All right, there he is. We have Rich Tobin, CEO of Dover, who is Zooming in because of flight complications. Really appreciate the pivot and, Rich, thanks for, you know, thanks for attending virtually. We appreciate it.
No problem, Steve.
I'll be working the presentation, so I'll make myself useful.
Yeah, I mean, the presentation is only there if anybody has any questions about full year results last year or guidance. I'm not gonna go through it. If you wanna put the guidance slide up, just to stick it up there, that's probably the most salient one, then we can go to Q&A.
That one?
I can't see 'em, so I'll
Okay, that's the guidance. There's no changes.
There we go.
We'll have to see if there's no changes.
There's no changes, no.
I think we're good.
Cool. Yeah.
Maybe just as a start, you know, you're always pretty good at giving us a bit of an update on what's going on in the macro and orders and things like that. What are you guys seeing here, since the last time we spoke?
Nothing really. I mean, I think it's a little bit early. I mean, clearly, we're preparing for higher energy costs, and for us, that's more freight costs than anything else, which I don't think is a hurdle that's gonna be that difficult. In terms of our customer behavior, we've seen nothing so far. Maybe a little bit of rerouting of freight. Does that cause any supply chain issues? I don't believe so, but right now we don't see anything.
I think you guys were somewhat bullish in January as far as how the orders were trending coming out of a pretty strong 4Q. What are you guys seeing on the orders front so far through the last turn of the year, maybe February?
Yeah. I mean, orders are tracking great. Strong January, strong February. We're clocking through March, so we should come out at the end of Q1, from a book-to-bill point of view, in really good shape for the setup for Q2 and Q3.
Can you maybe opine on what great means with more mathematics?
It looks higher than one, Steve. Clearly higher than one.
I think seasonally, it has to be higher than one, right? Because you have a step up from 1Q to 2Q. I know last year was in kind of the 1.0, 1.08, 1.07 range.
Mm-hmm.
Can it be a little bit better than that?
It can be better than that.
Okay. I think you had said that on the last conference call that you were kinda watching these orders, and if you guys built a little bit of backlog and had a nice trend into 2Q, that you would reevaluate the year to a degree.
Yeah
I s there enough going on in the world that, with this uncertainty that you would say, "All right, things are trending better, but, you know, probably not prudent given what's going on," or is there enough visibility to, you know, maybe, change the guide, support?
Hard to say. I mean, I'd like to close Q1 and see where we are in orders. I mean, clearly, when we do close Q1, we'll have a significant portion of Q2 booked, and probably booking into Q3 in certain of the business lines. Whether that'll be enough for us to revisit the guidance or not, I doubt it. I think we'd probably take another quarter or so because, you know, I know you and I have gone back and forth about organic versus all-in growth. I mean, FX is gonna be a big thing going from here. So we have a really good comp in FX in Q1, but that is fading now, with the strength of the dollar.
With all that going on, look, I think that if we close, we're concentrating getting product out the door as quick as we can. Will we change guidance at the end of Q1? I doubt it, but I think we'll give a lot of color on where we are in terms of backlog by business, for sure.
Right. As far as these orders, I know last second half of last year, there was, you know, a bit of a push. How much of this is catch-up from that, and how much do you think is, you know, real demand?
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, what we talked about last year was in retail refrigeration, that cost us about 2 points of organic growth last year that had been pushed right. You saw that the orders inflected very positively in Q4. Our customer base can't absorb more volume, right? Because these are big installs. We're shutting stores down. It's not as if we're gonna pick up the lost volume from last year and add it to this year. It's just basically gonna come out at the pace that we would have liked to have seen last year, because we gotta time it for installs and everything else.
You'll see it demonstrably in the backlog for sure, but it will be an odd year where you know, bookings, which is usually a short cycle business, bookings will be in backlog for in excess of a quarter in that particular business. Coupled with that, you know, we started and launched our CO2 platform about 18-20 months ago. I mean, that's tracking to be a $300 million business. It's not. You know, we've sized the retail refrigeration, the base business. We'll probably be sold out in that business. The real top-end growth that we'll see is in CO2.
Right. That's a pretty strong rate. That should be comfortably above kind of the company organic average for this year.
Yeah. I'd say it's gonna be a big piece to driving the top line in 2026, for sure.
You also mentioned Clean Energy & Fueling as being an above average grower. What are you guys seeing there, the various moving parts there?
Yeah. I mean, the fueling solution, so the traditional business, which is retail gas station equipment has inflected positively in the back half of last year for the first time in probably four years now that the EVs are taking over the world cycle. We think that because of the under-investment that we've seen in the previous three or four years, plus the fact that there's a lot of CapEx going into that space because profit margins in retail fueling have expanded significantly over that time period. That again, we think that that's probably a three year cycle only because kinda like what I mentioned, refrigeration, there's only so much equipment that can be absorbed by the marketplace because you're doing big installs, and you have to time it out and everything. We like it that way.
We'd rather have it over a kind of a steady three year grower as opposed to kind of getting it all in 12 months. We feel really good about that side of the business. The other side of the business, which is the cryogenic components, grew very well last year. We expect that to do the same again this year. That's more of a margin story now because that's where we're doing a lot of the footprint consolidation, and that is where a material portion of the $40 million rollover of productivity is gonna end up. You know, we like that segment just because of the dynamics of the top line, but what we're really concentrating is getting that segment to 25% EBITDA margin.
The fueling solutions, the kinda core ice business, I think that makes a lot of sense. It's a bit of a recovery from, you know, deferred CapEx there.
Mm-hmm.
The growth drivers for the other business, kind of the CNG, I guess a little bit of LNG in there, what's driving that business? And is there anything that stands out there, that can sustain a high level of growth?
Well, I mean, it's just the general infrastructure buildout of the gas complex itself, so it's CNG, LNG, propane, everything. We're levered towards gas, not only in this particular segment but in Pumps & Process Solutions also. That's why we invest in it because we think that that is durable for a decade minimum. That's what's driving that.
Yeah. Is there some sort of space exposure in there or something I've been hearing you?
There is.
I've been hearing you talk about?
Yeah. Right. Data centers and space. Maybe we'll put that on the cover of our presentation. Yeah, there is, because the fuel that goes into a space launch is cryogenic fuel, so we're a material supplier into that space.
I mean, could that be another growth driver or it's just too small?
Oh, yeah.
Okay.
Yeah. No, it's growing quite nicely. It's not the biggest business in the world before we get all hyped up about it, but it is gonna be relatively material exit this year for sure.
DCEF seems like it could also be, you know, nicely above the organic average.
Yeah. I mean, the two segments that we talked about are right now as we sit here probably going to be the biggest contributors to the top line and in absolute profit for 2026 over 2025.
How much runway, just stepping back to retail refrigeration, sorry. How much runway do you have on CO2? I mean, that's a $300 million business now. Can that continue to grow like solid double digits? I know you had a big order there, you know, a year ago or so.
Yeah. I mean, we hope so. I mean, adoption rates are accelerating. I mean, I don't wanna get into the whole whether, you know, mandate versus non-mandate. I think at the end of the day, the technology has now been proven. It's got a higher first-in capital cost, but over time it pays for itself over the traditional solutions, and that's known now. The other issue, the hurdle was training all the techs to service CO2. We spent an enormous amount of money and time doing that over the last couple years, and so that hurdle has now been crossed. I don't think anybody's waiting around anymore for different states to legislate it. It's more if you're a big national grocery chain, you're moving to CO2, so the runway should be significant.
The other parts of, I guess, of this business, the heat pump side, Europe seems to have some signs of life, but the U.S. really seems to be inflecting now, for you guys there. The AHR Expo, your business leader there was much more positive. Seems like that one's turning the corner. SWEP?
You got the Swedes to be positive, that's good.
Yeah, she was jumping out of her shoes.
Look, heat pumps are up in double digits right now, but it's coming off of a low base, and the size of that business is more or less half of what it was at its peak in terms of demand. Your guess is as good as mine is how that tracks from here and where it ends up. What's really driving the top line of the business is the data center side, which is up about 100% from where it was. I think that we were early in terms of the buildout of the capacity. It's largely a duopoly that we participate in, so we're pretty much can sell everything that we can make at this point.
Just lastly on Belvac. Any signs of life on the, you know, can equipment side of
No. No, Belvac is not gonna shrink, but we don't expect a lot of growth. CapEx cycle, when it comes, everybody will kick it off simultaneously, but right now it's relatively light.
Okay. Just moving to the other businesses. What's in the Engineered Products side? I know it's kinda small now. Vehicle Service.
Vehicle service is doing okay. I mean, did a fantastic job in terms of margin despite having a down year in terms of the top line, which is largely due to Europe as that's got a pretty material exposure to Europe. Europe right now for anything around the automotive complex, even in service, is tough. The military business should do very well this year for all the reasons we can understand. This segment should post some decent top-line growth because of the fact that MPG should do relatively well.
That's kind of a company average organic for DEP?
Probably lower now that the, you know, the average is 4%-6% is in the guidance. I told you that the two are probably gonna be at the top end there, so it'll probably be at the lower end if we can squeeze it. Again, that one's got FX in it, so we're gonna have to be careful about what our assumptions are from there. You know, and TWG and the winches is up because what we believe is happening on the pipeline side, we've got material exposure there to the pipeline layer business, and that is growing for the first time in half a decade.
Sorry, the 4%-6%, is that organic or that's all in?
That's organic.
Okay. I think you said three to five in the,
Oh, okay.
in the slide.
All right. Mea culpa.
Okay. Sorry. I know you don't care about organic growth. On
We're all-in growth and all-in absolute profit. Anyway, go ahead.
Yep. On DII.
Uh-huh
The portfolio there, I mean, things have been a little bit slower than they've been in the past. Obviously, you have the textile business that's been tough. Any signs of life on that front or just pretty steady as she goes, low single digit type growth?
Yeah, I mean, did a fabulous job in the margin. We have been lapping that decline in the textile business that is 1/4 of the size that it was at its peak. That's largely, we've lapped that now. We would expect that business to grow 3%-4% depending on FX.
Kind of the low end of the organic range.
Yeah.
What do you need to see that pick up, and how much of a drag was textile? Like a point or two, or?
I mean, you could. I'd have to go back and look for 2025, to be honest with you, Steve. I don't know what it would have been last year. Probably a point at maximum.
Yeah.
Look, that business just. That's the way it grows. If you wanna goose the numbers, you'd have to have build out in consumer goods, make basically new plants and new lines, and that generally doesn't happen too much. Then you could do it through pricing at the end of the day. How long you could get away with that remains to be seen. I think that we basically take about 1.5 points of price every year, and the balance, and what you see intra-year about the movement, if we take FX out of it, is when you have printer sales, volume goes up and margin comes down a little bit. When you have a bigger mix towards consumables, then volume is lower, but your margin goes up. That's the way it's been for as long as I've run the company.
Right. There's no real uptick in equipment sales, 'cause food and beverage, consumer good CapEx is kind of stable. That's kind of what-
Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, it's all volume, and we're levered towards consumer goods, a lot of which is food. It generally just kind of runs.
Okay. On the pumps and process business, may be like a bit of a swing factor here. What's the outlook for the kind of different parts of this segment?
Had a great year last year, so was clearly the biggest contributor to the top line and absolute profit and profit margin. We had the return of pharma, which was great. That has held in and continues to hold in. The comps. You know, you're coming off a low base, so the comps are gonna look a little bit funny this year. In terms of just the absolute growth rate and the absolute contribution of profit, that looks in good shape. Industrial right now is up, but it's slow right now. We'll see what happens with that over the balance of the year. Precision components is doing really well, so kind of mid-single digits grower last year. Expect that the same this year. That's compressor and turbine component part demand.
That has MAAG in it. MAAG was slow last year. MAAG is gonna be flat this year. Sikora continues to do well, so that's kind of what basically masked the decline in MAAG last year, was the outperformance of Sikora last year, so the acquisition was well-timed. Back to DPC. That's the area where we think we've got the opportunity to inflect positive in the back half of the year. We've been doing really well on the turbine side. So we supply, you know, the who's who's making these gas turbines.
These are the-
The vendor.
These are the compressor component, Cook Compression.
Yep
in that business?
No, these are the GE Vernova and the Siemens of the world and everybody else on the gas turbines. What we haven't seen is on the compression side, and that's the part that's more levered towards the distribution of gas, which is on pipeline build-out. What we've seen from the MLPs in terms of CapEx, it's moving up quite a bit. You've got to deliver gas to all these turbines that are being installed. We don't have it right now in our forecast, but we believe that we should see a material inflection in terms of demand in the back half of this year as that investment catches up.
You effectively have kind of MAAG stabilized, so that's not.
Mm-hmm
Growing, but it's not getting worse. You've got the data center stuff continuing to grow pretty strong here, and then you've got this, you know, inflection on the compression side going along with power gen. You know, I would think DPPS could be an above average, above segment, above company average grower there. Is Sikora growing above the company average?
Well above-ish.
When does that-
Well above it.
When does that go organic? Third quarter, fourth quarter?
June. You'd have to ask Jack. I think it's June.
I mean, that should be an accelerator into the second half of the year for this segment.
Yeah. Look, whether it's acquired growth or organic growth, doesn't matter to me. I mean, I think it was adding at exit a couple points to top line growth. M&A was last year, and probably will until we lap it in June.
Right. Sikora comes in and it's accretive to growth at that stage of the game, organic growth, so.
Yep. Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
I don't really see a lot in these businesses that's like, you know, there's a decent amount that could be above the high end of the range, and not too many that are gonna be below the low end of the range on an organic basis.
Mm-hmm.
Second half should, you know, be pretty good as an exit rate into next year. Is that, you know, the right construct if we're gonna get a little bullish here?
Yeah. Look, at the end of the day, it's gonna be orders, right? We're pretty close to having exit, which we covered in terms of what we think book-to-bill's gonna look like at the end of Q1, how that builds and ramps through Q2. You know, how we do this at the end of the day, it's. We build a lot of capacity, so we don't generate a lot of cash in Q1 as we ramp up production. We sell it in Q2 and Q3, and then depending on the order book, we'll make decisions about what we're gonna do into Q4. Right now, structural growth across the portfolio looks pretty good. There's a variety of reasons behind it, just because of the complexity of it. Yeah.
It's not as if we're pointing to the piece of portfolio and saying, you know, "That's gonna be a problem." Invariably, somebody's gonna overperform and somebody's gonna underperform. On average, we feel good about, you know, what we've put out there for organic growth, which benchmarks very well versus our peer set in terms of EPS growth, where I think we're probably top quartile.
From a margin perspective, you mentioned DCEF. You talked about 25% EBITDA.
Yeah.
I think at DPPS it's always kind of that 30% marker. That should be pretty stable. MAAG not growing very much is probably neutral from a mix perspective. You know, that business should continue to do pretty well, right? No risk on margins in DPPS?
Yeah, I wouldn't worry. I mean, I think we exited above $30. I know I think at certain points last year we were at $29 and change.
Yeah.
It's all mix affected at the end of the day. 30 on average is probably a good number.
MAAG
to put on there.
MAAG really seems to be the downside mover.
MAAG would be, but DPC coming in, and DPC's probably in the mid-20s%. If that inflects positively, it may have a little bit of, you know, bring it down a little bit, but we're not talking bringing it down materially.
Okay. You're stable at DII, I would assume. DEP, anything?
Stable at DII, DEP.
for margins?
You know, our margins were up on down revenue last year. I think we gotta be careful there. I think if we can hold margins there and grow the top line, I think we'd be in good shape. That's where we're looking for the margin is in clean energy, I think we discussed, because that's got some of the roll forward benefit, and it's got volume leverage.
Yeah
Which we should start seeing as we ramp. You know, we'll see what we can. You know, SWEP should ramp in terms of margin. Let's see what we get out of refrigeration. I mean, God as my witness, we're gonna get it to 20%.
20 is possible?
Yeah, 20 is possible.
20 EBITDA possible in the next-
20 EBIT possible. We've done it, we've done EBITDA, we've done EBIT in quarters. It's possible to get that business to 20.
In like 18 months, this year, two years? Is that like a long play?
Next year, if everything holds in.
Okay. That's pretty good.
Yeah.
When we think about the leverage this year, you're guiding to, you know, what you're guiding to.
Mm-hmm.
With the cost savings from restructuring, your incremental on this growth seems, you know, relatively modest. Should we think about it that way? It sounds like there's enough positive drivers that with the restructuring, that the incremental this year should be, you know, decently above trend.
That we're gonna finish talking up the revenue now to talk up the incremental margin on top of that, huh? All right. Look,
I believe you said Miami at a competitor. I don't know which competitor conference down there.
I don't go any competitor conferences, Steve, just yours. You know, 35 is the number we can hold, right? That gives me a little bit of room in terms of mix and assumes that every year we've got roll forward restructuring savings, which I think that we should have next year again. Yeah, I mean, 25, I, you know, as I commented before publicly, I think 25 is not realistic anymore. I think that 35 is pretty much the target. Now, we did well over that last year just because we had significant tailwind on mix and restructuring. 35 is still a good number in terms of incremental.
Okay. Anything on the recent move in raw materials that we have to be aware of? I think, you know, you guys guided the 1.5%-2% of price with the inflation. Should we think about that trending more towards 2%?
Yeah. Look, we're fussing around with copper. Copper is kind of all hung up with the macro right now. I think that we're well-positioned on steel and stainless steel. On copper, I think we've got enough pricing power over time, we can deal with that.
Okay. The 1.5%-2%, should that be more like two given this incremental inflation?
I don't know, right? I mean, between the business mix and the mix within the businesses, I think that, you know, 1.5%- 2% is probably a solid number. I don't wanna talk that up.
Okay. Okay. Any questions on the business fundamentals out there that anyone has? I mean. Oh, here we go. Go ahead. Just say it. I'll talk about it.
Just more general, I mean, sounds really good. I mean, look at Steve, like, this is pretty good. I mean, when you think about what's going on geopolitically and macro-wise, I mean, I don't wanna say you're not concerned, I know you're focused on it, but it doesn't seem like it's really keeping you up at night. Why is that? Have we kinda passed peak uncertainty at this point or?
Well, I mean, I heard the question.
Okay, great.
Yeah. I mean, look, you could drill yourself in a hole here if you really wanted to. All I can do is react to what we see from the data and the conversations with our customers. Frankly, it looks like if it gets worse, it's more of an issue for Europe than it is for North America. Our weighting in terms of business mix and where we see the growth coming this year, naturally, just because of GDP alone, is more North America focused. I think that we tend to kind of forget that the changes in the tax law on bonus depreciation took a while to kinda work its way through the system, but there is a pretty good incentive out there for doing CapEx right now.
Higher energy pricing globally, does that spur additional CapEx into the energy complex this year? Look, that's not for Dover to answer. That's more for the energy guys to answer. That generally has a long tail. Look, could the other shoe drop? Sure, it could. You know what? We made it through COVID, and we made it through tariff tantrum, and we made it. I mean, if you go back and look at our performance during those periods, we tend to do well. You know what? If it gets bad for whatever reason, our balance sheet is better than anybody. A dislocation in the market, we can take advantage of either from a capital return point of view or from an M&A point of view. I can't prognosticate about something that may happen. I can only just go by the data on the ground that we see.
You guys certainly aren't the most global company I cover, so the Middle East exposure obviously directly is, you know, probably pretty, you know.
Yeah, it's manageable.
Yeah, that's a good segue to the balance sheet.
Mm-hmm.
You guys have, every year, you seem to have, you know, a big war chest. You know, you're adding here and there, but you're also buying back a decent amount of stock. You know, what would you place the odds on today between M&A as we move through the year, M&A and buyback as we're getting, you know, towards the midpoint of the year?
I mean, the biggest mistake I made last year was buying half a billion, and so I should've bought $1 billion, I mean, in retrospect. At the time, we were looking at the M&A pipeline and kinda keeping our powder dry. We move into this year. I think what I said during the conference call, the full year based on transaction multiples, that we were probably biased towards capital return in 2026 more than usual. It's usually a 70/30 split, so 70% biased towards M&A and 30% towards capital return. In late January, I think that we said our bias was 50/50. I think that's fair to say it's the same right now. You know, the bad news is, again, that multiples are high.
The good news is that because multiples are high, there are a lot more assets coming to market because everybody sees the multiples they're trading at. Your guess is as good as mine. Were multiples high because of the paucity of assets and multiples come down when more assets come? Hard to say. I guess we'll see. I guess the good news is more assets are coming, so there's more opportunities to kick the tires on things that come. Generally speaking, I'd say that more than half of the M&A that we do is not assets brought to market, that we get them ourselves. We do have some opportunities that we've been working on in that regard. We're looking at kinda some of the assets that are largely coming out of PE. We're looking at them. We'll see what prevailing multiples are for those assets when they come.
Are you wed to deals that bolt on to the current platforms, or are there opportunities? We had you know the Dave Cote here yesterday.
Mm-hmm
F rom GPGI. Their whole business model is basically providing, you know, kind of a permanent capital home for some of these businesses that are coming out of private equity. Maybe the private equity guys feel a little bit more of an urgency to sell these days. Are you seeing, you know, some assets come out that would be attractive, not necessarily within one of your platforms today, that you would move on as a new platform if the price was right?
Yeah. I mean, if it's not an adjacency, then it's very hard. You know, execution, you know, it's easy to spend the money. Execution risk is real, right? You need to know how to run the businesses, and I don't want to get on a soapbox of, you know, we went through this whole period of every industrial company becoming a software company as if you just know how to run software companies. I mean, I think that was a pretty far punt to get valuations at the time. You know, near adjacencies we'll look at. Sikora, you know, we don't.
We're not in test and inspection in any meaningful way, but because it was an adjacency to a position that we had where we knew the customer base, then we said, "You know, this is a move that we can make." Same thing when we got into cryogenic components. We knew the end customer, so we had kind of a right to play, and a lot of that is through distribution, and we know how to run distribution businesses. There's check marks. You know, we're not an asset collector. You know, we see things from time to time that kind of would be nice to have 'cause you think you can turn them around. You know, I don't know. I don't think anybody wants to see our portfolio get more complex than it is.
One would argue that it trades at a discount because of the complexity of the portfolio that we haven't been able to overcome, so I don't think we'd go the other way and make it more complex at this point.
Right. I think that makes sense. Are you seeing a bit more urgency from private equity, or are they still-
Oh, well, it's what I said before. I mean, look, I've been hearing private equity's gotta monetize for four years now. But interest rates are heading the right way and multiples are heading the right way, so if you're not gonna bring it now, when are you gonna bring it?
Right. The last question I have is on this buyback. Have you-
Mm-hmm
thought about doing it in a more programmatic way? 'Cause you tend to be unique in that, you know, you kinda, like, get to the end of the year, and then it's like a $500 million sudden ASR that you've done.
Yeah
Have you thought about maybe a little more programmatic, or you just like having that optionality?
Yeah. I mean, we've thought about it for sure. I mean, programmatic becomes a little bit funny because then everybody just models it in that you're gonna do it every year. Then you do some M&A, and you don't, and then you kinda get all twisted up, and it takes away the opportunistic nature of if you think that your equity is dislocated from a valuation point of view, then you can act meaningfully as opposed to averaging it over time. Yeah, I mean, we discuss it every year about kind of what the stance is going to be. I think we've proven when we've acted meaningfully. I think we're 100% in the money.
Okay. Well, I think, as an editorial, you could at least raise the lower of the range by, like, a nickel. I think that would be differentiated when you guys report, so.
Oh. Thanks for that. I'll keep that in mind, Steve.
Everybody feels the same way in the room too, just like.
Yeah, I'm shocked.
If you could feel the energy here, you'd be blown away. All right. Rich.
Well, you know, you only get rewarded for beating and raising now. I mean, that's the new mantra. Like, give out terrible guidance, and then just knock it up every quarter. But not us. We give you what we think. We'll see about when we get to the end of the quarter, though, depending on order rates.
We could talk for about three hours on this.
Yeah, I'm sure we could.
We're out of time. Rich, thanks.
Yep
For making the effort on Zoom. We appreciate it.
Yeah, sorry for not being there, Steve.
Nope, understandable.
See you soon.
See ya.
All right. Bye.