Hello, and welcome to Veralto's inaugural investor event. Thank you to those who have joined us here in Wood Dale, home of Videojet, our world-class marking and coding business, and thank you to those joining on the webcast. My name is Ryan Taylor, and I am humbled and honored to lead investor relations for Veralto. Before we begin, please note the disclaimer. Certain statements that we make today will be forward-looking and subject to the safe harbor provisions. Actual results may differ materially from these statements. Please also note our most recent SEC filings for our most updated risk factors. Today, we'll use non-GAAP and adjusted figures. You can find reconciliations to those figures in the appendix of the presentation. During our presentation, you'll hear our speakers refer to the term gemba.
Gemba is a Japanese term that means actual place, and it is commonly adopted by lean practitioners, referring to the place where value-creating work actually happens. For those of you in person today, we will take you to Gemba for product demonstrations. Our goal today is to introduce you to Veralto, our leaders, our technology, and our culture. When you walk away, we hope that you have a firm understanding of our business model, our proven track record, and playbook for creating future value. We have a stellar lineup of speakers for you today, beginning with Jennifer Honeycutt, President and Chief Executive Officer of Veralto. Jennifer will lead off today with an introduction of the business. Following that, Melissa Aquino and Mattias Byström, our segment presidents, will discuss our leading water and product quality businesses.
Melissa will describe how we help customers analyze, treat, and protect water, and Mattias will describe how we help top consumer and pharma brands bring you safe, authentic products every day. Sameer Ralhan, our CFO, rounds out our speakers. He will provide a detailed review of our financial profile, our capital allocation approach, and our long-term modeling framework. Following our prepared remarks, we'll bring our speakers back up on the stage and invite you to engage in Q&A with our leaders. You can learn more about our speakers and their stellar careers by reading their biographies in the appendix. I'll briefly mention that Jennifer, Melissa, and Mattias are long-tenured Danaher veterans, and Sameer complements our team with strong strategy, finance, and spin-off background. Without further ado, it's my great pleasure to introduce to you Veralto's President and Chief Executive Officer, Jennifer Honeycutt.
Well, thank you, Ryan, for that warm introduction, and welcome to all of you who have joined us here in person today. It's great to have you. I'd like to extend a warm welcome to those of you who have dialed in to the live stream webcast as well. It is indeed an exciting day for us as we embark on our inaugural Investor Day, and we look forward to sharing both our history as well as what makes Veralto great going forward. Veralto is a premier technology leader in water and product quality. There are three key themes that describe how we think of ourselves. We play in large, attractive end markets as a leader in water and product quality, with 80% of our business in the food, water, and pharmaceutical markets.
These markets are characterized by strong secular growth drivers, and we offer leading technology and high-value water analytics and treatment solutions, along with a strong leadership position in digital workflows. Secondly, we operate with a premier financial profile, with 57%, roughly, of our recurring revenue, margins in the high 50s, reflecting the value of our technology and our workflow solutions, leading to EBITDA margins in the mid-20s. As this is not a set of capitally intensive businesses, we're able to convert 100% of net income to free cash flow consistently. And finally, we have a proven value creation playbook. With a strong Danaher heritage, we bring with us Danaher Business System, that is the engine that drives continuous improvement.
We have a highly diverse and experienced team, and an approach to capital allocation that is disciplined, a disciplined approach with a bias towards M&A to compound growth and earnings, ultimately increasing the value of the enterprise. All of our businesses within Veralto are united by a common purpose, and that purpose is safeguarding the world's most vital resources. Veralto today is a purpose-led, a purpose-driven leader in water and product quality, with nearly $5 billion in revenue. The two segments that comprise Veralto include water quality, which is 60% of our business, focused on water, our most vital resource in our natural resources... Within water, it's comprised of two primary categories: water analytics and water treatment, focused on quality, regulations, compliance, conservation, and reuse.
40% of our business sits within product quality and innovation, or PQI for short, with two categories, including marking and coding, and packaging and color. These businesses focus on product compliance, authenticity, and traceability for food and pharma producers. The key brands that you see on this page are top-tier brands in their markets. The two prominent brands of Hach and Videojet are flagship businesses for water quality and PQI, or product quality and innovation, respectively, are flagships for the anchor businesses that we have in these two categories, long-standing businesses that have been around for decades. Our team is comprised of 16,000 associates with operations in over 45 countries and over 2,500 patents, serving over 225,000 customers worldwide with a continuous improvement mindset and innovation to solve their toughest challenges. In front of you, you have a package of water.
It looks like this. This is, in fact, the intersection of all of Veralto's businesses. The water that's contained within this package had to be treated. Had to be treated to be free from contaminants, whether those are chemical contaminants or microbiological contaminants, and had to be verified through analytical testing to make sure that there were no contaminants in that water. The water then needed a vessel. That vessel had to be designed, and it came together in this package, wherein color was chosen, font was chosen, the regulatory standards on the side were chosen, ultimately coming through that production cycle with a code, with a best before, born on date, or product expiration date. This is the full cycle of every single one of our businesses touching a single product in the market today.
At Veralto, we play a profound role in safeguarding the world's most vital resources, and when we think about resources, we think about those resources broadly. We think about, obviously, natural resources, water, air, environment, earth, but we also think about food, medicines, time, money, and people, all critical resources. And these examples illustrate Veralto's impact on everyday life. We are, in fact, everywhere you look. Our water analytics and treatment solutions help ensure clean drinking water for roughly 40% of the world's population. We can serve 80 billion gallons of water annually and treat and recycle over 12 trillion gallons of water each year. Our product quality innovation solutions print over 10 billion codes daily to help top food and pharmaceutical brands authenticate their products for safety and traceability.
PQI solutions are used by roughly 80% of the food and pharma brands that you see in the market today, and we are increasingly helping customers advance their sustainability initiatives. For example, our package design and pallet optimization software helped a single customer eliminate over 500,000 trucking miles annually, equating to over 2 million pounds of carbon dioxide reduction. Our impact on humanity and the evolving risk to human health and safety not only give us purpose in our work, but they also create favorable tailwinds for our continued growth. We see strong secular drivers across both of our segments in water quality and product identification, with water providing life to everything, one of the world's most vital resources, if not the most vital resource.
Both water availability and cleanliness are significant issues across the globe as population growth and warming climate continue to pressure our global water supplies. This dynamic makes our water business highly resilient through economic cycles. In fact, since Danaher has owned Hach and the water businesses, our water businesses have never had a down year. In PQI, we see increasing regulations and consumer pressure on the brands to ensure product safety, quality, traceability, and authenticity. We also benefit from increased demand of global brand consistency and the demand for agile, shorter time to market new product development cycles. And finally, we benefit from a growing focus on minimizing environmental impact of packaging as customers convert to recyclable mono materials and biodegradable substrates. We are strategically positioned in attractive end markets with low cyclicality and durable business models.
80% of our business, as I mentioned, goes into food, water, and pharma end markets, and basic needs remain steady throughout economic cycles. People still need to drink water, have waste treated, and they need to get well. Our technologies and solutions are mission-critical to customer operations. We tend to be a low percentage of their overall spend, and as an essential part of their workflow, this is an OpEx set of businesses as opposed to CapEx set of businesses, which may rely on CapEx spending cycles. And with a razor-razorblade business model, we have a large installed base that drives recurring sales of consumables and services. The combination of attractive end markets, plus mission-critical solutions, and high consumables and service annuity leads to long-term sales growth. Our 2022 financial performance demonstrates the quality of our business and the value we bring to customers.
Last year, we grew core sales by 8%, with gross margins improving to 57%, yielding EBITDA margins of 24%. As you can see, we also delivered strong cash generation, and these results demonstrate our differentiated position in attractive end markets, our business model, and the power of the Danaher Business System. This unique combination has driven superior financial performance and sets us up for sustained long-term profitable growth. While part of Danaher, DBS was a key driver of consistent sales, growth, and margin expansion for the Veralto businesses. At Veralto, we'll draw on that heritage, leveraging its strength and flywheel of continuous improvement. The principles of DBS differentiate performance by driving continuous improvement in commercial execution, product innovation, operational improvements, and talent acquisition and management.
We believe this focus on operational excellence and outstanding customer needs, and understanding customer needs, has underpinned our long-term track record of top-line growth, margin expansion, and high-retention customer relationships. Veralto represents the longest vestige of Danaher industrial businesses today, and over the past two decades, Veralto businesses have been foundational in the leadership and development of the Danaher Business System toolset. Personally, I've been a Danaher Business System practitioner for over twenty years, and I've had an opportunity to architect and evolve these tools, as have several leaders on the Veralto leadership team. We benefit from our Danaher heritage, and we'll bring the best of DBS with us going forward. As we begin the next era as a standalone company, we are transitioning to the Veralto Enterprise System. VES is underpinned by principles of DBS and grounded in Veralto's values.
Core values define our culture, who we are, and how we serve our stakeholders. Fueled by four sets of disciplines, VES is focused on the fundamentals, operational excellence, growth, and leadership. With VES at the center of everything we do, we drive a virtuous flywheel of value creation. It starts with seizing market opportunities. Most of our businesses at Veralto were born in periods of new or emerging regulations. Our customer intimacy fostered an opportunity to innovate around their workflows and solve specific problems that then allowed us to scale and differentiate with new products, operational improvements using the Danaher Business System, and increasing our commercial reach. We then are able to fortify leadership in terms of our high-value annuities through consumables, customer service, and software subscriptions, allowing us to create the cash flow to curate the portfolio over time.
This allows us to go after strategic acquisitions, partnerships, innovation, and R&D, and the cycle repeats. This gives us new opportunities to identify other emerging trends, other unmet customer needs, and seize those opportunities through innovation, customer intimacy, and commercial reach. This playbook is underpinned by our philosophy of long-term value creation. This is going to be how we operate at Danaher, sorry, at Veralto, taking what we've learned from Danaher and how we deliver value to our shareholders. I've been at Danaher for a really long time, so I'm learning. I'm learning. It starts by running the businesses more efficiently, right?
We run the VES playbook going forward, leveraging scale to increase our gross margin while reducing non-customer-facing expense in terms of decreasing G&A, allowing us to take those savings, reinvesting them in R&D and sales and marketing, giving us disproportionate opportunities for share gain and competitive advantage, ultimately driving higher gains in core growth and operating margin expansion. It is the core growth, margin expansion, and working capital improvement that drives strong free cash flow, that then allows us to deploy that into strategic acquisitions that help drive double-digit earnings per share growth and compounding returns over time. This is how we've created value for the businesses in the past as part of Danaher, and we fully expect this is how we will deliver value in the future going forward.... M&A has been, and will continue to be, a part of the Veralto playbook to drive shareholder value.
And Veralto's approach to M&A will be similar to that of Danaher. As a standalone company, free cash flow generation will be invested in value-accretive opportunities with a bias towards M&A to drive compounding returns. And we'll follow the same disciplined approach to M&A that Danaher has followed, namely, focusing on great markets, markets that are durable, that have strong secular growth drivers, and have opportunities for differentiating the value proposition. We'll look to ensure that we have a strong target in the company that we look at, right? A company that has strong brand recognition, channel advantage, competitive market position, and a bias towards recurring revenue sales. And then finally, we've got to secure those assets at the right price. The valuation, in terms of focusing on ROIC, fortified with improvements, using VES, will allow us to deliver on those synergistic opportunities and deliver compounding returns over time.
Here's the proof point. Looking at the past 20 years of Veralto, Veralto was built into a world-class enterprise with the highest quality vintage of Danaher industrial businesses. Our beginnings date back to the late 1990s and the early 2000s, when Danaher acquired Hach and Videojet, as I mentioned, the flagship businesses for water quality and PQI, respectively. We took the Danaher Business System at that time and strengthened operating margins, commercial execution, and improved the speed of new product development to fortify these businesses. In combination, we executed approximately 80 acquisitions over that period across both of our segments to expand scope, enhance the portfolio, and add digital capabilities to support our customers. Over this time, core sales growth rate of the business improved from low single digits to mid-single digits, and operating margins expanded into the mid-20s.
The result really is a compound annual growth rate of 9.5% on the top line and a CAGR of more than 11% on operating profit, ultimately allowing us to achieve over 20% ROIC. Going forward, we would expect to utilize the same formula, the same discipline, and the same playbook. As you can tell, I'm extremely proud of our portfolio, our past performance, and our future potential, but I'm thrilled to be surrounded by the leadership team that will help deliver on the future. With a proven playbook and a best-in-class business system, it's only fitting to assemble a world-class team to lead Veralto, and this is the team who will do it.
I've taken a very deliberate approach over the last nine months to build this team, carefully architecting and curating a team of highly experienced professionals that represent the best of Danaher, complemented by external hires with a proven track record and public company experience. 60% of our team comes from Danaher, many of whom I've worked closely with. Collectively, these Danaher veterans have over 100 years of Danaher experience, playing key roles as operating presidents and group executives, leading strategy and sustainability, cultivating talent, and executing M&A. The other 40% are external hires from similar industries who bring critical public company experience as functional leaders in finance, legal, and technology. I'm thrilled about this team and its potential. Together, we represent a diverse, experienced, and high-performing team, a team that is 70% diverse, with 50% women and 40% people of color.
I'm incredibly excited for you to hear from a few of our leaders today. Melissa and Mattias will share an overview of their businesses and how they win in the market, and Sameer will follow with a financial overview. And what you're gonna hear today is that we have premier businesses with market-leading technologies and strong secular growth drivers. We are strategically positioned in very attractive markets and have durable razor/razor blade business model. And finally, we have a proven value creation playbook powered by the Veralto Enterprise System. And with that, let me go ahead and introduce Melissa Aquino, our Senior Vice President for Water Quality.
Thank you, Jennifer. Good afternoon, all. I am very happy to be here and share more about our water business with you. Like Jennifer, I have over 20 years of experience with Danaher, including leading three of our operating companies, as well as the Danaher Business System office. I'm passionate about leading water going forward for Veralto, because as we all know, water is vital to life, and it's essential for many industrial applications. I think about the critical role that we play, coming alongside our customers to ensure, ensure that water is safe to consume, it's clean, it's not contaminated, and that it's conserved for reuse. It's easy to wake up every day and, you know, feel the opportunity to be a steward of water going forward and protect this vital resource. So with that-...
I'm gonna give you an overview of our water business here at a high level. Nearly $3 billion, as Jennifer mentioned, and if you look to the right, you can see the composition of our sales today. We have a very nice split by application, with 70% of our sales supporting municipal industrial, and the other 30% going into the commercial environmental markets. Next, you can see from a market perspective, that geographically, we have 75% in developed markets and the other 25% in our high growth markets. The core sales growth here, mid-single digits, as you go up to the top left there, mid-single digits, and we have a durable business model of a recurring pull-through. The recurring sales are in the 50s for us.
So if you go to the middle of the page there, you can see three of our key companies here. These are our bigger operating companies. Hach is on the water analytics side, is a global leader in water analytics with deep expertise in applied chemistry and biology. And on the right-hand side, we have ChemTreat and Trojan. ChemTreat is a leader in industrial water treatment in North America, and we have Trojan there, that is a global leader in UV disinfection and membrane filtration. So essentially, we're aiming to solve some of the most complex water challenges, and I'm gonna give you a feel for that as we go through the presentation. Here's another view of where we play.
If you think about the water value chain from left to right, everywhere from the environmental space, lakes, rivers, streams, going into the core of municipal with drinking water, industrial applications, and then on the right, you're discharging water back to the environment. We play across this cycle with a broad portfolio of parameters that we test for. You can see with the analytic side of Hach, that we cover the entire spectrum. So starting on the left there with the lakes and streams through municipal and all the way out to discharge. And then in the treatment business, you'll see in the middle there, Trojan and ChemTreat are just well-positioned in the middle of the core municipal and industrial spaces. So we like our portfolio and where we're sitting across this value chain.
Next, I wanna give you another lens here that we think is pretty important, is that our technology solutions play at the high end of the value continuum for our customers. And as Jennifer mentioned in her presentation, you know, we're a pretty small part of the budget for these customers, but we are mission-critical. And what that means is that they are gonna come to us, relying on us for that expertise in their regulatory needs, their sustainability needs, conserving, reuse, and on the analysis and the treatment side of the equation, you know, any downtime that these industries might experience can represent, you know, 10x the cost of what one of our treatment plans might cost. So one hour downtime could cost them 10x.
So you know, the other thing to note here that I wanna point out is that we are not susceptible to those CapEx cycles in general, going up and down, because we're key in those operational budgets. This also, because we're playing at the high end of the value continuum, gives us an opportunity to develop deep customer relationships and intimacy, which creates some stickiness. Again, they rely on us for those mission-critical applications, and so that stickiness and that intimacy, we get rewarded for that. And we can also leverage that into how we commercialize, we can leverage it into how we innovate. So let's go into water analytics a little bit deeper here. We play across, as I mentioned, on the value chain, these customer types, and in a wide variety of application environments.
You'll get a little bit of a feel for this on the gemba walk, where you may see our Hach instruments out there, you know, we these little portable guys on the left, you know, out there by a stream. You will find us in the middle here in laboratories, hung on a wall in industrial applications, where they're continuously monitoring a process to keep it up and running 24/7. So down on the left here, I'm highlighting our colorimeters and our photometers and spectrophotometers. We have over 75 years, a tremendous installed base out there of these instruments, nearly 3-4x the next leading competitor. So with that, we get, we get rewarded with the consumable pull-through, as I mentioned.
They're testing for a wide array of parameters, and our chemistries and our solutions come together with that deep application expertise. One of the things, I'm gonna highlight, you're gonna see it on the Gemba walk, is the Chemkey Reagents, which is a proprietary consumable we have innovated and developed to make this testing easier for our customers. And we've been doing this, like I said, for a long time, over the 75 years. And over the last decade, we've complemented this with our digital solutions. You can see on the right there, one of our acquisitions that we made is Aquatic Informatics, and with that software, the United States Geological Survey relies on it every day to monitor 16,500 sites.
And they're looking for, you know, how to efficiently manage groundwater, what's happening with rivers, and over time, they've collected 58 billion data points using our software. I want to talk about innovation in particular, and what you're seeing here is our Pikes Peak Innovation Center. It was established in 2018. It's 90,000 sq ft, and what we've been able to do with our innovation center is make sure that we're state-of-the-art, and we have the space and the opportunity to take the best of the DBS tools, bring them to life as we work with our customers. Some of the key features of Pikes Peak is, you're gonna see a video of this as well, is visual project management, product line development.
So we will simultaneously be working in R&D while we're developing a production site that can go out into manufacturing, as well as on-site compliance testing. And since the inception of Pikes Peak, we have driven our digital solutions by five times the adoption with our customers, and we've accelerated the pace of product development by about 50%. So just to, again, wanna talk about our technology leadership here. We have a track record of this, and just going back 10 years, we have, with Pikes Peak and using the DBS tools, we have been able to innovate our instruments and those consumables, leveraging our deep application expertise. And over the last 10 years as well, we've continued to build out our digital portfolio with this with through organic development ourselves.
You can see some of the Hach products there, as well as with acquisitions, tuck-in acquisitions, that we've done with Aquatic Informatics, for example. So our VES growth tools going forward will allow us to approach innovation with a rigorous process, where this process includes identifying those unmet high-value needs and feeding that into insights and a roadmap, designing, testing, and commercializing against it. Speaking of commercialization, again, our VES growth tools help us run the spectrum from when is that idea all the way through how we commercialize. Here's an example on the Hach side. This is one of our key meters. We launched this in 2021, and we were one of the early adopters using digital sales tools, knowing that the pandemic was creating particular challenges in commercialization.
So we leveraged some first sneak peeks, virtual showcase, sales tools, and we were able to exceed our original targets on this particular meter by double digits, not letting the pandemic slow us down. All right. I wanna take us over to water treatment now with our ChemTreat and Trojan businesses. So with ChemTreat, we deliver tailored reagents, and on the Trojan side, we have sophisticated UV systems. I want to talk about ChemTreat, which is a pretty special business. It's focused on those industrial processes, including boiler and cooling systems, and again, we are mission-critical to these customers. We have a direct sales force, and these folks develop deep trust with the customers, and they will be on-site 365 days a year, if necessary, to make sure that we keep our industrial customers up and running.
Can be millions of dollars of impact to an industry if it goes down for one hour, and our products ensure that we keep, keep our customers up and running. So on the Trojan side, we are a leader in UV disinfection and filtration, and you will find our Trojan systems in a number of places. You will see us in municipal plants, in, you know, right there in the drinking water side, and again, you'll see an example out there today on the walk. You will find us in bottling plants, and you will find us underneath residential sinks and garages because we have a residential business that goes after UV disinfection right there in the home before it hits the tap. So the other place Trojan plays industrial is in those ultrapure applications.
So, we do have some installations in ultrapure water, such as pharmaceutical and life science. So now I'm gonna go into a couple of important customer examples on the treatment side, and as Jennifer mentioned, we will benefit from the continued threat of emerging contaminants in our world in water. And the example that I wanna highlight here is New York City, where we have 56 Trojan UV systems installed, and the Trojan application is, is capable of removing or destroying some of the most hazardous chemicals. So New York City chose us, and we meet the rigorous standards of the Department of Environmental Protection. And, you know, these installs are serving 2 billion gallons of water per day and protecting New York City.
Here's another example on the ChemTreat side, where we came along one of our key partners in the brewery industry to help them hit their sustainability goals. And they came to us because we are a trusted water quality expert, and they knew that we could help them identify solutions to drive water efficiency, save the water, operational performance as well. So in this particular case, we helped them achieve their sustainability goals ahead of their 2025 goal. We helped save 15 million gallons in 2021, and 500 million gallons across 9 years. So this was a 22% water reduction. And again, it's because we are that long-time, integral partner in helping customers advance their sustainability goals. And we expect this to continue.
We think that there's gonna be more and more demand from our industrial partners in particular, saying, "You know, my permits are changing. Help me hit my sustainability targets." Here's an example that I think is, again, it's a ChemTreat one, and it not only shows our application expertise, but by how we will leverage the DBS tools and future VES tools going forward. So in this case, it was on the innovation side. We brought in one of our tools, which we call Problem to Portfolio, which is P2P, and the whole premise of P2P is to ensure that we can get that insight from the customers in a valuable segment and define a winning roadmap.
So we went out and looked in our space and found this pretty prevalent customer problem, where they were having to shut down their cooling systems more frequently than they might like due to microbiological growth. So we went in there and identified that we really needed a solution that did not contain the zinc and the phosphorus, and brought this to market. So you can see the ChemTreat FlexPro product we've launched has had a 30% CAGR over the past three years. It reduces corrosion, protects the uptime, helps conserve water, and we've been able to take this not only with this one customer, but leverage it into 1,000 others. And again, it's on the back of understanding that application, leveraging the VES tools to make sure we can deliver the roadmap.
Jennifer mentioned this, and I wanna explore it here as well, the secular growth drivers and how those are gonna underpin our long-term growth. The quantity of water on this planet really hasn't been sufficient to support what we've done to it over the last 50 years. So we're gonna continue to see, you know, the increasing regulation around contaminants, and we are well positioned to innovate and participate there. Additionally, water scarcity, right? Some regions of the world are highly stressed, and they need-- they're needing solutions there as well. The climate change, extreme weather events are creating stresses on water, and again, because we play across that value chain, we feel we are well positioned to participate there as well.
So, how we will win, we're gonna bring our application expertise, as I've been talking about here, our commercial excellence and technology and innovation together, to make sure we can unlock and take advantage of these tailwinds. So again, just another highlight on the three key elements of our, of our business model and why we are well positioned for growth. We have a high value of recurring sales from the pull-through of our consumables, starting on the left there, with low cyclicality. And once we place those instruments, we're gonna get that 2-4x pull-through on consumables to follow on. We are mission-critical to our customers, and while we're a small percentage of their overall operating budget, we are mission-critical.
You know, again, downtime can cost them tremendously, so they're gonna stick with us for our application expertise and ensure that our solutions enable them to stay up and running. And then finally, the regulatory environment. Our customers come to us, making sure that we're an essential partner with them as they navigate the future space. So we think these three key pieces are. You know, they've given us steady growth. They're gonna continue to give us growth, no matter what the economic cycles are doing, and it lands us in that mid-single digit grower over the long term for water quality. You know, we've been doing this. We've been a compounder over time.
So over the past 20 years, we have grown from a $500 million business all the way up to nearly $3 billion. And you can see that we've accomplished this through those strategic, disciplined acquisitions, starting off with our platform acquisitions, Hach, Trojan, and ChemTreat, and then having a very thoughtful and again, disciplined approach to the bolt-ons, as I mentioned, for example, Aquatic Informatics on the digital front. So this has given us 10% compound annual growth and a 20% return on invested capital. So under Danaher's ownership, I mean, this is remarkable performance, and we are confident that with Veralto, we can take this to the next level and continue to grow in the future. So in summary, we believe our water quality business is world-class. We're a global leader in water analytics, treatment solutions.
We play in the high end of that value continuum in terms of technology and the customer needs, and we aim to solve the world's most complex water challenges. We're united by purpose, as Jennifer said, safeguarding the world's most vital resource. We're proud stewards of water. I'm gonna leave you with one quote, and this is a quote from Kathryn "Kitty" Hach, one of the founders at Hach, and we have this printed on our wall in the building in Loveland, Colorado. She said: "The water on this earth is all we have. We need to take care of it." So with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Mattias, who will share more about our PQI business.
Well done. So, thank you, Melissa. Good afternoon, everyone. It's my pleasure to be with you here today and to welcome you to Videojet. This is a great facility and the cornerstone of PQI. Now, I've been with Danaher for a little bit over 12 years, and in a number of different roles. And I'm truly excited to be part of Veralto's journey ahead here. There are so many opportunities. I think Jennifer and Melissa mentioned some. I'll talk about some more here today. And I have to say, I love the PQI businesses, from my passion for color and design to the engineer in me who's truly amazed at the technology we have across the businesses, and the simple fact that we touch almost everything that we use in our everyday lives.
Now, we are the leading global players in marking and coding, in packaging design solutions, and in color. Taking a look at the image here, I think you recognize that it's a supermarket. It's easy for me to come to work every day, just as Melissa mentioned, because knowing that we touch almost everything you see there. We estimate nine out of ten of the products you see in the supermarket are touched by a PQI business. We help ensure that, you know, they protect the health and safety, but also the experience that we as consumers have come to expect. So let's take a little closer look at our businesses here. As Jennifer mentioned, we're about $2 billion in sales, and about 60% of this is recurring business.
With recurring, we mean the consumables connected to our printers, the service contracts, and also our software businesses. 70% of our sales are related to our marking and coding businesses, and here we're the global leader in marking and coding with our Videojet and Linx brands. The remaining of 30% are in packaging and color. This includes Esko, the global leader in packaging software, as well as Pantone and X-Rite, two companies who are really focused on color, color specification, color measurement. Pantone is probably our best-known brand. It's known as the universal language of color. We estimate there are over three million designers that use Pantone's color system every day. Now, 50%, a little bit over half of our business is into consumer packaged goods, including food, beverage, pharmaceuticals, and then the remainder are into different industrial processes.
You can think of use cases such as electronics or cables, such as paint or plastics, to name a few. Geographically, I mean, we're pretty well spread out across the globe, a third each in North America, in Europe, and in the high-growth regions. Across the globe, we're partnering with our customers. I dare say we have some of the best customers around. We are the choice of industry leaders. We have 85% of the top CPG companies, 75% of the top life science and pharma companies, and 6 out of the top 10 chemical companies. The products and solutions we provide help safeguard the integrity of food, beverage, and pharmaceuticals, but also brands and brand equity.
Now, we work directly to ensure the quality and compliance of packaged goods, and we work indirectly to help our customers accelerate and ensure the fidelity of the innovation processes, their innovation processes. This is through the entire go-to-market process, ensuring minimal waste in time, in production scrap, and the highest efficiency here, in the end, leading to better consumer satisfaction. What sets us apart a bit is that we provide deep domain experience. We not only sell products, but we provide this deep domain experience that our customers typically don't have internally. And we are the leaders in each of our respective niches. So taking a look at how our businesses are positioned here across the value chain. We talk about the packaging value chain. This is a good way to visualize our business.
Now, starting from the left here, we have Esko and Pantone with packaging strategy and design. This is where Esko's packaging software and Pantone's color system comes into play. We're helping typically brand owners, designers, marketing agencies up front with the physical 2D and 3D design of the package, but also the specification around the package, what goes on the package, ingredients, et cetera, and how is that to be formatted? Then comes the manufacturing of the packaging material itself, which we don't do, by the way. We just provide the software and the solutions to help our customers do this. Esko's digital tools help manufacturers of packaging materials get the job done quickly, efficiently, and with the highest quality.
X-Rite provides both the hardware and the software to verify that the color as, as specified by the designer early in the process, is actually within the tolerances. Then at the end, to the very right here of the packaging value chain, at the end of the packaging line, our marking and coding businesses, Videojet and Linx, are printing probably the most critical information on the package, a variety of information, including lot codes, best before dates, and serial numbers. Let's break down our businesses a little bit more, and we'll start here from the left with our packaging and color businesses. In this part of the value chain, we're serving a variety of customers, most commonly brand owners and packaging designers, as well as consumer goods manufacturers.... Our most of our offerings in this part of the business are software or digital solutions.
In many respects, Esko is seen as the backbone of the packaging industry. Some call it the ERP of packaging. Our solutions include planning software, packaging workflow software, 3D packaging, CAD software, visualization software, palletization software. Oh, I could go on all day. It's a very broad portfolio. We are helping our customers ensure brand trust and workflow automation, so they can accelerate their time to market and meet all the regulatory compliance needs that within their industries. But what does this, what does this mean? So you can visualize our impact here on this slide, all the various stakeholders here considered when designing a product. Now, this is our fake brand of a Get Set bottle. Brand owners are trying to get this product to, to the market quickly, safely, and compliantly. And you would think that's not a very difficult process, but it is.
You know, product managers are seeing a need. They're trying to, you know, a consumer trend, they're trying to drive revenue. They're enlisting designers and marketing teams to make a product concept. Legal gets involved to ensure it's compliant. Operations, of course, can we actually make this product? Can we make it at the right cost, at the right quality? Can we do it while meeting our sustainability goals? Okay, but it's not a linear process. There are multiple do loops here. So this is rather complex for one SKU, but now imagine you're a global brand, and you have 100,000 SKUs or hundreds of thousands SKUs spread across the globe in a complex supply chain. Now, that is a complex problem. Our brand owners typically lack the tools to drive this, and with increasing regulatory complexity, the complexity is only getting worse.
So our solutions help customers solve this problem. We help them quickly create designs, integrating the marketing goals, the regulatory standards, the sustainability information, the barcodes, all the stuff that goes on the package, and we can do this in a validated and audited workflow, if that's needed. And all this information is critically important for the consumers, who are increasingly seeking information about what's in this product. Where was it made? How was it made? Is this safe for me to drink? And that makes it incredibly important for the brand owners as well. So let's take a look here at a typical packaging workflow. This is a real case of Esko's value to customers, looking at the workflow from design creation through packaging production. In this example, using a small yogurt container here.
Now, here we partnered with Alpro, using Esko's WebCenter cloud-based software solution to transform Alpro's go-to-market process. So we sell a piece of software, but it's also around our domain-specific knowledge and the use of DBS here with the customer, helping this customer accelerate their design process, speed up their review, approval, and production process. And the results can be seen here on the screen, right? We've reduced the customer workflow time by over half. We've reduced the labor cost by 50%, and we were able to help this customer not, not only reduce labor cost, but do this process with fewer people. So this is a proof point, you can say, of how we're helping customers also navigate the labor shortages that many of our customers are seeing today. So perhaps the most critical information on a package is printed by our marking and coding solutions.
Videojet, the building you're in here today. Now, this part of the business is where we play a critical role in the health and safety of consumers. You know, for example, what if listeria was found at packaged greens, looking back at that supermarket example I started with, and there was no way to determine what shipments were impacted? Now, the reality is that with marking and coding solutions like ours, we can help businesses track, understand, and act to ensure public health and safety. Our marking and coding businesses represent 1.4 of the $2 billion in sales, and Videojet here is the global leader of all the types of printers that go into the production line. We provide printers and marking systems that put the unique codes on basically everything, from the food you eat to the electronics you have in your pocket.
With increasing regulatory complexity that we're seeing, increased consumer demand for transparency, it drives the need for more advanced marking and coding solutions as well. So this picture that you see here on the left illustrates the variety of both packaging substrates and different product types that customers need to mark and code on. You know, some substrates that benefit from laser markings, while many need the flexibility of continuous inkjet printers. We, within PQI, within Videojet, have the broadest set of marking systems, from continuous inkjet to laser and everything in between, able to mark on anything and everything, from eggs to airplanes. And just like with the Esko example, it's not just about the product here. It's the product combined with our unique domain knowledge that allows us to partner with our customers to figure out just the right solution for their problem.
Our marking and coding technology is used across the manufacturing line in the primary, secondary, and tertiary packaging, such as pallets. You can see on the right here on the slide the importance of this information, both to our customers and to the consumers. Well, ranging from consumer safety, like the product recall example here, to the ability to authenticate products for brand protection, to ensuring that our customers are meeting all their regulatory and compliance standards within the industry. One of the reasons the customer come to us and stay with us, yes, we have this application knowledge, we have the broad product portfolio, but we also have innovation, quite a lot of innovation. We are an innovation leader, and this year, we've launched several new key products.
Here we have our new laser marking system, the 3350, that was launched here just a couple of months ago. I picked this example because it's a great example here of an innovation, well, when we go to Gemba, really listening to a customer, understanding their problem, and creating a solution to address their needs. Now, in this case, we know manufacturers are facing new and ever-changing production environments. Production runs are getting shorter, there are more and more changeovers. They need a high performance, performance lasers, but lasers are quite good, but they are complex to set up, and they wreak havoc on the changeovers. So this innovation is a cutting-edge, automatic focusing system and dynamic marking laser here that allows for easy product changeover with minimal operator touches. It can be done, it shortens that time significantly.
This laser can print pretty much anything you throw at it, from text to graphics to barcodes at the highest line speeds. Now, Videojet designed these born digital lasers with built-in connectivity to provide simple, secure ways for users to communicate and gather data from their printers. Or they can have the option to connect back to us, to Videojet's remote service. With Videojet Connect here, we augment our field-based service capabilities, and with this connectivity, we're able to monitor printer health and able to support the customer remotely. In the end, it's all about delivering the superior uptime that our customers are needing. Basically, this means that a printer will call home when it has a problem, and we can then help diagnose and solve most problems remotely using the operator or the on-site factory engineers.
Should it be something that we can't do remotely, we can immediately dispatch our field service team with the right spare parts here to be on site quickly. Now, this is important because line uptime and the ability to fix, quickly fix any issues is critical for the CPG companies, pharma companies, to be able to manufacture efficiently. You can say uptime, peace of mind is what it's all about. And to that extent, aside from, you know, in addition to a, the connected printers, we also have the largest field service footprint. We have the, one of the broadest offering of service level agreements that we support our customers with. And that domain-specific knowledge that I talked about, it's packaged in hundreds of application engineers around the company that can help partner with our customers to solve problems, and with around-the-clock support as well.
So some really, a really great set of businesses here, but what does this look like going forward? Well, we're well-positioned for growth. We have some really fundamental and strong secular drivers and a winning playbook, the winning playbook that Jennifer alluded to here. So there's increasing regulation and consumer pressure on brands to ensure product safety, quality, and authenticity. And these increasing regulations are driving complexity. Think about my packaging example in the beginning here. The transparency into the supply chain is becoming more important as consumers, they look to authenticate the fidelity of their products. Now, this has become more prominent post-COVID as consumers focus more on the health, their own health and safety. And it's also being driven by more, how to say, pressure from counterfeits and knockoff products.
Now, another driver that, that's accelerated during COVID is the demand for products to be delivered more quickly. I mean, who of us didn't order consumer packaged goods online during the pandemic? We all used e-commerce, and now all of a sudden, CPG customers, our customers, CPG companies, have to have both their brick-and-mortar delivery, but also the digital shelf that they have to cater to. And then consumers and manufacturers both are striving to improve the environmental impact of packaging. Packaging, which is essential for our way of life, but as we know, usually ends up as waste, resulting in a significant effort across the industry here to really reduce the impact of packaging with more sustainable packaging materials.
So these strong secular tailwinds provide growth opportunities for PQI for years ahead, and we're taking advantage of these tailwinds by focusing our efforts on innovation, with a particular emphasis here on digital capabilities and software. Just like Melissa and water quality here, the growth drivers we looked at are great for driving the growth here, but we also have a very stable and durable business model, which is driven with the three parameters you see here across the slide. With a high level of recurring sales that we have from the pull-through of our consumables, such as ink, our services, but also our SaaS software. The mission-critical aspect of what we do, you know, by and large, we are an OpEx to our customers and a small part of their OpEx budgets overall.
Yet, the third key driver here is the durability of our business model is the essential value we bring. As our customers try to navigate the regulatory environment and strive to achieve their sustainability goals, it's a complex mission-critical problem that we're solving for them. Now, the growth drivers, the high recurrent revenue, and the durability of our business model has contributed to mid-single-digit growth over the long haul for PQI. And looking at the long-term value creation within PQI, and you heard it already from, from Jennifer and from Melissa, the concept is pretty simple, and I think most of you in this room probably understand it very well. Identify an emerging trend, buy great business, improve the performance organically with DBS up till now and VES into the future, and then redeploy that resulting cash flow back into the business.
When we purchased Videojet here, it was a flat to low single-digit grower with mediocre margins, which we have now improved significantly with DBS. We added bolt-on acquisitions to sustain mid-single-digit growth at much higher operating margins. And now, collectively, these businesses are growing sustainably at a much higher rate, at margins significantly higher. And this, of course, compounds returns over time, which is driving, you know, near 20% return on invested capital. So, in summary, PQI is where we are the leading global players in packaging software, in color, and in marking and coding. We provide products and solutions and software here that safeguard the integrity of foods, beverages, and pharmaceuticals. But we also safeguard time and brand equity as we help tens of thousands of customers drive more efficient workflows from our suite of digital solutions.
We work directly to ensure the quality and compliance of packaged goods, and we work indirectly to accelerate and ensure the fidelity of the innovation processes at our customers. Thank you. Now, that concludes my portion here, and I'll hand over to Sameer.
Thanks, Mattias. Good afternoon, everyone. It's a pleasure to be with you today. I joined Veralto earlier this year, and what drew me to this opportunity was to be part of an organization that is purpose-driven and is solving some of the toughest challenges and, as Jennifer mentioned, safeguarding the world's most vital resources. Our businesses have a tremendous track record of financial performance under Danaher's ownership, and yet there are a number of opportunities to make these businesses even better and create tremendous value. That sets me up for what I want to present today. As you just heard from Melissa and Mattias, we have two great businesses. They deliver mid-single-digit core sales growth over long term, growth that is durable through economic cycles. They have a high-margin profile and generate robust free cash flow.
As a standalone company, we have an opportunity to focus the free cash flow of Veralto back into these two strong businesses, both of which have a long track record of compounding revenue, earnings, and free cash flow. On the next few slides, I'll do a double click on some of the key financial attributes of Veralto, the attributes that really help differentiate our value proposition. Let me start with the growth profile. Our sales growth has consistently outperformed the GDP over the long term. Here you can see our historical performance over two, five, 10, and 20 years. We have consistently outperformed GDP. Our steady growth is driven by the long secular tailwinds in our end markets that Melissa and Matthias just touched on.
Increasing global demand for water, heightened regulations and requirements for drinking water supply and wastewater discharge, and increasing regulations and consumer pressure on brands to help ensure product safety and transparency. In addition, we apply the VES growth tools to expand commercial opportunities and bring innovative new products to market with speed to meet the emerging needs of our customers. All these actions drive the core revenue growth. I also want to highlight the resiliency and the sustainability of a business model. Even in the depth of the global financial crisis and housing market collapse, our business is down only low single digits on top line. In fact, water was flat through the crisis, demonstrating the resiliency of our businesses. As you heard from Jennifer earlier, water has not had a down year under Danaher ownership.
The durability of the business model reflects a strategy of building out a portfolio with common traits, as you heard earlier. Products and services that are driven by regulatory and compliance requirements, dependence on customers' OpEx versus CapEx, the products that are integral to the everyday operations versus being exposed to capital investment cycles, and with the recurring revenue greater than 55% across both the businesses. As you look at the financial profile more broadly on the next page, you'll see the strong top-line growth that I just talked about is supported by strong margin profile. You can see that we are focused on driving high-quality sales growth, which we efficiently convert into profitability and cash. Our attractive gross margin reflects the quality and critical nature of the products and services we provide to our customers. They support premium pricing.
Additionally, activities driven by VES toolkits really help drive down COGS and SG&A to support our margin profile. We have an asset-light business model with very modest CapEx requirements, and we make investments in innovation primarily through R&D to maintain our technology advantage and drive differentiation. As a result, we generate very attractive free cash flow, with cash free cash flow conversion approximately 100% of net income. These attributes are really highlighted as we kind of look at the financial performance of the business over the last three years on this page. As you can see, the business held up really well, and in fact, grew through a dynamic macro environment over the last three years, starting with the global pandemic in 2020, followed by supply chain disruptions in 2021, and then inflationary pressures in 2022.
Teams across the board really leveraged the DBS tools to take supply chain actions to serve the needs of our customers and to take pricing actions to help offset inflation, resulting in the great financial results that you see on this page. Core growth was approximately 5% on average across this time period. Water quality growth was positive even in 2020. Adjusted operating profit margin was in 22%-23% range, and free cash flow conversion was well above 100% in this time frame. Note that the adjusted profit margin on this page reflects an estimate of incremental standalone company costs for Veralto. Let me just take a minute to go through some of the key financial considerations related to our separation from Danaher, including the incremental costs here.
Our incremental standalone company costs are expected to be approximately $70 million, resulting in 140 basis points impact on the operating profit margin at the overall company level. At the segment level, we expect the impact on operating profit margin to be approximately 70 basis points for each segment. Second, on the balance sheet side, we will have a strong investment-grade capital structure as a standalone company, with gross leverage of approximately 2.2 turns. We anticipate having roughly $250 million of cash on hand and a $1.5 billion revolving line of credit at separation. This solid balance sheet at the beginning, along with a strong free cash flow generation, provide ample liquidity for operational and strategic flexibility. Moving on to capital allocation.
Jennifer earlier talked about our plan to leverage capital allocation to benefit our shareholders. Let me just expand on that a little bit, because we believe our capital allocation optionality is a key lever for us to create long-term value. Our capital allocation framework is conceptually grounded in compounding earnings growth while maintaining investment-grade balance sheet. Our bias is to compound the earnings through high ROIC organic growth opportunities aligned with the great secular trends that you just heard, and then strategic acquisitions that drive long-term value accretion. Within our framework, we'll also maintain some flexibility to return cash to shareholders. Potentially, it will be a modest dividend, and having an ability to flex on share buybacks. Any capital return to shareholders, as you know, those decisions are subject to board approvals and board decisions.
Our long-term value creation framework is aligned with the value creation algorithm that Jennifer just discussed. Leveraging VES and organic investments to drive core revenue growth, expand our margins, generate strong free cash flow, and invest in acquisitions to compound EPS growth and returns. On the right-hand side, you can see how long-term modeling framework is aligned with this value creation algorithm. We expect to grow the core sales at mid-single digits, consistent with our historical performance, reflecting the strong recurring sales and durability of a business model. We expect that growth to drive operating margin expansion with incremental margin fall-through in 30%-35% range, and we anticipate free cash flow conversion of approximately 100% of net income on annual basis. We intend to complement our core growth with value accretive M&A.
Our formula to compound growth and returns is very similar to what you're used to seeing from Danaher. In summary, we have two great businesses with solid operational and financial fundamentals. There is a long track record of performance. We have delivered core growth and margin expansion in both of our businesses, resulting in double-digit operating profit CAGR over a long period of time. Growth in these businesses will continue to be driven by the secular growth trends and by our people, technology, innovation, and VES-driven processes. Our formula to drive long-term value creation is to compound revenue, earnings, and free cash flow across both of businesses over and over and over again. With that, I'll hand it back to Jennifer for closing remarks. Thank you.
... Well, there you have it. Veralto's history, promise of the future, and what makes these businesses great. Hopefully, you walk away from this really appreciating sort of the three things that underpin what makes Veralto and its businesses unique. Being a premier leader in water and product quality, defined by the attributes that you see here, strong secular drivers underpinning those vital resources that we've personally and professionally committed to safeguarding. Terrific operating model that's durable through business cycles, through economic cycles. Those secular drivers give us great opportunity to retain and enhance our razor, razor blade business model, giving us opportunity to innovate on behalf of customers who still have critical problems to solve throughout their applications. And then finally, the value that we inherit from the Danaher Business System in coming from Danaher.
We will deploy that business model, take the best of what DBS has brought us. We'll redeploy that as the Veralto Enterprise System. Working with a diverse and highly experienced team, with both extensive history with Danaher businesses, as well as critical outside public company experience, is what's gonna bring it all together for us. So thank you very much for your time here, and we will turn it over to Ryan, who will help us facilitate some Q&A. Ryan?
All right, thank you. We're moving into the Q&A portion of our program. We're going to rearrange the stage and bring the speakers up on seats in more of a panel format. I'll go over some housekeeping items. Pretty normal setup that we have. If you'd like to ask a question, please raise your hand. Steve and Travis are gonna be bringing the mics around. As a reminder, we are a webcast. Wait for the mic. When you do get the mic, please state your name and the firm that you're with, for the webcast participants and for the transcript.
Then, we have ample time, but we'd like to keep it to one question and then one follow-up, and then we'll pass it along as we go through the list of your questions. We're thankful that you're here. We're happy to engage and excited to know what's on your mind and answer your questions. So with that, I will turn it over to our first question. And where's M- Travis? Why don't we start here at the front with Mr. Scott Davis, and then, Steve, if you can go over to Dean Dray right behind him. We'll start there.
All right. Thanks, y'all, for doing this. Appreciate it. Jennifer, do you envision kind of Veralto being a two-segment company, you know, just say, the next five years, or is there a role for another leg?
Yeah, I think we really like the business portfolio that we have. We find that there's a lot of synergy in terms of how we serve the safeguarding the world's most vital resources. We think there's a lot of M&A runway in the space. We've got active funnels on both sides of the house, but I think we're pretty happy with the portfolio that we have, and we'll continue to build that over time.
Okay. And then for Melissa, how big of an opportunity is PFAS when you think about... Is that a game changer from a growth rate perspective or just a nice kind of incremental tailwind?
We like our position and our opportunity to play in PFAS for sure. And we have a long history of, you're gonna see it some today, of detecting and destroying contaminants. It's gonna take some innovation, from us and others to get after that. But, yeah, we like where we're sitting.
Yes. Good afternoon. It's Dean Dray with RBC. And the question, first question is, relates to M&A. And both water quality and product quality have a long history of successful acquisitions. You had a terrific slide that showed you the legacy, but there really has not-- That pace of deal-making has fallen off dramatically in the past six years, and you would not be the first company to be spun out that is, was not at the front of the table for capital allocation by the parent company. So I suspect you have a long list of deals that you have had your eye on. And maybe you can just talk about what the deal funnel is like.
Just to clarify, in the Form 10, I know there's a two-year restriction on major portfolio moves, but it also said restriction on acquisitions. If you could just clarify what the reference on that, on the restriction, but M&A funnel and over the near term. Thanks.
Yeah, thanks for the question, Dean. Obviously, we have been less acquisitive in recent years. I think the thing that gets us most excited is that the working capital that we generate now goes to building and fortifying the Veralto enterprises. We've got, as I had mentioned, a really robust funnel in both segments, right? We see good runway in our water businesses. There's a number of emerging needs that we talked about out there in the world. There's also secular drivers in PQI that make conversion to recyclable materials, model materials, biodegradables, shortened cycle times for various different digitization workflows, and so on. So we like the space that we're in with the portfolio that we've got. We have very active funnels, and we're looking forward to deploying capital to that end.
As far as the Form 10 question, maybe Samir can answer that one.
Yeah, Dean, thanks for that. Any restrictions that you see are just to preserve the tax-free status of the spin-off. There's nothing out of the normal that you would see in a typical spin-off like this. All tied to any ownership change or the shareholder change that you will see.
All right, that's really helpful. Then just a second question relates to: Are there software applications, SaaS businesses, that can be developed? Is there a water test as a service opportunity? Especially as you get more complex in terms of the contaminants, you'll find municipalities just don't want to do it themselves. Where and how might that be developed?
Wanna go ahead and take that one?
Yeah. I'll go ahead and jump in there. As you saw in my presentation, you know, we have a 10-year track record of building out our digital solutions, and we've been doing that both organically. You can see the Hach Claros in the middle there, where we continue to add sensors and systems to that, along with Aquatic Informatics, I mentioned, and a strategic tuck-in there that gives us some software capability. But we continue to stay tight to our customers, make sure we understand what those up-and-coming needs are, and then innovate against them, and that's everything from, you know, the preventative side all the way to predictive. And so, you know, we are playing across the spectrum there.
We'll go second row, Michael.
Thanks. Just another question on M&A. So, you know, the 10% ROI is sort of the gold standard, you know, that has been the Danaher board, et cetera. So is that the criteria we're going for here, 10% ROI, year 3, year 5? And what sort of leverage capability do you have? Obviously, came out of the gate with 2x. Where would you be prepared to go for the right deal?
Yeah, maybe I'll start and then turn it over to Sameer. I mean, I think as far as leverage is concerned, we're committed to keeping our investment-grade rating. That is first and foremost for us. I would say with regard to the metrics by which we would transact on a deal, I think it's gonna be variable. You know, we're gonna look at a host of financial variables. There will be some that really drive core growth versus margin versus earnings, and I think we are gonna basically be looking at the combination of those factors, ultimately committed to delivering long-term shareholder value. Did you-
Yeah
Add anything else to that?
I think you said it. Said that very well, and maybe I'll just add one more point on the leverage side, right? If we were to exceed our, any acquisition that we will do, we'll have a very credible path to get back to investment grade within 12 months. So, that, that's how our approach, we'll approach the situation.
Okay. Following question on incremental margins. You said 30-35% is the framework for incremental margins. For a company with your gross margin structure, that implies a lot of reinvestment. So just wondering, you know, what kind of reinvestments you're kind of—where the focus areas are? R&D at 5%, is that still the right level of R&D? What sort of focus areas around NPI, vitality, anything on investment would be helpful.
Yeah, I mean, I think the 30%-35% read-through gives us some flexibility. We're always gonna seek to, you know, drive our continuous improvement philosophy. But we do see some unique opportunities to further differentiate and create additional competitive advantage, and we'll look to do that both organically and inorganically. So I think that range gives us the flexibility to do exactly that.
Hi there, Michael Halloran with Baird. So a couple questions. First, just following up on that one, you know, these have been in the Danaher portfolio for an extended period of time. I mean, how do you think about the internal improvement opportunities as we sit here, maybe in addition to that 30%-35%? Or is the opportunity more as you bring in portfolio companies, you can leverage the synergies and everything on that side on a more broad basis?
I didn't actually hear the entirety of the question there. Can you repeat it, please?
Yeah, no, absolutely. So following up on that last question.
Yeah
... just talk through how long this has been in the Danaher portfolio. Maybe not as much internal improvement opportunity, but I would be curious to hear you talk about the internal improvement opportunity set, how much of it is possible now that you have a little bit more flexibility with where your capital dollars go-
Yeah
... versus the driving margins just through normal-
Yeah
incrementals, plus bringing in other portfolio companies.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think the one thing about the Danaher Business System is it's trained us all to be extraordinarily nimble, and you saw us respond very quickly throughout the pandemic relative to everything from securing supply chain to acting swiftly on pricing. I think those are endemic to who we are, and we exercise continuous improvement opportunities every single day. We haven't waited to become Veralto to do that, and we will not wait after becoming Veralto to start on any of those continuous improvement activities. So there's always opportunity here in driving the business, and no one knows that better than Mattias and Melissa relative to driving improved margin, increased leverage, better commercial scale, and so on.
That's just part and parcel to who we are and how we do what we do.
So, a simple question then, you know, from the sounds of the presentation, it feels like what's changing or what's different is just basically the entitlement of where the capital goes. Is there anything else that you can point to that's gonna change under your ownership? Obviously, you're gonna bring a lot of the Danaher model with you. But is there anything else that you feel like you're now more entitled to beyond just, "We can allocate our capital more simply to our own businesses?
Yeah, that's a great question. Thank you. I think that Veralto will feel very familiar to associates, customers, and shareholders, comparatively speaking to the heritage that we had at Danaher. I do think the opportunity to deploy our own capital to catalyze shareholder value, will be different, and certainly, that's the point that you focused on. I think as well in bringing over the Danaher Business System tool set, there's an opportunity to, curate those tools to be, perhaps a little bit more simple, or scaled rather, to a $5 billion enterprise as opposed to a $30 billion enterprise.
And, you know, certainly we're looking at comparative tools relative to scale, because we ought to be able to operate at $5 billion with a little bit more nimbleness and responsiveness and quick action. So those are some of the things that I would say might be different to folks going forward, but I would say, you know, the heritage is strong. You saw me still identify as a Danaher associate here in my pitch. And, you know, those threads run deep. We come from an outstanding Danaher pedigree, and we'll continue to carry the best of that forward while evolving the culture, the focus of our purpose and mission. Danaher is certainly very healthcare focused in life sciences and diagnostics.
Our sustainability focus pivots a little bit more to the environment, right? So we have an opportunity really to go after being stewards of the world's vital resources. And so that that will be different, and that will feel different to folks.
Hi, this is Evie Kozloski. I work under Matt Sykes at Goldman Sachs. My first question is, what is your ability to drive growth and margin expansion through pricing look like? With only being a small amount of customer expenses, my thought would be that it could be a material impact to your overall growth.
Yeah, it's a great question. Thank you. One of the things that you saw, and it shows up in the comps, is a fast start with the use of DBS tools last year to get ahead on pricing, as well as securing supply chain challenges. We were able to work quickly on both to continue to serve customers well and protect our margins from a financial perspective. So I think we've got a very robust playbook to be able to flex according to sort of fluctuations in pricing and commodities and what have you. And I think what the data would show is that we've done that successfully here.
Great. That's super helpful. And then I know one question was asked on it, but can you talk through your involvement with PFAS testing? I understand much of that is done on mass spec, but how is Veralto able to capture growth? And maybe talk about which products are positioned towards that growth area.
All right, I'll take that one.
Send it over to the expert.
Yeah. Well, you hit it there, which is, you know, today it is used on GC and mass spec. And, one of the... You know, that's not at the point where the need- the testing needs to happen ultimately. I think over the long term, it needs to be much closer to where that water is getting discharged, is, is our premise. And I will say that, you know, with our big installed base and our history of democratizing and, you know, testing, you're gonna see this in the Gemba Walk out to... You know, anybody that can read can run a test. That's what we're after, and we think that's where, the future will go. So we very much, wanna get after that in a thoughtful way and innovate, against it.
Hey, Tom Stevens, Cowen, I work under Dan Brennan. So, just one on product ID. You know, you've given that kind of long-term trend. Clearly, you know, a lot of tougher comps coming into this year. How do you see the next 12 months evolving, specifically on the product ID segment? And then maybe how does that inform your 24-month outlook going forward?
Yeah. Well, clearly, we've been on the fast track to stand this company up. We actually will be doing this 14% faster than the next nearest business that Danaher was able to spin. So I think we're really focused on making sure we get out of the gate strong and that we uphold our commitments, and that is commitments to shareholders, customers, and associates alike. I think we're very focused on making sure that we finish this year with no hiccups. We have no reason to believe that we have any real challenges ahead. We have a history of working with the team at Danaher, who's done two other spin-offs, and things are going sort of phenomenally well. So we're ready.
I think, we'll be in great shape by the time we go public. Thereafter, it's really focusing on continuing to serve customers, shareholders, and associates. As far as 2024 guide is concerned, we'll take a look at that with our fourth quarter earnings when we get to the new year.
Good afternoon, Justin Bowers from Deutsche Bank.
... Can you talk about the competitive advantages or the moats of the water quality in PQI businesses? And then the part two would be just around pricing and how that plays into the algorithm, the growth algorithm over a cycle.
Yeah. Well, I'll, I'll turn it over to the experts here to talk about water quality and PQI.
Yeah. So maybe I'll go first. I mean, I think we—I touched on it during my presentation here. It's a combination of our strong innovation and product portfolio, combined with, you know, the deep domain experience we have in the different segments we play, and a large installed base. Those three sort of make up the sort of foundation for a very intimate customer relationship that's not transactional. It's over long periods of time. Melissa, do you wanna-
Yeah. I would say that that's true with water as well, those, those, you know, same elements. I just wanna point to the fact that we play at the high end of that value continuum, which we believe is a differentiator, where, we have that tight relationship with customers and those mission-critical applications with a, you know, tremendous installed base and those sticky relationships. So that's really where we're gonna differentiate.
I think it's safe to say that the cost of failure for the customers is high.
Mm-hmm.
That's what we provide, is a safeguard against a process failure, right? That, combined with the broadest product portfolio, in the case of water, it's 3-4 times the next nearest competitor. We've got the broadest coding and marking solutions in the PQI arena. That breadth, combined with more than 7 decades of being in these businesses, 2 of those decades being under Danaher and fortifying relationships that are customer-centric, giving that deep domain expertise, the breadth of the product portfolio, and that customer stickiness of the relationship, I think really makes these businesses unique and defensible.
Hi, Joseph Hodes from Baird. When you talk about 60% recurring revenue, for each of the segments, can you talk about maybe the breakdown between consumables versus services agreements or analytics or software, as part of that 60% for each unit?
Do you wanna kick off? Yeah, so, we're not gonna break down the individual components here. But, I mean, when we talk about PQI, a large part of our recurring revenue is the inks and fluids connected to the largest business, Videojet and marking and coding, which is $1.4 billion of the $2 billion, if we remember from my presentation. The other components are the recurring software and the services, which are continuing to grow at a healthy clip. Melissa, do you wanna add something related to-
I just... Same thing. We're represented in all three. Yeah.
I'll try one more on price, basically. As you think about coming out of this inflationary period and looking forward, given that the cost of failure is so high, how do you think about your pricing strategy moving forward and what that should constitute of, of total growth for each of the segments?
Yeah, I had mentioned that we got a fast start on pricing as, you know, inflation started to really ramp across commodity classes and supplies for products that we manufacture. You know, I would say as inflation starts to abate and as destocking throughout sort of the customer value chain has normalized, that we effectively will see kinda more nominal pricing going forward, more in line with historical averages. There have been a lot of pretty impressive price capture on behalf of lots of businesses, but largely on the back of just incredible inflation that we just haven't seen, you know, in recent history. So I think as things start to normalize, we'll start to see pricing normalize again to historical averages.
Thank you. A couple follow-ups. It's Dean Dray with RBC. For Sameer, can you give us some color on the transition service agreements, just broadly, which, which functions, and how long do you think those will be extended? And do you expect to report on cash EPS? Most of your your peers do, but I just want to know whether you're willing to commit to that today.
Yeah, sure, Dean. Let me just address those piecemeal. Like, on the from the TSA side, it's pretty simple. There's very limited transition services agreement in here. Again, this is a third-largest spin-off from Danaher, so there's a lot of experience in getting these things done, so we're in a pretty good place. We'll have a little bit on the technology side, but nothing, nothing material. I think on the EPS and the and the forecast of those kind of things, I think it's more to come as we give our guidance for 2024. But, you know, we'll look at the acquisition and disposition, nothing beyond that at this point, but more to come as we kind of give our full guidance in 2024.
Then just a quick one for Melissa. It's come up a couple different times-
Mm-hmm
... on the PFAS testing there. Well, is there a revenue sharing arrangement with Danaher? I know you're not gonna go into the mass spec manufacturing business, but for SCIEX, how will you all deal with that as a... Is it a shared revenue opportunity for those sales?
... We're not connected there currently. I mean, we're you know, like SCIEX will end up being like any other partner, frankly, that we have in this space. We'll be looking at a number of open innovation partners out there across the spectrum for PFAS. So there's nothing special or unique there.
I would love to hear some more detail, and Jennifer, you talked about kinda scaling DBS into a $5 billion business from a 30. What does that really mean in kind of practical terms?
Yeah, I mean, I think it's largely getting back to the fundamentals by function, right? So there are a core set of fundamental tools. When I joined, when I joined Danaher, having come from Hach in the year 2000, I think that time Danaher was $3.2 billion in revenue. We had 60-odd companies, and we ran every single company with seven tools. And I think there is beauty and efficiency and efficacy that goes with simplification. There are some extraordinarily advanced tools that are best-in-class that Danaher has, some that are specific to innovation, some that are specific to commercial excellence.
We will bring those tools with us, but it's, I think we wanna make sure that those tools get used by the most capable, right, and the most advanced practitioners within the companies. I think we have an opportunity to sort of go back to the fundamentals and make sure that the evolutionary maturity of the operating company is matched to the suitable tool set that's gonna really give them leverage. I think that's. I'm keen to have that opportunity realized, because it again gets us, it gets us sort of back to core levels of discipline, particularly on the shop floor.
I think, you know, the way these businesses are gonna run in terms of the economics relative to sort of the macro that you see in life sciences and diagnostics, it's a little bit different, right? These businesses came into the fold in the late 1990s and the 2000s, and the playbook that we ran then really served to fortify these businesses really well. As the Danaher portfolio has changed and grown over time into the healthcare segments, life sciences and diagnostics, there's been a bit of a pivot in terms of which tools to lean into, and so we're just looking to sort of rebalance that tool set a little bit to be more endemic to the time period when these companies really became great, and that was really in that ramp in the 2000s, right?
I think that hopefully gives you a little bit of context for how to think about that.
That's super helpful. And just a little bit of a nitty-bitty question here, but when you talk about 3 million users every day in Pantone, what... Are they all paying licensing fees? Like, how do you monetize the 3 million users? Just-
So Pantone is, the Pantone Matching System is the way to specify color, right? And we monetize that by, how do you say it? Selling fan decks and different types of tools that the designers then use to communicate that. And it's really around the ability to, how do you say, match a color at the beginning of the process and ensure that can be manufactured then later on, right? So you can have that consistency. There's also a growing digital piece of the Pantone portfolio, but the base business is around the artifacts here that help the designers actually create their work.
What kind of price points? What would the licensing fee be?
You can actually go out on the website and look at what it costs to buy a fan deck here. It's a consumable. I mean, it depends on... It's all available there on Pantone.com.
Color of the Year is coming up as well.
Yes. Yeah, Viva Magenta you have on your desks here. This was the color of the year in this year here, and, launched in December last year, so we're coming up on the next one.
All right, well, thank you. I know we have some more questions, but we're need to move on to the next parts of our program. So I want to thank our speakers again-