Good afternoon, to resume things after the lunch. My name is Saurabh Pant. I'm the U.S. energy services analyst based in New York. I cover a lot of energy services, traditional companies, and one of a very unique company I cover is Chart Industries. Chart Industries plays into a lot of end markets, from industrial to energy, energy transition, a lot of exciting markets. I'm lucky to have with us the Chart management team.
We've got Joe Brinkman, who is the CFO. We've got John Walsh, who heads up IR, sitting in the front row, and Greg Shewfelt right behind him. , Joe, I think I'll hand it over to you. You've got a few slides to run through. Thank you.
Thanks, Saurabh. Good afternoon, everybody. Today, we're gonna walk through Chart at a glance, talk about our actions to increase throughput, the global hydrogen opportunity that Chart has in front of us, and driving our one of our favorite pieces of our business, aftermarket service and repair. F or those that are new to Chart, here are some key takeaways about our company.
We are uniquely positioned as a leading independent provider of technology, solutions, equipment, and services to customers across multiple end markets, with all mission-critical equipment manufactured in-house. Chart can deliver multiple solutions across our Nexus of Clean offering. This allows us to be molecule-agnostic and deliver value greater than the sum of its parts. Chart is driving profitable growth and free cash flow generation, driven by a resilient portfolio inclusive of 30%+ aftermarket service and repair.
High-quality backlog provides visibility for 2024 and beyond. Further, our customers that are investing to capture secular trends and are not interest rate sensitive. This slide really shows the breadth and depth of our organization. As many of you know, we closed Howden one year ago, this past Sunday, and it effectively doubled the size of our company, including our commercial and engineering teams.
This slide also shows our geographic reach, which is incredibly important for driving aftermarket growth, which I will touch on later in the deck, as well, as well as highlighting how well-positioned we are to support emerging markets across the globe. You can read this slide on your own, but I'd like to highlight a couple of our competitive advantages, including our full-service solution offering, from equipment to process technology, that we can also support with turnkey installation and aftermarket service and repair.
We are really proud of our domain expertise, which allows us to command leading industry market positions, as well as to help increase overall industry safety by being part of global partnering with global regulatory bodies. I've been very pleased with our margin performance to date, but there is more to go. These are some of the tools we use, such as our global flexible manufacturing strategy.
We can, we can now produce over 90% of our portfolio across at least two factories. We're going to be talking more about some of our throughput actions in a minute, but rest assured, we will continue to invest in high ROI CapEx. Third on the slide here is Chart Business Excellence. We talked a lot, we talked a lot about Chart Business Excellence, or CBE, at our Investor Day last November 2023.
Suffice to say, this is an operating framework that is used across the organization to create standard work, drive accountability, increase cash, and standardize our processes. It's really about identifying best practices and KPIs, and driving strong execution through our organization, from our commercial team, through engineering, project management, and operations.
This slide shows examples of throughput expansions in flight. I'd like to specifically highlight our Teddy 2 facility, which begins production immediately following our ribbon cutting next Thursday. Located directly on the water in Mobile, Alabama, this facility will build the largest shop-built cryogenic storage equipment in the world. We already have over $115 million of backlog for this facility. That includes customers in the space, marine, LNG regasification, and gas-by-rail markets.
The next few slides focus on hydrogen, a market with strong momentum across applications and geographies. I'd like to specifically highlight the award from Element Resources we announced earlier this week. This is a great example of Chart providing full system solution.
This order includes Chart's supply of hydrogen liquefaction system, liquid hydrogen storage tanks, trailer loadout bays, as well as liquid hydrogen transports and ISO containers. Hydrogen compression for storage, distribution, and heavy-duty fueling is also included in this order. I think these next two slides are to show the benefit of our offering across the value chain.
I want to highlight our liquefaction technology and how customers used to ask for 10-15 ton per day hydrogen liquefaction solutions, and now they're asking: "Can you do 100 tons per day?" Another great example is our hydrogen compression solution that is deployed in the world's first fossil fuel-free steel plant in Sweden.
This slide is about blue hydrogen. The main point here is how we went across colors and geographies with hydrogen. Hydrogen has gone from a niche market to being viewed as an energy carrier, and we are able to support our customers across geographies and across all forms of low-emission hydrogen. We absolutely love our aftermarket service and repair business. We are still in the early da
ys of unlocking the opportunities around aftermarket.
I like this slide because it shows how the business acts as an annuity for us, with our full solution of equipment feeding perpetual aftermarket business for us. As the equipment manufacturer or process technology owner, we think we are entitled to this business, and our customers want us servicing the equipment because we have the domain expertise and the global footprint to support them.
Our aftermarket business has been a key synergy area for us across our installed base of liquefaction, storage, and transportable and rotating equipment. Again, leveraging our expanded global footprint, coupled with tracking the installed base of equipment and utilizing our uptime monitoring technology to what we would call sticky, getting sticky with our customers, as we like to say, under long-term service agreements. With that, Saurabh?
Yeah, Joe, I think, we just have a quick discussion and, maybe if you want to-
Sounds good.
Take a seat.
Thank you.
Thank you for this, Joe. We'll spend some time on this. I have some other topics and questions.
Sounds good.
Maybe if we just continue with the theme, Joe. Obviously, you spent a lot of time on hydrogen, on your throughput actions, on aftermarket. I want to go through your key product lines. Hydrogen is obviously one of them, so maybe let's start there, because clearly the opportunity is huge. It's spread across the globe. It's not in one country or one region, but just given the regulatory landscape, interest rates, I hear a lot of concerns around the opportunity, but you seem to be booking new orders.
You booked 2 orders just this quarter, including the Element Resources, just this week. Just talk to that opportunity set for you specifically. How do you play? Where do you play in that market, and what are you seeing?
Yeah, I mean, what we really love about hydrogen is, you know, the excitement around the globe, whether it's hydrogen fueling for heavy-haul Class 8 trucks, or for other power generation opportunities, for maritime. We're getting interest in and part of our opportunity funnel is for hydrogen fueling, for cruise ships, for ferries.
That want to run their ships with no emissions here. I t really plays to Chart's strengths because we've been building hydrogen storage equipment in the legacy Chart side of the business since the 1970s, and have really a significant installed base of storage equipment on the legacy Howden side. The first one to develop Howden hydrogen compression was Howden decades ago.
We're really leveraging our strengths here. As the hydrogen economy takes off, and we've got the deep experience with hydrogen as a molecule, now we can leverage what we've already done in things like LNG, for example, where we have thousands of trucks in Europe running on liquefied natural gas. We started building liquefied natural gas vehicle tanks in the U.S. back in the nineties. In China, we did a lot in the early 2000s, and in Europe, there's tons. Well, the same equipment, the same technology platform applies to hydrogen as well.
You know, whether it's the fueling stations, the onboard vehicle tanks, and so-
Got it.
There's just a tremendous opportunity funnel for hydrogen, and it's not just in the U.S. We're seeing it globally.
Right. Right. And just to be clear to everybody, you don't own the molecule. You do not,
Yeah
... generate or own that,
We do not. We don't own molecules, but really, our equipment is needed to-
Yeah
... to, for the molecule economy to happen, right?
Yeah.
We build the liquefaction, the storage, the compression, the transportation. So those that are in the business of selling molecules-
Right
... need our equipment to, to move those molecules.
Right.
That's where the cryogenic piece comes into the equation because unless you've got a pipeline going from point A to point B, the most economical way to move large quantities of gas is to liquefy it, take advantage of that density-
Yeah
... put it in a truck or an ISO container.
Right.
Deliver it to its end-use point, which is usually to turn it back into a gas and-
Right
... and use it. Sometimes people use the liquid, but-
Right, right, right. So that also means you are agnostic to the color, right? Because-
We are more-
All the, all the hues and shades of hydrogen.
We are agnostic to the color of the hydrogen. We are agnostic to the molecule itself. Like I was referencing earlier with our background in LNG, whether it's regasification, downstream for creating a virtual pipeline into a community, which we've done in Norway, we've done it in northern Canada, we've done it in the Caribbean, or over-the-road trucks.
You know, what we've done on the LNG side applies to hydrogen, and so really, you know, if economies stick with natural gas, we've got the equipment. If countries pivot to hydrogen, take advantage of the emissions benefits, we've, it's the same technology platform.
Right.
We've got the equipment solution.
Right, right, right. J ust given your customer base, right, which can be very different from somebody else, by the way, right? T hat's why I asked this question. How do you look at the potential interest rate sensitivity or the level of subsidy or government support your customers need to just move ahead on their hydrogen plans?
Yeah, I mean, we're winning business on the hydrogen side. It's where there's economic viability there.
It's not reliant on subsidies. It's not reliant on any of that. So, where we're winning, it's economically-
Right.
-viable.
Right, right. T hen on the margin side of hydrogen, how should we think about the margins on your, your hydrogen business being accretive, dilutive, or relatively in line to the rest of your, your portfolio?
Yeah, for the most part, it's accretive.
Okay.
You know, hydrogen is, you know, it's the lightest element, right?
Right.
Number one on the periodic table. It's colder when you liquefy it. There's some additional complexities that you deal with with hydrogen, which then leverages our decades of experience with that molecule, both on the cryogenic side and on the compression side.
Right.
When we're winning business in hydrogen, it's generally margin accretive.
Okay, we can keep talking about hydrogen, but-
Yeah.
-in the interest of-
Yeah.
Of moving on, you mentioned LNG a little bit, right? M aybe let's talk about that, because there's been a lot of news flow on that topic, particularly in the U.S., but literally globally, right? W e saw the Biden administration announce a pause in terms of new non-FTA approval. How does that impact Chart, right?
Because we did see non-U.S. exporters take advantage of that. We saw Qatar, we saw you book an order late in December, and you talked about an IPSMR award potentially come in by the end of this year, right? J ust talk to us about that a little bit and, and how is Chart positioned?
Yeah, I mean, you know, as you said, the U.S. has a pause, which I think is largely a politically motivated-
Yeah
... pause there. But, you know, we play in LNG natural gas liquefaction across the globe. W hether it's the U.S., whether it's sub-Saharan Africa, wherever, Southeast Asia, wherever it is, you know, those, you know, we've got $8.6 billion of big, big LNG opportunity funnel, and that has not changed with-
Right
... with the pause. It has affected nothing that's in our backlog. W e can just continue to see opportunities on the big LNG side. T hen, you know, like I alluded to earlier, you know, there's this. People maybe have. It's not been the top of the talking point in the industry, but there are substantial downstream LNG opportunities as well.
Right.
I mean, I alluded to a little bit earlier, but, you know, specifically, you know, power generation, in remote areas like Caribbean islands, Southeast Asian islands. You know, there's seven of our 1,000-cubic-meter storage tanks that feed a power plant in Montego Bay, Jamaica. Y ou know, that power plant wanted to get off of hauling in diesel fuel, and so they basically, offload LNG right into these really large storage tanks and, and convert a power plant-
Right
... from diesel to natural gas. T here's significant opportunities in our funnel to do more of those, right? T hen even further in the Caribbean, you know, people that, you know, are running manufacturing facilities, say, a pharmaceutical company or even a resort that doesn't want to rely on the local grid, you know-
Right
... they'll haul LNG in to feed gen sets to make sure that they always have power. That LNG is being hauled by our LNG ISO containers, and it can come from the U.S. You know, LNG can come from anywhere, but we build LNG ISO containers and feed that. And that-
Right.
That activity on the LNG side is, downstream continues to be robust.
Got it.
Right. Right. I think a key part of your evolution in the LNG market is you develop your IPSMR solution in-house. It caters really well to the modular LNG applications, which is actually, I think, gaining ground even outside the U.S., right? J ust talk to that a little bit, and maybe what does that mean from a margin perspective as well?
Yeah, yeah. No, thanks for bringing that up. IPSMR is a proprietary process technology that we own. J ust remind folks that when LNG liquefaction happens, you know, it could be our process technology, which obviously we prefer, or it could be somebody else's. Either way, we've got cold box content, we've got brazed aluminum heat exchanger content-
Got it
... in those plants. Specific to your question about IPSMR, you know, we've announced that that process technology has been approved for another international liquefaction opportunity, and we expect that to turn to award later this year or early next year. But on the margin question, when we have our own process technology, it is margin accretive to what versus when we're supplying.
Got it
... cold boxes and exchangers to other people.
Got it.
You know, as long as we're talking about IPSMR, I wanna point out that that proprietary technology runs. It operates more efficiently than other technologies. W e're able to build smaller-scale plants and still have the efficiency where it's worthwhile to go to liquefaction and smaller scale opportunities.
Got it.
Then we're deploying the same process technology on hydrogen and helium liquefaction as well.
Right.
So.
Right. Right, right. T hen just maybe moving on, you've got a lot of interesting end markets that I wanna make sure we touch on those. C arbon capture, maybe quickly, that clearly has a lot of potential. You play into both the small scale and the large scale side of things, right?
F or you, just listening to your calls and your investor day, it seems like the small-scale Earthly Labs business is making tremendous progress, right? N ot just for you, for the industry, the large-scale side of things are slower to move on. M aybe talk to those two aspects.
Yeah, well, let's start with the Earthly Labs acquisition and that small-scale carbon capture. You know, a very, I would call, boutique business when we acquired it a couple of years back. Building CO2 capture equipment for breweries, whether they're microbreweries or larger breweries. You know, was subcontracting that manufacturing.
Now, since our acquisition, we've both taken that manufacturing in-house, which is helping on the margin performance, but was really necessary to scale up to meet the market demand, which continues to be impressive. You know, with most brewery opportunities, the payback on our equipment is two years or less, which makes it obviously very attractive.
Then it's literally an enabling technology in some areas where there's actually, you know, believe it or not, there's a CO2 shortage. You know, we-
Yeah
... we're all worried about CO2, but markets like Australia, you know, getting the CO2 they need to package their beverages, you know, there's a shortage there. T his basically enables them to capture the CO2 from the brewing and then use it in the packaging.
Right.
It's actually enabling people that would have a hard time, and payback is extremely good in those markets. Y ou know, pivoting to your question about large scale, you know, we've got pilot plants going in the U.S. and Europe, on cement manufacturing, on some steel manufacturing there, but it's definitely a longer horizon there on the large scale.
Right.
I will note that, you know, anybody that's looking at direct air capture, they would utilize our storage equipment in any one of those solutions, so it's not specific to our carbon capture, but still an opportunity-
Right
... for us.
Right.
As anything happens in those markets.
Okay. Okay. T hen I just, you talk about, food and beverage industry a fair amount in your calls. Water, it seems, you guys are very excited about. The water side of the equation, I think it's still relatively small, but it's growing quickly. The opportunity set is big. Maybe just touch on those two markets a little bit.
Yeah, yeah. W ell, before we get into water, let's. I'll just talk, you know, legacy food and beverage. You know, we're in beverage carbonation, you know, the CO2 tanks that are in restaurants across the globe for beverage carbonation. We've been in that business for decades. It's extremely solid for us, as well as we build nitrogen dosers for dosing water bottles with liquid nitrogen or any other inert packaging, you know, where you've got. You want to displace any oxygen, you know, on the top of a bottle of wine, or you want to put it in a, you know, in a water bottle, you can use a third less plastic and have the water bottle not collapse when you stack that.
That, that's a smaller piece of our business, but it's, again-
Right
... it's food and beverage, and it's strong for us. On the water side, we've got drinking water treatment technology, and then we've got water disposal- cleanup technology. On the drinking water treatment side, you know, seeing a lot of activity in the U.S. for PFAS removal-
Yep
... for arsenic removal. But it's not just in the U.S. We've got, you know, villages in India that are using, deploying our technology to clean the drinking water. We've got opportunities in Brazil as well. Y ou know, like I said, like you said, you know, it's not a huge piece of our business, but the growth we're seeing is-
Yeah
... significantly double-digit
Yeah
... on the water side.
Okay.
So it's, you know, really something that, you know, takes off as there's more and more installed base traction.
Right.
Example, you know, when you're dealing with municipal projects, you want to be able to point to examples of, you know, look at that community and how well it's working, and.
Right
... and we're seeing some of that in India and in Brazil, which is very exciting.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, and I'm from India. I spent 30 years of my life in India, so I can appreciate the opportunity. Not just the opportunity, right, but the opportunity for the population and for the countries to serve their citizens.
Yeah, everyone needs clean drinking water.
Yeah.
That's-
Yeah, exactly. Let's just move on to aftermarket. You touched on aftermarket in your presentation, and that's one thing that changed a lot, post the Howden acquisition for you, right? The size of your aftermarket business is now slightly above 30%, but if you look at from a margin perspective, actually, it's much higher than that even, right?
Mm.
So it's a lot more stable, but it's also growing relatively quickly. If I would tell aftermarket then to anybody, they would think it's growing single digit, right? So just talk to that growth opportunity.
Yeah, I mean, it's like I had in some of my prepared remarks, you know, we love the aftermarket business. It's margin creative for us. It's really like an annuity for us, where, you know, you've got this installed base of equipment that customers want us to service. We sign long-term service agreements, and then, you know, that business just continues. And so it's—I would say it's rare that any of that business would fall off of our radar. And, you know, every year, we're putting more and more equipment out there, so it just adds to the-
Right
... adds to the total installed base, and, you know, we offer the uptime monitoring solution, where basically we can monitor rotating equipment and predict potential failures before they happen, and get in there and do preventative maintenance. And, you know, these customers are highly appreciative because downtime on a piece of rotating equipment-
Right.
I mean, the losses they incur in downtime are just astronomical compared to the-
Yeah
-cost of the service or even the equipment itself. I t's a very, very strong, strong business for us. And, you know, and then, you know, adding, adding all the global locations that we had, that we did through the, the Howden acquisition, like I talked to in, earlier, that's just opened the door for us to be able to, to service legacy Chart equipment that's deployed globally.
Yeah.
I know it's tangential to your question, but you know, as you look at hydrogen economies that emerge globally, and oftentimes you know, with hydrogen, you know, it might be a gaseous solution before it gets to a liquid solution.
You know, where you can have gaseous hydrogen at play before liquefaction is really ramped up there. You know, you need to be able to service that equipment in order for that market to go.
Right.
Having that footprint just enables us to be everywhere, where hydrogen is gonna emerge.
Yeah.
In the economy, we're already there-
Right
... you know, which is just a huge advantage for us.
Right. Right. I think the footprint of the Howden and the legacy Chart side was very complementary.
Yeah, it was. It was, it was very complementary. D efinitely on the aftermarket side, where we're very U.S.-focused with some European presence, and then basically Howden just filled in the global gaps for us, so-
Right.
Right.
Right. Right. Right. Let's spend a little time on... Before that, actually, I had a follow-up on the aftermarket side. I think your guidance, your outlook for 2024 calls for aftermarket revenues to grow 15%-20% in 2024, and then I think longer term, you've talked about double-digit growth. So is there something unique in 2024 that's benefiting 2024 above and beyond the double-digit growth that you anticipate?
Yeah. I mean, other than, you know, the installed base ramping up like I talked about, we've got existing, you know, brownfield LNG plants that are engaging our aftermarket services to improve efficiency, and just leverage, you know, what they've already invested in there.
T here's actually significant aftermarket activity going in there, utilizing our Tuf-Lite fan technology to increase the efficiency of their plants, is one example there. And so we've got, you know, significant LNG brownfield LNG-
Right. Okay.
... servicing aspect in the 2024.
Okay. Okay, now, thanks for that reminder. I, I forgot for a second that the retrofitting actually moved through the, through the RSL business.
Yeah, it does.
That's a good point. Okay, okay. Then on the throughput action, you talked about that, right? At Teddy two , you spent money on your Tulsa, Oklahoma-based brazed aluminum heat exchanger facility last year, I think, Goch, Germany. Y ou are taking all those actions.
One point I wanted to clarify was that your medium-term revenue growth outlook of mid-teens, do you think you need to invest more? You need to continue to invest in your throughput actions, or these large, chunky items are enough to get you there?
You know, we will continue to invest in high ROI CapEx and throughput expansion as those opportunities, you know, appear where... You know, we're blessed with a significant backlog and we've had book-to-bill, you know, ratios above one, and we expect, you know, that one number to be the number-
Right
about for this year. Y ou know, to keep our lead times down where it doesn't cause us an issue as markets evolve, we're gonna continue to invest in CapEx.
Right
For sure. But we've got, you know, for what we're seeing in the medium-term outlook, we're well positioned with the big pieces.
Like Teddy 2 is—was huge 'cause it gives us a capability expansion there with larger tanks, which is drawing tremendous interest. You know, I mentioned it in the prepared remarks, but, you know, we've got over $115 million in backlog. I mean, there's liquid propellant tanks for launch pads in there. There is gas by rail in there. You know, think about the example, you know, I mentioned earlier of converting a power plant in Jamaica. It's got seven of our 1,000 cubic meter storage tanks.
Well, we'll be able to build 1,700 cubic meter storage tanks at Teddy II and ship them right on the water. Well, those seven tanks will now be—could now be four tanks in the same opportunity and get the same liquid storage.
Right.
And then it's easier for the customer on a foundation. There's less interconnecting piping to connect the tanks together, and we could still deliver those tanks to those customers much quicker than if they were gonna go to an alternative, like build a field-erected tank.
Right
... on a remote island. You know, that would take years, for example, versus just barging in our tanks, putting them on the ground, and, you know, you go from ordering those tanks to having that online in a little more than a year.
Right.
Take three years to build a field-erected tank.
Got it. Right.
You know, that Teddy 2 is a big piece of that. Adding the brazed aluminum heat exchanger capacity in Tulsa is big, and then expansions in Germany, like you highlighted.
Right.
for additional industrial gas and hydrogen trailers, as the market in Europe evolves on hydrogen, which is almost certain to do.
Right. Right, right.
So-
Well, you get to free cash flow in a little bit, but just on the CapEx side, Joe, while I have you-
Yeah.
2%-2.5% of revenue, that's still the right way to think about medium-term CapEx?
Yeah, that's, that's the right way to think about it.
Okay. Okay, okay, awesome. Well, so let's just quickly move on to the 2024 outlook, free cash flow. I, I absolutely want to make sure we touch on that. That's, that's a, that's a key topic for investors. Before we go to free cash, let's just revisit the 2024 outlook, because one thing that we've talked about a lot is the timing of the revenue recognition, right? As you have become much more of a project business versus a discrete product company-
Yep
... it's been harder to perfectly time when you recognize revenue. You talked to that a little bit, and talked to the $200 million in revenue allowance you're building in your guidance for 2024.
Yeah, right, and you're referencing our deck in our earnings call.
Yep
... that we just put out three weeks ago, today, actually, I think it was. You know, and as you mentioned, as we're doing our pivot to more of a system solution provider, these projects, you know, are great because they're margin accretive. There's synergies with Howden compression technology and Chart technology. T hey also tend to be more complicated from an engineering standpoint. W e're seeing that, you know, engineering can take longer, and, you know, that can affect our rev rec timing-
Mm-hmm
... from one quarter to the next. But I will highlight, you know, specific to EBITDA to free cash flow conversion. You know, we've, as we're getting better and better at this pivot, making a concerted effort through our cash culture initiative to make sure that our projects are flowing cash positive. T hat when you see the growth, the pivot to solutions and the growth, you know, it isn't coming with a ton of additional, you know, working capital investment, like you might have with a traditional component where-
Right.
You know, your business is ramping up. Okay, that means more inventory, which means more cash tied up until you ship that stuff, and-
Right
... and, you know, it's a key focus of ours with our cash culture to make sure that as we're growing through these solutions, that these projects are running cash neutral or preferentially cash positive, so it's not a drain on free cash flow.
Right. Right.
Um.
Right. Right. R elated to that, on the margin front, because you have made a lot of progress on raising your margin rate. Not that long ago, you used to be in the mid- to upper-20s in gross margin. Now you've been above 30% for 3 consecutive quarters, I think. So talk to that a little bit. What has led to that improvement, and how should we think about that going forward?
Yeah, I mean, the aftermarket piece is certainly benefiting us there. Again, pivoting to the systems solution, that's a higher margin, higher margin wins for us than supplying just the components, that's for sure. T hen, you know, as you look forward to 2024, you know, we've got the full year of 2024 with our cost synergies that we-
Right
... that we came out of the with the first year of the Howden acquisition-
Right
... all benefiting, margin here-
Right
in the short term.
Right. No, I think $130 million was the number of incremental full-year over full-year synergy benefit, right?
Yep.
Okay. Okay.
Yep, and there's more to be had on the cost outside, too. I mean, one specific example I'll highlight, you know, as part of our year one synergies, we did a rapid negotiation with our supplier base, basically, where you've got, you know, two businesses of a similar size coming together, and you go to the supplier base and say, "There's a lot more, there's a lot more business to be had here.
Right.
You know, give us some quick cost reductions, and you have a leg up on securing that business for the long term." We had a lot of suppliers that signed up for that, and we-
Right
... we booked that. You know, I would say that, you know, we didn't get the entire supply base to sign up for that, but we're still sitting there with double the purchasing volume in the various commodities. N ow we went through a more lengthy RFP process and potentially, you know, resourcing as needed to leverage that. But there's more savings to be had there.
Right.
I expect our global procurement organization, and hopefully they're listening too, to deliver, you know, $40 million of annualized procurement costs down. Now, when I say annualized, I don't mean for this year. I mean, you know, throughout the year, finding annualized savings-
Yeah
... of $40 million to benefit us for-
Right
... years to come, but that's the, that's the target that-
Right
... the team is running with.
Right. Right. T hen on the, just on the absolute free cash flow outlook for 2024, right, midpoint is $600 million. That number is unchanged, even though the EBITDA you introduced a lower end versus the original $1.3 billion number, right? Now it's $1.175 billion-$1.3 billion. E ven though EBITDA came down by a little bit, at the midpoint, free cash flow outlook is the same. So what's driving the offset?
Yeah, I mean, I would just... We covered that pretty well three weeks ago in our slide deck, so I don't wanna give too much additional context there. Y ou know, I will talk a little bit about you know, the free cash flow pieces that happen specific to you know, meaningful cash flows that we have in Q1, for example, that don't recur-
Yeah
... don't recur throughout the year. I mean, we have our semiannual bond payment that's in the first quarter and the third quarter every year. I t's in the quarter here.
Seventy
... it's $77 million. You know, like we've been talking about Teddy 2, and the way that build-out has happened is there was more CapEx spent in Q3 of last year, and then kind of finishing the facility with the ribbon cutting next week and all the new equipment arriving. The Teddy 2 or the CapEx number for Q1 will be more like Q3 of last year versus Q4. It's kind of the way I would look at that.
Then, you know, other, you know, one time within the year activity that, that's happening, in Q1. You know, we do our annual short-term incentive payout in the month of March, that-
Right
... that, and, and other things like insurance. You know, we're now twice the size of the company we were, you know, going into last year, so our, you know, insurance premiums that are paid in the first quarter-
Right
... nominally double what they used to be.
Right.
There are, you know, I, I would say as you're looking at, you know, we're, we're not gonna forecast cash by quarter, but, but certainly there are, there are meaningful cash outflows in Q1, and we noted those three weeks ago-
Yeah
... in our earnings release, so I don't think I'm-
Yeah
... making any news here.
No, I mean,
It's worth a reminder because the business has changed, the cash flow profile.
Yeah, yeah.
The seasonality in that has changed. N o, thanks for that reminder.
Yeah, and then, you know, as far as improvement throughout the year, you know, as we continue to de-lever in our. W e're on our path there and continued down that path. You know, there's just less interest expense-
Right
... as we go down the path, so.
Right.
Right.
Right. J ust, pivoting a bit, I think we've got two minutes left, so just pivoting, to de-leveraging. You have, found, good success, like you, like you guided the street, right? $500 million in divestitures. You're done with that. You've used those proceeds to reduce your debt, right? I think the, the number at the end of last quarter was 3.35.
Yeah.
Your target is getting down to 2.5-2.9 by the middle of 2024, and then the sweet spot for you is 2-2.5, right?
Right.
Talk about that a little bit. When should we expect for you to get there? I know it's hard to pin you down on that, right?
Right.
Just a rough sense is helpful. T hen why is 2-2.5 the right number?
Yeah, so we, like you highlighted, expect to be in the high 2s around the middle of this year and then closer to our sweet spot range around the end of this year. Y ou know, 2-2.5 is just really where we're comfortable operating, where we could start to consider things that we're currently keeping off the table, like, you know, significant-
Right
cash acquisitions, and other uses of cash that, you know, until we de-lever, we're not-
Yeah
we're not gonna do those things.
Right.
Once we get in the 2-2.5 range, then we'll... That's where we're comfortable reconsidering that stuff.
Right. Right, right. And once you get there, we should expect you to get back to your bolt-on M&As, because there are a lot of growth opportunities.
No question.
Right. Uh-
Yeah, no question that there are a lot of opportunities, for sure.
Right, right.
You see them all the time.
Right, right. A gain, to be sure, you have said that until you get there, you're not doing any meaningful cash acquisitions?
Not any significant cash acquisitions, no.
Right. Right, right. Okay. Okay. Fantastic. We are almost out of time. If somebody has a question in the audience, we can take that.
Thank you. Maybe you can highlight the midterm page in terms of growth for your business. In terms of organic growth, how do you see that, and how much leverage would you get on your margin for additional growth, let's say if you have a 3-5 year perspective?
Yeah, we put out significant medium-term guidance at our Investor Day last September. I think it was September. No, it was October, but it was information as of September 30 last year. You know, mid-teens CAGR on the medium term there. Expect that. You know, I'm not bringing new news there.
We're still confident in that, our medium-term outlook. Matter of fact, we just reinforced that outlook in light of the big LNG pause news. We wanted to go out to the market and reiterate or I should say just restate that, and so we did that earlier in Q1. So I would stick with that.
Okay, Joe, I think we'll just wrap it over there. We are over our scheduled time, so thank you.
Yeah.
Thanks a lot.
Thanks for having us.
Uh-
Really appreciate it.
... this discussion. Thanks.
Thanks, everybody.