I think we'll get started now. It's my pleasure to have here Jim and Olumide from Fortive. Jim, of course, has been the CEO since the spin-out nine years ago from Danaher. Olumide will be the CEO of the new Fortive, once Precision Technologies spins out, in about six months' time. So thanks for being here. I think, Olumide, you've got a couple of slides to go through first, and then we'll go into questions.
Great. Wonderful. Thanks for having us. It's great to be with you all today. So just a few things to set the context here. So we are excited at Fortive about the five-year history that we're building on, history that's shown us with sustainable performance, with core growth accelerating to meet single digits, 350 basis points of gross margin expansion, 600 basis points of gross margin expansion over the last five years. Great free cash flows, as you've all seen. And we feel quite excited about our capacity to sustain that level of performance with the Fortive Business System. As we also covered in our earnings call two weeks ago, we feel really good about our strategic positioning for 2025.
We feel like with the stable industrial demand that we're seeing and the NPI, new product introduction momentum in all of our companies, we're set up for continued growth with our software and recurring revenue businesses growing at high single digits. We feel really excited that the spin process of Precision Technologies, PT segment, is moving even faster than we initially thought, and we expect that to be done in early Q3. That then sets us up after the spin for new Fortive, that is incredibly exciting, and as we get more firm about the spin date, we will have an investor day focused on really laying out the outlook for the company, but for today, just a few things I would highlight about new Fortive. The first one is we will be a much simpler and more focused company with a very attractive financial profile.
Everything we do at new Fortive will be about innovating essential technologies to make the world safe and productive. Our Intelligent Operating Solutions segment will do that in an industrial setting. That will be two-thirds of the company. And our Advanced Healthcare Solutions segment will do it in the healthcare segment. That will be a third of the company. It's worth noting that everything we do in healthcare will very much be about healthcare operations. It's the most manufacturing part of a hospital system. It's how you track your instruments, how you clean them, make sure they get to the right place at the right time, and keep both providers and patients safe and productive. So that there's a lot of commonality across the business. All of that adds up to about $4 billion in revenues.
You can see the margin profile, 65-ish% gross margins, over 30% operating margins in a business, and half of the business in recurring revenue models. Importantly, over the last three years, we've shown that this constitution of Fortive, i.e., the IOS and AHS segment, has delivered 6% compounded annual growth rate in the business. The operating profit dollars have grown at twice that rate, at 12% a year. This gives us the basis for expecting we'll be able to deliver mid-single-digit growth, going forward, for the company. In addition to our organic performance, we're also making a deliberate shift in our capital allocation strategy going forward.
We believe that based on the incredible work we've done the last nine years to create the current state of Fortive, with strong positions in all the markets that we play, we can shift to a capital allocation approach that's much lower risk. That really balances share buybacks as a more sustained piece of our formula and then the M&A that we do, more focused on a very disciplined set of bolt-on deals that we execute on. Those bolt-on deals will be things that are close to our existing positions in the markets we're playing. They will be things that are accretive to our growth rate and our recurring and durable revenue mix. They will be things that can benefit from the Fortive Business System, capacity to unlock value.
They will tend to be things that are very strong in terms of the cash returns on the deal. Just, and that all of that will just reinforce our mid-single digit performance. Just in closing, just to illustrate what I mean by bolt-on deals a little bit, this last slide, slide seven, shows four deals that we did in the second half of 2023. So it's kind of our H2 2023 vintage deals in the IOS segment. And you can see there's four deals, generally, high growth rate deals. You can see 25% growth this year, collectively across them. They're high recurring and durable revenue mix. Most of them are recurring, and very sticky businesses overall. They've all benefited from the Fortive Business System's capacity to unlock value. And hence, you see those delivering low-teens ROIC in 2025, the second year.
Not every package of deal we do will have this exact profile, but that gives you a bit of a taste of what we mean by bolt-ons versus the mega deals and big deployments, and we think this unlocks a lot of value for shareholders, so that's really the context I wanted to cover, but I wanna make sure we get to your questions.
Great. Thanks, Olumide. Maybe we'll just start with a couple of questions on sort of current Fortive and the near term. You know, I think there's some concern maybe, you know, is the guide for the year a little bit back-end loaded? It's a very uncertain macro. I feel people say that every year, though. But anyway, assume this is uncertain. How would you sort of characterize that guidance? Sort of what are you seeing from customers near term?
Yeah, I would say a couple things. One, when we look at from a historic perspective, and it, you know, every year can be a little bit different, but the year looks pretty similar. The growth rates can vary a little bit. The first quarter growth rate varies for a couple reasons. And I think there's maybe some thought around it, your question because of that. We've got a few less days, which impacts our, primarily our healthcare consumables businesses, but also impacts some of our software and services as well. We've got a tougher comp in China. So I would say the one thing, Julian, that is probably a standout from we're gonna be down, we were down high single digits in China last year as Fortive.
Yeah.
But the first quarter's gonna be down low double digit because last year we were anticipating that some of the government programs, you know, the equipment buy renewal programs were gonna take hold. And so there was some inventory built. So I think when you account for that, that sort of gets to, you know, a little bit of revenue at Fluke that happened in the fourth quarter instead of the first quarter as some channel partners got some incentives. That really constitutes the sort of lower part of the growth rate in the first quarter. But when we look sort of, there's a couple of big orders on the PT front that are gonna ship in the second half. And that really constitutes, you know, really what would be different.
But really, when we've looked historically, both from a revenue first half, second half, or EPS first half, second half, pretty consistent with what we've seen over the last few years.
Got it. And you mentioned orders, and that's a question, I guess, of the product hardware businesses at Fluke and.
Yeah.
Also at PT or Precision Technologies. But, I think orders have been a little bit better there. It's taking some time to feed into sales. Just maybe help us understand, is the orders improvement, is that reflecting just easy comps or, no, it's a genuine.
Yeah.
Customer appetite going up?
Yeah, I would say it's a little bit of both. I wouldn't necessarily say we've, and what we're not anticipating here is some big macro improvement through the year. We did, after several quarters of deteriorated orders, you know, we started to see orders come back. And as you said, in the second half of 2024, in Precision Technologies, they were up double digit. Fluke's orders were good in the third and fourth quarter as well. That constitutes our hardware businesses.
Yeah.
We are seeing on the Precision Technologies side a little bit of those, that order. And we talked about this in several earnings calls last year. We are seeing an order pattern where customers are pushing out their orders a little bit. And that's why I was talking about some of those investments are actually in the second half for orders we've received. So, but again, we're not really. We're. Some of it just kind of gets into comps rather than sort of a big expectation that there's a big shift in the need for the macro to improve anytime soon.
Perfect. And then, you know, Olumide, when you look at the sort of end market vertical mix of new Fortive, I think that, you know, you take industrial, manufacturing, distribution, all that collectively is about one-third of the sales there. A lot of that at Fluke. You know, how are you thinking about the revenue growth of that business this year?
We feel really good about the outlook for it. Just a few data points on that. You know, like Jim mentioned, Fluke saw high single digits order growth in the second half of 2024, both Q3 and Q4. The point of sale, so the sales through has also been quite strong, especially in the U.S., the Middle East, and Africa, as well as APAC, ex-China.
Mm-hmm.
Some softness in China and Western Europe. So you've got a strong POS. You've got a strong order book coming into the year. And we mentioned Fluke got 200 basis points of growth from new product introductions in 2024. We expect at least as much in 2025. We're also continuing to get price in the business as well. You layer all those together.
Yeah.
We feel quite good about the outlook for growth, and the guide we have.
Got it. And then, you know, one question sort of shorter term that comes up from investors is around this whole government efficiency push in the U.S. government, you know, reasonably large vertical for parts of new Fortive. Any thoughts on how that could affect you? Is it positive, negative, too early?
Yeah. So certainly there's a lot more of the plot to unfold here, so it's too early to call it conclusively. But, you know, the government work that we do, a lot of that's in our FAL Gordian business.
Yes.
Everything we do there is really oriented towards driving productivity and cost savings for this government agency. We feel that, you know, inherently that kind of skews towards the intent of all of the shifts. So far, we haven't seen anything to suggest that it would be a big risk for us, but it's too early to call. We like the alignment we have with the objectives that we've heard, but we're watching that by the day.
On FAL, you know, more broadly, I think it's maybe a business that's not super well understood by investors. You know, there's a couple of sort of marquee brands that are known from the acquisitions kind of five or so years ago. Maybe remind us, like, what are the one or two kind of strongest parts of the FAL franchise? You know, why does it win against competitors? Any sort of impressions around market share?
Yeah. So, you know, FAL's about $750 million. It's the biggest, and we believe the strongest of those kinds of businesses in the spaces that we play in, in that workflow. The most distinctive things about the business, so the brands you know are Gordian, ServiceChannel, and Accruent.
Mm-hmm.
It is a business as a whole that has a lot of network economies built into it, so a few examples of that. In Gordian, we have perhaps the leading and only procurement network for job order contracting that a lot of the, whichever state or local government you're in, they're very likely to be doing some of their big safety productivity-related procurements on that platform, and it takes a two-sided network, which we have there. The same thing in ServiceChannel, where for the repair and maintenance operations of just about any multi-site sort of retail restaurant operations, they need a network that connects the owners of the facilities with contractors for repair and maintenance, and again, we've got a unique 90,000-plus network of contractors that underlie that business.
And so when you have business that has those network economies, it's, it's really a strong competitive advantage. Second is the data content of those businesses. Again, in Gordian, we have the industry currency data set, for a lot of the construction data, that feeds government procurement.
Mm-hmm.
On the ServiceChannel side, we have some of the leading industry benchmarks on what you should expect from repair and maintenance returns for these multi-site retail operations. That's a unique data set that the industry counts on to track how they're doing versus the rest of the world. And they're used for reporting to their boards and management teams. So they, you know, I think the thing I'll call out is we've picked this very specific positions in the workflow. We don't play across the kind of, you know, build, maintain, operate, workflow, but the pieces we've picked, they're data-rich and network-enabled businesses. That's why we've been able to have, in a couple of years at Gordian, of 20%+ growth. And ServiceChannel continued to be a double-digit growth company. And Accruent's been kind of our journey of improvement.
That continues to really progress towards what we believe the potential of that business is. So it's a really great platform for us.
When we think about, you know, as you said, some of the brands have had different growth profiles in recent years, what's the sort of overall FAL through-cycle growth entitlement, do you think?
So we think about it as high single digits growth overall.
Yeah.
and so that's what's built into our guide for this year as an example.
Mm-hmm.
You know, we, it's also one of our platforms that we're most active in deploying new AI-powered use cases related to the data richness that I talked about. That's a little proprietary data that we can unlock more value for customers on. It is also a business that still has a big kind of addressable market. So our share is really modest 'cause it's a very fragmented space. So from an organic share gain point of view, innovation point of view, we feel like it's an exciting arena to be in. And right now it's higher than our fleet average, with the high single-digit growth that we're getting from it.
And then sort of operating margins, I think for FAL are a little bit below the, say, Fluke within IOS. And I guess people would say it's unusual that the hardware business has higher margins than the software one. So how do we think about FAL's profitability from here? You know, there's a huge TAM, very good growth runway. So you're kind of taking the time to invest a lot for X years, and then once the installed base is there, maybe move to more of a margin focus after that? Like, how should we think about it?
Yeah. And, you know, we generally take the and approach in everything we do. And I think for the FAL platform as an example, the journey we've been on is between 2021 and 2024, we've seen 800 basis points operating margin expansion in the FAL platform. And we talked about this in our earnings call two weeks ago, including 2,000 basis points of operating margin expansion for ServiceChannel. So this business just came in with whatever profile they had. And with the power of FBS, we've driven that improvement. The way we've driven the improvement is not just about, you know, just productivity. And we, you know, we've done that too. It's not just been about deploying AI tools to get more out of our engineering teams and reduce our cost to support customers.
But it's also been about the top-line growth. It's very, to your point, very high incremental margins on the growth in those software data-rich businesses. So when, you know, Gordian's growing 20%+ for a couple of years.
Mm-hmm.
They follow through on that. Growth is incredible and does wonderful things. Same thing at ServiceChannel, same thing at Accruent. So, we feel really good about the potential to continue that journey that we've been on the last three years.
Perfect. And in the healthcare division, you know, had some volatility after the acquisition and then around COVID, but it sort of seems to have settled down. It's had good organic growth acceleration for a couple of years. You know, when we think about that business from here, I think sometimes people ask about, oh, in sterilization versus, you know, big competitor, you know, are they growing a bit faster? Why is that? How would you think about sort of market share for AHS?
Yeah. You know, we really like where we are in AHS segments. It's taken a few years to get here, but we really like where we are. So again, just to frame the.
Yeah.
AHS segment is, think about it as two-thirds of it is ASP around sterilization.
Yeah.
Sort of sterile monitoring. And then a third of it is healthcare productivity software, radiation monitoring for safety, equipment quality assurance. I think for, on the, sterilization side.
Mm-hmm.
I think there's a bit of a thesis that maybe we're losing share, which may be a bit of a dated point of view.
Yeah.
When we brought in ASP into Fortive, it hadn't had a lot of focus historically. It's been a business that didn't have the push and the priority with the previous owner of it. That's changed now. The team's.
Yeah.
done an incredible job with the Fortive Business System to get that business to a point where it's now growing mid-single digits. And they've done that really, you know, driving growth outside of the U.S., making sure we're keeping our installed base stable in the U.S., where we already have a really high share. And then growing really quickly on consumables, and the utilization rate of the capital placements that we do have. And at the same time, our software and radiation monitoring businesses, which are very heavy recurring content, have been growing incredibly fast through innovation and all of that.
So overall, you know, the segment we think about, the really clear growth algorithm for it, that's, you know, one to two points of price a year, one to two points from incremental capital placements, install base growth, one to two points of utilization of sort of just procedural volume growth.
Mm-hmm.
And then one to two points of new product introductions, which we talked about the increase in the velocity of that, including at ASP, where we had six new products in 2024 alone with 510(k) approval. So, we feel really good about the platform. We feel good about our position versus other players that may be more broad.
Yeah.
But not as deep. We think about ourselves in ASP as really deep and clinically differentiated, and for low-temperature sterilization and sterile monitoring. The customer loyalty we get because our technology is better, our service and support is better. We think about ourselves as trusted advisors for our customers, and the CEO says that. It sets us apart from other players that may be broader, the lower margins. You know, so if you think about the financial profile, there's a reason we have a much higher margin business in AHS than maybe some of the other players. It's because we run a different play.
Got it. And, you know, Fortive generally has, you know, versus most companies at this conference, higher R&D, higher gross margin, higher cash and operating margins. On the R&D front, you know, how do you make sure that you keep getting a very high return on those investments, particularly as the new Fortive, you know, there are some slightly, they will have high recurring revenue, but they're different businesses in a sense, Fluke, AHS, and FAL?
Yeah. No, absolutely. And, you know, we've just our mindset at FBS is all about getting more out of what you spend.
Mm-hmm.
And, in R&D, it's been no different. So we've built a mindset and a toolset focused on R&D productivity as part of the Fortive Business System that all our companies are adopting. Over the last two years, we've infused kind of AI-enabled tools into that. So as an example, you know, we've talked about this. We now have just about all of our R&D teams using kind of AI copilots and other tools that's driven 25%-30% increase in their productivity, by using those tools. And those are the things we do first before we put more dollars into R&D. And so I think it's just so deeply rooted in our culture, and so even though these businesses are all slightly different in terms of their R&D intensity, they all manage to industry-standard benchmarks for their particular space.
We, you know, hold ourselves accountable to that. So I think that culture would end here.
When we think about the operating margin entitlement of new Fortive, you know, AHS, I think, is still a little bit below the medium-term margin guide that was set out, a couple of years ago. IOS is there already, I think, this year. How should we think about kind of the total entity of new Fortive, what kind of operating leverage? You know, do we see the healthcare margins get to that target on schedule?
Yeah. So, you know, I think if you think about 2024, we're, you know, for this new Fortive.
Mm-hmm.
Consistent, we're about 31% adjusted operating profit margins, and I think 33% for Q4.
Yeah.
And like you pointed out, Julian, the AHS segments continue to increase. And that increase is from the growth, and kind of the high incrementals and the growth. And IOS as well, even though we've gone to the target, we've kept improving every single year.
Yeah.
And so for both segments, we don't think we're done in terms of continuing to improve. And so you will see that play through over time. We really like our starting point. We think in terms of entitlement, we have a chance to do a lot more for customers that create value. And that's how we think about entitlement for margins, is you do more for customers and you get to capture more of that. And so we feel quite good about the trajectory to keep improving. And you know, the AHS segment especially has a lot of headroom still ahead of us by executing the growth formula I talked about. Because if your growth's coming from you know pricing and it's coming from high gross margin NPI and high gross margin consumable growth, that's 75% of the growth.
Those are inherently just very high incremental, kind of growth contributors. So that's the. We've got a flywheel built in.
Yeah.
for not just growth, but also margin improvement.
Got it. So overall, new Fortive, you know, when we think about the earnings algorithm, if you like, it's sort of, I don't know, you know, mid-single digit plus organic growth, and then sort of, I don't know, 75 basis points plus of operating margin expansion annually, and then some capital deployment on top. Is that the right way to think about new Fortive after the split?
Yeah. And, you know, we at the investor day, once we have a firm date on the spin, we'll kind of expand on that a lot more. But I think that's roughly right. We like the mid-single digit growth expectation.
Yeah.
We'll reinforce that with the bolt-on M&A that we do. You know, we like the fact that we are inherently the way we run the company, partly because of the nature of how we grow, but also operating leverage. We'll continue to grow our operating profit, much, much faster than our revenue is growing.
Yeah.
So that that has built-in margin expansion in it, and free cash flow has been an outstanding point for us.
Yeah.
We intend to continue that, you know, as well. I think we've cut net working capital to sales in half to 6% of sales over the last five years. We think for new Fortive, it'll be lower than that 6% for Fortive today.
Yeah.
We will continue to improve that over time. We feel quite good about the path ahead for new Fortive.
When we look at the portfolio for new Fortive, you know, Fortive in total has had a lot of portfolio change in the last nine years. New Fortive, I suppose, will be more settled, perhaps at least initially. I don't know. When should investors expect, if you start to see more meaningful divestments or acquisitions, you know, how far out is that kind of activity?
Yeah, so we absolutely like where we're starting from.
Yeah.
I think, like you pointed out, Julian, the hard work over the last nine years to do all the big acquisitions, and some of those were risky, and it's in the nature of some of these big deployments.
Mm-hmm.
Is now giving us the entitlement to play a different game. And a different game we're now playing is we know the organic engine works. We know the mid-single digit revenue growth and earnings, high single digits just from that organic engine. The capital allocation strategy is very intentional in being balanced, right? So share repurchases will be a more sustained component of how we allocate capital, all solving for, at any point in time, what gives us the best risk-adjusted returns. And the M&A that we do will be bolt-on, so they will be connected to our existing positions. They will be accretive to our top-line growth and our recurring and durable revenue mix. There will be things that can benefit from the Fortive Business System's ability to unlock value.
And they tend to be terrific accretive cash return type of deals, as I pointed out in my opening remarks with the example of the four we did before. So we don't expect for the next three years a need for any major shifts.
Okay.
In our portfolio composition. We like the kind of the singles and doubles and M&A, share repurchase, game plan, and our organic engine. We think that gives us what we need. And, you know, three years from now, we'll have conversations with all of our stakeholders.
Yeah.
And, see if we need a different play.
Fantastic. Well, with that, we'll switch to the audience response survey questions, please, so the first one, do you currently own the stock?
My favorite part of the program.
80% no. Second question is around sort of what's your kind of bias towards it right now? So generally sort of neutral to positive. Third question is around earnings growth expectations for, let's say, new Fortive, versus the multi-industry average. So in line with the group. Fourth question is around kind of excess cash usage for new Fortive.