Really excited to have with us, from Gates Corporation, Tom Pitstick, Chief Strategy Officer, Rich Kwas, Vice President of Investor Relations. Tom, Rich, thank you so much for joining us.
Thanks, Jerry. Thanks for having us.
Tom, as we sit here today, you know, not that long since the IPO, can you talk about the competitive positioning of the business today compared to the time of the IPO, and how do you folks see the evolution of the business over the next three to five years?
Yeah, that's a great, great question, Jerry. Thank you. You know, we've really been focused on executing the strategy that we kicked off around the IPO, which was, you know, pivoting the business more towards industrial to capitalize on both the large market sizes that we see in industrial, but also the secular trends such as industrial automation that are supporting those markets. You know, we've talked a lot about our pivot, or our selective participation in auto OEM, so we've been executing that strategy very well. Really underpinning all of this is our focus on innovation. You know, we've taken our vitality index from low single digits up to what we talked about last year at Investor Day in the low teens. We've launched almost 40 new platforms over the past couple of years.
From a, you know, competitive positioning standpoint, our focus on innovation is really supporting our ability to, to drive growth in the, in the markets that we're participating in, which, which have, you know, as, as we've talked about, very attractive secular trends behind them.
And, you know, one of the elements of the analysts' day plan was 24% EBITDA margin targets. How much does the inflationary environment that we've been on, how does that impact the target and, and timing, compared to what we.
Yeah.
We're planning for at the analysts' day.
I might defer that one to Rich.
Yeah.
Kinda walk us to the targets.
Jerry, as you know, at the end of last year, for a full year, we finished a little bit above 19, though, and off our normal 21-22 threshold there. There are a couple hundred basis points there that we expect to recover, as the environment normalizes. We've incurred supply chain inefficiencies, also just combating inflation, which we're at EBITDA margin neutrality now. Feel good about that, but it's still been a bit of a gross margin dilution impact. Over the next 12-18 months, we expect to get back to that threshold. The incremental 250 is gonna come from a few different incremental initiatives. We got 80/20, which we expect to improve the profitability of our product suite and with our customer base.
We've also got the incremental restructuring that we introduced late last year, and we expect to provide some more details later this year. The other thing that's been lost in the last year or two has been the productivity, the natural productivity that we get, we should get year in, year out. We would expect to get that, you know, starting really now, but going forward, and that should build momentum. That'll get us the incremental 250, and then there should be another 50 basis points associated with volume leverage. If you add that all up, that gets us there to that above 24% threshold.
And, you know, when we look at the company's performance in prior cycles, you know, margins have tapped out at 23% margins. Are we thinking of 24 as the new normal? So peak has to be 26-27%, or how would you counsel us to think about?
We feel good about getting to 24% on a normalized run rate. I think depending on how the market environment is and the volume environment is and the overall economic, global economic environment, there's potential to go past that. Really, we're targeting to get to 24% on a run rate basis in a reasonable environment.
And so pretty big cycle over cycle performance then, to get there. So, Rich, you know, we're talking about some normalization, in terms of supply chain efficiency. The big gap, what I'm hearing from you at 300-400 basis point cycle over cycle is really 80/20 and the restructuring.
Footprint optimization, right? You know, don't underestimate we some of the productivity that we would normally be experiencing, we haven't been able to fully recapture at this point. That, that's really gonna build more momentum and compound.
You know, that's really one of the critical elements of what's playing out on the numbers. You folks are putting up pretty good margin performance relative to the volumes. Talk to us about how much the supply chain is improving. Do you still have momentum as you know, exiting 1Q into 2Q?
Can we take that one?
Yeah, so, we've definitely seen improvement in the supply chain, certainly from where we were in, I'd say, third quarter of last year. I wouldn't say it's perfect yet, but we're on an improvement trend. You know, maybe in contrast to parts of last year, we're not able to get the materials that we need, but maybe they're not in the right place or exactly at the right time. So we're still incurring some cost to move things around. You know, maybe we get something in Asia we needed in Europe. We've got to move things around. It's on an improvement trend, I would say, but we're not totally out of the woods yet.
Yeah. And Tom, if the trend continues, when would we be in a normal environment?
Yeah, and I'd like to think the, you know, latter part of this year, you know, as China starts to come fully back online, you know, we start to see some stabilization in the, in the sort of fill rates between regions in terms of raw materials. I, you know, I think as we get into the later part of the year.
Mm-hmm. And so, it sounds like, potentially if things go well, we've got a natural sequential margin uplift as that happens because.
Yeah.
All of this is pretty disruptive.
Yeah, it's part of the, it's part of the improvement plan that, you know, it's part of just the getting back to normal that Rich talked about. Certainly, supply chain stability is a piece of that.
And in terms of looking at one quarter results, is it possible to get a rough sense of what's the extra expediting cost and efficiencies from not having the right things in the right places?
Yeah, we haven't really talked about that, but it's in that.
It's in that kind of 200-250 impact.
Two to a while.
It is part of that.
All of it.
It's.
It is part of that.
It's part of the 200- 250 if you look, where we are currently versus where we should be. It's part of that 200- 250 difference, you know, in margin. We haven't quantified the specific expedited freight impact, but it's part of it.
Rich, just to make sure we're on the same page, expedited freight plus the inefficiencies from not having on-time deliveries is about 200-250 basis points, or are there other items?
I would just keep it as broad, you know, just broadly, it's part of the 200- 250, not—it-it's just it's encompassing all of our operating inefficiencies along with the supply chain.
Right. Okay. And, when we look at, you know, the point of max pain, you know, call it second quarter 2022, third quarter 2022, what was the drag relative to 200-250?
Did we publish that?
Yeah, we didn't.
Yeah, we didn't talk, we didn't talk about it, but it was certainly, I mean, that was an issue of not really being able to procure the right polymers. So we lost essentially, you know, as you know, we've been building backlog, have been building backlog, and still building a little bit of backlog here. It's really the procurement of the polymers. We didn't have the ability to get the polymers really at, at some points last in the third quarter of last year. Now we're getting the polymers to what Tom said. They may not exactly be efficient being in the right place at the right time, but we're getting access to them where in some cases last year in the third quarter weren't.
It was somewhat more, there was definitely some cost inefficiency, but it was also on the top-line impact, which we did recapture a bit in the fourth quarter because we grew 16% top-line organically in the fourth quarter. Some of that did come back.
Mm-hmm.
We're also seeing, I think, the benefits from some of the things we've talked about in the past of, you know, leveraging our material science capabilities to design in alternative materials, design in alternative suppliers to provide more flexibility there. We're seeing more and more of the benefits of those efforts as we sit here today.
Tom, can you say more? In terms of the mix of suppliers at your deal source today versus a year or two ago?
Yeah, I don't, I don't have a specific number that I can quote, but I can think of a number of instances of where we, you know, maybe we had two or three suppliers in the past where we might have five suppliers now for something. That takes work. That takes engineering work to qualify those new materials, make sure they perform the same as what we were sourcing from someone else. That's one piece of it. The other piece of it is designing in alternative materials that are, you know, perform equal to or better than what we were using in the past, but maybe, maybe for one reason or another, they weren't used in the past.
You know, really leveraging those material science capabilities to take advantage of maybe more broadly available materials that give us more optionality from a supply chain standpoint.
And, can we talk about pricing? We've had, across industrials, really good pricing action to pay for some of these good things like on-time deliveries. You know, as we think about 2024 price increase announcements for your customers, we're getting.
Mm-hmm.
Pretty close to that date. Are you signaling back to normal, low single digit type pricing for your customers in 2024?
Yeah, I mean, I think that's, that's the right way to think about it. We have a stated objective of covering our cost, and being margin neutral, which we've been achieving. We're still seeing inflation of raw materials, not as high or not as high of rates as we were seeing in the past 12 or 18 months, but we're still seeing positive inflation. We intend to pass those through in terms of price and maintain margin neutrality. As we think about entering 2024, yeah, we're certainly looking at what's happening to our materials. As I said, we're still seeing inflation, albeit moderating inflation. We've proven our ability to go get price in the market.
Our brand, quality of our products, reputation we have in the market, we've been able to get fair price to cover our costs and maintain margin neutrality.
And Tom, you know, what we've seen, from, OEMs that have the type of market share that, that you folks have as supplier, but for as OEMs, they've been more aggressive in pushing pricing and, and, and so just philosophically, you know, what's, what's kept you folks from saying, "You know what? We're gonna post the double-digit price increase like Caterpillar and Deere are posting"?
We certainly have examples of where we've done that. I think, you know, over this past cycle, we've taken price in every one of our channels with virtually all of our customers, whether it's our OEM customers or our distribution channel partners. It's been, you know, a pretty concerted effort. We've gotten double-digit price increases in some cases based on what we were seeing in our cost increases. Yeah, again, our stated objective is to cover costs and maintain margin neutrality.
And in terms of, just to shift gears, on what you folks are seeing in industrial aftermarket, you know, we've seen growth slow on a core basis as the comps have gotten tougher. Can you just talk about what you're seeing in real time and, you know, comment on dealer stocking levels if you don't mind?
Yeah, I mean, we've seen our, you know, channel inventory is pretty stable. We haven't seen any meaningful destocking. Yeah, there is some choppiness in certain sort of sub-end markets. We've talked about logistics and distribution. You've seen how other companies in the space have talked about what's going on in some of those end markets. That's showing some choppiness. You know, other areas we've seen nice strength. But, you know, overall, we're seeing inventory levels kinda in line with demand in our channels. And, you know, we obviously looked at some of the macro indicators that have shown some softness in the industrial economy. What's interesting is we continue to maintain a, you know, book-to-bill ratio above one. We're seeing relatively stable inventory in the channel.
You know, so there are certainly some mixed signals with the macro indicators that are causing us to be, say, pragmatic as we proceed through the year. You know, we have, we are seeing support in the market still.
We had some noise in industrial replacement in the first quarter with the cybersecurity incident.
That's right.
That did primarily affect North America and did have some impact on industrial replacement activity for us. It was not as clean a quarter as you would normally see, with that impact.
Mm-hmm. Got it. And, in terms of why did it impact that particular region and channel, Rich, can you say more? You know, why, why wasn't it a bigger,
Yeah, it's just basically because a lot of that's book and ship business, so it has to be available. It didn't really affect the OE side. It was more the replacement side. It just, given the size, where we're positioned, relative size, it just had more impact on North American industrial than some other areas of our business.
Europe. It was more of our mature markets, yeah.
Yeah. I, you know, that obviously that's behind us now. As we move forward, you know, that, that we're not expecting those sales to come back 'cause it's book and ship business, so it's not part of our guidance. We maintain our guidance with the $15 million going away, but we should have a more normalized state here, going forward.
And, given your market share, what happens when you can't fill that order? For a lot of SKUs, I mean, you folks are essentially the only game in town.
Yeah, I mean, if a customer's got, I don't know, a vehicle down or a factory down, they're gonna find a way to solve it. So if we've, you know, in many cases in the replacement channel, if we miss that order, we don't get it back. We'll get the next order when the next thing breaks or needs to be replaced. But some of that just, that book and bill nature of our replacement business means sometimes you, sometimes you miss the order and you just miss it.
Mm-hmm. Got it. And, based on the cadence of book and ship activity that you folks have seen over the course of the quarter, for industrial aftermarket, which regions stand out as seeing a healthy uptick?
I mean, I think we're starting to see recovery in places like China. You know, as China emerges from the late last year, early this year COVID, you know, the February Chinese New Year this year, we're seeing improvements, certainly in China. Exiting the quarter, we saw a nice momentum out of China. Maybe a little stronger in the automotive replacement markets, but we're seeing industrial start to pick up there as well. You know, I think there are some of these macro trends too that we talk about, the reshoring trends, the mega projects that might be, you know, we think are providing some support to our industrial end markets, both on the OE side and the replacement side. I think we're probably in the early innings of the benefit from some of those.
You know, again, that's why we kinda refer to it as choppiness. There's some segments like warehousing and logistics that might be a little down and other segments like industrial automation that might be a little bit stronger.
Can we talk about industrial OE? You know, we're seeing channel inventory filling out of the OEMs. I'm wondering, as you look at your book of business, where do you see you have the longest lead times, which end markets and regions, and, you know, where do you see some choppiness?
Yeah, we're, I mean, we see, you know, a lot of strength in construction and ag still. I mean, we think, yeah, there's some, some of our customers' channel inventories are starting to improve, but we're seeing pretty steady order rates and consistent business there. I mean, construction has been, I think we posted mid-teens growth in the quarter. Ag, not quite that, not quite that strong, but still, still positive. You know, we're starting to see again, China is still down a bit, but we're seeing early signs of recovery there. Europe performed strong in those markets in the quarter. I don't know. Am I missing anything or anything?
No, Europe's been pretty good for the last couple quarters. And, you know, we're taking a pragmatic view there, but it's been so far so good. We've been pleasantly surprised.
Can we talk about auto aftermarket in China?
Yeah.
You know, after how much activity has been artificially cut, how significant is this snapback as normalization, 20% type growth to just calibrate us because, you know, it can be interesting given the loss of small numbers?
Yeah, I think, I mean, we don't see it being a V-shaped snapback quite like that, but we're seeing nice, nice recovery. You know, vehicle miles traveled in China, you know, were down the past couple of years due to, due to COVID and the lockdowns. You know, our anticipation is those will get back to close to pre-pandemic levels this year, which supports us. You know, you got the largest car park in the world. It's aging more rapidly than other car parks. So pretty strong fundamental dynamics in the market there. You know, people are starting to bring their cars back into the shops after maybe not having driven them as much over the past couple years. I think there's good tailwinds behind the auto replacement market in particular in China.
We're in a great position. We spent the past several years building out broad channel, broad product portfolio coverage, really replicating our success in our more mature markets like Europe and North America where, you know, it really is all about having channel and all about having the right products for the market. That's where we've been investing for the past five or six years. We think that it positions us, or actually longer than five or six years, but positions us well for that recovery that we see starting to happen.
Rich, can you?
I was gonna say, you know, in China aftermarket, you know, the average age of the vehicle now is in that six to seven-year neighborhood. And when you think about where our product suite really starts to see significant growth is in post-seven years. So we're starting to get to the early stages of that cycle where we should really get to the meat of that growth. That would seem to indicate that we're in a good position here in the succeeding years here to benefit from that trend.
And Tom, you mentioned returning to pre-COVID levels. Is that 10% up year-over-year, 20%? Just can you calibrate us versus?
Yeah, it's, it's.
Last year?
It's, I don't wanna throw a number out, but it's, it won't, it won't be the V-shaped bounce that we might've seen, maybe in the early days of COVID and 2021 in some markets. It'll, it's gonna be a progressive but nice, nice growth. Yeah, I'd hate to venture a number, but.
Okay. And the strategy in, in China, you, can you, can you expand on that? Because obviously you've been able to grow, that, that business which, you know, is, pretty hard to grow in a new market organically in, in that part of the world. Just talk about how you folks have been able to do that and, how much more runway you have.
Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of it is that, you know, very early on as we looked at the market for auto replacement there and we saw the, the trends in new vehicle purchases, you know, we really got in and started building out channel coverage. So very, very broad channel coverage in every province, not just the tier one cities, but we've, our team's done a nice job of building out coverage. And then product coverage. If you don't have the right products to cover the vehicles in the market, you know, you don't, you won't get off the starting line. Something we've done historically very well in North America and Europe, and we just took the playbook and reapplied it in China. You know, some of the market dynamics obviously are different.
It's, it's maybe more, you know, five, ten years ago it was more of a greenfield market. But we've done a nice job, I think, of establishing a strong brand. We believe we're the leader in our product categories in, in China. Yes, it's a competitive market, but, you know, having a broad portfolio of the right parts for the right applications just makes our, our channel partners' lives easier so that they keep coming back.
And in terms of, from a pricing point standpoint, can you talk about where you folks stand versus the competition in that region and, you know, essentially in other parts of the world?
Yeah.
earn your margin, but through on-time deliveries and the product SKU? Is it the same playbook?
Yeah, I think, I mean, I think it's, you know, I would say in most, if not all markets, in the auto replacement segment in particular, really all of our segments, we're a premium brand. We're known for high quality. We're known for delivery. We're known for having a broad portfolio that makes our channel partners' lives easy. The same is true in China. We have a strong brand that's recognized. Yeah, I think that combination of brand, products, product quality, innovation have helped us be the premium player in most of the markets we serve for many years.
Excuse me. Thank you. And, getting excited about your market position here, Tom. Can we talk about auto OEM? You folks have really focused on getting the right type of OEM business at the right margins. Can you just talk about, is that a shift that's now largely complete or, as additional platforms come up, if that's something we should still keep in mind?
Yeah, we, we've, you know, going back to your initial question on how we've been executing the strategy and positioning the business into the IPO, I mean, we're really focused on this auto OEM strategy of selective participation. We, we're, we're pretty selective about the business we, we, we take. We wanna, we want programs where we bring something to the table in terms of differentiated technology or maybe some sort of system solution that gives us some advantage over the competition. We've taken the business from roughly, I'm gonna say, mid, mid-teens % of total Gates sales to sub 10%, which has been our stated goal. We intend to sort of manage the business in that sub 10% of total Gates sales range by being selective.
We walk away from a lot of potential programs that we could win, but, you know, we're trying to manage that business appropriately.
And so, sub 10% today, is it gonna go to sub 5 or is this?
No, our target is to keep it sub, sub, sub 10. You know, will it ever go away? I don't know. It won't go away, or I don't think it'll go away. It, but we'll keep it where we can. Yeah, if our selective participation strategy causes us to wean that down a little bit more, we're actually okay with that. That's part of the stated strategy.
The other piece of that is just we'll have growth in other areas, right, that are gonna dilute it. We'll be selective participants on programs and then put incremental capital in other areas that grow, and so that'll dilute it as well.
We have more than made up for, you know, that what we've shed in auto OE with growth in auto replacement, growth in initiatives like mobility where we're leveraging a lot of that expertise and those product capabilities in, in new applications where, you know, where there's, there's a lot of secular market growth.
You know, if we just assume the margin gap is 10 points between auto OE and the rest of the business, that shift of 5 points that you spoke about, Tom, that suggests the margins are boosted by 50 basis points, something to that effect?
Yeah, the mix.
The transition?
The mix away from auto OEs towards, say, mobility will naturally help that margin mix, for sure. Yeah, mobility is accretive, fleet average and auto OE is dilutive, so it's, yeah, natural.
Good. Can we talk about electric vehicles? You know, you folks obviously have the advantage of having the channel in aftermarket. Talk to us about how you can leverage that from an aftermarket standpoint and how your views on your potential market position.
Yeah, so a couple things there. I think one is, the content opportunity per vehicle goes up pretty substantially for us as you move from an ICE application to an EV application. So we really like that content uplift. The mix tends to shift from maybe more historically power transmission products to what we would refer to as thermal management products in an EV application. But we're an incumbent in both those areas. Yeah, within Gates, it'll mix up from PT to more thermal solutions, but nice uplift in content. You know, same playbook I mentioned about China. You know, how do we win in the aftermarket?
As EVs start to enter the aged part of the car park, we win through our channel partners and working with our channel partners and bringing a broad portfolio of products to the table. We believe that, you know, we've been investing in building out our EV catalog coverage for several years now and believe we're, you know, again, in our product categories are the leader in the independent aftermarket in terms of product coverage.
And so, Tom, can you expand on that point? Because, you know, there was no 1980 Toyota Camry.
Exactly.
In an EV world, right? That big advantage that you folks have with the product SKUs might be smaller in an EV world. Can you just expand on how you can leverage the existing position?
Yeah, so I think what I'll, you know, where you see aftermarket car parts develop is we've seen, you know, rapid penetration at the new vehicle level of EVs, right, in really every, every part of the world. The time it takes to age those EVs into that 7-12-year sweet spot window of 7-12 years, right? It takes time to get into that age window. You know, sitting here today, the number of vehicles, number of EVs around the world in that window of 7-12 years is relatively, relatively low. You know, so we're building our product catalog out ahead of that wave that's coming, you know, in the 3-5-year timeframe, give or take, where we start to see a significant population of vehicles in that aged, in that aged window.
Mm-hmm.
You know, we'll be more than ready for it when that hits. It takes time for the car park to age, right, in the mix.
And, you know, you have a agreement, I believe, with O'Reilly and NAPA and the major distributors. Are you finding that you're getting the call to provide these new components?
Yeah, what I'm hearing and seeing from my teams who are out in the field, you know, pitching our capabilities in this space is, we believe we're leading with, you know, messaging around parts availability, coverage, training materials, you know, to support both our channel partners but also their end customers, the installers and shops in terms of being ready for this aged car window to start to open up in, you know, in a few years as these vehicles enter that aged sweet spot. We get good kudos from our channel partners on the work we're doing and being out ahead. It, again, is just executing that playbook that has made us a strong player in the aftermarket for a long time. Channel access and product coverage.
Low initial volumes, presumably, that's a benefit to you compared to other players that are not current suppliers, right?
I mean, I just wanna, you know, one of the strengths naturally, if you have broad coverage of a car park, is you have a lot of SKUs to cover that. So we are, I think, quite proficient at managing an appropriate level of complexity to serve the market. And I think that's an important point tying back to the 80/20 concept. We do not just cover everything for the sake of covering everything. We are thoughtful about building out catalog coverage for parts of the car park where we have got the near-term market opportunity.
Got it. And, in terms of any OE opportunities in the EV environment, I know we spoke about the business in its entirety, not being a huge focus, but what about EVs specifically?
Yeah, I mean, we're taking the same strategy of selective participation. You know, so there are opportunities we're walking away from, and there's opportunities that we're chasing hard. We've got content on, you know, I won't name names, but on many, many platforms that you might see on the road every day. We're also quite excited about the heavy-duty opportunity in that space. You know, we talk about the content uplift from an ICE engine to a, to a EV platform in, in the auto space. If you think about that in a heavy-duty truck where you've got a much more distributed architecture and just a much physically bigger vehicle, there's a lot more product content on those for us.
We've, you know, some of our technical capabilities with our new water pump and our thermal management host capability are nicely suited for heavy-duty. We see a good opportunity there as well.
And when you say heavy-duty, is that automotive or truck,
truck, truck, bus, commercial vehicles?
Last-mile delivery is an interesting space, right, where I think EVs have a nice advantage with a lot of start-stop, right? We see some good opportunities and some good programs in those applications as well.
Oh, very, can you, can you say more, so the component that you would sell into those applications, what's the, s?
Yeah, so we've got, you know, maybe a representative program that's four or five times more content than, say, a typical automotive platform. Just it, it's a multiple. It's not an order of magnitude, but it's a multiple of what you might see in an auto just due to the sheer size of the vehicle and the distributed architecture of these thermal management systems.
Very interesting. And can we shift gears a little bit and talk about the company's distribution? You know, 370,000 SKUs, most of them delivered within 24-48 hours. Any interesting technological developments that you folks are implementing behind the scenes that could be a tailwind for the business?
Yeah, and, I mean, in terms of getting product to customer, I mean, we're, you know, we've, we're pretty comfortable with our, our, our distribution footprint. You know, in terms of technical capabilities, there's always, there's always ways to run your DCs better and improvements in, in software solutions and, and business operating processes. Yeah, I think we're, we're doing some interesting things, I think, with digital tools, and, and tying digital tools to demand creation. On the PT side, we recently launched the mobile version of our gauge design power tools, which you can design a belt drive in the field on your iPhone. We've had desktop versions, and we've upgraded those desktop versions, but those tools make it very easy for our customers to design in a drive, determine benefits such as energy efficiency improvements, etc.
those lead to demand generation, which we ultimately will fulfill through our, our distribution networks and our distribution partners. You know, on the FP side, I think we've shown, publicly our, I know we've shown publicly our, our GC20 Crimper platform, which is a digital platform that enables assemblers and distributors to assemble hydraulic hose assemblies. When they're doing that digitally, we're able to support them in the process of making the assembly, but also, you know, also monitor consumption and potentially use that to maybe do auto replenishment schemes, and just to make sure our, our customers in the field have the latest information about our products, the latest training, and access to, access to product in real time, as they consume that product in the field.
Maybe less about the, the distribution centers themselves, but more about, you know, how are we using digital tools to create demand downstream from our DCs. Those are some of the examples.
And any potential for, you know, push marketing sort of thing? So,
Yeah. Yeah, what we've seen, like, in our Crimper platform, when we launch a new product, we can push information about that new product to the screen right in front of the operator. I mean, you can imagine, "Hey, you're currently using this product. Here's a new product from Gates, and here's the three benefits of this product." Have that show up right at the point of use, which is pretty powerful from a marketing standpoint. There's training materials and, you know, best practices, troubleshooting, things we can do with a digital platform that you couldn't do with the legacy analog platforms.
And, so, you know, we spoke about electrification. Any other industry trends that you're monitoring that could be interesting for you folks?
Yeah, I mean, we've talked about this one quite a bit, but we really like the electrification trends in the two-wheeler personal mobility sector. I mean, is it okay? Is it a corollary to the electrification in automobiles? Maybe, but we think it's happening much, much faster in two-wheelers. It's hard for me to imagine a two-wheeler without a belt drive, an electric two-wheeler without a belt drive solution. Now, sure, there are examples you could find that don't have a belt drive solution, but you're driving a nice, quiet E2 wheeler. You don't want to hear the chain slapping around and making a bunch of noise and having to be oiled and retention. The belt drive solution is just a really elegant solution for an electric two-wheel vehicle. That is a nice supportive trend.
I mean, I think industrial automation in general benefits our products. Infrastructure build-out, if you're building a road, you're using a machine that's using hydraulics most likely. You know, the mega project investments that are ongoing could support our, you know, our construction applications. There are a number of strong secular tailwinds behind what we're doing. We just gotta make sure we're there with the right products and the right channel partners at the right time to serve them.
Super. Well, that's all the time that we have. Please join me in thanking Tom and Rich for coming out. Gentlemen, thank you.
Thank you.
Thanks, Rich.
Thanks, Jerry.
Thanks, Jerry.
I won't shake your hand.