. I'm excited to be here with you today to walk you through our financial overview and outlook as we enter into the next chapter of DuPont. You may ask, what does this next chapter bring? First, our top line growth is accelerating. We now have a streamlined portfolio with about 50% of our revenue in high-growth markets. Our leadership positions, our longstanding relationships with customers that make us the partner of choice, our history of innovation, and the value that our products and solutions provide will deliver an above-market 3% to 4% revenue CAGR over the next three years. Second, we will build upon our consistent execution.
Operational excellence, coupled with a continuous improvement mindset, will deliver 150 to 200 basis points of margin expansion, bringing our EBITDA margin in 2028 to 25% plus. Our expected revenue growth, coupled with our margin expansion, will deliver an 8% to 10% EPS CAGR. Next, our bottom line results will convert to cash at greater than 90%, generating $2.7 to $2.8 billion of free cash flow by the end of 2028. Lastly, our disciplined capital allocation allows flexibility in managing organic investments with targeted M&A and returning cash to shareholders via increasing dividends and share repurchases. Together, these elements maximize long-term shareholder value by maintaining a strong financial profile and disciplined execution.
Before we get into the details of our future financials, I want to take a couple of minutes to level set everyone on how we will report our results for the remainder of the year, as well as the basis for our pro formas. First, let me be very clear. There are no changes to our underlying guidance assumptions. We are simply recasting guidance to show the impact of discontinued operations. Our Q3 results, which will be reported in early November, will include. The
Electronics business, given the intended November 1 separation date, but will exclude Aramids, which will be classified as a discontinued operation. We have included our recasted third-quarter guidance in the appendix to the slides. From a full-year perspective, we have recast our guidance to reflect the impact of both electronics and Aramids being reported as discontinued operations. Starting on the left-hand side of the slide, you can see our previous full-year revenue guidance, and that is being adjusted to remove $4.6 billion of sales related to electronics and about $1.4 billion of sales related to Aramids, bringing our recasted new DuPont sales guidance for the full year to $6.865 billion. On the right-hand side, you can see our previous EBITDA guidance, which includes business results partially offset by corporate expense.
We are adjusting our EBITDA guidance to remove the business results of electronics and Aramids as you would currently recognize them, meaning these amounts include function costs that are allocated to electronics and Aramids to support the business. From a reporting perspective, allocated costs that are not specifically going with a transaction or divestiture are not reported as discontinued operations and are commonly known as dis-synergies or stranded costs. These costs are included in the net dis-COPS adjustment of $15 million. Recasting for these reporting adjustments, we now expect 2025 operating EBITDA for the new DuPont of $1.575 billion. You all still with me? The following slide transitions from our revised guidance to our pro forma, which adjusts corporate expense from $140 million down to $95 million. Over the past six months, we have been actively preparing for day one, implementing measures to effectively right-size our public company costs.
All right, now that we're grounded in the financials, let's take a quick look at the new DuPont: $6.9 billion in sales, $1.6 billion in operating EBITDA, and a 23.6% margin. Our high growth, high margin healthcare and water segment makes up about 50% of the portfolio, with the remainder in diversified industrials, predominantly with exposure in our auto and construction markets. We also have a very attractive geographic mix with about half of our sales in North America and the remainder predominantly in EMEA and Asia. We're entering into this next chapter from a position of strength. Our financial profile is compelling, with a strong balance sheet that gives us flexibility. We're increasing exposure to secular high-growth markets, generating solid cash flow, and maintaining ample liquidity. Our balanced debt maturity, coupled with our strong investment-grade credit rating, supports our growth ambitions.
Our track record of consistent financials for continued value creation. Taking a quick look back during the period of 2019 to 2025, this portfolio has delivered an organic revenue growth CAGR of 2.4%, in line with our multi-industrial peers. Our operating EBITDA has grown nearly two times our revenue growth, and our operating margin has expanded 200 basis points. These metrics set a solid trajectory for future growth. We also have a strong history of returning cash to shareholders. This chart speaks for itself. I would simply call out that we expect the metrics on this chart to continue to grow, as return of capital to shareholders will remain central to new DuPont's model. I will talk more about our expected dividends and share repurchases in a few minutes. As we look forward, we're accelerating our top-line growth and margin expansion.
As I mentioned previously, we expect a three-year organic revenue CAGR of 3% to 4% and 150 to 200 basis points of EBITDA margin expansion. This will result in an 8% to 10% EPS CAGR. I want to be clear that excess free cash flow deployment, whether into M&A or share repurchase, will be incremental to the 8% to 10% EPS CAGR, reinforcing our commitment to value creation. Now, let's double-click into what is driving each one of these metrics. You heard from Irune and Beth Ferrera about the specific market trends in each of our businesses and how we're positioned to win. In healthcare and water, these secular markets have favorable megatrends that are fueling growth, and we should grow nicely above GDP. Our diversified industrial segment, which includes building and industrial, should grow generally in line with GDP.
Overall, we expect above GDP growth, driven by growth premiums in healthcare and water. Moving to margin improvement, starting with our 2025 pro forma EBITDA margin of 23.6%, we expect a 110 basis point margin increase, driven by 35% incrementals on revenue growth. From a stranded cost perspective, as we've been preparing for the separation, we've spent quite a bit of time benchmarking cost structures by function and designing an organization that's fit for purpose. The result of $30 million expected to contribute up to 50 basis points of incremental margin expansion. The overall target is an improvement of 150 to 200 basis points by the end of 2028, resulting in an EBITDA margin between 25% and 25.5%. From an operating leverage perspective, this is a healthy 1.7 times our revenue growth. Let's take a quick look at the EPS algorithm.
Each percentage point of revenue growth will equate to 2% EPS growth. As a result, our 3% to 4% revenue CAGR is projected to result in a 7% EPS CAGR at the midpoint. The elimination of stranded costs is expected to add an additional percentage point of EPS growth, and productivity gains above the rate of inflation may add another point, resulting in a projected overall 8% to 10% EPS CAGR. We have high confidence in our ability to deliver on this framework. Moving to cash flow, $8 billion from 2026 to 2028, representing a conversion rate above 90%, underscores our ability to generate cash efficiently and fund growth initiatives, dividends, and shareholder returns.
Over the next three years, the cumulative cash outlay related to dividends and offsetting share dilution is about $1.3 billion, leaving about $1.5 billion to put to work in bolt-on M&A and share repurchases, which again is incremental to the 8% to 10% EPS CAGR we discussed earlier. Disciplined capital allocation. Lori mentioned this earlier, and I just want to highlight four key areas: organic growth. We are differentially investing in the businesses to drive the top line. Dividend payments. As the new DuPont, we will have a healthy dividend payout ratio in the 35% to 45% range, and as our earnings grow, our dividend will also grow. M&A. We will pursue strategic bolt-on acquisitions to enhance our capabilities and market position. Lastly, share repurchases. We will continue to return capital to shareholders to drive accelerated returns.
As always, we will allocate capital through the lens of a shareholder to maximize value. The foundation of our capital allocation approach is a strong balance sheet and low leverage, which provides liquidity and financial flexibility. We expect to maintain about $1 billion of cash on the balance sheet and approximately $3.25 billion in pro forma debt. We're committed to maintaining our BBB+ credit rating and target a net debt-to-EBITDA ratio of less than two times, which compares very favorably to our multi-industrial peers. Bringing all that you've heard together, I will leave you with four final thoughts. First, we are executing on a culture of continuous improvement. Second, we are well-positioned to accelerate organic growth. Third, we are converting earnings to cash and generating strong free cash flow. Fourth, we are disciplined. Disciplined in allocating capital, disciplined in driving consistent results, and disciplined in delivering shareholder value.
I will now turn it back over to Lori to wrap things up before Q&A.
Please welcome Lori Koch back to the stage.
Thanks, Antonella. As we look ahead, I want to be clear on why now is the right time to invest in our company and why I believe the future holds significant value for our shareholders. We are a leading advanced solutions provider built on a foundation of specialized technologies that set us apart. Our innovations solve complex challenges, and our customers rely on us to power their most advanced innovations and grow their businesses. Over the past few years, we've taken bold steps to simplify our portfolio, strategically focusing on higher growth markets. We are building a culture of performance and accountability and have the right team to deliver. We remain committed to a disciplined capital allocation model. Since 2019, we've returned over $14 billion to shareholders and closed $5 billion in high-return acquisitions. Both of these are a testament to our financial strength and our dedication to delivering value.
Looking forward, we have a clear path to our 2028 targets and will deliver 8% to 10% EPS growth, and I'll say it one more time, without the benefit of additional capital deployment. In closing, we are positioned for growth and are committed to continue to drive value for our shareholders. We are going to take a quick break to turn over for Q&A, and then we'll join you on stage soon. Dave Koch will join us for Q&A as well. Thank you very much.
Thank you, everyone. We'll now take a 10-minute break as we set up for the Q&A session. We'll have a timer on the screen, so be aware of it, and please be back at 10:30 A.M. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, our program resumes in two minutes. Two minutes.
Is that already out there?
No, it's fine.
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome our DuPont leaders back to the stage for the Q&A session. In addition to Lori, Irune, and Beth Ferrera, we will also have Dave Koch, who leads our Operations teams, join us. We have Antonella Franzen. We have team members positioned around the room with microphones, so please raise your hand and we will come to you.
Thank you. It's Jeff Sprague from Vertical Research. Good to see all of you. Maybe I'll just start with a couple on capital deployment and hand the mic off to someone else. First, just tactically, if you think about the separation, if there's any dislocation in the shares, what is your capacity or comfort level to step in immediately with some contemporaneous share repurchase as opposed to the multi-year view you gave us?
Yeah, we've proven over time that we've been very shareholder-friendly, especially when it comes to buying back our shares with proceeds from divestitures as well as using the cash that we generate to show that we put our money where our mouth is and invest in our business. We have a board meeting coming up. We don't have an open authorization right now. We have a board meeting in a couple of weeks where it will be a key topic around what level of authorization we get. We are very aware of the valuation disconnect that exists between where we trade today. Obviously, we don't know where we'll trade coming out and where our peer sets sit. I think with our past history, you can be confident that we're not going to be shy about taking the right steps to be able to take advantage of a dislocation.
Yeah. The only thing I would add, Jeff, is given, you know, where our balance sheet is, the cash flow we expect to generate, and also the proceeds related to the Aramids transaction that Lori mentioned earlier, I think we're in a really good position to do both share repurchases as well as M&A.
Maybe just on M&A. Clearly, you made it very clear water and healthcare is the focus. Do you see those sort of deals playing in the TAM as you defined it for us today and strengthening that position, or is there a TAM expansion play through bolt-ons also?
Yeah, I'll open it up and I'll turn it over to Irune to provide more color. I would say it's both. On the healthcare side, I would say it's within the existing TAM. We've been scouting opportunities that are similar to what we did with Spectrum and Donatel, you know, in the CDMO space. It's very fragmented. There are a lot of opportunities for us to continue to build on to the base that we've built, as well as a lot of the assets are owned by private equity. Obviously, at some point, they have to be actionable. It makes it a little bit easier of a hill to climb. On the med packaging side, we've also been looking to expand there as well to see what opportunities that there are for us to move beyond our flexible barrier application today into other applications.
For water, it's probably more of a TAM expansion. We obviously are key players in the water filtration space today, market leaders across the end markets that we participate in. It could be a little bit more limiting if you're going for a technology play in the water filtration space. We'll look to expand the remit a bit on both the filtration side as well as potentially going into other areas of water. I'll let Irune fill in additional details.
Yeah, I think on the healthcare side, the CDMO space, as Lori said, is very, very fragmented. The way that we would be looking at it is to say, what's the type of capability that we can build upon next to what we offer today? Our SAM is defined by the capabilities that we have today. When we look at the next CDMO type of offering, we look at new capabilities in line with these three markets I talked about: electrophysiology, neurovascular, and structural heart. Capabilities that we don't have today, which therefore means we're going to be able to participate in different spaces that we're not participating in. That's where that SAM expansion will come from, right? I think on the water side, we're really going to take a very strong end market focus. Looking at markets like industrial wastewater, microelectronics, desalination, and also food and beverage.
The first three markets obviously being very much water-focused and where we think we have still opportunity for broadening our existing portfolio. Then looking at food and beverage, you start immediately looking at, you know, beyond water. What does that mean for the filtration opportunities that are participating there?
When you take a step back and you look at your projected CAGRs for healthcare and water, what substrates within each of those businesses offer the most confidence in terms of your ability to not only grow at a GDP plus rate, but also your peers? Thank you.
Yeah, so I'll start. I think in my opening comments, I had mentioned that in the markets that are growing above GDP, such as healthcare and water, we expect to outperform versus market. A portion of that is gaining share and a portion of it is just being favorably positioned in subsegments that are growing above the average. To your question within med device, the critical care component, anything related to the heart, is growing above the average, which will enable us to be able to continue to grow. In the water space, in some of the life sciences and the microelectronics space or semiconductor, we are favorably positioned there to be able to shore up the top-line expectations that we have.
Maybe a question for Beth. You're relatively new in the seat, but you've had a little bit of a chance to kind of dig through things, I guess. Can you speak to where you see some of the bigger opportunities, maybe relative to your past firms, your past roles? Is it on the efficiency side? Is it on the commercialization side? How should we be thinking about that?
Yeah, it's been really interesting getting to know the businesses. I think the foundational part is that I think we have some really nice pockets for growth, you know, with some nice growth opportunities there. To your question about kind of past experience and the, you know, opportunities for margin expansion, I definitely think that we've made big steps on the decentralization. I think that's relatively new in terms of moving operations into the businesses and getting that agility and real ownership in the businesses. I think that will drive quite a bit, along with the excellence frameworks around operations, getting that more standardized and getting the KPIs brought to the forefront. Pieces around the way we work and also around the portfolio are some great opportunities for us. Product line fulfillment, I think, would be tremendous.
I think if I think about the way you describe both of those segments, you talked a lot about margin improvement in the industrial side. Do you see any opportunities to do that on the healthcare and water side, or is that primarily a sales growth story?
Why don't I just start for a little bit? In terms of our margin expansion and where that's coming from, as we talked about, each segment will have its own remit in terms of revenue growth and margin expansion. I want to be clear that the margin expansion is coming from both segments as well as from corporate expense as we shed some of our stranded costs. When you think about Healthcare and Water, that's expected to grow at the 5% growth rate. It'll have a little bit of a lower leverage point, and the opposite will hold true in Diversified Industrials. It'll grow at a lower rate but have a higher leverage in terms of the margin expansion related to that.
Yeah, but I mean, we have productivity across the portfolio. I'll turn it over to Dave. Obviously, as we drive a more enhanced business system and a focus on continuous improvement, it's not going to be just pointed in one direction versus the other. Really driving all of the key components of a really robust business system. When we were searching for new leaders, we were targeting companies specifically to be able to bring in what we knew were best practices that existed across the industry and really did a really nice job of getting that with Beth Ferrera and Dave's background. Obviously, the value creation lever for Diversified Industrials is going to be more on the margin side versus Healthcare and Water on the growth side. They both should see nice lifts in margins.
Maybe Dave, if you want to comment just about what you've seen and how well it can work.
Yeah, I mean, I think the opportunity is across the board. I mean, I've seen this work very well. The equation is people, process, performance. I think we're in a very good position at DuPont in that equation, and it's across the board. I think we've talked about it a couple of times today, but you'll keep hearing us talk about refresh management standards, updated rigor around those management standards, core KPIs. Those create a common language for us internally in a decentralized environment. That's very important. We've got a strong toolset. We're starting from a strong excellence framework, building that out more in innovation and commercial. I think it's really about creating the need in the business to leverage those tools and build more of a pull system around that.
I think we're in a really strong position to do that, and we've got the culture to back it up.
Good morning. Jake Levinson from Millions Research. There's a pretty clear emphasis on driving lean transformation and continuous improvement, but maybe you can help level set us in some of those core metrics that you talked about: product quality, on-time delivery. If you can contextualize, where are we today and what are you driving towards?
Yeah, we have our eight core KPIs identified. They're focused across both, you know, kind of financial, shareholder-driven, customer-driven, and then employee-driven. They're a bit of a balance. There's like four, two, and two. There's four in the shareholder financial range and then two each in both the employee as well as growth. We're identifying them and we're building the processes around them with respect to the standards that will guide the internal reviews around consistency. It's really driving that continuous loop of where are you, what are you doing to improve it, you've improved it, all right, how are you keeping it in place, and how are you starting over again? We talked about this continuous flywheel of improvement that we need to build across the businesses. We're really excited about it. It's obviously in the early phases.
We've just completed the identification of the core KPIs and are rolling them out across the organization. There's a lot of opportunity to be had for us. I mean, we have a great company, as Antonella Franzen had shown, we have a strong foundation to build from. Our performance has been in line with the multi's, and we look to step change it a bit, going from where we've been the past five years at about 2.5% growth and 23.5% margins to consistent 3.5% growth and then north of 25% margins. This is a big piece of that.
That's helpful. Just maybe as a related follow-up, is there scope over time for that R&D and CapEx spend, called 5.5% of sales? As you're finding opportunities, is there scope for that to actually come down?
Yes, let me start with that. Lori mentioned in terms of the R&D spend, right now we're around 2.5% and our intent is to keep it at that level. Clearly, when there's opportunities to invest, we have the capacity to do that and we will. From a CapEx perspective, we did talk about, you may have seen on Lori's slide that our goal is to get to about 3% of CapEx as a percent of sales for our business CapEx. We're currently sitting at about 4%. We're at 4% for 2025. We'll probably be close to 4% in 2026 and then be making our way down to 3%. A couple of things that are driving that is, one, we're kind of looking at more of a capital light structure, using more contract manufacturing versus creating additional capacity as our sales grow from an internal basis.
Also, just looking at where our cost structure is today and do we have options to go more towards contract manufacturing to reduce our cost structure. I think also when you look at our CapEx, we're about 40% growth, 60% maintenance. The more utilization of AI tools in terms of how you do your maintenance and more predictive maintenance, not necessarily having things set on a set schedule. The last thing I would point out is really the business system. CapEx is one of the areas where I would say we can very much lean in and have a more disciplined approach around it to help bring that level down.
Yeah, I mean, you kind of just answered what I was going to ask, but I guess a little bit incremental to that. As we look at the growth trajectory in some of these markets, I was going to say, do you have the capacity to actually service what you're looking for? In the case of like medical packaging and something like Tyvek, is that something where you'll be transitioning from?
We did the expansion of Tyvek, right? A couple of years ago, we did line eight. We've got ample room to continue without having to short the construction side to enable growth in the packaging side. We're in good shape there. Generally, across the portfolio, there's not any large capital investments that we've had in the past, like a couple hundred million. Everything is more incremental, well under $75 million either. There's not a big slug that's going to cause us a hiccup around. It's a nice glide path to that 3%.
Edlin Rodriguez, Mizuho. When you look at the portfolio right now, it's about evenly split between, you know, higher growth and lower growth businesses. As we go over the next couple of years, how do you see that split developing and what's going to drive that? Is it going to be pruning of Diversified Industrials or how do you see that going over time?
Yeah, so we've made a nice move with the Aramids divestiture. Before we did Aramids, we were around 40-60 between high growth and then growing alongside GDP. When we did Aramids, that moved us pretty quickly to 50-50 where we are today. We've mentioned that we would like to be able to get to more like a two-thirds, one-third split. Enablement of that from 50% up to two-thirds is a combination of both some M&A activity. We had mentioned that we were going to target our acquisitions at the healthcare water space to enable continued shift in that exposure, as well as just mix enrichment. The healthcare and water business is consistently growing at 5% versus a diversified at 2% will lead to outgrowth and then a bigger portion of our portfolio as well. We did mention that we have further opportunity to optimize with the businesses that we have.
We are always looking at our businesses through a shareholder's lens and determining do they fit and do we get the right value for them.
Thank you, Vincent Andrews with Morgan Stanley. I just wanted to ask about your building product segment and the 2% revenue CAGR you're projecting. Obviously, we're kind of at the bottom of the cycle for the RESI part in particular, but also non-RESI. Are you just being conservative in the outlook because it's been so tricky the last two years? Obviously, we had a Fed meeting yesterday. Rates are starting to come down. I just, how would you assess if we have a recovery and starts and renovation activity picks up? How much torque is there in that business, both in terms of what the top line could do and what would the incrementals on that be if it winds up being a bit better than you think?
Yeah. Why don't I start with that? To your point, we have used kind of what the current outlooks are in determining what our three-year targets would be. From a building's perspective, I would tell you that what we are using is only a 2% growth. To your point, if there is a significant recovery or a V-shaped recovery, that would clearly be incremental to the plan that we currently have. I would say it is relatively conservative assumptions that are built into that. I think most importantly, we are very well positioned. When that recovery does come back, to take advantage of that from both a growth perspective and then have pretty nice incrementals that would drop from that as well.
It is, again, a much more, I would say, conservative approach because I think we've all been dealing with that second half recovery probably for the last three to four years. To your point, as we move forward, clearly there'll be some improvement from where we're at today.
Hi, Irune Viswanathan, RBC. I guess I just had a question about the capital deployment. How do you balance the fact that you do feel that you're undervalued versus potentially going out there and doing M&A of maybe higher multiple businesses that would increase your growth profile? Said differently, would it be valuable to maybe put in maybe a couple % of EPS growth contribution from buybacks at this point? Why is that just more of a discretionary item? Thanks.
Yeah, we obviously will continue to be balanced in our approach and we're not going to sit on cash. We never have and we never will. We've got the proceeds coming from the Aramids divestiture at some point in Q2 of about $1.2 billion. We'll look to put that to work. We've got, as Antonella Franzen had pointed, over the next three years, around $1.5 billion of excess cash that we'll generate after we pay the dividend and invest in our businesses. We'll put that to work as well. The cleanest way was to commit to the 8 to 10 and then provide upside opportunity if there's M&A activity or if there's share repurchases that could drive outperformance there. Not knowing exactly what the pace of that looked like, not having an open authorization right now, not knowing what the share price would be.
We don't know what the share price is going to be to be able to commit to a number of shares to come out through a share repurchase program. We may have been on the conservative side, but I think we've shown time and time again our willingness to invest either in M&A or in share buybacks and not have the cash sit idly around. Thanks.
On the legal front, it seems like with some potential trials ongoing, is there a sense for the company wanting to maintain a slightly larger cash balance to be able to deal with any of those payments that might be needed or settlement payments? Obviously, this is relevant to other parts of the DuPont Dow complex, but specifically for you, do you think the $1 billion minimum cash that you guys are outlining embeds some of that or would it be in surplus of that?
How about PayPal? No, the $1 billion that we hold as our operating cash would not be a fund to then fund future litigation settlements. We're confident that we've got more than enough capacity to fund whatever future settlements may occur. We have two of the larger ones behind us with the state of New Jersey and the water districts. I would say ahead of us, we've got the state of North Carolina and to a lesser extent West Virginia, and then the personal injuries and the state AGs. We've set a precedent around a couple of things that prove really well for us as we go forward. One is when it relates to firefighting foam, which is the bulk of the future settlements to be had, we're 3% to 7% as a complex of DuPont, Chemours, and Corteva. When you break our piece down, it's even smaller.
We've seen that precedent play out in both the water district cases as well as the New Jersey settlements. We're confident that that would be a marker as we go forward. We also set a precedent, as well as 3M, about putting payments over a 25-year period. It really reduces the amount of CapEx or amount of cash that you have upfront. Those dynamics give us confidence that we will be the cash required. In fact, next year, even with the insurance settlement that we would pay as part of the Corteva agreement that we did with Chemours, we're under $200 million next year for the New Jersey piece. In 2026, that drops to like $30 million. It gets to be a pretty small number when you can stretch it out over 25 years.
When you took this opportunity to recast the new DuPont, I'm just curious as to why you decided to keep healthcare and water together. What are the linkages there? Why did you decide not to split those into and so have three reporting segments? As I think about the healthcare and water businesses, I mean, very strong positions, very good brands. How has your market shares been trending over the past three to five years? What are your thoughts on gaining market share in the future in those businesses?
Yeah, I'll open with the decision on why the segment structure is two versus three, and then I can turn it to Irune for the market share. For us, it was the cleanest way to report. The high-growth businesses have similar growth profiles, they have similar margin profiles, so it made sense to report them together. You'll see the revenue for each when we disaggregate revenue. You'll see the revenue that healthcare generates and the revenue that water generates. We thought that was a nice way to merge the growth businesses together and then under-diversify the ones that were more alongside GDP. It wasn't anything more than that with respect to just simplification of how we report in the share.
Yeah, sure on the share. On the healthcare side, of course, when you look at the space where we are with Spectrum and Donatel, we've essentially acquired market share, right? We weren't there before. That is still all part of the integration of what they're doing right now. We see clear opportunities to expand on the share. Clearly, it's a space that we've only had recent participation in. On medical packaging, I think our share has been very strong and it's continuously strong as well. Certainly now with the expansion of our line eight where we can actually provide much more Tyvek medical material packaging, packaging materials, I think we have a lot more opportunity to expand that share even beyond where we are today because previously we were not able to serve demand that was out there. I think that's there on the healthcare side.
On the water side, I think we have always been a very significant participant in the space. Certainly, if you look at RO, if you look at ion exchange, I think we have a very strong market share position there. Are there pockets where we continuously can expand share? For sure, there are. Certainly, if you look at some of the growth areas that I talked about in terms of direct lithium extraction, PFAS removal, and green hydrogen, these are all spaces that are very much ion exchange resin oriented. Therefore, creating new opportunity of markets for us that we can expand our total share within the ion exchange resin space from as well.
Alexia Dembek, KeyBank. Wondering if you have a pace of bolt-on acquisitions in mind, like one deal every year, two, three years for sort of mid to large size bolt-ons?
Yeah, I wouldn't say we have a numbers target. We have a dollar amount that we know we have available. We don't see right now any need to take on additional debt to do a large acquisition. We think with the proceeds that we have from the Aramids divestiture, as well as the excess cash that we generate, that would be more than sufficient to fund the M&A opportunities that we see in the pipeline. If we were to find an opportunity that was really high return for us and met all of our thresholds, was accretive to growth, low cyclicality, low capital intensity, if we did decide we were going to take on some debt, we would be back within our normal debt range within 18 to 24 months. That would be a commitment. For us right now, it's more the bolt-on size.
Think the size of where we were with Spectrum or Laird a few years ago, really adding to our toolkit. We're not going to be adding a leg to the stool.
Maybe we'll take a quick question from the folks online. Lori, we've obviously talked a lot about transformation today. How do you view the new DuPont going forward and where are you most excited about the opportunities ahead of us?
Yeah, I had mentioned in my opening comments what excites me the most is just the opportunity to drive growth. We have a nice line of sight that Antonella nicely detailed with respect to how we'll get to the 3 to 4%. If there's end market cooperation that's beyond that, we'll take it. We did not assume any recovery in construction or even automotive, which is, you know, kind of been stuck for the last couple of years as well. That growth piece is very exciting. The building of the business system is the other piece that personally energizes me. You know, really having that discipline around driving our excellence models and coupling them with a really robust business system is going to influence not only the culture. We have a great culture at DuPont.
You know, Dave had made a cool comment to me that he was visiting the sites, you know, pretty rigorously over the last couple of weeks, and he could have mentioned what the core values were without them ever saying what they were because he felt them at the sites. I am going to really build on that strong foundation with the great people and the great businesses that we have and just enhance it with a focus on growth and improvement.
Mike Sisson, Wells Fargo. Lori, you know, 3 to 4% organic sales growth would be, you know, exceptional, particularly in chemicals. Hopefully, you're not with us.
Not chemicals.
Even in industrials, I think that would be, you know, a really nice achievement over the next couple of years. Just curious, if you were not to achieve that goal, why do you think that would be? Would it be macro? Would housing stay weak? Would some investments, regulation, competition, you know, what would cause you potentially to miss that goal? If you do achieve it over the next two to three years and you don't get the multiple that you want, do we get three new mini DuPonts after that? How do you sort of get that value over time?
Yeah, I mean, I think with respect to the first part of your question about what would enable us not to achieve the 3% to 4%, it would primarily be if the end markets don't cooperate. If we head into some type of recession or there's further malaise in the construction and automotive spaces, that would cause us to not even see just a, you know, not be able to get to that 2%, that would be. There's also another small piece that we are excited about within Beth Ferrera's portfolio. She obviously brings a key competency in 80-20 work that she had when she was at ITW. As you apply the 80-20 framework, sometimes it will come at the expense of some volume as you take complexity out, but drive really nice margin growth.
We are ferreting out that opportunity to see where that sits, but that could be one piece that I wouldn't say it would cause us to miss the 3% to 4%, but it could factor in as a piece that we don't have in the 3% to 4% basis now. I'm confident, assuming end market cooperation, that we'll be good with the 3% to 4%. As far as the creation of three mini DuPonts, right now we're committed on running the company. We've got really great businesses, really great people, really great teams. We are always looking for valuation and seeing where we are versus where we think we could be.
Thanks. Just a couple other things. Maybe just touch on your businesses as it relates to China. My impression, perhaps incorrect, but correct me. It looks like you're overrepresented in China on, you know, water and filtration. I'm not sure if you're over or underrepresented in China as it relates to the Chinese EVs, which are becoming a bit of a juggernaut. This might tie a little bit into the share question as it relates to water and, you know, your geographic mix. Can you just give us your assessment of China versus DuPont and your relative position in water versus the Chinese EVs?
Yeah, so we're 10%, so much more in line with the peer set with respect to total company China exposure as a percent of sales. We went from around the 20% with total DuPont down to 10% with the new DuPont. That was nice to see. I would say I'll let Irune cover the water side and maybe Beth cover the EV side in more detail. With water, that is where a big chunk of our 10% exposure for total DuPont comes with, you know, roundly, not quite a third anymore of the China being the RO business. With the OEMs in China on the automotive side, our exposure, we have nice exposure in China outside of BYD. BYD either uses their own adhesives or they use really low-cost models.
If that dynamic persists with respect to BYD being the large player in the space, then we wouldn't have the opportunity to participate with them. The majority of all the other Chinese OEMs, we are well entrenched with. In fact, some of them we have 100% of their business in some of the higher-end models. We're watching closely what the BYD situation looks like to make sure that we're aware of the dynamic there. It feels like it might be flattening out a bit. Others are starting to gain some traction, but I'll let Irune and Beth add some incremental comments.
Yeah, sure, maybe start with water. If I look at the total water business globally, the portion that the China business has is actually reduced over time. We've seen that reduction because other regions like the PAC region and even, I think, our market share position there has been very stable, actually. We have not seen any major deviations there at all. If I look again further at where the majority of the growth opportunities will play out for us looking forward, it really is going to continuously be in the Middle East because of desalination. In the PAC region, because of the microelectronics business, some of the microelectronics business is now emerging here in North America as well. We're going to see that benefit there.
I think over time we'll see actually faster growth in the other regions that will increase or that will sort of reduce our further dependence on China, even in water as well.
Yeah, and in terms of the EV space in China, Lori's right. With BYD, we've actually not had such a strong position because they handle it a different way, but we are well positioned with others like Xiaomi and Siemens. It's a good opportunity. As I mentioned earlier, we're really well positioned across EVs globally in adhesives in terms of being, I think, all the top 10 global automakers where we actually have products in their vehicles. I'm looking forward to that in terms of the expansion and in the EVs particularly. I think we'll be really well positioned to support that as well. In China, maybe just one other thing outside of adhesives, we're really well positioned with MOLYKOTE® on all the local for local Chinese auto space as well. That tends to be quite regional and we support well in each of the regions.
Just one little data point. It was said a couple of times that water has high recurring revenue, but I never heard a %. Could you frame that for us?
70% of our annual revenue is coming from replacement cycles of existing installation.
Thank you. Yeah.
Hi, Patrick Cunningham with Citi. Can you talk a little bit more about the opportunity for portfolio optimization within Diversified Industrials? You've obviously sold off the Aramids business here. On the one hand, it looks pretty compelling in terms of latent growth and operating leverage. Do you want to prove that out over multiple years or do you think there'll be opportunities to get rid of some more cyclical businesses, higher capital intensity businesses?
Yeah, I mean, I don't want to comment in any specificity. We had mentioned that we have a strategic intent to continue to morph towards the higher growth spaces. There are high growth spaces in Diversified today. We've got a really nice position in aerospace, a really nice position in EV. I think we're just constantly assessing our perspective from a shareholder's lens and determining does it add incremental value for our shareholders and for ourselves. As we play out that analysis, that is usually what leads us to decide whether or not it fits in our portfolio. I think to the Aramids question, that was a business that was the lowest margin profile in the company. That was a big factor when we were looking at the decision to divest Aramids and it was challenged, especially on the Kevlar side from a competitive perspective.
We don't have any of that left. The decisions that we make in the future with respect to portfolio optionality are going to be really more around how do we shore up that growth percentage of our portfolio.
Thank you. Vincent Andrews from Morgan Stanley again. I wanted to tie together a couple of things, Antonella, on the financial forecast. You know, we have the CAGR, the 3 to 4%. You have the margin expansion, 150 to 200 over that timeframe. There was a little conversation before about, hey, maybe we're going to prune some volume initially. When we think about those CAGRs, you know, are they linear or is it a little bit more loaded to the back half of that period because you've got a little work to do initially? How should we just be thinking about that starting in 2016?
I think you'll start to see nice performance out of the gates. It's not expected to be all back and loaded in the three-year plan. Quite honestly, even from a margin perspective, you'll probably have a little bit more of a benefit in the first two years as that's the time period in which we will take out the stranded costs. You'll see pretty even performance and from a margin perspective, a little more built up front.
Thank you.
Maybe for our final question, we've heard from Lori about what she's excited about going forward. Maybe for the rest of the leadership team, can you share your perspective about what you're excited for the new DuPont going forward?
I can start. I think I'm really excited about the timing now with where the company is headed and the direction that we can go in. I think the timing is fantastic along those growth opportunities with that segment. Patient and focused there too. I'm really excited about the business. Like we said, even the building space, the market needs to turn at some point. The underlying fundamentals are there. The challenges are there, and we're really well positioned for those. Beyond the EV and the aerospace.
Healthcare and water industries, these are great spaces to be in, right? I think both from a size of the market, so $13 billion for healthcare, $7 billion for water. If you look at the growth rates that come with these, very excited spaces to be in. If I then think about the position that we have already built for ourselves today, as well as what we can still do beyond that, I think that ability, the growth trajectory that I can see in front of us, again, both organically from what the market can do and how we participate from an innovation perspective, as well as the inorganic opportunities that we have. I think that's a great opportunity, and I'm very excited to be able to deliver that growth contribution to the company.
Thanks. I would say, you know, DuPont is a great organization with a great culture, and I've had a really great experience over the last three years. You get, I would say, the benefit of both. We have a longstanding history as DuPont, yet a significant amount of change that allows this leadership team really the opportunity to write the next chapter of the story.
Yeah, for me, you've heard it a couple of times today, the people and the culture at DuPont are just different. When I think about what I've seen so far, and I think about when we take a practical toolset, rigorous management standards, and a common language, we put that together with the talent that we have on the field and the culture that already exists in this organization. I keep saying the sky's the limit. I mean, we're going to be in for a really exciting couple of years here because we've got a lot of work in front of us, but we're poised to deliver on that.
Good. Maybe Lori, some final remarks? Yeah. Our goal for today was to build momentum for the new DuPont and prove to you that we have the right team, the right vision, and the right strategy to drive value. Ideally, we achieved that. Thanks to everyone for your time. I'm also equally excited about the afternoon. For those of you that are hanging around for the Q&A session, they've got an equally impressive story. They are the leader in the semiconductor space. They've got two-thirds of their business exposed to semiconductors, and they've got the broadest portfolio to address it. I'm super excited to participate in that too. Thanks, everybody. Thank you.
That concludes our morning programming. Thank you for joining us and have a great rest of your day.