Let's get started again. Thanks for joining us. We're really excited to have Fortive Corporation with us. Today we've got Jim Lico, who is the President and CEO, and we've got Tami Newcombe, who is the President and CEO of Precision Technologies and future CEO of Ralliant. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Tami, who I think has a few prepared remarks, and then we'll get into questions.
Thank you. Thanks for spending some time with us this morning. We appreciate that. Jump in here. So two weeks ago in earnings, you heard Jim Lico and Chuck McLaughlin share that we had a record finish for both margins and free cash flow. Exciting, exciting finish. Even more, even more on the front of my mind these days is positioning us for a spin. And we have the opportunity. I'll steal some of Jim Lico's words from last week at our leadership conference. We are on the cusp of the most transformative year in Fortive's history. And we have the ability between Olumide Soroye and myself to really set the foundation for two really strong companies. And I've been spending my time getting us positioned for the spin.
We spoke last week about that we'll pull forward to the Q3 timeframe. But my confidence is high. And my confidence comes from two things.
One is the team that we have. And I'll speak a little bit about the team and what they've been able to deliver. And then secondly, how this spin allows us to have a very focused strategy. So we have a name. Our name is Ralliant. We've also announced our board chair, Ganesh Moorthy. He previously was the Chief Executive Officer of Microchip. And I am extremely appreciative to have two of the founding board members from the Fortive board that have offered and have joined Ralliant. So some really nice progress there. When I speak about the team, the operators, the presidents, seven of them that run the operating companies and Ralliant are super energized about this opportunity. As we finished the leadership conference last week, I was able to stay on with those presidents.
That's the team that has been able to deliver these phenomenal results: the mid-single digit growth at 4% CAGR for the last three years and 2x that in adjusted operating profits. The other part of the spin is that to our customers, there's very little disruption. Our customers do business with the leading brands in the operating companies. They do business with Gems, Setra and Qualitrol, Tektronix and Keithley, and EA. That's where the customer rings the cash register. And these presidents and operators will continue to take care of our customers. Of those presidents, they're deep in FBS. They are practitioners of our business system. Five of seven of them have been with us since the DBS tool set. So really strong foundation here to build upon. When we think about our strategy, we get to be very focused on our competitive differentiation, what we do really well.
It all starts with Precision Technologies. And I mean precision like to the atomic clock type precision in instrumentation, in sensors, and in safety systems. And that portfolio is most valuable to customers who have mission-critical applications. And those applications live in these eight end markets. And these eight end markets, none of which is over 20% of our revenue, give us a really diverse opportunity. Our strategy didn't just start with the spin. If you were with us two years ago at the investor day that we did as Fortive, we talked then about the tailwind of electrification and digitization. And we have continued to align our innovation roadmaps and our opportunity to drive organic growth with these tailwinds. And we will continue to do that as we go into the future. The other way that we get more focused is on our capital deployment.
You will see us be predictable in where we make investments. We will continue, like Fortive has, to use share buybacks as one of our levers, as well as our acquisitions will be more of a tuck-in, bolt-on inside of our operating companies over the first several quarters of Ralliant. So if I just step back and maybe close on the value proposition, we have a really nice portfolio aligned to some tailwinds with a much more focused strategy. Today, we're a 4% through-the-cycle grower delivering 2x the adjusted operating profits. We will continue to try to focus on moving that growth rate up. We'll start with a point and just continue to drive the growth in the business. We'll be very disciplined about our capital deployment and continue the industry-leading free cash flow that we've been able to deliver. Thank you.
Tam, so maybe I'll start with you just because you know it's very topical. You just had your meeting last week. So if I think about Precision Technologies or Ralliant, your outlook for 2025 growth is up slightly, but you also talked about 35% of the portfolio growing double digits. And I think you mentioned today Qualitrol, Pacific, those are the sort of big drivers, but you've also highlighted adding more capacity. So maybe talk about what kind of a bump in capacity you're talking about and how fast could these fast businesses grow.
Yeah, the businesses you mentioned, the operating companies, but it's really playing into the expansion of the grid, the electrical grid. And where Qualitrol plays, there is every transformer that goes into the grid is lit up with health monitoring systems from the Qualitrol business. And then in Pacific Scientific, it's the production programs in the defense industry that have continued to be really strong. So I think of the capacity in two ways. First, short term, we will continue to use, like we have in the prior years, our toolkit, our FBS toolkit to get more out of ourselves and more out of our space. And when you think about 2025, which is we're right here in the middle of it, that's what we'll use to drive capacity. We'll start to make some capital investments this year. Those will come into play more building expansion in the 2026 timeframe.
Got it. So it's more in existing capacity this year and then maybe more roofline for next year. Is that the way to think about it?
Yeah, if you look at those businesses over a three-year period, they're up 50%-75% in their business. So we have been doing this and we will have to continue to do this to meet the demand of the customers.
Helpful, Tamara. And so maybe, Jim, I'll go back to you just because I want to get sort of the current landscape out of the way a little. I know you just reported a couple of weeks ago, probably not too much change, but we all watch Fluke. It's a nice short cycle business. You talked about positive North American point of sale of Fluke in Q4. Are you seeing sort of those positive sell-out trends continue here in Q1? And I think you mentioned you expect orders in dollars to be up in PT in the first half versus the second half despite some continued weakness in China. So I just want to verify that and see how PT orders were trending in Q1.
Yeah, so maybe start with the general landscape. As you said, earnings a couple of weeks ago, not a lot different from what we would have seen. What we said on the earnings call is exactly what you just said, which is, you know, I think when we look at Fluke, as you mentioned, it's kind of our canary in the coal mine. North America has been pretty solid. Europe mixed, Andy, to some extent, kind of depends on the country. Then most of the high-growth markets are pretty good, maybe with the exception of China. We have broadly a comp challenge in the first quarter relative to China.
What we saw last year was a number of channel partners really across the portfolio build inventory in anticipation of a number of the government programs that were supposed to drive demand last year that I think, as we talked through the year, didn't. So we've got that comp, and that'll be a challenge to the businesses both on orders and shipments. In PT, I think TamTami can comment on this, but I think we're pretty even first half, second half, maybe on the order front. We should see some growth in orders in the first half of PT.
I should clarify because I can't even read my own questions. Like the first half of this year versus last [crosstalk] half last year, orders will be up. That was the question.
Yeah. And I think, you know, just, you know, the environment, because I know everybody probably wants to have a sense of the environment. You know, certainly there's uncertainty in a number of places and a number of reasons and why. But, you know, base demand still, as we mentioned, you sort of take the days out, you take the China comp out, things are pretty close to the fourth quarter, particularly when you look at Fluke had a little bit of advanced buying in the fourth quarter that really probably should have been in the first quarter. When you look at that, you're kind of looking at fourth quarter to first quarter relatively stable.
Did you want to say anything, TamTami, to that?
Yeah, Jim mentioned on Q1, this is the toughest comp we'll have at PT Ralliant of the year. And as he said, there was pull forward orders for the, it was called the old to new stimulus program that really didn't produce much for us in Q1 last year. But the channel is pretty well stocked in China. So we have pretty low expectations there. And then this is our toughest comp for EA. So we burned a lot of backlog in Q1. So we'll start with a low double digit kind of start for, or low mid-single digit, sorry, that was tech, low mid-single digit for PT and then improve gradually through the year.
Got it. That's helpful. And Jim, just following up on Fluke for a second, you know, again, it's forecast to start a little slower in consumables, you know, and services in Q1. We already talked about China. So are you worried at all about Fluke cycling or is it really just now more steady-eddy business, more recurring sales versus its history?
As I think we've sort of talked all through 2024, Fluke didn't sort of, you know, didn't cycle, right? And sort of had really good performance. And we talked about it on the earnings call. They've really accelerated the level of innovation in the business, which is not only to some extent has amped up the, certainly amped up the revenue on the new product side, but it's also probably leveraged our price a little bit better, you know, than historical purposes. So we could probably get a little bit better growth out of price than historically just because the innovation is so strong. And as you know, multi-years of innovation, you end up getting price on that after the first year. So I think it's a combination of those things that have been really strong. And you know, there's going to be some pieces.
Some of the headwind in Fluke in the first quarter is that China conversation that we talked about, very similar to what Tami just described. So that's a little bit of the headwind, but we think it's still going to be a very strong part of the business going forward. The big hit in the first quarter, Andy, relative to the days is really on the health side. It's really on the consumables front in health. You know, if you think about ASP, about half of health is consumables, both at ASP and in Landauer. And it's a pretty straight calculation that if you have less days, you have less consumables. And that's really where there's also some hits in IOS on the software and services side. That's probably the other place where we see some of that hit as well.
Got it. So I don't want to focus the discussion too much on China. So let's just ask one more on China for now. So I think, you know, organic sales for the year is down mid-single digits for China in 2025. But conversely, you've got good growth in high-growth markets ex-China. So in that context, how are you thinking about the longer-term outlook in China versus the other markets? Can other HGMs take the place of China over time? Or like how do you think about it?
Yeah, and they have been. You know, over the last couple of years, what I'll call non-China high-growth markets has been growing high single digit. And China's been down the last couple of years. So I think that in and of itself, you know, you're starting to mix towards that growth rate. The high-growth markets now ex-China are bigger than China totally for Fortive. So the answer is yes. And I think as we go forward, TamTami runs China for us broadly for Fortive. And I think as we have spent a lot of time on this, it's probably not a high-growth market in the next few years in the sense of, you know, for a couple of decades, you could dial in high single to double-digit growth in China and sort of be pretty relatively predictable.
But I think, you know, it's going to move down to a low- to mid-single-digit growth rate as I think we get into the 2026, 2027 timeframe. And, you know, that's maybe moderating expectations. We don't invest a ton today into the region. A lot of our, what I will call regional investment has been going into some of these markets as manufacturing regionalizes, R&D regionalizes, real strong opportunities in India, Latin America, Middle East. So, you know, we've been leveraging those investments. So, you know, at the end of the day, we still think we can get growth out of China longer term, but certainly moderating from, you know, what I would say general expectations of what we've seen over the years.
TamTami, I should just ask you, like how difficult is it to run the business in China these days in terms of visibility versus what you're used to, maybe?
Yeah, for Ralliant, China is about 15% of our total revenues. We have a terrific team over there, great culture, great engagement. We have manufacturing in China for a broad part of our business. What's been a real positive for us is we're already in China for China across all the businesses that sell into China. That business is, you know, we continue to see some strength there. It's the restrictions that we have. There are customers we can no longer sell to, which has shrunk our market size in China probably 20%-30%, and where we can sell test and measurement equipment. I would also say outside of China, we're seeing real growth, Taiwan, Japan, India, real strengths for us.
Helpful. And then, TamTami, I just want to understand sort of what exactly is going on in tech, right? So like high single-digit growth in orders the last couple of quarters. Like what are you forecasting for the year? It seems like when I try to look at it, you're talking about not much growth still in tech this year, even though orders have turned, you know, more positive. So maybe you can sort of talk about that.
Yeah, you're right on the year. For the year, that's how we've called the year. We did see really strong. We've had two quarters of double-digit orders growth. Some of those orders were for long lead time systems that go into wafer production. So you'll see those shipping in the second half of the year where we took the orders in the first half. You also see here, as we get through the first half, things have sort of steadied out in the European market. We're still calling China to be down probably high single digits from a tech standpoint. And what gives them some lift in the second half is we've got some new products coming out. If you remember back to all the supply chain issues that we were fighting coming off of COVID, it did delay some of our innovation roadmaps.
You saw in the back half of last year and then into this year, you'll see some really nice NPIs. You'll also see some strength in EA in North America as we get to the second half. It's still being held back by EV. Anything to do with EV and infrastructure in Europe is way down. We don't see China coming back.
Tamara, I feel like you always have some sort of NPI sort of movement. Is this a bigger year, 2025, you know, new version of an oscilloscope? Like what's going on this year?
It is. It's a big year for tech from announcements. The platforming approach that started in about 2018, which we platformed from the two all the way to the six series of the oscilloscopes, we'll take that to the high end. We've also taken on a platform approach for the Keithley portfolio. You'll see the first launch of that this year. And then the first software platform, we're selling to a few lighthouse customers, but that will come in in the second half to start to contribute to our revenue. And then we announced in the fourth quarter a new probe specific for this power space that's so important to tech. So it is a year.
I think what you're going to see going forward with platforms is more velocity that they can announce more products without starting from scratch because we build off of a platform.
Just digging in because this is the time that I can, like in Keithley, like it seems like there's more momentum there. Is that kind of right characterization? Is that where, I mean, I think you guys mentioned defense and high-end semiconductor and compute is driving your business. So is it like Keithley, like maybe expound on sort of what you're seeing there?
Yeah, I'll go just Ralliant and I'll go outside of Tektronix. Anything to do with the expansion in data center. So we have sensors that go into the liquid-cooled part of the data center. All of the compute, which includes the compute and it includes the memory and the communications. All of those are where Tektronix plays in data center. And anytime there's a technology change or an expansion, those are good opportunities for Tektronix. So data center is a good place for us.
Is it possible to ask you like, you know, how big the exposure is inside Tektronix to data centers, something like that, just out of curiosity?
If you were to add communications, high-performance compute. I missed your question there on Keithley. Keithley plays in two places. They play on the bench in R&D, but they also play in the production of high-performance memory that's going into the data center. So if you put that together, I'd estimate somewhere 30% or so.
Pretty big number. Okay, that's helpful. And then Tami?
Just to maybe connect the dots over things we've been talking about for a few years relative to the good work that Tami and her team have been doing is we used to talk about mainstream oscilloscopes and some of the things that they've really positioned. This is a long-term positioning that Tami and the team have really done, sort of seeing around corners as to where this was going to go. Because as you can think about, these product decisions didn't happen six months ago, right? They happened years ago. And the work they've done to sort of position this in order to make the business more durable, as we said, it's not completely durable. It still has cyclical growth to it, but it does have a durability element to it. And that really has continued to improve year on year on year.
I think that really speaks to the good work they've done organically to position their R&D efforts around these markets.
It's helpful.
Maybe to the platform approach, maybe to bring it to life. We sell to engineers. And an engineer today, starting with the mainstream platform, can go all the way down to a two series, up to a seven series with the same user interface, the same great feature set. So it really simplifies the interactions and engineers have with these platforms.
Very helpful, and then Tami, you mentioned EV, you know, so like obviously there's been a fair amount of focus on EA Elektro. I think you're guiding it to have a better year this year, mid-single digit growth in 2025, but it's been down. So what's driving the turn that you expect and when do you see the turn?
Yeah, when the acquisition happened, where EA was less penetrated was North America. That's where Tektronix has a very strong footprint. So the growth that you'll see this year in EA is the combination, and this was part of our thesis, which was that we will open doors for the EA team into the R&D labs where Tektronix has played for decades and decades. So that's where you'll see the growth. Until we get some lift in EV in Europe, I think that will be soft and pretty low exposure in China right now. So it's a North America story.
Got it. So let me ask you a question about margin. I'll open up to the audience in case they have any questions. But so overall, I mean, margin performance has been very good over the many years, actually. You drove 100 basis points of margin improvement in 2024, despite only 1% growth. That's pretty good. Maybe talk about the drivers of margin growth and then how should investors think about the potential for really outsized margin growth as you separate? Because a lot of times as you separate, you get more focused, even better at execution. So how do you think about the possibilities for Ralliant or New Fortive?
You know, we've averaged 125 basis points a year for five years. So pretty good. I think that's a pretty strong performance that compares, I think, pretty favorably to just about anyone. I think when you look at it, I think two things, Andy. Number one is, I'll let Tamara speak to the Ralliant piece because I think it's important. But you know, we've always had, if you think about what's got us there, it's a combination of FBS in its true sense, which is just productivity in every way. And what we've done recently in bringing together a lot of the activities that we do with the Fort, which is our centralized artificial intelligence effort and capability and team and all that, that is we're in the early days of the next generation of productivity tied to the FBS tools.
And we've created a number of tools internally that now use that leverage AI, but really facilitate FBS efforts. So I think the productivity effort in the company is probably in the early innings of opportunity going forward. Obviously, the continued effort around innovation has a margin, a positive margin implication. And that really, I mentioned the price story at Fluke, but you know, when you create products that have more value to customers, you know, our deep belief is that they should have higher margins. And so when you look at the gross margin improvements that we've had over the last five years, you know, our margin expansion is pretty close to our gross margin expansion simply because of those two efforts. And I think that those things continue.
I do believe that both businesses have an opportunity here to maybe do a little bit more investing on the front of it from the more focused effort gives them. I think more effort on an innovation front, even though 2024 was a record year for innovation at Fortive and 2025 will beat that record and be even better. But at the end of the day, I think, you know, we'll continue to focus. So I think the AOP growth and the EPS growth, you know, I'm not saying we won't average that margin expansion. I think it'll break off into two businesses and those numbers are a little bit different. But I think at the end of the day, the idea that we can continue to work on accelerating core growth with good fall through inevitably gives us a great opportunity to expand margins.
But as we've always done, we've never taken every dollar that has come through from a variable contribution margin and put that to the bottom line. We've always had a perspective of we should put more of that back into the business with high return investments. And the single biggest, the single highest return investment we have in Fortive is investments in R&D in terms of payback and return on invested capital.
Tamara, did you want to say anything there? Are you good?
Well, as Jim was speaking, I was thinking about, it was just last week, I got to host our day of accelerating productivity. I actually, at the start of the session, renamed it how we unlock growth in the company, and real examples, Chief Financial Officer o f Tektronix standing up talking about how we're taking FBS and infusing AI and getting just maxing productivity throughout the company, and they shared what's working, what's not working, and how do we accelerate it across the entire enterprise, so Jim, everything Jim said is what we're doing internally at Ralliant and Fortive to drive continued productivity and use that to, you know, save to invest, reinvest in our R&D and our organic growth.
Any questions from the audience? I don't think I see anything. I'm going to continue. Oh, there is a question. I'm excited.
Can you give an example of what infusing AI into these businesses means? Like what's the opportunity set?
Yeah. Well, I would say the one that comes to mind first is probably in product development. And it's been pretty standard that when you think about software engineering in particular, but engineering in general, product development in general, the tools are out. HubSpot, you know, the tools are there today to be able to leverage time to market. And I think we're now at a 25% efficiency in terms of our R&D efforts relative to those tools. And think about that as 6% of our revenue is in R&D roughly. So if you think about $6 billion, call it the $400 million of spend, and we've gotten a great deal of productivity. Now, most of that we put towards accelerating innovation.
So that's a good example of why 2024 and 2025 are record years for innovation because we're using those cost savings and we're applying it to accelerate innovation. Tamara mentioned Tektronix and we had our leadership conference. I think he named 90,000 hours of savings in back office activities. So in the efforts at tech last year, so pretty much all of our, and that's in all the things you think about robotic, mostly robotic process automation of just taking, you know, tasks and turning them into automation. So we're, as I mentioned, we're still in the early innings. We've got a number of, we've started our Kaizen effort that actually starts with an AI opportunity. And we now have what we call AI Kaizens, which is implementing some of this robotic process automation. So those are some examples of how we're using.
Like I said, still early days, we haven't really applied it that much to the selling process. Both businesses, as we go forward, have fairly sizable go-to-market investments. You know, that's a place where there's still a lot of opportunity.
Any other questions? So I want to shift to HS. You know, segments have been growing nicely for the last five quarters. I think it's grown at mid-single digit or better. So how do you think about it going forward? I know Q1 you talked about it's got the DAYS issue. But I think, Jim, you and I have talked about that you've really worked on your global infrastructure at ASP over time. So where are you with that progress? Are there any bigger risks to HS overall, whether it's China? Some people asking about U.S. hospital reimbursements, things like that.
Yeah. Well, it continues to be, as you mentioned, a very strong business. I mean, when you look at it over the last few years, we've had a really, really strong business. The go-to-market changes we made in 2023 in North America have been a real positive, as we saw, and certainly in the back half of the year. So we're really getting the go-to-market motion around the world in a really good place. It's a mid-single digit grower, Andy. I think ASP continues to be the majority of our health business. Our Landauer business is, if Fluke Health is a mid-single digit grower, Provation is going to grow a little bit better than that. So, you know, as Provation becomes a bigger part of the portfolio, maybe over time that growth rate might move up a little bit.
I think the thing we were most pleased about in 2024, and we talked about on the call, was the number of new products that we've now announced in the fourth quarter with 510(k) approval. That, I mean, we really, we had a lack of innovation. When we bought the company, we really didn't have an innovation funnel. It was not, and Tami knows this, she ran the business for a while. It was sort of nonexistent. We really got it started a few years ago. And we're just now starting to see that. So I think the combination of the changes we made on the go-to-market motion, and as you mentioned, it's a global business. Relative to North America, we still feel things are good. You know, reimbursements or elective procedures are really what drives that business. Elective procedures are where hospitals make money.
I was with a couple of hospital presidents the other day, and they're trying to figure out how to add more ORs, how to invest more in elective procedures. That's where their investments are going. So, you know, I think that's a good example of why that business continues to do pretty well in the future.
Helpful. Then for New Fortive, you're expecting double-digit ARR growth in 2025. Can you first remind investors how big ARR is going to be a portion of New Fortive as it separates? And then talk about the components contributing to that growth. I think you mentioned a business such as Gordian could actually benefit from, as DOGE kind of looks at efficiency in federal spending. Maybe talk about that. And what are you seeing on the ground at Gordian, Accruent, and ServiceChannel right now?
So, you know, our software businesses in total are going to be over $1 billion in New Fortive going forward. That's maybe a structural. And, you know, you think about that as maybe a little bit of two-thirds-ish is in the AR realm and the rest of it is some of the, you know, the one-time stuff. And that is going to grow high single to low double digit this year, grew high single last year. We think we're in a, the businesses are in a good place. It's a broad set of businesses for sure. FAL, our facility and asset lifecycle software, our single biggest component of that, as you mentioned. Gordian has been a great grower for us the last few years.
Did see a little bit of more comp challenge last year than anything, and maybe a little bit of slowdown in some states where they didn't see as much spending. You know, at the end of the day, the DOGE theory is a theory, which is if governments today our software and solutions at Gordian are used to sort of really take projects and get them implemented at best cost, managing the project, comparing it against, you know, benchmarkable costs. And, you know, theoretically, if we become more cost-conscious on projects like that, then our software and our solutions are certainly right there for that. We don't have a lot of federal business, so it's mostly state and local. We do have a federal solution that we can take to market, but for the most part. So it's kind of theory that that's going to happen.
But I do think that business is in a good place. FAL's in a good place for the year. We feel really good about that business going forward. The margin expansion has been really strong. We mentioned that on the earnings call. So I think the margin structure, the growth rate of that business is going to be a real additive piece of New Fortive going forward.
And then, Jim, you had a pretty big move in terms of your timing of separation. You know, you had talked originally about being out of 2025. It's now early Q3. I think you commented on your earnings call that you could issue your Form 10 in the spring. So what's gone more smoothly than you originally expected to speed up the timing? Usually, it's only a couple of months after Form 10 issued for when you can separate. So could you actually speed up the separation a little bit more?
I think the track that we mentioned, which is early third quarter, is our track. And when you, as you mentioned, there's some IRS things that, you know, we have to come to play. We have to finalize the Form 10, as you mentioned. We've got to build the team. That's going well. But, you know, it's certainly on track, but something we want to make sure we continue to do. And we want some cycles. You know, we've, you know, why has it better than we originally anticipated? Well, you know, we've done this before, but everyone is a little bit different. So, you know, when we originally set things up, we sort of play it out. And over the first, our teams did a fantastic job getting started. The amount of work that we got done before the new year was immense.
Kudos to our team that really stepped it up and did a fantastic job. This is where FBS plays a huge role. We have an Obeya room, you know, in Everett that we can all go to. We go to on a frequent basis to sort of see the progress of all the swim lanes of projects and things like that. It's just, you know, the team has done a really good job. I feel we're in a really good place of where we're at. This allows us to do some cycles. Tami mentioned at the onset, we built the board. We still have some additional folks to add to the board, but we feel good about that. I think we're in a really, we've got a name, which is a great name.
I think we're in a really good place for the timeline we talked about.
And to that point, Jim, you know, you talked about setting both sides up for, you know, a nice investment-grade rating. We can talk about any thoughts or discussions you and your teams are having about potential optimal capital structures of each side.
Yeah, you know, probably in the 1.5, I think we ended the year as Fortive at 1.6 turns. You know, we think in the 1.5-2 range is where both companies should be set up. That'll put them in a good position from an investment-grade perspective. And that's, I think, you know, probably New Fortive could probably do a, could go a little higher because of the nature of the recurring revenue. I'm confident that the rating agencies would give them more latitude. The reality is that Ralliant has been incredibly strong free cash flow, even when the revenue has been down. So the cyclicality, while it applies to the revenue, our team does a great job of managing the free cash flow. So both of them are going to be really strong free cash flow generators. They're both going to have, I think, lots of degrees of freedom.
And really the anticipation of us and sort of the primary thesis of this was to set both companies up with really strong balance sheets to give them the degrees of freedom that they want to do to deploy capital going forward.
It's helpful. And then in the same vein, we know you've committed to deploying 75% of free cash flow to share repurchases through the spin. Like how should investors think about the timing of repurchases and under what circumstances would you consider front-loading the repurchases?
We continue to think about, you know, there's all the things that go into it relative to the capital structure we just talked about, how the quarters play out. We're almost there when you think about how much timeline we've got left. We'll continue to look for opportunities to buy back stock. Probably just as the math goes because of the way free cash, we generate more free cash flow in the second half than the first half. That percentage could go up a little bit in the first half, but I think we should think about that on a full-year basis as being sort of 75%.
I got another question to ask you on M&A, but I want to ask you the question I asked you last year and I ask all companies. What are the top two or three innovations and structural changes affecting your company over the next five years? And are there any emerging industry trends that are perhaps being overlooked in the current discourse?
I think I probably take more than three minutes to talk about that.
I know. But we'll continue.
But I would say, well, Tami talked a lot about the drivers on Ralliant. And I think that's pretty specific. So, and I think incredibly strong. I think when you think about the Fortive side, you know, we talk about safety and productivity solutions for industrial and healthcare. When you think about just where the world's going relative to productivity and the technologies that are enabling that, that is an enormous trend. And that plays out in our software and businesses. It plays out in our healthcare businesses. It plays out at Fluke. We're in a really good position to really leverage technology. That's AI. It's the software and embedded nature of the things we do today and the domain expertise that we have.
I think when you really just step back and look at what the regionalization of manufacturing, the desire for countries to be able to take on maybe more of their own destiny and our capability on a global basis to leverage that, those are two enormous trends that are really strong. You know, China's going to be a little bit slower, but you know, in many respects, I think across the board, we've sort of weathered that storm over the last couple of years in many respects. We're positioned from a make in China for China to be able to be positioned to compete well across our business line. I think those are the, you know, the positives are really strong and we've mitigated, you know, a number of the challenges that we've had.
You know, we think both businesses are really in a unique position. We spent nine years building the capability and the foundation that we've got in the business. I think taking that, you'll see in 2025, Tami mentioned, I called it the most transformative year in our history. In many ways it is, but in many ways it sets us up for the success of the future.
And then last question. So you kind of de-emphasize in acquisitions now, you know, as you do repurchases and separate. How do you stay plugged in? You know, because both companies are going to come out and, you know, you had Fortive, for instance, it took a little while to do your first bigger acquisition. Should we expect that again or are you ready to go or like?
We're ready to go. So, you know, even though M&A is always episodic. Some years you do a bunch, some years you don't do as many. But if you take, you know, we average a decent amount of deals. You know, we did five types of deals at the end of 2023. We pretty much put this on hold in 2024. But the process itself, you know, we've toned it, we've tweaked it, we've Kaizened it. It'll be well, it'll serve our capital allocation strategies going forward. Both Tami and Olumide are very plugged into their current processes. We still review those processes. So we're still talking to people. We're still very aware of what's going on.
You know, we've been, you know, even though we've said we take a bit of a hiatus, the good news is you haven't seen a lot happen in a lot of our markets. We feel good about the fact that, you know, we're going to be, you know, early third quarter is going to be here before you know it. Both businesses with great balance sheets, with more of a bolt-on focus, as Tami suggested, and as Olumide will talk about as well as he gets out here over the next few months. I think in both cases, we're well positioned to do that.
Thank you, Jim and T ami very much. Appreciate it. You guys.