Thank you, everyone, for joining us. We've got Jill Evanko, President and CEO at Chart Industries, with us here. Jill, thank you for taking the time.
Thanks for having us.
Jill, I know you wanted to go through a few slides, and then we'll go through the Q&A, but up to you.
Sounds great. So I thought we'd just give a quick overview of what Chart does, and we'll move through this fairly quickly so that Ati and I can have Q&A. Real quick legal statements there. So by way of background at Chart, what we do is engineer, design, and manufacture a variety of different solutions and products that go into any molecule handling. So that's molecule agnosticness, as we call it, which means that we can serve anything from traditional oil and gas to LNG to hydrogen, helium, CO2, all the way through to liquid oxygen. And how do we do that? We do that through a variety of new build manufacturing, the process technologies, all the way through to our aftermarket service and repair.
The aftermarket service repair piece of our business is now over a third of our business, and that's something that I'll talk to you in a moment on how it drives continued gross margin and operating margin improvement and what we see for that in the future. Across our 11,700 team members around the world, we manufacture in 64 new build locations, and we have 50 different service centers globally. Of that, about 35% of our workforce has engineering backgrounds. So really, the tip of the spear when we talk about getting sticky with our customers early is around design, Pre-FEED, and FEED types of activities. We also have multiple IP and patents associated with the business, and we have over 85% of our business has associated IP with it.
So when we talk about the third of the business being aftermarket service and repair, that's one contributor to what's different as how we look today as we start 2025 to how we looked a decade ago. We picked 2015 to show up here on this slide, and what we really want to point out here is the business looks extremely different. What it has allowed us to do is serve multiple different end markets with the same types of products that we had back then, but also with the fuller solution offering, including the process technologies.
You'll note that a decade ago, we did not have any aftermarket service and repair in the business, so that's been a key part of building out the customer base and allowing our new build customers, who in many cases spend tens of millions of dollars with us, to also have us serve the aftermarket and the repair capability inside of things. So when we look at what does that mean for the business, I'll return to this concept of being molecule agnostic. What it means is that we're able to take advantage of multiple macro and secular tailwinds that happen out there in the industries that we participate in. I would point out here, I think, a very hot topic these days that multiple folks are talking about is artificial intelligence, AI, and data centers.
That whole linkage is really to the increasing need for more energy, energy intensity, and then you wind that together with multiple different geopolitical activities that are happening, so linking to energy independence and energy security. And we play a key part in that, given the fact that we're able to serve LNG markets, hydrogen markets, multiple different types of activities associated with the growing energy intensity. Also associated with the business are things like carbon capture, things like water treatment, so clean water, clean power going together, and then this aging infrastructure that's associated with all of the above, where there's retrofit happening, there's optimization of brownfield facilities happening, and then there's also new build in regions that are not yet as far along as the Western Hemisphere is. So when you talk about the business, people ask, who's a peer to Chart?
At the top level, we essentially don't have peers, but when you get into the business, that's really where we talk about who the peers are in the respective segments. But when you speak to what makes us differentiated, what gives us that wide moat that we have for competitors entering our space, is the things that you see up on this particular slide. And I'll point out three of them, one of them being new product development and R&D. We are heavy engineering. We are a leader in new product development for the applications that we've talked about, and in many cases, we will do first of a kind with customers that are asking us to participate in their vision in the future, so we get in early with them. Certifications and safety is extremely important to the business and to the industry.
Clearly, handling molecules that are under high pressure at low temperatures is something that is important from a safety element, and we are an industry leader in safety certifications, participating in Compressed Gas Association and multiple different other certifications, including in regions that are new to handling certain molecules, such as hydrogen certifications in places like South Korea and in Europe. And then lastly, and perhaps one of the most important aspects of our differentiation is our flexible manufacturing. I talked about the 64 new build locations around the world, and in that 64 set of manufacturing facilities that we have, we make nearly all of the products that we manufacture in more than one location.
So that not only gives us flexibility when it comes to being close to our customers, being as cost-effective as possible, but it also allows us to manage things like our supply base, our supply chain. And in addition to that, we're able to serve all of these different end markets with that same capacity. A good example of serving these end markets with that same capacity or that same manufacturing capability is something like a heat exchanger. If you take an air-cooled heat exchanger as an example, this originally, eight or 10 years ago, you would be asking us, what is an air cooler used for? And we would tell you it was used in oil fields, and it still is, absolutely. But that same air-cooled heat exchanger is used in applications such as LNG liquefaction. It's used in applications for CCUS. It's used in data centers.
And so you can see how we didn't have to change our capability, our manufacturing capacity, and we're able to serve these other end markets with that same product offering. And that applies to everything that you see on the left-hand side of the slide that's up on the screen. One of these manufacturing facilities is at the heart and soul of our company, which is in La Crosse, Wisconsin. This was our original brazed aluminum heat exchanger manufacturing facility. We are one of only five companies around the world that can manufacture brazed aluminum heat exchangers.
We are the only one that does so in North America, the only one that does so therefore in the United States, which clearly the brazed aluminum heat exchanger being at the heart of any type of liquefaction process, including U.S. LNG exports and liquefaction, is something that's very important as we enter the coming four years with the focus on U.S. energy and U.S. manufacturing. So you can see a variety of different LNG projects. We play across LNG in many different ways. We're very proud to have announced recently the phase one order for Woodside, Louisiana LNG project, which uses our IPSMR process technology, as well as recently having Cheniere announce their first liquefaction at Corpus Christi Stage 3, which also utilizes our IPSMR process technology and the equipment that you've seen throughout the presentation today.
And what that really is about LNG. I think LNG has become a new hot topic again, another new hot topic over the years. And through that, what we've seen is a move from these large liquefaction facilities to more modular facilities, and our process technology really suits that modularity very, very well. And that also applies to hydrogen. So this ability to flex between molecules and serve the various different end markets is, again, a real attribute to us being able to serve the variety of different customers that we have. And the same comments that I just stated on LNG also apply for our offerings to hydrogen. So we're able to use hydrogen and helium cycle for hydrogen liquefaction, and we also serve both gaseous and liquid hydrogen. And all of that rolls together into kind of the end of the life cycle being the aftermarket service and repair.
So continuing to have a tail associated with the customers, being close to these customers as they utilize your technology and your equipment. And a key part of that for us is not only digital preventive maintenance with our Digital Uptime offering, but also the ability to serve at the back end of these projects with our service and repair capabilities. Probably my favorite one, well, actually, they're all favorites of mine, but I'm going to touch on the middle and the far right real quickly. The middle is a great story around Opus One, so wineries.
Wineries, breweries, distilleries have really embraced small-scale carbon capture capabilities, and through our Earthly Labs process technology, we've been able to not only serve these end markets in food and beverage to help a closed-loop CO2 capture system and reuse in the making of the product, but also have them be able to monitor CO2, monitor CO2 usage with that digital offering, so Opus One has been a wonderful customer of ours and keeps coming back for expanding that capability, and then the right-hand side of the screen is a recent retrofit that we did at Cheniere's Sabine Pass LNG liquefaction facility to optimize a brownfield, and that's around utilizing our newly introduced Tuf-Lite IV fans, which has a very particular fan blade, and also can and are being used in data center applications.
You can see the ability for us to continue to grow this piece of the business, clearly because we only have about 40% of our current install base being covered with our aftermarket, and so we are looking to really hone in and penetrate more on that. That commentary of ability to expand on the new build and aftermarket side also applies geographically, and Africa is a great example of that. I'm going to just conclude my prepared remarks on a lot of focus we've had on making sure that we continue to pay down our debt and get into our target net leverage ratio range so that we can continue to reinvest in the business with high ROIC projects and continue to look at other ways for shareholder return when we hit our target net leverage ratio range.
So hopefully that gave you a quick overview of the Chart business, and Ati, let's roll.
Yeah, thanks for that, Jill. Jill, you mentioned LNG has come back into focus. It's always been a part of the story, but now you're seeing a bunch of projects roll through Woodside. You mentioned maybe let's start with the project announcement or the agreement announcement you made this morning with ExxonMobil. What does that do for Chart? Why is it unique? What does that do to the order expectations that we as analysts can start thinking about and the revenue impact?
Yeah, so we're very pleased that this morning, for those of you who haven't seen, we announced a master services and goods agreement with ExxonMobil.
Taking a quick step back, there's a few ways I'd like to kind of put the bookends around what that means and how to think about it. The first is just as a general comment in the LNG market, so a macro comment and not specific to Exxon, but I'll bring it back to this topic, is that we've seen this move from base load facilities eight or 10 years ago to modularity. What that really means is operators of LNG liquefaction export facilities don't have to go and spend as much upfront capital in many cases and don't have to have long-term offtake agreements for 10 or 20 MTPA before they start getting to first gas or liquid.
So you're able to put trains together, smaller million-ton per annum trains, and start operating your facility as an operator, and so therefore you can have various different ways to serve the spot market, serve your offtake arrangements and contracts, and then also be bringing more trains online as you are operating the current and existing modular trains. Our process technology really is a leader in the modular aspect of what we're talking about here from a variety of different perspectives, ranging from how much gas or liquid you can get through a train at nameplate or above nameplate capacity to the plot size that the equipment fits on and the ability to service that particular equipment.
That macro industry trend has really happened over the last eight to 10 years of moving to modularity, and we've been able to get our process technology certified to be utilized on many, many of these projects. Exxon was one of those customers that over the course of the last five to seven years has spent a lot of time with our team validating the technology itself through the engineering team. With that validation process over the years, once it gets through that technical qualification, then it becomes one of the choices of technology that they can utilize in their portfolio for their projects. This really kind of rang true when we announced the selection of our IPSMR process technology for the ExxonMobil Rovuma project that is expected to FID in the next 12-18 months type of time frame, I believe is what they publicly said.
So that's something that we announced, and that is not yet in backlog. So that's hundreds of millions of dollars of Chart content, but also a great example of the way that the industry is moving to optimization and to modularity and that being an international project. So I would use that to kind of be the proxy to how to think about where the industry itself is moving in terms of modularity and how we fit into that, along with all of the mission-critical pieces and parts that go into the LNG portfolio. And so what that means is that there's more opportunities for that ahead, and we look very much forward to working closely with Exxon, not only on Mozambique Rovuma, but also on many other opportunities.
And then, to more broadly kind of put the point in your last part of your question on how to think about what this means for modeling or the future or other projects, we just announced the Woodside Louisiana phase one order. When I think we talked on LNG projects that weren't yet in backlog six months ago or so, and we said that was about $1.5 billion associated with specific projects. We also then at Capital Markets Day said that we had about $2 billion total of projects that weren't yet booked into backlog, some of those being non-LNG, some of those being LNG.
So now we've been moved the phase one into backlog, but we continue to see over $1.7 billion of commitments that are not yet in backlog that we have and expect to come into play in the coming couple of years. So very excited about how we fit into the LNG story, and that doesn't only apply to the export and liquefaction side, kind of across the board.
So when you mentioned across the board, do you want to spend a couple of minutes talking about the other aspects that tend to be maybe not as much spoken about in general in terms of the refrigeration, so the regasification side of it?
Absolutely. When we talk about LNG for our portfolio, you've got the LNG liquefaction, which is big, small scale, and floating, and then you have LNG infrastructure and then the aftermarket piece.
The LNG infrastructure is what Ati's referring to on things like regas, so it's great to export the molecule or the gas or the liquid, but you have to do something with it at the receiving end, and that is where the regas side of our equipment offering comes into play. We also serve the LNG regas infrastructure market with fueling stations, with ISO containers, with onboard vehicle tanks, to name a few examples of how that infrastructure play works together with the molecule side, and then the last part of the LNG offering being this brownfield optimization where I gave the example of Sabine Pass and the Tuf-Lite IV retrofit, so lots going on in the world of LNG, and we kind of touch the front end and the back end.
You mentioned Woodside already. A portion of that has moved forward, but Woodside obviously has plans for more projects at some point down the road. Is there anything in your conversations that you can point to in terms of what that potential looks like and how that 1.7 could keep growing just in terms of a trend? And then I think at the capital markets, you had mentioned Port Fourchon as one of the opportunities. Anything you can talk about regarding that?
Yeah, absolutely. So we have definitely in the last few months seen an increasing amount of LNG activity into the pipeline itself, and that's both international and domestic. As a comment, certainly operators such as Woodside, operators such as Venture Global and Cheniere are looking at what's next and what is in the future.
And so those, while I'm not going to speak on their behalf, it's certainly not a one and done from the dialogues that we have with our customers, especially ones that are currently operating existing assets. In addition to that, there's other operators that have yet to build their first facility but are certainly working on getting to that point, and we have a handful of commitments to the IPSMR process technology if and when those projects move forward with Argent Port Fourchon moving forward or anticipated to move forward, and that's one of the handful that's not yet in our backlog but would become in order at the point where they choose to or are financed to move forward.
Jill, Corpus Christi is one of those projects where you've got a pretty—you kind of have everything that's going on in there.
You've got IPSMR. You've got a lot of the equipment. Maybe spend a couple of minutes talking about that and how you see the value of Chart going into Cheniere and how Cheniere's partnership is with you guys.
Yeah, Cheniere is a fantastic partner, and it's what I would say over the many years we've worked with Cheniere. We also have worked with their EPC, which for Corpus Christi stage three is Bechtel. So it's been a great partnership over the years, and we range from the process technology to things like the brazed and the cold boxes to the air coolers for that project. What I would say is that the way that Cheniere thinks about it is really how do I utilize my balance sheet and how do I continue to become more and more efficient, whether that's through technology or through equipment or through retrofit.
And having them be open-minded to a new technology, which was the IPSMR coming into being a different technology than they had used in the past, was something that is a great example of the partnership where they trusted that this was something they wanted to try and see if it would work. And that validation process, again, has happened over the last decade, and I think there's much more to come, and that can come in a variety of different ways, whether it's equipment or more process technology. So we're excited about having that relationship. And also, once it's built, right, the EPC generally leaves once the project is complete. So having the direct relationship with the operator is something that's very important to us as we continue to serve them as the technology is operating.
Jill, with LNG conversations now increasing again, IPSMR is probably among the only modular process technologies that are out there. So can you talk about what, I mean, outside of Cheniere and folks that have already used it and are interested in it, what does the adoption strategy look like, and who else is out there that has modular technology? How does the competitive landscape shape up?
Yeah, so I think it's all very important. We really needed to get through those dozens and dozens of validations with key parties, whether operators or EPCs. That was very important to get to the first utilization of IPSMR because not a lot of people want to be that first one. Once we got past that and we started seeing more and more interest in the general concept of modularity, we've seen that pipeline really grow. We really were waiting for the international side.
So the U.S., the Gulf Coast was certainly earlier adopters than the international side, and now I'd say it's kind of on par. The commercial pipeline opportunity between international and domestic is pretty darn similar. So that's a positive as well because I do view it as a global market. A lot of times we get stuck in U.S. policy, but LNG is definitely a global market and will continue to be a part of it. And in terms of competition, there's always competition, whether it's the incumbent and the incumbent's technology uses spiral wound heat exchangers or the ability for them to adjust to a smaller scale or more modular.
I think that the key is continuing to demonstrate the ability to do what we need to do with mission-critical equipment on the lead times and time frames that everybody wants to be getting to first gas and liquid and doing so safely, as well as at these assets operating in the field in the recent months, right? We've had two first liquids using IPSMR, and with the customers being very pleased with the output. So that's important, right? You can't say, "I'm going to do two MTPA train and have it only do one." Well, these guys want two to do 2.1. And so all of those things kind of go to the strategy of, "Hey, this technology is really operating, as it said, if not better than it said," and that draws moths to the flame.
Jill, hydrogen obviously has been a very integral part of the story for a while. The industry has moved from being very optimistic around it to a little cautious, and now you've laid out a 7%-10% growth expectation. Talk to us about what you are seeing from your conversations. You're on a bunch of councils and think tanks as well. Where does the conversation lie? How has it shaped so far? And with 45V, with the final rules out, what does that mean for the projects that might have been stalled a little bit over the last couple of years?
Yeah, I think it's been an interesting ride, right, the last four and a half years on hydrogen.
What I would say is there was a high level of frustration since the IRA was announced in August of 2022 up until recently, up until the last week or so because of the lack of clarity in particular in the United States and how that impacted larger projects moving ahead to FID. I would say that that probably had a different tenor globally outside of the United States, meaning that depending on the region you were in would depend on where hydrogen was in the thinking of the public and the private sector. So, for example, this past year, we saw the most activity that we have seen to date in Europe, and that was projects that had long been in the making finally moving ahead to the order book. So it's still a very regional market, is my point in talking about it that way.
It's still kind of this hub and spoke and not yet interconnected with a global pricing strategy or global certifications. And those are the things that are parts of the dialogue that people are talking about now is, "Okay, we have clarity from the U.S. IRA, we have 45V, and we want this market to continue to progress, and how are we going to get it to look like the oil field or like LNG?" And that's a big part of it. But what I would say, the feedback that we have received from multiple different parties on the 45V clarifications that came out (was it last week, I guess) has been generally positive. And I think, first and foremost, everybody just wanted to know.
Secondly, the feedback around kind of the characterization of how existing nuclear fits into play, how energy storage capabilities fit into that, into the 45V, and the 30% that associated with that. So the elements that people were looking for that are actually the project builders were generally positively received. So now from there, with that clarification, now it is going back to continuing to fund the rest, right? So the private sector having to participate in moving those projects forward to FID. But I think we've, as an industry in hydrogen, it's been a slow go, but globally it's still a really strong part of the dialogue, and I don't think it's going away. It's just how fast does it progress?
Makes sense. Jill, on the repair service and leasing side, on the aftermarket side, you've obviously made a lot of headway as you've built out real estate footprint near locations that your customers have. How do you think about the growth prospects from here? Is there some of that still that needs to be done? What regions? What else drives growth there?
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and I get very excited when I talk about the aftermarket service repair piece of the business. I mean, this was something that when I started at Chart, we essentially had none, no aftermarket service repair, and now it's over a third of the business, and that's very exciting. And as an operator, as a business person, it's probably number one very exciting because of the margin profile associated with it.
It's above our average gross margin, and we see ways to continue to grow not only the top line but also the margin associated with the aftermarket piece. I would point to a few different aspects of how are we going to do that. I talked briefly on one slide about us covering only about 40% of our install base of assets, and we really want to double that coverage. There's low-hanging fruit associated with that, which is primarily us covering Chart legacy products, so things like tanks and trailers that are out in the field in Europe and in Asia-Pac. So I would say that's number one low-hanging fruit ability for us to do that. We didn't have the capability to do it pre our Howden acquisition, which was about two years ago. So that's low-hanging fruit to be able to go hit our own install base.
As a subtext to that, hitting our competitor's installed base as well is something that we're able to do, and we're seeing some traction in that. Certainly, the Digital Uptime, the monitoring, the preventive maintenance aspect gives us the ability to grow our customer base that has LTSAs and framework agreements, and so that's a focus point in the organization. We've centralized what we call revenue operations around aftermarket service and repair as well. And so the ability to link that to our new build sales folks on the One Chart commercial team is bringing more ability to talk to our customers on the new build side and say, "Hey, we see that you have our installed base at these facilities. Have you thought about having a spare on hand?
Would you like to do a service and repair contract?" So then linking to the service and repair contract side, the closer we get to operators of these larger projects like we talked about on the LNG side, especially as they use the technology, the more opportunities we have because certainly if the technology is not working or if you have a preventive maintenance need, you're going to want the owner of that technology or the provider of that technology to have a service agreement with you. So those are just a few examples. The list really is really long, and that gives me a lot of excitement about the future growth of our RSL segment, which if you looked at year to date through September of 2024 compared to the same period in 2023, pro forma, the orders grew over 9% year to date and sales grew over 25%.
So we've said in the public domain that we expect the aftermarket service repair to continue to grow in that high single-digit type of range and certainly have the tools to be able to drive that growth.
So Jill, as you think about that growth, you mentioned margins. Obviously, it's a driver for your overall margins. So maybe spend a couple of minutes talking about where do you see that overall margin for the company moving? Obviously, RSL is a big driver, but how about the other segments as well?
Yeah, so I mean, certainly I'm a huge proponent of what I would call self-help, continuous improvement. So things that are within our own control that we can drive further margin improvement.
We have Chart Business Excellence or CBE that is rolled out throughout the organization, and there's a lot of opportunity for us to utilize those tools and continuous improvement to drive cost out of the business, and we're continuing to do that. That's a lever that's within our own control. Obviously, the mix on the RSL side, but also the mix on more full solution offerings, which include the process technologies. Clearly, that commands a different type of margin than just a book and ship or a one-off individual product sale. We also see the ability for us to continue to look for opportunities to price appropriately and gain more pricing with customers. That clearly depends on value proposition, but something that we look to do. Those are just a couple of descriptions of where we're focused on margin improvement.
And I think the real question is, where do we think we can go on margin improvement? And what we've said in the medium term is the mid-30% gross margins as a percent of sales, medium term being the last one we put out was to 2026. And I'm eager to hit that and then continue to go from there.
Jill, in the last couple of minutes we have, how do you think about cash use in terms of CapEx expectations for this year, free cash flow generation? You've talked about paying down debt, obviously, so it seems like you will get to that point at some point in 2025. You've authorized a repurchase agreement as well. Talk to us about what you see that transitioning into as you pay down debt. Where do you focus on for the next year?
Yeah, so I mean, I think your question hit everything that I would want to convey in the message around we are focused on debt paydown. It's been a very important part of the last two years and continues to be an important part of 2025. We've said that we anticipate getting to a debt level of about $3 billion, which would be in our target leverage ratio range of sub 2.5 of our net leverage target. So that's a focus, and we're going to stay the course on our financial policy until we get into our target range, and the financial policy, just for clarification, is no material cash acquisitions until we hit that range and no material share buybacks till we hit that range.
Once we get there and we have the line of sight given kind of what we've done the last couple of prior to 930 in terms of cash flow and what we anticipate to do in 2025 with a declining CapEx spend. We come off of really a couple of years or 18 months of heavier than typical capital expenditures for the business given our investment in our Theodore, Alabama, or Teddy 2 facility, which is our largest jumbo cryogenic, largest in the world shop-built tanks facility, and that's served primarily the space exploration market very well. The second being our investment in an additional brazed aluminum heat exchanger line in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the third being a trailer expansion in Germany to serve industrial gas and hydrogen trailers.
So with the ability for us to kind of get to a more typical capital spend year combined with all of the cash generative activities that we've had in play over the past years, this is something that gives us a lot of confidence that we'll hit the targets that we've put out and from there be able to reinvest and find other ways for shareholder return.
Makes sense. Well, Jill, thank you so much for taking the time. I appreciate it.
Thanks.
Thank you.