All right, if everyone can please grab their seats. Welcome, everyone, to Chart's 2024 Capital Markets Day. Thank you to those here in person down at the New York Stock Exchange and for those joining us on the webcast. We plan to take about two hours today for this meeting. Before our President and CEO, Jill Evanko, takes you through our safety moment, I would first like to direct your attention to our forward-looking statements on slide two and three. With that, I would now like to turn the podium over to Jill.
Thanks, John. And good morning to everyone. Thanks for showing up today. We're excited to walk through, actually, what is a shorter-than-typical investor day so that we can focus today on 2025 and our medium term and walking you from 2024 to 2025. I want to start with the safety moment because safety is our number one priority. Across Chart, all of our One Chart Global team members are empowered, authorized, and expected to stop work if they see a potentially unsafe situation. This is shown in our lowest-ever quarter-end total recordable incident rate as of September 30, 2024, of 0.43, which is a 20% reduction. And it's like golf, right? The lower, the better. So a 20% reduction in our TRIR from one year ago.
In terms of lost-time incident rate, we are also at our lowest ever in our history of 0.13, which is a 35% reduction in lost-time from one year ago today, so we show today a safety moment. This is just one example. We start each of our meetings, as well as all of our global CEO town halls, with a safety moment. If you look at the incidents that we do have, they're primarily related to fingers and hands or ladders, and so we chose today to share ladder safety with you, and you can see some details here, which I won't take you through, but ultimately, our goal is to eliminate ladder use as much as is possible in our business to continue to drive toward our target of zero accidents in the business, so I'm going to go ahead and walk through the first part of today's agenda.
I'm here with Joe Brinkman, our CFO today, who will piggyback this with me in the middle. So the first part here, I want to talk about our commercial pipeline, what we have going in the business, and some of the fundamentals of what makes us very unique as a company at Chart. So in terms of safety being our number one priority, we see that linked very closely with team member engagement, which is linked very closely with our operational metrics and operational execution. As a business, we're very unique. We have molecule agnostic is the term that we use. So we're able to serve a variety and multiple sets of end markets with the same manufacturing lines, the same capabilities, and the same equipment. And that gives us a very unique advantage.
We also handle such a widespread set of molecules that we're not heavily reliant on one independent or individual end market. In addition to that, over the last few years, we've expanded our aftermarket service repair capabilities to be over 30% of our total revenue. And you can see in the upper left-hand side of slide seven, the split between our segments, including 33% of our business in the repair service leasing or aftermarket segment. That is supported by our 50 service and repair centers around the world. In addition to that, we've been able to serve a very broad global geographic diverse set of customers, including achieving orders with over 300 new customers each year for the past three years.
We're supporting that global diverse customer base with our 64 new build manufacturing sites, which allows us to be closer to our customer projects as well as cost-effective as we can be when we're serving that customer base. In addition to that, not only is our manufacturing proximity to our customers a unique competitive advantage, but also the depth of our engineering expertise. We have about 35% of our 11,700 global team members that have an engineering background. You can see specifically the number of engineers by definition in the business at 1,500 on the page here. They're what brings us to customers early, what gets us sticky with our customers early in a project, and in many cases gets us specked in so that when there are repetitive orders in a pipeline, we're the company that already has the advantage being specked in.
Then finally, on this page, I'd point out the 1,320 patents and trademarks that we have. This is supported by our portfolio having over 80% of what we do with intellectual property associated. So the business looks quite a bit different than it did back in 2015 or about 10 years ago. We didn't always have the business composition that I just described with 33% or so aftermarket and full solution on the new build side. The evolution that you see on slide eight here really has come from the shaping of our strategy and the execution thereof. The first piece being our goal of having more resiliency throughout a cycle. You can see that in the middle of the page. We're back in 2015. Really in 2017 even, we had 0% of the business in aftermarket service and repair.
In addition to that, with that resiliency across the cycle and hitting such a broad set of end markets on the new build side, we've been able to get less reliant on one or two large projects. And that's allowed us to have the ability to continue to grow through a cycle. And I'll talk about that toward the end of the presentation today of what we see in terms of the growth profile and the margin profile continuing across the coming years up to 2030. In addition to all of this here, we've been able to expand the portfolio, expand our capacity, and hit, again, a variety of different end markets through some investment in our organic CapEx in addition to our inorganic acquisitions.
In that kind of pruning of the portfolio and then expanding of the portfolio, we divested our biomedical business, which was kind of what's not like the rest of the business, meaning that biomedical had high working capital as a percent of sales. It had a high amount of lawsuits associated with that segment and was a much faster R&D cycle than the rest of the business. So as we divested those businesses, we redeployed that cash both inorganically and organically to serve the expanded solution set, expand our process technologies, and then invest in capacity as we've done over the last few years. Shortly, Joe is going to talk about the normalization of our capital expenditure spent, and that's something that we saw really come down into our normalized 2%-2.5% of sales in the third quarter of 2024.
We expect that normalization trend to continue here in the coming few years. And then finally, I'd point out on this page around cash generation. So we'll talk throughout today about how we're generating cash operationally, some of the other activities that we have to achieve our target at the end of 2025 of $3 billion of debt, and also self-help, Chart Business Excellence, and other activities that we have deployed already and are in early innings of to continue to expand the margin profile in 2025 as well as beyond that. Because our solutions and equipment are molecule agnostic, we're also hitting a wide range of end markets and benefiting from macro tailwinds, as you can see on slide nine.
So these macro tailwinds, you can read through these as a whole, but I'd point number one to continued energy intensity, the need for more energy, whether it's via artificial intelligence, whether it's the hybrid of need for energy sources, whether it's the changing climate, et cetera, all drive the need for more energy. And we're very well positioned for that. In addition to that, the other one I would point out on this page is related to aging infrastructure. You've heard us talk more and more about aftermarket and service and repair. And that's starting to become a key element in all of the end markets that we have.
We'll share a little bit today about not only the service repair footprint that we have, the traction that we've gotten through bringing Howden's aftermarket expertise to us, but also how we play in the digital uptime space in preventive maintenance and what people really want is information early so that they make good decisions with respect to their capital assets. What is our competitive advantage? You've heard me talk about uniqueness. You've heard me talk about molecule agnostic. You've heard me talk about our engineering expertise, the ability to design a full solution, and then manufacture all of the mission-critical pieces of equipment that go into that full solution. You can see up here eight different aspects of how we define our competitive advantage. I'm going to point out a few examples here. New product development and R&D.
This is something that I would say we do very well internally. We have, as you might imagine, a stage gate process for new product development. At any given point in time, we have in the works for R&D just over 100 different projects, and those go through a very regimented approach to the decision-making of how they get into that funnel and pipeline. A few examples right now that we're willing to share that are not highly confidential. We're working right now on an enhanced fin surface for air-cooled heat exchangers, and I'll talk air-cooled in a minute. There's quite a bit of different end market opportunity for our ACHX. In addition to that, we're working on a higher blade angle fan, and that's for data center cooling applications.
We've talked about the fact that we've now gotten two orders with data center operators, and that's with respect to air coolers. We do believe that there's a competitive advantage ahead for some of the nuances that we're deploying through our new product development cycle. In addition to that, the air lubrication system for engines and marine, marine and end market, that's, I would say, becoming more of a growth profile in our business, still very embryonic, but we're able to serve this end market more so with our compressors, blowers than we ever were before, as well as our jumbo cryogenic tanks for marine bunkering and onboard marine that are made in our Theodore, Alabama Teddy 2 facility. We'll talk about the facility in a few slides.
The last one that I love to point out because it's kind of part of our core business in our cryo tank solutions, but even in that segment for industrial gas, there is innovation. And we are at the leading edge of that innovation. For example, one of the new products that we have in the pipeline is our Trifecta Pro All-Star Trailer. I did not name that. This is a complete operating system in a single atmospheric trailer for industrial gas applications. So there's a lot of technical elements to that. But what I can tell you is that industrial gas players of all sizes and scope, they want a one answer in one trailer. And this is really kind of upping the game on industrial gas trailers. So we look forward to introducing that shortly here to the market.
And then I'd point out the certifications and regulations piece of the puzzle. This is something that kind of in our world, we view as table stakes, but it is quite a differentiator for us. With that, we are a leader in the industry certification standards. Joe Belling sits on the board of Compressed Gas Association, or CGA, which is a leader in setting safety certifications as well as pressure, temperature, and all kinds of different requirements for high pressure, low temperature handling. In addition to that, we are always out there in different regions that are looking to set their regulatory requirements or certification requirements. We were one of the first in China for our liquid hydrogen group code for tanks. We were the first in Korea for our Korean Gas Standard for liquid hydrogen trailers.
These are processes that give us a competitive edge not only from the design manufacturing, but also give us a leg up commercially, being ahead of competitors that are followers. In terms of this molecule agnosticness that we have, what does that really mean? On the slide that's shown on the screen here, which is slide 11, what I would point to is a lot of times we get the question of, how do you serve so many end markets? And the answer to that is that we do not have to change our product. We do not have to change our manufacturing for those products to serve the variety of end markets that we serve. You can see some examples up on the page here. Starting in the upper right-hand side of slide 11, you can see our heat exchangers.
So this can be air-cooled or brazed heat exchangers, which traditionally, 10 years ago on that first evolution chart, you would have seen primarily almost wholly in the oil field or oil and gas. Those same heat exchangers are now used in data centers, in CCUS, in direct air capture, in water applications, and multiple others. So you can see that we didn't have to do anything different in our shops to serve the variety of different end markets. And that's one of the most important aspects of our ability to be molecule agnostic and our ability to utilize our flexible manufacturing around the globe. With respect to flexible manufacturing, almost all of the products that we manufacture are made in more than one of our shops around the world.
So that gives us flexibility in terms of if there's a macro disruption, it gives us flexibility in terms of volume changes between products or end markets. And it gives us flexibility for customers who make decisions around, is it cost-effective for me to ship something that's the size of this room from North America to an international location, or would I prefer to have it made closer to where I have the end use of that product? And then the bottom left of slide 11 should not go unnoticed. It's a very important aspect of when we talk about we handle the entire value chain from production, providing process technology and equipment to those who produce the molecule, to storage and transport, to end use. We also underpin this with the service aftermarket repair aspect of the business with the digital uptime offering that we have.
We have a Ventsim offering for our mining customers and CO2 management, as well as the lifecycle services, so if there's an emergency situation, we serve our customers with respect to that, so from point A to point Z, we're able to support our customers. That is very different than back in 2017 or 2018 with zero aftermarket and with quite a breadth of the process technologies and the digital that we've added to the portfolio in the last few years. All right, when I talk about not having to switch manufacturing lines or products to serve these end markets, I wanted to give a few examples as well as some examples of the investments that we have made in the last few years to support the growth that we see that we've seen into the backlog, but also that we see ahead in our commercial pipeline.
On slide 12, La Crosse, Wisconsin. Some of you have been to La Crosse, Wisconsin. I think we found the hardy ones because we took everybody to La Crosse in the winter a few years ago and got to tour the facility. This is our core brazed aluminum heat exchanger facility where we have the world's two largest brazing furnaces. We have multiple furnaces at that facility. We point out the world's two largest, with the largest being capable to braze a 144-inch core. That's a very large core. That gives us quite an advantage, especially as you see liquefaction entities wanting to scale up. It also gives us flexibility around the modularity that goes with the process technology of IPSMR that we have for LNG. We'll talk about that in a minute.
In the last few years, we have added a brazing line and furnace to our Tulsa, Oklahoma facility so that we have more than one location that can do this. We have the ability to level load easier between plants and continue to take on more brazing cold box opportunities from our commercial pipeline across the end markets that I've described. There are only five in the world that can manufacture brazed aluminum heat exchangers, including Chart. We are the only company in the world that manufactures brazed aluminum heat exchangers in North America at two different facilities. That gives us a very unique advantage, especially when you look at manufacturing in America, especially as you look at LNG export facilities and their need for equipment being shop-built but brought to site in these modular applications.
The bottom right-hand talks a little bit about what have we done to improve throughput. I can tell you we have a lot more to go on throughput. That is something that some of you have heard me talk about throughout the year. And I see an immense amount of opportunity for us to continue to improve via Chart Business Excellence, via automation, and the ability to utilize our manufacturing sites in a way that gives us the maximum throughput and optimization for where we're the best at what we make in each of these shops. If we look at Chart Business Excellence or CBE, which was deployed through Six Sigma applications, through Kaizen applications, as well as through our integration team over the last 18 months, this has gained a lot of traction. We have hundreds of people that have been trained this year to date in Six Sigma.
As part of that, the utilization of their tools and in real-life projects in our shops has yielded some margin improvements and some throughput improvements. I'd point to one machine in particular that has been very beneficial to us in terms of improving man hours as well as throughput, and that is a friction stir welder. We put friction stir welding into this facility in La Crosse, Wisconsin. We've had significant manpower savings. I won't go into specifics on what that looks like, but also an over 50% reduction in the cost of poor quality in terms of this step in the manufacturing. We are currently in the process of implementing friction stir welding in the Tulsa, Oklahoma facility, and that will go live in the first quarter of 2025.
We're very much looking forward to seeing further optimization and throughput, in particular in brazed, because that is at the heart and soul of many, many liquefaction projects, opportunities, and molecules. Another area that we made an investment in geographically was in Theodore, Alabama. So there's two Theodore facilities inside of Chart. We refer to them fondly as Teddy One and Teddy Two. Teddy One came to us via the acquisition of Worthington's cryogenic and hydrogen trailer business a few years back. Since then, we've utilized that facility for what we call flexible manufacturing between New Prague, Minnesota, the Czech Republic facility that we have, and our Ball Ground, Georgia facility. So that's been a great add for us to be able to take on more bulk tanks in particular in a more trailer business with that flexibility to level load between those facilities.
Teddy Two was a greenfield for us that we have invested in over the last few years. This facility went live into production here earlier in 2024. Teddy Two is extremely unique. This is the only facility in the world that can manufacture in the shop cryogenic jumbo tanks of up to 1,700 cubic meters. I'm going to talk about why that's important in a second here. But think 1,700 cubic meters. So that's the inner in the bottom left of slide 13 here. I think double wall insulated, right? So you got an inner and an outer to simplify it. Joe, that's 28 feet?
28 feet.
28 feet tall there. But if you think 1,700 cubic meters, so I was trying to how do I visualize that? Think of an NBA basketball court. And if you filled it with liquid up to the top of the basketball hoops, that's how much 1,700 cubic meters is inside of something. It's also two and a quarter million bottles of wine, so my preferred analogy. But that's pretty big, right? And that actually brings me to why Theodore, why Teddy 2. Strong talent there, strong labor market, strong welding. This facility is on the water, so it's on Mobile. It allows us to get these large tanks to where they need to go without having to transport on land or a lot of land because the weight of these can, in many cases, not cross certain roads that are already in play.
So water is extremely important, water access. In addition to that, there's a rail spur on site. So that gives us flexibility not only for transport, but also for us to take rail car business into the Teddy 2 facility. We've seen in the last 18 months or so through various different quarters, different industrial gas rail car orders coming into the pipe. And we expect rail car orders to continue to be part of our annual order mix and sales mix. So this facility gives us another optionality with respect to rail cars. But at the foundation of Teddy 2, besides the size of these tanks, so somebody may say, why 1,700 cubic meters? Why is that? And it really opens up a few different end markets than what we previously had access to, marine being one of them.
So I referred earlier to marine being somewhat embryonic for us, but we're seeing a pipeline of marine that we couldn't have accessed before without this size capability in tank. And that's drawn quite a bit of attention not only in the LNG marine market, not only in the bunkering aspect of marine, but also in onboard cargo ship. So there's quite a bit of opportunity to utilize this facility to serve those end markets. Space exploration and market is very interesting and is going to only become a higher growth market in our opinion. So space exploration is a market that utilizes these types of storage tanks essentially on the launch pad for rockets for takeoff. And they handle a variety of different molecules, whether it's nitrogen or oxygen, in some cases hydrogen for these applications.
We have seen an immense amount of increase in our space exploration backlog and order book as a result of this particular facility. And just given the dynamics that we see ahead, we think space exploration for a variety of different reasons is going to continue to grow, especially in the private sector. If you look at our trailing 12-month orders for space, $60 million of space exploration orders at this particular location. All right. So looking out to 2030, you can pick a lot of different timelines in terms of looking at our end markets. But I want to focus in on the fact that if you look across our primary end markets, what you see here is between now and 2030, we anticipate every one of these to grow.
We're set in a very good position with our commercial pipeline being the highest that it's ever been at over $24 billion of opportunities here in the coming three-ish years or so. And if you look at these variety of different end markets, what I'd point out here is this aspect of even if this doesn't hold true, let's just say we face what we faced in 2020 in COVID as an example, right? And so food and beverage was shut down for a period of time. Industrial gas focused in wholly on oxygen and liquid oxygen. We were able to essentially keep ourselves flat in COVID year to the prior year because we pivoted to serve the hospital, the oxygen, the industrial gas end market to serve COVID.
That's a great example of having the diversity of the end markets allows us, with the manufacturing capabilities that I've already described, to pivot and be agile if something doesn't look perfectly like up into the right as we show here on the screen. Another good example of this is our HLNG vehicle tanks. If you look in this year, it's great. This year, we'll call it recovering. Year to date through September 30th, 2024, our HLNG vehicle tank orders were higher than full year 2022 and were higher than full year 2023. So that's good. But in a year where it was down, let's take 2022, which year over year in 2022, HLNG vehicle tank orders were down about $100 million year over year or 85-ish%. We still grew our order book over double digits in 2022, even with that decline in HLNG vehicle tanks.
So those are just a couple of anecdotes to describe the fact that this diversity of end markets, even though we expect them to continue to grow across the board, if something happens that's a hiccup in that growth from a macro environment, we feel like we're very well set to be agile to pivot to serve other end markets and applications. And I'd be remiss on this page also to just not mention aftermarket, right? Aftermarket down here saying growing high single digits to 10%. In the last couple of years, we have grown more than that. We are going to talk in a minute about the early innings of some of the aftermarket synergies and actions that we have ahead. But we're level setting aftermarket at this particular growth rate.
I'd remind everybody on this particular slide that we do have commitments from customers on specific projects that total $1.95 billion that are not yet in backlog. The reason those are not yet in backlog is either because we're working on terms and conditions and getting paper done, or we're waiting for the customer to release us from a manufacturing release standpoint in the case of ExxonMobil Mozambique, in the case of Woodside, Louisiana LNG project, two examples that are part of that nearly $2 billion of awarded but not yet in backlog. And then one question that we regularly get is shown on page 42 of the deck. And I'd skip ahead, but it'd probably take me a while. So these slides are online. It's in the appendix, but it shows our breakdown of approximate sales this year by major end market and major category.
LNG sales as a whole are running approximately between in the high teens, so between 17%-20% of our sales right now, and that's LNG in its entirety, not just big LNG. Okay. All right. Now moving on, so I'm going to touch on a few key end markets that we're seeing at various stages of their evolution and of their maturity and how we play in them. Hot topic, data center, artificial intelligence related. I talked a little bit about this, but think back, 2019, we acquired Air-X-C hangers from Harsco. When we acquired Air-X-C hangers, that business was primarily for the oil and gas end markets. Those Air-X-C hangers, air coolers are now the ones that are used in carbon capture. They're used in the direct air capture large projects that you hear about in Texas, and they're used in data centers applications.
So that's another great example of how we can hit these end markets with the same piece of equipment that perhaps originally was heavily dominated in a traditional energy end market. We already have $80 million of data center awards this year. 40 of that 80 will be a fourth quarter booking. And we talked about that a week ago. So we see a growing set of applications for our equipment in data center land, especially as the hyperscalers get larger, especially as they are located in certain climates where dry cooled and heat rejection works better than more traditional applications. And you heard me talk about the new product development example that will serve this data center end market. And we're working very closely with specific data center operators on what that optimization looks like for these applications. So moving on to LNG, LNG opportunity.
Listen, LNG is here to stay. We've said that over and over again over the last few years. We think it's a critical part of the hybrid of energy solutions, so there's not just going to be one winner, and we're able to serve a variety of these. Why is LNG here to stay? It's cost-effective. It is scaled. There is global infrastructure, and the actual export-import, the two sides to the puzzle here are built and are building more. If you look at IPSMR, so Integrated Pre-Cooled Single Mixed Refrigerant, it's kind of like that trifecta naming convention. That's what you get with engineers. IPSMR has been gaining a lot of traction, but it's not only IPSMR. It's not only the equipment for export terminals that we're seeing gaining and growing demand. It's also storage and transport. It's regas.
When you hear about European needs to displace Russian LNG, the re-gas side, the import side, the equipment to transport the incoming LNG to where it needs to go and its end use is all part of what we serve across the LNG set of end markets. The last slide, 16, the last slide here, retrofit and service. This is important. This is something that we had talked about for many, many years about seeing retrofit and is it going to gain traction on brownfield LNG export facilities. In the last 12, 14 months, this has really been picking up steam. So it's somewhat on the aging infrastructure macro theme that I referred to earlier, but it's also somewhat on the fact that there's optimization for those who already have an existing asset. So getting more gas out of an existing train, that's something that can be optimized.
And we're a key partner on some of these things. Not having as much downtime. And I'll talk in a moment about a case study that we did with Cheniere to support optimizing their Sabine Pass facility, as well as taking advantage of things like, I have boil-off gas. What can I do with it from my facility? There is a lot of helium as an example that boils off of these types of facilities. And there is a growing need for helium. So those are examples of how that last bucket that was kind of more of a thesis on our part a few years ago has brought very tangible orders into the order book in the last 12 to 14 months. If you look at our backlog, our LNG-related backlog typically runs and is currently running between 21% and 24% of our total backlog.
So we get asked that question a lot. I looked back, and it really hasn't varied. It's not whipsawed a lot. It's kind of stayed in that low 20% of our total backlog. And that's all-inclusive, right? That's not just the big LNG aspect. You can see here that we really are gaining lots of installed base in LNG. This is export in particular projects. I'd point you to the right-hand side of the page. There's five shown here that we're able to talk about that we would point to not being in backlog right now. And some of those are in that $1.95 billion I referenced. A couple of these are not. And then there's dozens of additional projects that we're currently working with customers, potential customers that we're not able to speak to the particulars yet. But that gives you a sense that this pipeline is real.
It's very tangible, and the pipeline is growing for LNG, which in some cases, maybe in the last week is not the case, but prior to last Tuesday, maybe was a little bit counterintuitive to this idea of LNG pause, but I can tell you that we did not experience in 2024 any type of difference in our LNG pipeline, in our LNG kind of expectations around what the order book looked like as a result of that LNG pause. There are four not shown on this page that off the top of my head, we have been told that they are ours. Two of the four will utilize IPSMR. Two will be equipment specifically. Three of the four are outside of the United States, so to give you a sense that this page is actually very fluid. This page is fluid by the day.
In our world, that's a very strong positive. It also ties very closely to our need to continue to increase throughput in the core shops that drive the heart and soul of LNG equipment. All right. We say IPSMR is winning the marketplace. IPSMR, so this is our process technology, really serves the modular mid-scale. What that means is you can, as an operator, you don't have to go sell 20 MTPA and build a big LNG facility. You can do these in trains of 1 MTPA, 2 MTPA, and then start producing and returning to yourself as you add trains. That's the modular aspect of what we refer to here. There's really two reasons that we're gaining traction in this space. One is the industry shift itself. The other is specific to the process technology that we bring to the table.
The industry shift is around the fact of what I just described. The operator doesn't want to wait to return to themselves. The operator wants less CapEx, less OpEx. They want a smaller pot size, smaller footprint in some cases, so all of these things, including the need for less labor at a construction site, go to why the industry is shifting here. In addition, modular works both onshore as well as floating, and so in certain geographies, having the ability to have a floating vessel makes a difference because it can move, and that can be around security concerns. It can be around gas composition, temperature of water, et cetera. Specific to Chart and why IPSMR is winning and what the benefits are are really around the installed base, so we're gaining some traction because we do have operating above nameplate capacity assets in the field at this point.
Over the last five years, we've worked with dozens of operators, EPCs to validate the technology. So you can't just go in and say, "Hey, guys, here's some IPSMR. Use it on your project, Exxon." It doesn't work that way. It goes through heavy engineering and technical validation and then also a project team validation. So this has been validated by dozens, as I referred to, obviously Exxon, Cheniere, Bechtel, Fluor, TotalEnergies, to name a few. So that's something that has allowed the actual traction of IPSMR to start to grow faster by having those validations. And then lastly, I'd point out that we do have 107 patents on our IPSMR process technology with 42 pending patent applications in addition to those. All right. So we've said we don't think the answer to this energy intensity and energy access challenge in the macro environment is one.
It's not just LNG. It's not just traditional energy. But we do think there's a hybrid of solutions, hydrogen being one of them. We've been working on hydrogen equipment for 158 years. In the last few years, we've seen gaining traction from production to end use with really the last couple of years moving away from just production to storage and transport and into end use. The hydrogen market is still a very regional play. So there is not the global construct that I described on LNG. So what we've seen so far into the order book has been a geographic regional play. We do expect that over time, but it's going to take some time that there is an import-export market that develops. That import-export market is not included in that look that we show to 2030. So really, we're expecting more builds, getting larger, getting more scale.
We're starting to see inbound requests for larger tons per day on the liquefaction side in multiple end-use equipment. So this is, again, a gas and a liquid play. It is a very regional play right now. And we're very well set to serve these geographies. I think our number up here, we were above 20 in terms of countries that we regions that we serve from already with an install base in hydrogen. But it also links closely to the certification discussion that I described earlier. So having a head start on certifications in specific regions that are heavily dedicated to hydrogen, so not just a U.S. play here, is something that we've seen gaining traction. Nuclear. A couple of years ago, we probably couldn't say nuclear.
And now we talk nuclear as a growing end market, something that we serve traditional nuclear applications with our fans, as well as SMR applications with gas circulators, fans, air coolers, just to name a few of the pieces of equipment that we serve. So more traditional side would be the fans that came from the Howden acquisition. And then on the SMR side, it's a combination of Chart and Howden equipment working together. Earlier in October, we booked orders with EDF, with Axima, and then with a U.S. utility that's working heavily on nuclear. So we see this as a small current market for us that is growing in pipeline. The pipeline itself has increased meaningfully in the last couple of quarters even. So this is an area that we're keeping a good eye on. But again, we don't have to do something different to serve this end market.
We just have to be out there ensuring that the players in nuclear are working with us early, in particular in their SMR applications. And then carbon capture, CCUS. So we talk about this. We play in carbon capture in a myriad of ways. We play with technologies. That's our sustainable energy solutions, cryogenic carbon capture technology, or SESCCC. We have Earthly Labs, which is the smaller scale, kind of closed-loop cycle carbon capture technology that was primarily originally for wineries, breweries, distilleries because of its food grade and closed-loop cycle for CO2. And that's growing into larger applications. And then equipment. So our equipment is technology agnostic in carbon capture. And so every CCUS application, whether it's amine, cryogenic, or other, is going to have a need for heat exchangers, for fans, for blowers, for compressors. And so we serve the benefit even if it's not our technology.
Scaling up on the left-hand side, if you looked at Earthly Labs, average order when they first came into our portfolio three and a half years ago, that ranged from about $200,000 per order to at the most, it would be $2 million. Right now, our average is over $2.5 million per order on Earthly Labs. And that's because it's scaling up to these other end markets that you see in the middle here. We've also localized assembly for Earthly Labs in one of our German facilities, which has allowed us to begin to penetrate the European market. Very early days, high demand. So we're excited to see this particular technology going into not only Europe, but also New Zealand, Australia, et cetera. And then the digital connection piece. This is a great aspect.
It's not huge dollars per new build, but it really does get that customer sticky. And in some cases, it actually gives us the ability to not only do preventive maintenance, but also see where a competitor's asset needs servicing. And then we can service our competitor's asset in the field. I'm going to talk about one particular, and this is an Earthly Labs aftermarket case that relates to digital. So we have our Earthly Labs CiCi Oak solution is being used at Opus One Winery. It now is utilizing the digital uptime, real-time monitoring system. So I do have a video we'd like to share, a brief video. It's a few minutes long. Please play the video.
A number of years ago, a former associate said that he wanted to be able to have a good answer for his children or his grandchildren when they ask, "What have you done to save the planet?" What can we do in our industry? We can do a ton because the industry is not that huge. But if we can be like that scratch in a champagne glass where the bubbles flow, if we can get people interested in climate change and see what we're doing, then maybe they will pick up the lead and do things in their own industries or in their own personal lives. Earthly Labs had a long history in the brewing industry, and they were looking to translate that expertise, that knowledge to the wine industry. Michael and his team looked at what they were doing.
For me, for Michael, for the team, it really became what we wanted to focus on for the 2022 harvest. I think it's really important because we do generate a lot of CO2 with the fermentation. Why wouldn't you do something about capturing carbon dioxide, sequestering it, and turning it into something that you can use? Carbon sequestration is very important because this is really one of the main reasons we have climate change, because so much CO2 is being given off with the way we live, that it's important to start to address it and at least stop climate change or go backwards a little. A very, very important initiative that Michael and his team are spearheading is, in fact, the pilot test program we have currently underway with Earthly Labs. This is a CiCi unit.
It collects the gas off the fermentation headspace that collects in the tank. The compressed gas moves through a purification process. From there, the scrubbed CO2 is cooled to a liquefied temperature. That liquefied gas is moved into the CO2 store where it can be stored for later use. We were able to collect 1,400 pounds of CO2 off just six tank collection. To put that into perspective, 1,400 pounds of CO2 is equivalent to one year, so at that scale, we would capture tons, and so we're looking at, well, can we take the CO2 being generated directly from the fermentation and turn it into something that is very useful? We're taking it a step further to create a product that we can use in-house that dry ice now.
And we can use that in a fermentation that has ended, but we leave the wine in contact with the skins and extended maceration, and it protects the headspace. There's a lot of opportunities. I hope that we're encouraging other wineries to be a part of this goal to become carbon negative. And I hope that our customers also, people who drink a glass of Opus One, I hope that one of the daydreams they have when they're pondering the flavors and the aromas and the mouthfeel of the wine, that they're thinking about how they can help save the planet as well.
And if any of you are ever out there and visiting Opus One, let us know. We'll get you a tour to see the CC in action. Some other aftermarket case studies.
What I would say is aftermarket has been one of the great synergies that we've seen over the last 18 months. You can see on this page, the middle is what we just showed you. The life cycle support side on stations has been gaining traction. That's really the result of having field service people close to the installed base of assets, in particular in Europe. Then on the right-hand side of the page, this is a case study that we worked on with Cheniere with respect to our Tuf-Lite 4 fans. Cheniere had a particular time frame with which they wanted these fans to be installed given their seasonality at their location, at their Sabine Pass location. We were able to meet this testing requirement in a shorter time frame than they needed as the result of having Howden's wind tunnel capability.
That's another great example that brought in tens of millions of dollars into the business. What does this mean in terms of future opportunity? I call it early innings. There is so much more opportunity for us to go after in RSL or aftermarket. You can see our installed base of about 450,000 units. We expect that to grow between now and 2030, as you can see on slide 24. One of the things that I think is super important, and we actually have with us today for Q&A the individual in our organization that joined us via Howden, who runs our aftermarket business. He can share a lot more during Q&A with you. One of the things that I find as a super interesting fact is we only currently have about 40%; it's actually 39% of our installed base covered via aftermarket service repair.
So that leaves an immense amount of geographic and install base coverage opportunity in the current state to go after, let alone in the growth that you see from new build install coming in play in the next five to six years. And all of this, as you heard on the Opus One video, but all of this is underpinned through our ESG activities. We've talked a lot about safety. I just want to reiterate, it is our number one priority. You can see as it compares to industry-specific Bureau of Labor Statistics in the upper right-hand corner here. Our S&P Global score increased from 2023 to 2024 from 29 to 32, driven by us joining the UN Global Compact and improvements in IT supply chain safety and training.
And we do expect in the near term a positive update from MSCI given some of the actions that we currently have in flight in our sharing with them. So before I hand it over to Joe Brinkman to talk about the details and the walks from 2024 to 2025, I just want to talk a little bit about a few aspects of our 2025 outlook that you can see on slide 26. These numbers are the same that we gave on November 1st. So they are unchanged from what we showed at that point. And we've really worked to incorporate the learnings that we've had in terms of our full solution business, timing of revenue shifts, and being able to deliver the outlook that we have here. And we have great backlog coverage for this outlook.
We feel great about the actions that we've put in place and are underway again to achieve this going forward. There's a few things I do want to point out here, though, about 2025 for those who are modeling this. As we've said, the first quarter of our year in any given year is always our lowest quarter of the year. We do not anticipate 2025 to be different than that. The first quarter is typically a use of cash, just given very specific items that John can share offline with you, but things like bonuses and timing of insurance renewals, et cetera. The first quarter is typically a use of cash for us. When you look at the first half and second half of the year, we don't anticipate 2025 to look much different than our first half, second half, the last couple of years have looked.
If you look at sales, it's kind of in the mid- to high 40% of the years in the first half, and then you guys can do the math to the second half. Cash I just described, so that you're going to have a more heavily back-end second half of the year weighted cash than you would in sales. Earnings reflects kind of that sales seasonality first to second half, so we're happy to provide more specifics on 1H to 2H as needed, and my last comment, and I'll welcome Joe up in the meantime, is around margin and backlog. The margin in our backlog supports the gross and EBITDA margin outlook that is shown here in our 2025 guide, so thank you, Joe, for taking it from here.
All right. Thanks, Jill. I'll spend the next few slides talking about how we will deliver our 2025 outlook.
As you can see on slide 28, most of the incremental sales needed to hit our 2025 forecast range of 9%-14% growth will come from backlog conversion and capacity and productivity actions we put in place during 2023 and 2024, including incremental capacity from Teddy 2, our Tulsa, Oklahoma brazing line expansion, which Jill talked to you about earlier, and our trailer expansion at our Ball Ground facility in Georgia. Our forecast assumes that our new build, book, and ship business grows low single digits year on year, which is lower than historically typical, as less is needed with higher strong backlog coverage of over 60% for the next 12 months. We also have included $200 million for potential project and order timing delays in our forecast. By nature, potential delays are difficult to predict, but we thought it was prudent to include in our range.
As a reminder, project delays and customer schedule changes are not cancellations or lost business. Our cancellation rate remains significantly below 1% of backlog. Slide 29 shows how the segments are expected to perform in 2025. We anticipate that RSL solutions will increase low single digits as we assume a normal year for the balance of the world, excluding China, where weakness is likely to persist in 2025. The growth in Heat Transfer Systems is largely driven by backlog conversion related to both supply and demand for all things energy, including LNG and data center projects. We anticipate a similar trend in Specialty Products, with its double-digit growth rate also being driven by backlog conversion of global hydrogen projects and other specialty markets such as carbon capture, metals and mining, and space. Earlier, Jill highlighted how we are still early in our aftermarket journey.
Next year, we forecast sales growth of high single digits to 10%, as Jill just mentioned. Year to date, September 30, 2024, our RSL orders and sales grew 10.3% and 26.8% respectively when compared to the same period in 2023. We are not forecasting that level of growth in 2025 due to 2024 having had a significant field service project, which are difficult to predict and are not included in our 2025 forecast. Overall, we anticipate our margin to increase in 2025, driven primarily by our heat transfer system and specialty product segments. We expect to see a normalization in repair service and leasing, as we are not forecasting a repeat of high margin 2024 activity, which drove Q2 and Q3 margins higher. Our full year 2025 Adjusted EBITDA bridge is shown on slide 30.
The key drivers are our positive margin coming out of our backlog, largely driven by delivering more full solutions to our customers, and additional synergy drop through which will be partially offset by inflation. This is mainly driven by labor. Our main raw materials inputs are stainless steel and aluminum, and our metal costs right now are stable. Freight has dropped off the peak. However, the Red Sea issue is still keeping pricing elevated and likely to stabilize to a new normal, which is higher than prior to the Red Sea issue. Looking at our full year 2025 EPS bridge, the majority of the growth is driven by operations, as just covered. We will have movement with interest expense, tax, and our share count. In a few slides, I will cover how we are simplifying our capital structure.
As we've spoken to before, we have made significant progress driving our cash culture through the organization, which is key to our continued improvement on cash generation. We've implemented a global One Chart training and approach to working capital management to drive improved operational cash performance through our global project management, commercial, and operations teams. We saw tangible benefits of this in the third quarter of 2024. And with our major capacity expansion projects in place, we will see a normalized level of CapEx expenditure moving forward in the range of 2%-2.5% of revenue. I'd like to spend a little extra time on the full year 2025 free cash flow bridge, as shown on slide 33.
While working capital is anticipated to be a use of cash in 2025, given our growth profile, we are seeing working capital as a percentage of sales come down relative to 2024, which is 16% of sales. For comparison, working capital is 18% of sales at the end of Q3 of 2023. As mentioned earlier, we expect lower dollar spend in CapEx as we come off several years of elevated spending for our significant CapEx and throughput capacity expansions. We ended Q3 with $3.7 billion of net debt or $3.875 billion of gross debt net of fees. Our sustainable cash generation drives our de-leveraging, which results in Q4 2025 estimated net debt of approximately $3 billion, as shown on slide 34. Not included on this slide are any potential non-operating cash actions we could take in 2025.
I want to reiterate our commitment to a strong and flexible balance sheet. We anticipate reaching our target net leverage of 2-2.5 times as we exit 2025. I would like to now hand it back to Jill, over to Jill, to provide some additional commentary around 2026 and how we plan to deploy capital once we reach our target leverage.
Thanks, Joe. I would also point out to you guys on this particular slide that this Thursday is the settlement of our seven-year convertible note. So that is coming, being settled at the end of this week, the principal in cash and the premium in equity. So if we go ahead and just a couple more slides, and then we'll open it up for Q&A here. Let me start here on what we had originally set out a year ago on our medium-term targets.
This is compared to the original base that we had set out. We're tracking very well to these targets. There's one particular one on here that I would point out, which is the delta from our original anticipated growth in adjusted diluted EPS compared to what we're tracking to, which is in the mid-30% versus our original target of mid-40%. The two factors that drive that delta to the original target are, number one, the fact that we no longer add back to adjusted the impact of the mandatory preferred dividend. And number two, the delta in the tax rate that we've seen across the last year or so and anticipated approximately 22% tax rate in 2025. Those are the two key factors driving that delta from the original medium-term targets.
As we look beyond 2026, as you heard me talk about earlier in the presentation, the anticipated end market growth, the commercial pipeline at all-time record highs continues to support growth through the cycle. And that's something that on the very first slide, we wanted to get away from the high-level cyclicality that we saw seven to 10 years ago in the business. And that's now being reflected in growth across a cycle. We also continue to see opportunities for further margin expansion via the self-help activities that we've talked about, via the mix in aftermarket, as well as the full solution project mix in many of the end markets that we discussed today. So we certainly had no intent that mid-30% gross margin was our stopping point on the margin expansion.
We expect that to continue to expand in the years beyond 2026, 2027, all the way through to 2030. Our outlook here in the second half of this decade continues to have strong growth and strong margin expansion anticipated ahead. On the capital allocation side, we get this question regularly. I wanted to just spend a moment here on this slide. First and foremost, as Joe mentioned, we reiterate our financial policy. This is unchanged. Our financial policy is that we will not do any material cash acquisitions or share repurchases until we are in our target net leverage ratio range, which is sub 2.5.
Yet as we're nearing the 3 mark, so we were 3.04 Net Leverage Ratio as of September 30th, we do intend to seek authorization from our board of directors to put a share repurchase authorization in place, which we do not intend to use, barring a crazy circumstance, until we're within that 2-2.5 range, but we'll have it available to us. When we look beyond getting to that sub-2.5 range, there's a multitude of different ways that we look for shareholder return and continuing to profitably grow the business. That's through high ROI, organic and inorganic activities for growth, as well as comparing those ROIs to the return for shareholders on share repurchases. Other opportunities always in play are things like dividend and other ways to return to shareholders.
So we want to take this moment today to share that these are things that are regularly discussed with respect to capital allocation, especially as we're nearing that 3 mark and focused in on getting to the $3 billion of debt by the end of 2025, which in turn gets us to that 2.5-ish range on the net leverage ratio. When we talk about inorganic opportunities, if you look at the tools that we use when we're evaluating these, we use an ROI IRR metric, both of those, the ROIC being a five-year metric. Both of those thresholds internally are 20% when we're evaluating inorganic opportunities.
Some focus areas of inorganic would be with respect to bolt-on acquisitions, the focus being on aftermarket service repair, further build-out, unique technologies, as you've seen us do in the past, as well as there's specific cryogenic other equipment players out there in the world of smaller size and more regional place. So those are the types of things that we consider when we look ahead. But first and foremost, we're generating the cash flow. We're focused on delivering the debt, the gross and net debt number that we're committed to do across the next 14 months. And we're focused and dedicated to hitting the target net leverage ratio range before we go and go outside of our financial policy. My last comment on acquisitions is that while we are sticking with this financial policy, we haven't had our head in the sand with respect to acquisitions.
We've seen over 125 come across our desks here over the last 15 months or so, and we don't feel that we have missed any opportunity inorganically that we really wish we could have had. We'll keep watching and we'll keep looking at these. But all in all, our focus is going to be on high ROI returns and shareholder returns ahead, so with that, John, all yours.
Right now, we're just going to bring a couple of chairs onto the stage, and I'm going to also invite a couple of additional Chart executives to join Jill and Joe for the Q&A process. Joining us on the stage is Joe Belling, Chart's Chief Technology Officer, Jesper Osterlund, Chart's SVP of Revenue Operations, and Curtis Stubbings, Chart's SVP of Operational Excellence and Integration. We have a couple of mic runners that are in the room.
I guess I would just ask if you could raise your hand. Someone will come to you, and if you wouldn't mind just giving your name and what organization you're with, then you're happy to ask your question.
Oh, up here? Right up here. Mark Bianchi. Test? Okay. Mark Bianchi from TD Cowen. Thanks for the presentation, as always. Well done. I guess first, a clarification question. You had the slide with all the growth rates on it for the different businesses. It said LNG and natural gas were growing 50%. Looked like everything else on that slide was a CAGR. That looks like a total growth rate from 2024 to 2030. Is that right?
That's correct.
Okay. If I work out what low double digits means for 2026, if I put 11% in there, looks like it's about 5.5% growth.
If I look at the growth in unit installed units that you talked about, that's about 5% growth. Is that kind of the right way to be thinking about the mid-cycle growth for Chart? And what's embedded in there with large LNG? I know maybe we're getting away from big LNG, but that you've got a bunch of backlog there. You're going to work that off. Do we need to get a whole bunch more orders, or can you have sort of a downdraft in that part of the business and still get that mid single-digit growth?
Yeah. So I would say that we anticipate certainly double digit. We kind of this 10% range seems to be very achievable for us. So we base on the backlog and the anticipated book to bill of one or more.
In terms of the LNG, thank you for getting away from the big LNG. LNG as a whole, I commented on kind of that low 20% of backlog. There's multiple other areas of the business that we anticipate, even if we don't have backfill on the LNG side, that can more than cover that from other projects and other pipeline opportunities. But I would tell you that we do anticipate that we'll continue to see LNG across the four categories of LNG come into our backlog very consistently across the coming couple of years. Mark, did you have a follow-up? He might think, Mark.
I have one more in mind, just and then I'll be done. If I look at the bridge in the EBITDA that you have from 24 to 25, the margin on the EBITDA coming out of backlog and on the book and ship is like 35%.
But total company is like 25%. Should we be thinking about that as sort of your that's your leading edge margin? And as you go forward in 2026 and beyond, we should be trending towards that kind of a level?
Yeah, so there's obviously drop-through capability given not having to add incremental SG&A and so on for all of that, but we've said we're not giving a specific go-forward target gross margin. But I'll just take you back to my comment that there was never an intent to stop gross margin at 35%. We see a lot more room to run here in 2026 and beyond, so directionally, I wouldn't temper it back by any means, but we don't want to get out over our skis on each year, the increment that we can get off of the prior year.
So we're looking at what is very achievable, but we also have a lot of actions in place to continue to drive that number up.
Why don't you go over to Roger?
Thank you. Roger Read, Wells Fargo. Again, thanks for the presentation. I just have one question. The data center side of things, I think it was air-cooled heat exchangers, doesn't have quite maybe the competitive position of, say, brazed aluminum, right? So when you think about what you can do out of the data center side, the competition that's there, and certainly an area where it seems like there's some pretty sky's the limit growth, just what are some ways to think about that out to say 2030?
Yeah. And you'd actually be surprised at the limited amount of competition on the air coolers for this particular application. Joe Belling, you want to comment on your views of that?
Yeah. It's a great question. And there's a couple of ways to think about it. When we think specifically about air-cooled heat exchangers, it's not just about the design and the capability. It's about the ability to manufacture the volumes that are required because data centers generate a lot of heat. So they need a lot of heat rejected. And so the capacity that Chart has is going to help to facilitate that along with our design capability. The other thing to think about, too, is it's not just heat rejection. It's movement of heat. So Jill highlighted one of our NPD projects, which is the increased pitch fan blade. And that fan blade is designed to move heat from the data center to other areas in a much more efficient manner.
It's reduction of energy consumption while doing the same amount of work that is going to bring more value to the data center customer. And that's what we're providing.
Right there, diagonal, right in front of you, Tuck.
Thank you. Rob Brown at Lake Street Capital Markets. Kind of getting back to the repair, service, and leasing business, I think you talked about just about a 40% kind of coverage rate. Where do you think that can get to? And I guess what's the kind of effort and timeline and things you're going to do to increase repair, service, and leasing?
Rob, I think you can get to 100%. Now, Jesper, why don't you talk to the opportunity that you see ahead?
Yeah. So definitely, we are having roughly that right now.
We are doing a whole bunch of things on the digital side, which actually means that not only do we expect to grow our coverage, but we also expect to get much more out of our install base. So for example, we are having a lot of digital initiatives on how we actually visualize our install base, how we ensure that we figure out exactly what our entitlement on each piece of equipment is, which also takes us towards a much better coverage. And that, combined also with our field service setup and presence that you've seen, actually enables us to, let's say, target that even more. And as Jill was mentioning, target obviously is going for 100% as well.
How about back there, Manav?
Hi. Just one question, slide 38.
Once you get to 2.5, which we hope you get sooner than later, you're talking about funding high ROI organic CapEx and then obviously funding high ROI bolt-on acquisitions. Can we get some more details around what kind of targets you're looking at for both CapEx as well as bolt-ons?
Sure. So when we say high ROI, right, I described the threshold of IRR and ROIC, five-year ROIC at the 20% mark. That's something that we've historically and continue to use. So that's not a new metric. When we look at all of these things rolled in one, right, what we really wanted to message on slide 38 was that it's not this, then this, then this, then this. It's going to be compare and contrast what do we think is the best return for the company for shareholders.
And when we talk about the acquisition side, I would focus in on bolt-ons specifically. We definitely love that the repair service capabilities. We're seeing more and more inbound need from customers on the repair service. So that could be footprint. That could be field service folks, that type of thing. There's plenty of opportunity with respect to that. Also, when we talk about the opportunity for taking out other smaller competitors, that's certainly in our thinking as well. And then we always look at unique technologies. We do have some minority investments in technologies to see how they fare commercially. So we look at things like that to ensure that we're not missing what the next generation could look like. But that leads me to the organic piece as well. A lot of our technology is developed in-house ourselves. And that does require R&D spend.
That's not necessarily direct CapEx link, but it certainly is R&D spend. And then when we look at CapEx, we continue to look at what customers need. So there are certain customers that come to us and say, "Hey, we have this amount of volume to give to you. And the only way we could serve it is if we added a line or added a mold or something like that." So when we look at that type of CapEx, that's truly very specific ROI. Customer's going to give us A if we do B. When we look at the other opportunities, it's where are there bottlenecks, throughput improvements needed. So that could be machinery, automation, equipment like that. Or it could be something like a facility. We feel really good about the capacity that we have right now to serve that pipeline that I described.
So I don't see anything that's a large, meaningful CapEx like a Teddy 2 in the coming few years.
All right. Let's go right behind him and then over here to Ati afterwards.
Hi, Dave Anderson, Barclays. Hey, Jill, you said LNG is about 17%-20% of your business right now. So on those projections that you showed out to 2030, where does LNG ultimately end up in terms of your projections, like roughly how big? And then secondarily around that, on the four buckets you showed of kind of big LNG, small scale, infrastructure, and there was one other one.
Right, throughput. Yeah.
What's the biggest one out of those four? What does that end up looking like in 2030? Yeah.
So if we continue to see the pipeline that we have and the anticipated growth that we have, you would see LNG sales being in the 20% in that time frame. And then of the three categories, the smallest right now is the retrofit service side. And I think that'll continue to be the case because it tends to be when they want to optimize or something's broken. And then the first two kind of are pretty similar to each other, meaning big LNG, small scale floating. It can really depend on the year. We kind of think of that now as all one bucket. So that'll be the largest and continue to be the largest by far. In infrastructures, typically will be depends on the year, but 60% of that category.
And then one other question, the IPSMR process technology.
Is that a recurring revenue stream, or is that a one and done? Do you get paid on the molecule as it's processed? How does that work?
So it depends on the construct with the customer. Typically, so far to date, the ones that are on the left side of that one page that we had on LNG would be licensing of the technology. And a licensing fee would be paid, but not on an ongoing basis. It would be a licensing fee at the project point.
Right there, Ati. Then we'll come on to.
Hi, Jill. Good morning, team. This is Ati Modak from Goldman Sachs. Jill, you mentioned mid 30% margins by 2026. And then there's potential for higher later on. Can you talk about the drivers between those two time periods and where does that higher number eventually go to? Sure.
So yeah, I think, first of all, we're well on our way to that mid 30% gross margin that we've seen the benefit this year of some of the synergies flowing through. And I think I'll ask Curtis to talk to synergies in a moment here just to piggyback your question to something we wanted to share. If we look back, and I'll kind of characterize my answer historically, if we look back to 2021 type of time frame, early 2022, we were saying we're going to get back to 30% gross margin. And then in the last two years, we've consistently, the last six quarters, been above 30%, been above 30.8% gross margin. And we've seen that incrementally improve. Not every quarter is going to be up and to the right. It's just not exactly that way, but in that range.
Through the mix, we've seen an increase of 300-400 basis points on the margin line. That's a mix of self-help and CBE. I think there's opportunity to see similar in the second part of the decade. Curtis, if you don't mind, Ati, could I ask Curtis just to talk about some of the synergy achievement?
Yeah. Especially one I would like to highlight is around procurement and supply chain, really, where we've seen a lot of improvement there, just leveraging the broader size of the organization and some really best-in-class practices of category management and just driving a lot of cost improvement, both on direct costs as well as indirect costs. We've achieved a lot there, but I would say we've still got quite a ways that we can continue to push there and make continued improvement.
Over to Ben.
Okay, thanks. Just to follow up, I have two questions, but one sort of follow-up. As you think about synergies where a year and a half-ish, maybe a little bit more than that after Howden, does it feel pretty well all one unit? And are we at a point where there's not any restructuring charges and that the numbers would be a little bit cleaner? And then secondly, on the LNG side or really, I guess, on the cryogenic side, you've clearly been gaining share. Do you think that the Honeywell acquisition of the Air Products business, does it change that competitive dynamic? Or you still feel like you're kind of the lead horse at the moment?
Okay. So the first part of the question, we definitely feel like we're one Chart.
We really, hopefully, even today came across as less Howden legacy, Chart legacy. Curtis, why don't you talk about what you see in terms of us being a cohesive unit, yes to fewer restructuring type of charges, and then Joe, you answer the Honeywell Air Products question.
Yeah, just as far as feeling like one organization, we really have done that, and it really started from the beginning. Even though this was an acquisition, it felt a lot more like a merger of equals. And we took a lot of best practices from Howden and leveraged those across Chart. Really, the Chart Business Excellence with Lean Six Sigma was a big example of that, where Howden had a relatively mature program and organization around that. And that gave us a big head start in leveraging that across the rest of the company, and really, we continue to see that.
We've got a mix of management throughout the organization from the two organizations. And we all work together as equals. There's no real Howden versus Chart anymore. It's Chart. Yeah. Thanks for the question, Ben. We don't really see a tremendous impact on the sale of their products technology over to Honeywell. From our standpoint, it doesn't really impact how we're going to change anything. We've spent a significant amount of time over the last several years in furthering the IPSMR technology to make it more competitive, in many cases, actually by or surpassing what that technology has to offer. So from an operating cost basis, we're matched or better. From an installed cost basis, we're matched most cases better. And then you get the versatility and value that's brought to the customer through the multi-train capability.
So in our view, we don't see a huge impact to the marketplace, especially on us from that sale.
All right. So why don't we just, well, let's hit Marty up first, and then right behind, we'll go down the line.
Okay. Barry Haimes, Sage Asset Management. I had two quick questions. One is, of the almost $2 billion of commitments, but not yet orders, what % of those would ship in 2025 versus beyond 2025? And then second question is, you've alluded a couple of times to the non-operating cash possibilities. I think you said not in guide, but could you elaborate a little bit more as to what those might be and size, timing, if at all appropriate? Thanks.
Sure. So of the nearly $2 billion of opportunities not in backlog, the super majority of that is revenue 2026 and beyond.
And then for the non-cash opportunities, Joe, you want to talk to those?
Oh, sure. Yeah. There's a number of things we're looking at currently, including some redundant properties that we've acquired through the Howden acquisition and with legacy Chart, some real estate pieces, some things like that. I wouldn't say it's huge, but there are some that we're in the process of looking at right now.
Barry, we've also talked historically, and we'll just reiterate the point today that we constantly look at the portfolio for things that could be divestiture candidates. There is a small product line one, but that's really one that we'll only do opportunistically if we get the right market price for.
Marty and then Walt.
Thank you for taking my questions. Marty Malloy, Johnson Rice. First, I have two questions. The first, aftermarket gross margins have been very strong this year.
As you put more through those field service facilities, can you maybe talk about upside potential there with those gross margins? And then the second question I had was just on, are you seeing any interest from data center developers using LNG either as a for standby fuel at the site or to maybe until a pipeline gets hooked up to use LNG kind of a virtual pipeline?
I'll start answering both, and then I'm going to have Jesper and Joe chime in on the two respectives. Yes, the last two quarters have been super strong in the aftermarket margin side of things. We do want to reiterate that those are not typical, consistently typical in the high 40s. We've kind of said low-to-mid 40% on gross margin as a % of sales for the RSL segment.
With that said, I do think that there is a meaningful opportunity to continue to grow that segment's margin, and I'll have Jesper talk about some of the, there's some pricing actions and tools that we have and some other things that will drive that, but let me answer the start of the second question. Short answer is yes. These data centers are looking for essentially anything energy. So I think of it as peak shavers, but think of it as, hey, I need access to energy. I was talking to, this was a private data center guy, and he made a joke about, no longer does it have to be green. No longer does it have to be, he's like, listen, he made a horrible joke about burning things and then having that be energy, but that was the mentality, was I need access to energy.
And so LNG is in the dialogue. Pretty much you name it is in the dialogue. But LNG is a very practical answer. So to be determined commercially, we haven't actually seen anything come in the backlog that way yet. But certainly the dialogue around give me an answer here is happening. Jesper, why don't you talk about margin potential opportunities in aftermarket? And Joe, if you want to add anything to my LNG answer. Absolutely.
So pre-acquisition, the legacy Howden business developed a rather solid pricing structure, which basically gave the opportunity to be much more sharp and customer-focused on pricing, which means that in the areas where we have an advantage, we could maximize margins, but we could also at the same time go in and at the areas where we may not have as strong as an advantage, go in and let's say target our margin is exactly where it needs to be in order for us to also not lose business. After the acquisition, that program has been started to roll out across the combined business. And we actually already started seeing some rather good benefits from that.
And that's going to be a journey that's going to continue also as we get more on the, let's say, our digital journey where we get on the same systems even more than we are today, which also enables us to, let's say, be much smarter in maximizing our margins. And there's definitely potential for upside on that as well.
Hey, Jesper, can you talk to bringing the aftermarket CRM tools together?
Absolutely. So on the new build side of things, we are on the same CRM system. On the aftermarket side of things, also the legacy Howden side of the business have a, let's say, some strong processes running through the CRM system. And we're bringing that together on one system right now. So we're running that project as we speak.
That's going to be rolled out in the next year, where we're going to onboard all the businesses onto the same CRM system and the same quoting system and areas like that, which is going to give us, again, even more opportunity for margin improvement, but also transparency to our customers and making sure that we address them the way they need to be addressed.
Yeah. And just to add to Jill's response on data centers, Marty, I think she gave a very thorough answer. But one thing I would also say is they're not talking about just backup power. They're talking about primary power source. The number one thing for data centers is availability, right? And secondary becomes efficiency and third becomes environment.
But we are talking to everybody about everything from LNG to hydrogen to diesel to, as Jill threw out there, just burning mass to generate power. So conversations are out there. The real serious ones, though, are taking a heavy look at a lot of the offerings that we have. So LNG is definitely in play. Walt, right there.
Thank you. Walt Liptak with Seaport. With the Trump victory last week, drill, baby drill, it looks like we're going to be setting up for export more. What was in the guidance, like that 50% growth in LNG? Was that the line drawn before or after Trump? And maybe what are your thoughts on what happens next?
What happens next specific to LNG?
To LNG.
With this administration?
Or, well, maybe the administration in general too, because there might be other.
I'll pause and gather my thoughts on that.
So what I would say is the approximately 50%, that's an industry figure. That's through Shell's LNG outlook, but it's also based on what we see in the pipeline and have seen in the pipeline. I don't want to go too bullish here beyond that because that's a big number. So take this as an ancillary comment not to be built in, but there's a lot of other LNG projects that maybe were waiting for this particular moment, waiting to see what the administration was going to do that have the potential to join into that pipeline and potentially move forward. So there's more opportunity, but the 50% being that Shell LNG macro outlook is what we based that particular metric off of.
In terms of the outcome of the election, what we see ahead, what we've said all along prior to last Tuesday was that given the molecule agnosticness of our business, that we didn't see the outcome impacting the 2025 outlook that we put out just a few days before the election. We reiterate that statement we showed you today, the bridges from 2024 to 2025. I think there are certain things that everybody in the room would say have benefits from this incoming administration around the potential for tax rates, LNG certainly being a key aspect of the administration, as well as traditional energy and all things pro-American manufacturing. I commented during my remarks today, we are the only manufacturer of brazed aluminum heat exchangers in North America in the world.
So that's something that, again, with domestic manufacturing in focus, is going to be, we anticipate to be another positive to us in the coming years.
I guess as a follow-up to that, the Woodside project that's changed hands now, I wonder your thoughts. Is it a positive, negative? What was holding it back?
Yeah. Joe and I have worked very closely on this particular topic for many years. And so I think this is a positive catalyst for the project to move forward. And just by way of background for others, this was previously referred to in our materials as Tellurian's Driftwood project, now is Woodside Louisiana LNG, or LNG Louisiana in order. And as Woodside has publicly stated, they anticipate FIDing here in the coming couple of quarters. I think it was Q1 that they publicly stated they anticipated FIDing the first phases of that.
We view that as a near-term catalyst, Walt, for us in that particular project. In terms of speculating on what was holding it back, I don't have a speculation on that, but I do know that Woodside is a very strong energy company globally and also has use for the LNG themselves. So that's also a positive to them being the owner. Joe, anything you want to add to that?
I mean, it was a pretty significant investment for a global oil company. To me, that's a very good sign that the project is going to continue forward. Thank you. Down the road.
Yeah. Graham Tanaka Capital. With CO2 levels at two times the prior eight peaks of the last 800,000 years, there's obviously a problem. And I'm wondering what % of your revenues are in carbon capture, decarbonization.
What % of that is outside of the U.S. versus the U.S.? Understand the difference in the future, and what your margins are now and what they could be. How important is this business going to be for Chart going forward? Thanks.
Thanks, Graham. So in terms of CCUS, as a % of our sales, it's sub 5% right now. I'm going to pull up a slide here. This is slide 42 in the deck. So the right-hand column shows our approximate revenue mix this year as we look at these end markets. We chose to categorize them the same way that we did two years ago to give you a sense that there's not really a meaningful delta outside of aftermarket has increased, and we're seeing kind of the energy transition and renewables being pretty consistent as a portion of the total portfolio.
But the CCUS and water there is about 5% of the revenues that we have right now. And in terms of U.S. versus non-U.S., the majority of it is U.S. or is North American, so U.S. and Canada right now. We're seeing larger projects come into the pipeline, in particular in the Middle East and in Europe for the opportunities on the carbon capture side. And then the scale-up of Earthly Labs into things like the biogas applications and broader, larger types of applications give us more stickiness into non-North American markets, especially those that are looking for closed-loop CO2 applications where they can't get access to CO2.
Yeah. So what kind of margins are you expecting in this area? I mean, there's a lot of social good that it could come, but looking for financial returns as well. And what would be the sort of trend going forward?
Yeah. We're wholly aligned on the financial return aspect of these businesses. We rarely do, we take, it's usually a first of a kind if we are to take something that's lower than the margin profile that we set out for a particular end market. In CCUS and specialty as a whole, we talk about the target kind of margin mix being in the low 30%s for 2025 as gross margin, as a percent of sales and carbon capture would look similar, if not a little bit better than that. Thanks, Graham.
In front of you in that.
Ethan Kalis, Bank of America, high yield. Thank you for the slide on simplifying the capital structure. That was very helpful. I guess, how do you envision the mix between unsecured and secured debt going forward?
And is there a longer-term aspiration to become investment grade, or would you prefer to operate more as a high-quality, high-yield company to maintain financial flexibility? And then finally, you noted both bonds become callable in 2026. Is the idea to refinance those when they become callable or wait for the call penalty to step down? Thank you.
All right. Multifaceted question. You learned the John Walsh one question, no follow-up trick. So first and foremost, I think where we sit today, and we will say this over and over and over again, is that we want to simplify and optimize our capital structure. There are two things in the next 14 months that naturally are going to occur that will help with that. The first is this week, which is the settlement of the seven-year convertible note coming due. You see that impact in the share count.
You will see that in the fourth quarter, that impact. So a reduction to our share count as a result of that, but we also like the simplification of no convertible. The second aspect of this simplification occurs on December 15th of 2025, and that is when the mandatory preferred converts to common. And so that will be really the other instrument that we would view as a more complex aspect of our current capital structure being taken out. Over time, what I would say is right now, floating fixed rate is kind of 48%-52% if you look at that from an interest rate standpoint. We're not unhappy with that mix. We certainly do anticipate the opportunity for us to optimize more around the rate structure that we currently have, but we're going to do that when the opportunity presents itself here.
And we don't have a specific timeline around that, but we don't anticipate that. We do anticipate there's going to be more opportunities for us to optimize and reduce our rate structure ahead. And it could be as simple as we did the terminal and be repriced twice in the last 12 or 14 months, things like that. So that's the way to think about it. And then with respect to investment grade, we want to get to the $3 billion target at the end of 2025. We want to be under two and a half net leverage ratio. And we want to be consistent and execute against the financial policy that we've put out. And that's the extent of what I would say with respect to that.
That looks like there was a hand in the back.
Hey, thank you. Dan Kutz from Morgan Stanley.
Maybe just to round out the questions earlier on capital allocation priorities, once you've achieved the two to two and a half times net leverage target, could you just talk through how you'd already kind of elaborated on the organic and inorganic investment components? But maybe could you talk about if further delevering would be on the menu at all? And then it seems like there's kind of a clear preference for share repurchases as the preferred shareholder return metric, but would dividends, a normal dividend or a special dividend, be on the menu as well? Thanks.
Thanks for the question. So first and foremost, we don't have an artificial we're going to stop deleveraging once we get to the target range, right?
So please don't take what we have on slide or the comments to say that we have to do something when we get into that two to two and a half range. We will be very thoughtful. This high ROIC is really important to us as we look ahead. We feel, as I've said, really good about the capacity that we have in play organically to serve the pipeline, to serve the backlog that we have underway. So this isn't going to be I have to go and do something when I get to that moment in time. So for clarification purposes, in terms of other ways of shareholder return, they're all under discussion. They are regularly under discussion. I can tell you 100% that this board is committed to getting to the targets we've put out, whether it's on leverage ratio, whether it's on gross debt balance, etc.
And so generating cash flow and getting to that point is our number one priority. But I wouldn't say, by way of what's on the slide, there's a preference to share repurchase versus a dividend contemplation or versus just continuing to pay down debt. Those are all kind of in our thinking, but I think it's going to really be a matter of the moment, a matter of where we're trading, where what we see as alternatives in the compare and contrast. So all of those things are on the table without the strong preference being very thoughtful around the ROI and what the business needs to continue to profitably grow while being cognizant of shareholder return.
Looks like over there. Yep, go there. And then in the back and then come front.
Morning, team. This is Alexa Petrick from Goldman Sachs.
wanted to ask, as we're thinking about the solid growth in Chart's installed base expected through 2030, how should we then think about the relationship between that installed base and then growth in aftermarket services? And then maybe more generally, if you could just talk to RSL and some of the key growth drivers there. Thank you.
So, I'm going to hand it to Jesper to talk about some of the growth drivers themselves. What I would say is, when we look at installed base, right, there is also a function of we think that what we've shown today, extremely achievable based on how much new build installed base we've put into play the last couple of years. But in a year where we grow 10%, that installed base could even grow faster. But this is a really very realistic look from 2024 to 2030.
There's a lot of ways we can play in terms of the drivers and how we can get more coverage. It's probably one of my top three views of opportunities within the business strategically to continue to drive more profitable growth. Some of the levers you heard about in the case studies that we'll continue to do. But Jesper, I think you're probably better suited to talk to specifics.
I'll definitely do that. So definitely there is a growth in the mere fact that we're growing on our install base. So that's one portion of it. But there are actually very many aspects of how we see growth in aftermarket. So there's that. And not only growing the install base, but also making sure that we serve it better, as we talked about before.
On top of that, we also see that through some of the initiatives that we're doing, that we actually get to offer even more. On top of that, we have the third-party install base, which we can also address. We see a lot of initiatives across the combined product portfolio and a lot of business coming in from actually being able to serve our customers. Now, with the scale that we have, we have customers that are asking us also to cover more than just, let's say, our delivered products. We also have the whole digital, so our uptime connections. Jill was kind of mentioning that we are in the early innings of aftermarket, I would say, on our digital growth journey. We're probably in the bus on the way to the stadium.
Because if we look at the digital connections, the uptime connections of the equipment that we throw in the market, on some of our equipment portfolio, we are actually uptime enabling all products. And we're working towards making sure that every single product that goes out eventually is uptime connected. And there's a huge growth driver in aftermarket for that. And we've seen, let's say, after the acquisition, we've seen the expansion of uptime into other segments. You've seen it in the Opus One Winery, actually, as being one, the LNG fueling stations being the example you saw here also. And right now, we're also looking at other products such as the Orca trucks getting those connected. On top of that, we've seen that the assets that we've connected over the past years, we start seeing the revenue growth that we get from those.
And even though it is, let's say, preliminary indications, it is quite significant, which is also going to grow on, let's say, add on top of that growth. So lots of things besides just the, let's say, organic install base growth.
And there's two other things I'd add. One is that Jesper's team has deployed a tool to our global commercial team so that when they go to see a customer, it tells them by the customer sites where what installed equipment of ours and our competitors is at that site. So they're educated to talk to that customer about the opportunity for spares or service right there and then as they're visiting the customer. So that tool has proven to be very effective, especially when you have a new build person who typically doesn't sell aftermarket. And then the other one, I would say, did we kill that slide?
The new build gives us X amount of, all right, never mind. We had a slide that said new build gives us the right of X amount of aftermarket typically in like an LNG. So there's that linkage that we make internally to say, if I get this much new build, this many new build dollars, I should be getting X new aftermarket dollars. So we haven't put that number out, but it is an area that we're heavily focused on linking those two things up.
All right. Gentlemen in the back.
Thank you. Doug Becker, Capital One. The sales bridge includes a risk adjustment for project timing. The EBITDA bridge has an adjustment for inflation. Just hoping for some more context on how the buildup of the outlook for 2025 differs than maybe some previous years and really gives you confidence that it's appropriately risked.
So, I think first and foremost is we really have worked to incorporate the learnings that we've had of things that have moved between quarters and whether it's supply chain being a challenge or a customer schedule shift. So we specifically, I think in years past, we didn't have that call out to say, this happens. This happens in our business because ours is not necessarily a quarterly business in terms of that. From the bottoms up as well, from our teams in the field, that gives us the confidence. It's coming from folks in each of the regions. We've learned a lot of what their behaviors are in the specific regions and the specific business units of what they can achieve, what they can't achieve, who's aggressive, who's conservative.
So all of those things rolled into one really give us a lot of confidence heading into 2025 that we've incorporated the learnings from when we've missed.
Hey, Greg Lewis, BTIG, thank you. I did want to touch a little bit more on the data center opportunity just because it seems like obviously there's a lot of excitement around that. And to some of your comments, hey, let's just get the power in the door and worry about we need the power. So as you're having these conversations, and it might be an education process for a lot of these hyperscaler customers, what has kind of been their receptivity to carbon capture in kind of layering that on that peaker LNG power that you're potentially going to need at these hyperscaler data centers?
On some of the private side, and they're less hyperscalers, they're more regional folks, it's very much part of the dialogue. In terms of the hyperscalers that you would Google or you would find on the, I guess Googling isn't the right term, right? You would find on the internet that they typically are looking at that as maybe a subsequent step because they're looking at how quickly can I get this built, how quickly, where do I want to put it, what do I need to have it be functional first, are really the discussions that we're having around that side of things. But there's a whole different next tier of folks that are doing data centers, whether that's at a university or that type of application, they're 100% talking about carbon capture.
And then just one other one for me.
I don't think anyone argues that hydrogen is coming and you're obviously well equipped to benefit as hydrogen ramps. But I guess what I wonder is as we see delays in the adoption of hydrogen, does that just provide a longer tailwind for natural gas and kind of those suite of services as power demand is going higher? And if it's not going to be from hydrogen, I guess it needs to come from somewhere else.
My short answer to that is yes. That's exactly right. And that's really what we've seen. If you look at the kind of the order book this year, if it's not A, it's been B, all wrapped under that energy umbrella.
All right. Yeah, let's finish. I think just in time, this is the last one?
Hi, Donald Wong from Tocqueville. Two questions, please.
Both in the HTS and the specialty products business, project concentration, so top five, top ten projects account for what percent of either backlog or revenue in both of those divisions? And then second, of your sales pipeline, how much actually gets awarded in a given year versus either pushed or canceled?
Between specialty and HTS, the answer is going to be very similar. I think our largest project in backlog would be $200 million in total, but there's not a heavy concentration of a couple hundred millions. So one or two, two, three type of handfuls in that size per individual project. One of the things that actually Howden brought to us when the two companies came together was dilution of the top ten. So we were about, I think, 35%-40% of our revenue was top ten.
Between the two companies, it came down meaningfully from there because Howden did not have that concentration. So that's been, in my opinion, another positive to not having a heavy reliance on a handful of these large projects to make or break any given year. In terms of the second part of the question, I missed that. Cancellation rate. Oh, cancellation rate. Oh, sales pipeline. What's what?
Of your $24 billion in sales pipeline, how much actually gets awarded in a given year versus deferred or canceled?
Probably.
Well, that pipeline look is, I think, more near-term than long-term. It's easier to see projects that are two to three years in front of you versus projects that are 10 years in front of you. So as we continue to move forward in time, we add those longer-term projects to the pipeline. So you showed a $24 million order pipeline.
Yearly conversion is anywhere from $4.5 billion-$5 billion. A lot of those projects that are in the pipeline can be delayed as permits are not issued, as projects just don't make sense financially to go forward, but they might remain in development trying to optimize, so the number that get canceled once we recognize them in our pipeline, I would say is low, probably in the 10% range.
It's 0.1% of backlog get canceled out of our backlog, so very low cancellation rate, but in terms of the pipeline themselves, if something isn't moving ahead, we take it out of that pipeline, so what you're seeing is a fresh kind of every week we look at that pipeline weekly in terms of what's in there, what do we think is going to move forward or not, where do we want our engineers spending time, and so on.
So cancellations out of a pipeline would be more things that we don't anticipate are going to move forward in the next two to three years would be the way to think about it from our side.
And then the last one over here.
Hi, Craig at Tuohy Brothers. Just want to dig into this capital allocation, dividends, buybacks, M&A, deleveraging question with a little different twist because Jill, you talked about, well, I mean, who knows where our shares are? So it'll all feed in, we'll optimize. But 2026, 2027, let's think of two worlds. One with a glorious U.S. LNG renaissance with some really strong outsized cash flows that may not, certainly won't have strong growth to the end of the decade. They'll kind of overweight front-load cash flows at Chart just past mid-decade.
And another environment where your cash flows are disproportionately specialty RSL and recurring things that are growing. So when you think about those two kind of weighted environments, those possibilities, what implications does that have on your capital allocation thoughts?
I'd repeat my same answer, which is that it really is going to depend on where we are at what point in time and what the options are for the utilization of cash. I don't actually see timing of big LNG cash flows changing that evaluation of high ROI returns. And clearly, if we still have enough capacity, which we anticipate that we will, that would give us a different answer than if we needed to add capacity.
If you're in your, there's too many factors, which we could have a very hypothetical conversation, but too many factors in like, okay, big LNG all hits in the same year at the same time. Do I contemplate a new brazing furnace or something like that? Those are the kind of dialogues that would have to happen at that point in time, but it's too hard to speculate outside of you kind of have the construct that we're thinking of all of these things and we're trying to be prepared as we kind of near the three and have a very line of sight executable approach to cash flow to get to that $3 billion of gross and net debt.
Great. And with that, we would certainly like to thank everyone for attending here in person and also on the webcast. And thank you for your interest in Chart.