Good morning! What an amazing video on the power of employee ownership and the impact it's had on some of our 17,500 employees. I'm Matthew Fort, Vice President of Investor Relations, and welcome to Ingersoll Rand's 2023 Investor Day. We are excited to be here today, and I just want to say thank you to everyone for your attendance, continued support, and interest in Ingersoll Rand. Today's presentation is being webcast, and both the presentation and the video will be available for replay on our investor relations website. The QR code that you see on the inside of your notebook cover will take you directly to both the event and the presentation.
Before we get started, I'd like to remind everybody that certain statements you'll hear in today's presentation are forward-looking in nature, and as such, are subject to the risks and uncertainties as laid out in our previous SEC statements, as well as the disclaimer here on slide three. We'll kick things off with an overview of the company and our strategy, as provided by our Chairman and CEO, Vicente Reynal. From demand generation, to segment updates, to M&A case studies, you'll hear members of our global leadership team provide updates relating to the company's long-term growth targets, an update to our financial outlook, and establishment of 2027 targets. For our Q&A, we ask the questions remain focused around the content presented. Just a few quick housekeeping items: We will break at around 9:45 A.M., with 20 minutes for snacks and beverages in the lobby.
And second, we will be hosting a leadership luncheon at the end of the presentation, also located in the lobby. With that, I'll turn it over to our Chairman and CEO, Vicente Reynal.
Thanks, Matthew, and good morning, and welcome everyone here, and welcome to those of you on the, on the webcast. It's great to have you here on this very special day for us. I'm gonna start with one of our leading strengths, the management of this company. From a global perspective, we have assembled a team that embraces our values and nurtures our culture of execution every single day. What we decided to do here today at this Investor Day, is to bring team members from across the world, so they can tell you how they're executing every single day. So I'm gonna highlight a few of the team members that you have not met, that you'll get a chance to see here as they come and present.
Starting at the bottom of the page with the ITS segment, we have brought here Amar Kaul. Amar runs our compression systems for Europe, Middle East, India, and Africa. Amar is gonna walk you through how he's leveraging return on investment, quick paybacks, based on reduction of energy and water conservation, to really accelerate our growth. Arnold Li. Arnold runs our ITS Asia Pacific business. Arnold lives in Shanghai, China. You heard us say how much we have driven differentiated performance in China. Arnold is gonna come here and tell you how he's doing it. We have Santiago Arias Ubal, our new leader for the Precision and Science Technologies segment, the PST segment. Santiago is not new to Ingersoll Rand.
I hired Santiago in 2017, and Santiago is a great example of how we bring talent to Ingersoll Rand, and we nurture that talent and develop that talent for positions like this. Andy Hider will come after. Andy Hider, with a deep expertise in end markets like water and wastewater, and many other technology end markets, Andy's gonna tell you how we're taking technologies from different businesses within PST and applying them to be very uniquely in the market and take share. And then Pam Timko. Pam is the leader of our Dosatron business, a business that we acquired just a year ago. And Pam is gonna tell you about her experience moving from a family-owned company to joining the Ingersoll Rand family. But Pam is also another example, that when we acquire a company, we not only acquire great technology, but we bring phenomenal talent.
I wanna highlight, too, as well, that during the breaks and the luncheons, you're gonna have a phenomenal group of teams that you should be able to share experiences, and let me highlight a few of them. We have Mary Betts, who runs our sustainability, and you will see how much and how rapidly we have advanced our sustainability efforts. We have in the room here, Dr. Christian Hansen. Dr. Christian Hansen is another example of how we acquired a company like SEEPEX, which is where Christian was based out of. And Christian drove and developed the IIoT platform for SEEPEX, and it is a platform that we're now leveraging across Ingersoll Rand. So in his role as the Ingersoll Rand digital leader, he is expanding that technology across. Bert Jamison. Bert has been with us for just more than a year, but Bert can count- Ca...
Bert will be able to walk you through our capital structure and what we're doing to unlock more cash. You'll see how we continue to see our free cash flow generation continue to grow. Then Chris Neubauer. Dr. Chris Neubauer, many of you have asked me about supply chain and what, what is it that we have done differently during the supply chain nightmares of the pandemic and the logistics issues, to be able to still deliver our products? Chris can walk you through that. More important, he's gonna tell you how we're moving from being in a defense market to now into the offensive market, to be able to capture savings from the supply chain. It is also our board of directors, that we have assembled a world-class board of directors, with leaders with proven performance.
Leaders, that when you think about the domain expertise that they bring, we have been very specific about what we're looking for. We're looking for domain expertise that is very well aligned with our growth secular trends. Secular trends on sustainability, digitalization, and quality of life. You can see the domain expertise that this group of board directors are bringing to us, including the world-class level of diversity. They bring a combined 150 years of digitalization experience, and also a combined experience of more than 150 years of experience in life sciences. I'm also very pleased to say that Bill Donnelly, our lead director, is here with us, so feel free that during breaks and luncheon, you can reach out to Bill. This is what you're gonna hear today.
You're gonna hear today that we continue to be a very attractive long-term investment, and we are because we have a proven economic engine that has demonstrated to be able to drive great performance. Performance that consistently delivers double-digit earnings growth and a very strong free cash flow. What you're gonna hear today as well is that we have done a lot of work over the past 3 years to really change our growth profile by divesting non-core cyclical assets and investing in over 41 companies that play in high-growth, sustainable end markets. You're gonna hear today as well, that we have an engine that we call demand generation, that allows us to penetrate whichever end market that we want to, because our technologies are agnostic. You're gonna hear today how Ingersoll Rand continues to be that multiplier and engine that allows us to execute every day.
And you will hear today as well from Mike Medaska , how we're driving new recurrent revenue streams to really accelerate our aftermarket percentage and improve our profitability as well. You'll hear today also how we believe of the power of the end, driving great performance and having a company that leads in sustainability. With our ownership mindset that is very unique, and our approach to our technologies that can drive energy efficiency and water conservation. And for me, the most important piece is that you'll see that we have a platform that we believe is putting us into the early innings of being a premier growth compounder. So this is the platform of today, the Ingersoll Rand of today, where mission- we're a leader in mission-critical flow creation technologies.
The best way I like to describe that to my daughters, who they still don't know exactly what I do, they, I describe to them our technologies as basically, we're the heart of every process out there, and we can be very selective where we want to be. That scale that we have at $7 billion in revenue, 26% EBITDA margins, and generating a free cash flow every year of more than $1 billion, allows us to continue to grow and drive performance. Performance that you can see over the past 3 years, driving a revenue CAGR of 15% and an EBITDA margin expansion of more than 400 basis points. One that will continue to help us drive great shareholder return.
It's this performance that we like to say is guided by our call to action, and our call to action is our purpose. Our purpose of making life better, making life better for our employees, the customers, the planet, and the shareholders. When you think about our employees, we make life better because we create a great place to work that is combined with this ownership mindset. Look at the data points. Our employee satisfaction is in the upper 10th percentile of the industry. Our employee satisfaction is 600 basis points higher than the industry, and the ownership mindset has generated over $400 million of wealth for our employees. We make life better for our customers because all of our technologies drive great payback. Drive great payback because we provide efficiencies and improvements for our customers.
Efficiencies and improvements that, by the way, they help the planet, because all our technologies are enablers for our customers to achieve their Scope 1 and Scope 2 targets. It is also we making life better for the planet because of all the things that we do internally towards our greenhouse gas emission targets that we have for 2030 and 2050, that are pretty aggressive, but you'll see how much we have improved so far. Clearly, we make life better for our shareholders because we drive consistent performance. A performance that has allowed us to deliver, over the past six years, over 250% shareholder return and added $25 billion of market cap to our company. It is this purpose that we then execute through our economic growth engine.
An economic growth engine that we shared with you in November of 2021, at our last Investors Day, but it's a playbook that we have been playing over the past six years. We said in 2021 that we were gonna deliver, over the period, low double-digit average growth, driven by a great combination between organic and inorganic, while expanding margins. I think the most important thing for us in this economic growth engine is that multiplier, is that differentiator of performance, which is a combination of the ownership mindset with IRX. It is IRX, that culture, that drives our execution every day. I like to best describe this simply, that we start with our four core values on the outer ring that you see in red.
And it starts with the bottom of the rings by having a strong foundation of thinking and acting like owners, because we are all owners. And that foundation creates strong attachment to our customers, because we solve our most difficult problems for our customers. While being very bold with our aspirations, we're always executing with high level of humility. And we think that ownership mindset, focus on the customer, and being bold allow us to create phenomenal inspiration with our teams. And these four core values, then we translate into specific metrics that we drill down into the organization via our strategic imperatives. And for us, starts with talent. Talent is crucial and very important, so we deploy talent to those most difficult problems.
We deploy talent to achieve growth and accelerate differentiated organic growth while allocating capital effectively to also achieve differentiated inorganic growth. It is the talent, the growth, and ability to expand margins that creates this compounding engine that we have. It is that performance that, as we say, is the power of the and in between performance and also leading sustainably, as you see as one of our strategic imperatives. The values move into strategic imperatives, and then they get executed through IRX. It is that playbook and performance that has allowed us to deliver phenomenal performance over the past few years. I want to take a moment in time here back to 2016, when I took over as CEO of Gardner Denver, and I was super excited to have a platform that I could transform.
Back then, we were $2 billion in revenue, $400 million in EBITDA, and a working capital that needed a lot of fixing. Fast-forward to today, we are at $7 billion, approximately $7 billion revenue, 26% EBITDA margins, over 600 basis points of expansion, generating over $1 billion of cash, and a balance sheet that is pristine. So I can tell you that I am younger than 2016, but I'm also more excited about what I had in 2016 and what we have today as a platform that we can continue to accelerate from here. And the power of the and is that performance, but also what we do as a company. Is the how, and is our call to action. It's how three years ago, we were not even recognized by any of the ratings in ESG.
In just three years, we went from not being on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index to now being number 1 in North America and number 2 in the world. MSCI recognizing us as AA, when three years ago, we were not even on the list. Those are great moments of celebration and high fives, but for us, it's more about what we do every day in our communities. Yes, keep getting recognized by U.S. News and other organizations about our corporate responsibility, but it's that community work. Community work that we do, whether it's local in Charlotte with Feed NC and La Escuelita, helping local communities, nationwide, partnering with the American Heart Association, because we know that cardiovascular disease continues to be the number 1 cause of death, and we can make a difference.
But also going into Uganda, in Africa, and partnering with Drop in the Bucket, and utilizing our technologies, our compressor technologies, to drill wells in a matter of hours, where current technology takes weeks. We're going to India with... and partnering with Planet Water to utilize our non-electric pumps to be able to create potable water in very remote villages. It's also what we do internally by having these aggressive 2030 and 2050 targets, that we're already well on our way on achieving them. I think we have a technical issue here. Yeah.
Technical difficulty.
I can't imagine. It's funny, in 2019, Investors Day, we also had a technical difficulty. The power went out in the middle of a presentation, so-
I'll be right back.
Yeah, yeah, no problem.
Best dad jokes.
What's that?
Best dad jokes.
Oh, best dad jokes. I don't have any. Vik, do you have any? Yeah. Oh, okay, got it.
It's gonna be one or two minutes.
Yeah, no problem. They're asking for any jokes, Matthew. Well, might as well do the Q&A section now.
They might.
Mm-hmm.
...
... Mm-hmm. We can imagine. Mm-hmm. Okay, I think we're back up. So it is this, great effort that we're doing on the performance and driving sustainability, but we can only do it because of our employees. 17,500 employees all going on the same direction because they have that ownership mindset, and that we believe that creating a workplace where we have a great place to work, combined with that ownership mindset, is just a catalyst of long-term performance. And you can see here how employee satisfaction is over 600 basis points higher than the industry average, and how with the ownership grants that we provided, we have provided over $400 million of incremental wealth to our employees. And these are just some quotes from our employees, how this ownership and the performance that they drive every day has been life-changing.
Whether now employees can actually afford paying for some very difficult procedures to improve the health of their family, or simply having the financial backing so they can start a family. Or as simple as just driving that emotional attachment on employees to change their mindset, to think, "This is the company I work for," to saying, "This is my company I work for." It is that playbook and that type of culture that we think is sustainable, and that we believe that will continue to drive great shareholder performance. But so far, over the 6.5 years has been approximately 250% of shareholder return, over 16,000 basis points higher than the S&P, and adding $25 billion of market cap value.
We believe that this is a platform that we can continue to accelerate from here because we play in very highly diversified end markets. End markets that with our technologies, we can continue to pivot them to where we want to, to be able to place, to be able to grow more sustainably. Where you can see here now, our number one end market to be life sciences, where last Investor Day, it was not. But how we continue to accelerate our penetration in those end markets that we believe will provide long-term sustainable growth. It is not only the diversification of markets that it's great for our platform, but it's also how big and the addressable market is for Ingersoll Rand, and how we continue to accelerate and expand this. At the last Investor Day, it was $44 billion addressable market.
Today, a few years later, it's already a $55 billion based on a lot of the M&A that we have done and a lot of the innovation that we have launched in the different markets. We continue this to see moving forward to becoming a $75 billion addressable market by 2025. We win in these diverse and big end markets because we have one of the best and broadest technology portfolio in mission-critical flow creation. We're number one or number two in the markets that we play, where we continuously launch great innovation with over 2,000 patents, and 90%-almost 90% of those patents are towards sustainability. What that means is that these technologies will allow to save energy and conserve water.
So it is this phenomenal set of products, combined with our over 80 premium, well-respected, well-recognized brands, that provide uniqueness in the market, with a great, long-lasting history of high levels of quality and reliability, because that's what we, and when I say we, all of our brands are known for. So take the technology that we have, the brands that we have, and our massive operational, but more important, commercial footprint. Commercial footprint, where we have 5,000 employees dedicated every single day to be close to our customers. Where we have over 150 customer centers to be really close to our customers. And when we have 66 manufacturing sites globally to be close to our customers and continue with our in-region for region strategy. That has been a great differentiator for us.
It's not only what we can actually do with launching new technologies and current products, but start to harvest our installed base with over 5 million assets out in the field that we're connecting as we continue to progress our digitalization technologies. And that combination of technology, brands, and footprint has allowed us to deliver constant performance. Our economic growth engine, we told you at Investors Day, was gonna be on average. Over the cycle, we were gonna generate mid-single-digit organic, mid-single-digit inorganic, and on average, 100 basis points of margin expansion. We've been able to do it every single year, including here in 2023, where we expect to generate 10% organic growth and an additional 6% inorganic growth, and a margin expansion of 140 basis points.
Here in 2023, where there's been a lot of geopolitical situations and secular situations that have even put PMIs at less than 50 for now more than 14 months, yet we've still been able to deliver great performance. Great performance that then translate into an EPS growth that is gonna be over 20% in 2023. So it is why, with confidence, as we kind of set our targets for 2027, that Vik is gonna walk us into more detail, that we're here confident that we can continue to achieve this performance. And we're confident with this performance, that we're even increasing some targets. This is the adjusted EBITDA margin on the upper range of what we were saying before, which very impressively getting to touch that 30%.
Our free cash flow margin that we said before, mid-teens, and we see a path to have free cash flow margin that starts with a 2. It is all these results and performance that we feel really proud of. What I'm most proud of is our employees, that they just do it every day, day in and day out, because they are owners, and they think and act like owners. They have an economic engine that we execute with IRX, that we know can deliver great performance. To all of our employees that I know they're listening to the webcast, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for what you do day in and day out.
I hope that today you're gonna have these takeaways, that we have a proven economic growth engine with the enablers to help us deliver this ongoing performance. You're gonna see that we still have plenty of room to improve, and that we drive ongoing growth and improvement in profitability, all with that accelerant, and our accelerant being IRX, compounded with the ownership mindset. That we even though we set always ambitious targets, we're always gonna execute them with a high level of humility, whether it is on performance and numbers or whether it is on sustainability. For me, the most exciting is that I am super excited that we have now today a great platform that we can continue to build upon here and continue to be considered as a premier growth compounder.
So with that, I'm gonna have Mike Weatherred come in and present IRX and also demand generation, which are two of our most important growth levers. Mike?
Thank you, sir. Thank you, Vicente. Good morning. My name is Mike Weatherred, and I have responsibility for execution excellence at Ingersoll Rand. We call it IRX. I bet you got up this morning, and you said to yourself, "Man, I can't wait to get to the Ingersoll Rand Investors Day. Oh, I so hope they have a big update on their business operating system!" I knew if I used it three times in four years, it would eventually bomb. I know you see, I know you see a lot of, you see a lot of this. We've talked with a lot of you about this in detail. There's a lot of random business operating systems out there. I would tell you, we're as enthusiastic as ever to talk to you about what we're learning and where we are, the progress.
I was talking to a couple of you early this morning. I think in 2019, when we talked about Gardner Denver execution excellence, it was alive and well and adding tremendous value, but we had an aspiration of it becoming something really impactful, and we feel like we're on that path. I do wanna pause here for a second. I was talking to Arnold Li on the way over this morning, who you'll meet later, and we think there's about 100 of these employees from Baoshan, China, watching online. I'd just like to give them a chance to find themselves. Arnold and I found ourselves early this morning, but that was a special day a couple of months ago, so. All right, I have two topics this morning. As Vicente mentioned, IRX is the first.
It's the way we do things. You're gonna hear all day people talk about IDMs and IRX and the way they get things done, and I'm just gonna give you a quick flavor for really what that means and how they're operating when they use those terms. It's a great coaching tool, and I'll talk more about that. It lays a standard process of standard work that allows everybody in the organization to coach regularly. I would encourage you to talk to some of the associates that are here today. Vicente had the slide up. Ask Chris Neubauer how he's using IDMs to overcome some of a lot of the commodities, headwinds, et cetera. Everybody who's here from Ingersoll Rand participates, owns a swim lane, or runs their own IDM as part of what they do, regardless of function....
It works great for integration planning, integration execution. I'll talk about that. I'll give you one case study. Liz Hepting will go a little bit deeper on how we do that and how effective it is, and we think the goodness in using a regular process for integration is that it gets a lot of reps in a standard fashion. And then finally, I'll talk a little bit about the maturity curve, and we have some companies, some businesses, some geographies, and brands that are 5.5 years into the process, others that are relatively new, which gives us a really strong feeling about the fact that overall, we're really just getting started. Okay, so this is where it fits in the economic growth engine.
You can see it over there on the right, and some, maybe, maybe overzealous branding at the top and bottom without that middle piece. That middle piece around ownership mindset is the thing that separates this, in my experience and opinion, from a lot of other business operating systems. The reason for that, and this has taken me, you know, about six years to get a little bit of clarity on this, is that the ownership model, the goodness of the ownership model, and I had to leave the room when the video started, 'cause yesterday when we started, when we saw it, I almost started crying. But the goodness of the ownership model is definitely financial benefit, no question. But there's two other things behind it that I think make it more impactful in the way the company runs every day.
The first, it's the great equalizer of peers, meaning we all come to work to get better every day. We all have a stake in the game. We're all owners of the company. And then the third thing that I've learned is that, as owners of the company, when you talk about a high-performance execution system, it's not just, "Let's try hard till we burn up. Let's try hard till we finish this project." It's, "Let's work smartly, get better over time. Let's not be afraid of setting big goals. Let's not be afraid of measuring what we're doing." You wanna talk to salespeople about measuring how many sales calls they're making? You know, you're gonna start a war if you're not careful. Those kind of things with a ownership mindset, not a big deal.
Also, coming weekly and talking about, "How am I doing against what you're measuring?" Keeping score, rapid sessions every week, continuous improvement over time. So to me, IRX is the how. The what is on the left-hand side. The growth step mindset is what separates it from a lot of other business operating systems. Okay, this is the slide we use quite often. We talk about the fact that IRX and IDMs are simple. I know some of... I've talked with a lot of you about this. I think for those of you that are hearing this story for the first time, I'll try and give you a feel for that. Simplicity, it's overall about driving a high-performance execution process, focusing on the high priorities. That's another differentiator, in my experience, is it's we don't use IDMs and IRX everywhere.
We use it on the highest of the high priorities. Create several moments of truth, and a moment of truth we would describe as, think about coming into a weekly report-out, and you've got four or five minutes. You're gonna go through your area of focus. You're gonna do it in a standard form. They all look the same everywhere. Managers can instantaneously get engaged and help you by asking questions, providing assistance to help, maybe suggesting some alternatives, and we think that that gives us two-three times the annual— We think people get developed two-three times faster annually because they're getting that 40-50 reps a week, a year of showing their work, having the score be measured, getting some coaching, most importantly, having the opportunity to ask for help. Okay?
100% adoption and helping us get things done faster, as well as developing people. Okay, so it's all about the highest priorities, and again, I think this part of it, the first maybe section one and two here, are kind of boilerplate. I think a lot of well, to exceptionally well-run companies can do this. But the way we do it is we start in Q2 by building a strategic plan. Our strategic plan, we call an MLB. An MLB is gonna happen locally. It's gonna happen by product. It's gonna happen by geography. It's gonna happen by brand.
It all rolls up, and in the second or third week of July, every year, we take Monday through Friday, and we go through all the MLB report-outs, and at the end of that week, we have the top five areas for focused growth and top five margin improvements by business. So a lot of, lot of priorities, right? We keep boiling that down, having some follow-ups with the teams, while at the same time, starting two equally critical processes. One is a budget. Now, you guys know... All of you, I think, know Vik. All of you know Vicente. I can tell you, the level of the budgets and the level of granularity in those budgets is pretty specific and extremely well done. The third part of the process is talent.
So Kate Keene runs a process we call TRX, Talent Review Excellence, and again, it's as, it's as well done as I've ever been associated with it, where we're gonna talk about who, where do our employees fall. Every employee gets a 9-box. Every employee falls into some sort of succession planning. And then, if you wanna hear about great development plans today, at the break or at lunch, grab Kate, because Kate and her team have done a tremendous job of putting extraordinary focus on development plans, of which a lot of times the outcome might have something to do with an IDM. All right, so there's a moment in time where we've got the top 5 growth, top 5 margin, all the companies. Roll that up. We roll that up into what we call, at the bottom of the center, an IROPE.
The IROPE is an Ingersoll Rand Operating Plan Execution. That's got the top 24, 25 priorities in the company. Vicente pushes off of that and runs his staff meeting every Friday by going through those KPIs, by P&L. And then we review the corporate functions of importance during those 100-day sprints. All right? And then what that IROPE does, so this is an, this is another—and I, I missed the last part of the process, which that time spent in December, which actually ironically kind of coincides next week, that allows us to get off of a, to a very fast start in Q1, which is always a good thing. The best thing about it for us is it gets us into the market.
We know what we missed, we know what needs to be countermeasured, we know what we need to do differently, and then we hit that third quarter, second quarter with a lot of momentum to repeat the MLB process. So all those priorities are then pushed off into IDMs, and there's hundreds of them. I'll talk more about that. So a lot of people say: "How do you start an IDM? How do you launch an IDM?" It's really very simple. Takes less than a day. We don't do IDM or IRX training, we do installations. And the installation simply has to do with finding the highest area of focus, getting the right people, usually cross-functionally, maybe 10, 12, maximum kind of 15 people together, figuring out how you're going to build the swim lanes.
Now, the point before the swim lanes is the growth bridge, and you see the growth bridge on the bottom left. Really important part of the growth bridge is the headwinds, and this is the way we start the day. So we would say: "What's our 100-day objective for improvement during this next cycle?" And the first question we would ask is, "If we don't make the number, if we don't make the objective, if we don't launch the product, if we don't get the commodity savings, whatever the area of focus is, what would be the reason why?" And people kind of, you know, they're a little bit uncomfortable, and then the next thing you know, sticky notes are flying up.
You prioritize them, and you end up with a list of things that critically have to be prevented, or else they're going to be built into your bridge, which then would reset the jump-off point. So the example I always use here is that, let's say in a specific, let's say, the southeast part of the United States, you did $100 million in bookings during a certain period this year. You want to do 110. In my experience, up until recently, you would spend a lot of time building a plan to get that 10. You would go out, you might even get 11, and you would fall solidly at 98. And then you would say: "What did we do wrong?" And it's not, what did we do wrong? It's what did we not consider?
What did we not consider is that things change, and no two periods, we're learning, even week over week, look identically. So you take the headwinds. The next thing you say is, "If we're going to achieve this objective, what has to be critically focused on?" Right? So launch this new product, win back this customer, close the specific orders, and those are areas of growth. And we don't do this... We don't take weeks and months to do the math to the fifth decimal point. These are placeholders, and later, late in the morning, we start pushing off into swim lanes. And swim lanes, this chart looks, I'm sure, a little complicated if you haven't seen it before. Actually, very simple. Top of that chart, in the right-hand corner, is red.
That would mean this swim lane is out of control, which means that whatever period in the 100-day sprint they are, by week, that they either need some help or they need to countermeasure the plan. So am I in or out of control? What's my 100-day objective? Who's on the team? What am I going to measure? Leading KPIs, big learning, big opportunity. Leading KPIs are all activity-based, influenceable actions, right? So a lot of companies would measure, again, for sales, because it's fairly straightforward. They might measure orders, they might measure bookings, they might measure even their funnel. That would be a progressive measurement in that kind of swim lane. For us, that's way too basic.
We're going to measure and set goals for number of contacts, number of appointments, number of sales calls, number of demos, number of quotes, number of bookings, and then maybe the second or third cycle, we'll measure the cycle time between those things. So again, on a 6- or 7-day pace, what can I influence? What can I have activity-based movement around, and how am I doing? So teams get together weekly. We run it for 13 weeks. We call it a 100-day sprint, and then at the end of the 100-day sprint, big focus on resetting the bridge and think about what that second session of resetting that bridge might look like. And you'll hear from Pam later this morning around her experience with IRX. All right, this is my favorite slide. I had a dream last night.
After about 45 minutes, I had to be physically dragged off the stage because I was stuck on this one. Man, I got to get some new material. Okay, so the thing I like about this is, one, the original intent of this was that people would literally, the 12-15 people, stand in front of the wall and look at this posted, much like a safety QDIP board. Of course, COVID hit, a lot of things changed. Big global company, people all over. What we learned very quickly is this works great. 14 tabs, Excel workbook, 6 days a week. All these IDMs look identically, and I know some of you have participated. We could show you... I mean, China, Arnold's IDMs look the same as Amar's, look the same as Santiago's. That's the common execution language.
That's what makes it a lot of fun and gives us the opportunity to add value. So 10 minutes on the left, 20 minutes in the middle, 10 minutes to wrap up. The first 10 minutes is spent taking attendance. So if you're one of those 12-15 people, we call you the board of directors for that particular IDM, or you're focused on that 100-day area of improvement. Going to discuss the brief, the discussion guide briefly, which is timed. I'll run with a shot clock, 2, 3, 4 minutes per topic. And then I think something that is actually working out quite well because it's so simple, it's... Follow-ups from this week.
Follow-ups from this week is maxed at 5, and this we talk about as a parking lot with 5 parking spots in it, and if there's 3 cars, you only have room for 2. The reason for that is we don't want this to be an endless list of 40 things that are bogging us down. We want to chase these things off dynamically. 4 minutes per swim lane. I'm in control, out of control, here's what I'm measuring, here's what I did last week, here's what I'm going to do next week, here's where I need help, times 5, 20 minutes. Last 30 minutes are spent on follow-ups for this week. Again, assuming there's some parking spots open. Where do we need help? Where do we need help?
Another critical, good finding in this process is that that IDM can request help from anybody who's not in the IDM. And Vik, and Vicente, and everybody else in the room will occasionally get an ask from an IDM. Nothing gets a higher priority, whether it's a text, email, phone call; we respond to those quickly because we know the six-day clock is running, and they're waiting on an answer. Last piece of the IDM is the self-audit form. Self-audit form is the team, and this is what we like about the dynamics of the self-directed work team: they're gonna score themselves. And listening to this is really a lot of fun because they pass it around. Sometimes it's harsh, sometimes not so harsh, sometimes a little friendly, sometimes there's a little scrapping.
They're measuring three or four or five simple things like, did we start and finish on time, right people in attendance, making critical progress on our 100-day objective, so on and so forth. I've said a thousand times that if you get the right people, set the right 100-day objective, self-audit yourself to what you determine good to be, you'll figure out the stuff in the middle, and seems to be proven pretty true. 400 of these IDMs running weekly. When we talked about this in 2019, we had 60. We don't really... I don't, you know, I don't—I think what that means is we're using it everywhere. We don't have a goal for how many... You know, we're not at 400, trying to get to 500.
It's just kind of a self-pulled, self-selected, self-deployed process, but I know we're using it everywhere. You'll hear about it all day. 7,000, 7,000 associates weekly. Again, we think in a high, high development, good process to get coaching, and then you can see the donut in the middle, about half on growth, half on everything else. All right. Here's just a quick wrapper. I think the ownership model is the game changer here. I think this process might work in a different environment. I don't think it would work as well. It's simple, really easy to implement. People pick it up quickly. Liz will show you how we get people ramped up as we integrate new companies and as we go around the world and kind of spread the good news of what you can do with this tool.
Plenty of people that can coach. If you've been through a cycle or two, you can easily help somebody install one. I haven't found, and I get a lot of calls on, "How would you think about, or could we use an IDM for fill-in-the-blanks?" Haven't found one yet, including personal things like vacation planning, running marathons, et cetera. So it's a process that the 100-day goal objective or goal setting, measuring activity-based influenceable actions, seems to have some value. Last thing I'll say here is, we have some IDMs. That page on the front page we have there, from Baoshan, China, Vicente and I were there a few months ago. They ran an IDM. That IDM had been in existence for five and a half years, in basically the same format: sales, marketing, margin improvement, aftermarket, and operations.
It was almost unrecognizable in its goodness because of what they had done with it, and it wasn't the same 12-15 people that installed it. So we think it's early innings here. All right, let me spend a little bit of time here on DGX, Demand Generation Excellence. We think this is a proprietary growth engine, very much focused on taking market share and growing the top line. I'll show you how we measure that and the impact we think we're having. It's a proprietary commercial process. We'll talk more about that. A lot more than just outbound marketing, which sometimes people mistake the term for. It's a combination of customer insight, which we would think about as a customer database, and that's kind of maturing and getting richer all the time.
Commercial execution, outbound marketing, aftermarket assistance where needed, dynamic value-based pricing, e-commerce, which we talk about as allowing customers to buy what they want to buy, when they want to buy it, how they want to buy it. And then at the end of the team or at the other side, and I'll show you the framework here in a second, there's a business intelligence and data analytics group, which is really helping us get smarter every minute. Really scalable for new acquisitions. I'll show you a quick case study on that. I think the big game changer here, and my last slide you'll see from me this morning, talks about our maturity curve. Tremendous upside based on data.
And then again, we think, pretty early innings here, as the more we learn, the more, I think, positive we get about the impact we can have. Here's where it fits in the economic growth engine. We strive for 100-200 basis points of growth here, organic growth. That's our goal. That's how we measure our success, and again, all focusing on this proprietary growth engine. All right, here's the framework, and on the left-hand side, think about the customer database, customer insights it says here. In the middle, think about those five areas of focus and, for example... And this, this could be the size of this wall, plus, as far as the detail that goes into these things. But that web and digital marketing, you might think about, we have 78 websites that are all hosted on a single platform.
We can make changes dynamically, real time. We host over 250 distributor websites or landing pages. We do a lot of outbound integrated campaigns. I'll talk more. I'll take you through a couple here in a minute. Commercial, we're gonna talk about standard work and sales. Again, measuring calls, talking about CRM, but territory management, channel management, aftermarket focus. Mike Medaska will follow me, give you an update on recurring revenue. You can see how a lot of the things he'll talk about can easily be deployed through IRX with this process, adding some momentum.
Insightful pricing, I think, this might be an understated part of this team, and that we have some real pricing experts, and all they do is pricing, you know, five or six days a week, eight to whatever time they're doing it, which I, in my experience, the fact that this total 175-person team doing this full-time is really the momentum that gets built over time. In a lot of companies our size, a lot of companies smaller or bigger, you'll find people with most of these responsibilities. It's usually a piece of what the, of the work that they do. This is 175 people getting up every day, come to work, to think about nothing but growth and margin improvement, driving top-line revenue and increasing market share.
All right, centralization of the experts, to me, there was a couple decisions made about seven years ago. One was, this is gonna be a centralized team. Two, was we're gonna have a multi-brand, multi-channel strategy. Those two things frame the rest of this, and you can see the reason for those decisions, although the brands were probably about a quarter of these, and our opportunities to get to our customer was not near as big. But a few years later, 80 brands, 87,000 paths to the customer, 25 targeted segments. Without this, I think we'd look like the rest of the industrial manufacturing market. We'd rise, we'd fall, we'd sort of be susceptible. With demand generation, we feel like we can control what we can control, drive market, drive market growth, take market share, pivot to new markets, et cetera.
All right, the other side of this, the reason that this is effective, is we deal with a pretty complicated customer. Hold on to your seats for a second. I got a newsflash for you. Most of these people are using the internet. Okay, that's ground taken. Now, they spend a lot of time online. We wanna deliver a great online experience, no doubt about it. That would probably be an equalizer to everybody who looks like us. But the thing that we're coming to learn is they don't have a great job satisfaction. And the reasons, if you can think about that, and everything the world's been through in the last five or six years, probably fairly obvious.
The thing that has been interesting for me to learn is they have 4-5 times more responsibility than they did just a very short period of time ago. So it's gotten complicated. They got a lot more to do. They're solving a new problem for the first time. Think about some of the micro markets that we would pivot to. Might be EV batteries or biogas. I'll show you a slide on that coming up right away. They don't like to deal with salespeople. They do not want to engage a salesperson until up to 75% of the decision has been made.
But they do say, "If I could get the right information at the right time, that would be very helpful to me." And you can see we can deliver that by paying really specific attention to where they are in their customer buying journey, right? So they're either early in the market, not in the market, early in the market, getting into the market, making a decision, or they own our products. And it looks pretty straightforward, but the way that we would message and communicate with them, based on what we wanted to communicate with them about, would look a lot different. And those five areas of focus that we talked about, that playbook gets moved around as well, again, depending on where they are in the buying cycle.
We also ultimately are trying to deliver a great customer experience, and we, on purpose, and let me tell you, when we first started this three years ago, it wasn't very pretty. We measured Net Promoter Score at three stages during that cycle. Started off with an extra digit in the number, we thought the math was wrong. Now, you know, the Net Promoter Scores are pretty good. It also drives a lot of great activity, like, for example, responding to a lead automatically in an automated fashion or real time, or when we hand the leads off, and I'll talk about that in a minute, salespeople pounce on them because they know the Net Promoter Score is being measured. All right, this is how it works. Think about, think about any situation that you want to think about. You start off in that top left-hand corner.
We can take a geography, we can take a product, we can take a brand, and we're going to pick an area of focus, much like a IDM. I think that's why this works so well with IRX and IDMs. We're going to go into our contact database, figure out what we have from a contact standpoint. We have millions of people in there. I'll show you the specific number in a second. We're gonna launch an integrated campaign, which I have a sample here of probably a three-page menu of the way that we could get to these people. Again, based on where they are in their customer buying journey and how they want to receive information from us, which we pay a lot of attention to. You'll hear Arnold talk about some China-specific stuff here later.
Then out of that, we get 6,000 MQLs a week. An MQL is a targeted customer, a name with a contact, with a need, for which we have a product that can solve their problem. We're gonna quickly, and many times in an automated fashion, hand it off to a salesperson. Salesperson is going to contact them again almost immediately, and out of that, about 30% to convert to SQLs. A SQL is everything I just said, plus we're, we know the decision-making criteria, we know the specific product and how we'll approach solving the problem, and we know the timing is very realistic and warrants our time. So this has all changed, and it's changed really quickly in that salespeople used to not be big fans of leads from marketing. It was almost like two different, two different places.
Now very connected, and what this is doing is making salespeople much more efficient. If I can think about, I'm spending a third to half to more of my time working on marketing qualified leads, warm leads, I'm gonna be much more successful. You know, there's always, I've spent about 40 years in the commercial space, and there's always been this holy grail of formulaic commercial execution, right? So X times Y equals Z, which you can do pretty well in a factory. You can do really well in a call center. Some engineering teams pull it off. People don't even think about it in sales because it's sales and marketing, 'cause it's a random, wandering, ever-changing event. I think with this process, we're well on the way.
I think the other thing that gives me hope in getting there, and getting there really quickly, is that if you look at this framework, and some of you are more expert at this than I am, but there's 6 to 8 to 10 opportunities for continuous improvement, measurement, and countermeasure. Now, as this is the way we run the playbook, we're doing that kind of work every day. All right, so we take the playbook, and what do we think about? We think about focusing on specific target customers or markets. We think about pivoting to new micro markets, right? When you heard Vicente say, "Control what we can control, do what we say we're gonna do," we have a couple of individuals in our company that are looking at 100 micro trends all the time.
We're going to accelerate new acquisitions, more to come on that, launch new products, and expand the aftermarket services and revenue. All right, good results here. I think in... we've talked about this in 2019. You can see the starting point from when Vicente started to build this team out. We now have about 5 million contacts in the contact database. I think we'll get close to 300,000 MQLs this year. So the cost per lead is down to a very reasonable amount of money. I think we would compare that to a lot of places, about $1.5 billion in our sales funnel. So adding value, getting better, growing over time, and again, pretty early innings.
Okay, a couple quick case studies, and I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on these, 'cause I think you've seen the playbook, and you're gonna hear a lot more about some of these specific areas of focus, from the teams with the technology. But think about food and beverage or life sciences. We can go in there. This is kind of our power alley. We might be talking to, in our install base, around added services, revenue, care, things that, that you're gonna hear about all day. We wanna stay in touch with them. We might be going after new ones. You can see in these two, two particular campaigns, about 1 million contacts in the database, thirty-four million added to the sales funnel, I think 13,000 MQLs generated.
So this is kind of the thing that keeps the salespeople highly engaged, this bread and butter every day. We call this... This would be part of the focusing playbook. This would be pivoting, and pivoting means we're gonna move quickly to a new market that's emerging. You're gonna hear both from ITS and PST how they're moving to electric vehicle batteries, and we have renewable biogas up here. Same playbook, different version, right? And the different version is, these may not be customers we know well. They are highly likely, 30%-40% of the time, be solving a problem for the first time. We're gonna be very educational. We're not even gonna talk about products until we help them get up to speed on the problem that they're trying to solve.
Most importantly, two things: The first is that in these are new orders and build-outs, they're 2-3 times larger than our standard orders, right? And the second thing is, whether we win or lose, this is the beginning of a great customer experience that we'll have with these folks for a long time. All right, last case study, and then I'll wrap it up. I love this. When we bought the... And, and you guys all know about this, we bought the air treatment business from SPX Flow. SPX Flow went to market as a corporate brand. We took that corporate brand off, and we launched, relaunched, 5 heritage brands that SPX Flow had acquired over time. Did it really quickly. That gave us 5 marketing campaigns, web platforms, social media initiatives, et cetera.
We also did value-based dynamic pricing here, all in the first 100 days. Great story about a gentleman in Moers, Germany, where Hankison is. When he heard his whole brand was coming back, he went home, he got a 25-year-old jacket out of his closet, wore it to work the next day, and he was meeted on-- he was met on the factory floor with a standing ovation. People take pride in these brands. Bringing these brands back just immediately raises the engagement at, across SPX Flow. And then lot of MQLs, a lot of activity. The great thing about that is it gets not only the demand generation process going, but also IRX, and we're starting to work on the overall impact and value of the economic growth engine. All right, maturity path.
I'll let you look at this one at your leisure. I would say, lot of pick-and-shovel work by the team here in the last seven years. Tremendous amount of work. I say pick and shovel, that way undermines the actual highly technical work that they've done. I think, as I showed you a couple of slides back, we're solidly into the leveraging this commercially, and problem-solving, and building momentum, and using it in new integrations all the time. We have a column on here, which we call world-class. We think the journey to world class, we're solidly on, but you guys know us well enough. We'll move the goalpost. This would be world-class for a manufacturing company. We'll change the goalpost here to something that looks more sophisticated. We think we're playing at that level.
So we'll continue to make progress and come back in a couple of years and tell you where we are. All right, it's alive and well. Demand generation adding a lot of value. Hopefully, you understand some of the simplicity. It's really scalable. The more we learn about customers, the smarter we're gonna be. The data which I had on that previous slide, I think once you hear Mike, just maybe make a little note, data is gonna drive this to a whole another level. When Mike gets finished, you'll understand why. We think the talent and the customer insight and the passion, the 175 people, the multi-brand, multi-channel is really not comparable to other situations. So overall, pretty early innings in DGX. Thank you very much for your time.
I'll now turn it over to Mike Medaska for an update on recurring revenue.
Thank you, Mike, and good morning, everyone. My name is Mike Medaska. I'm the Vice President of Corporate Strategy for the company, and it's a pleasure to be here with you this morning to talk about our recurring revenue strategy. What you'll hear today, really three key points. The first is that we've more than doubled the percent of revenue from our IIoT-ready products from 10% to approximately 20% in the last three years, and that we are on path to hit our 25% target by the year 2025. Two, we're establishing a bold target to reach $1 billion in recurring revenue by the year 2027. And three, that we intend to achieve that target by growing our industry-leading CARE comprehensive service offering, expanding our Ecoplant system optimization platform, and growing our air quality services business. So let's dive in. First, digitalization.
As I mentioned, we've doubled the percent of revenue from IIoT-ready products and services to approximately 20% this year, and we will meet our 25% target by the year 2025. Beyond the metrics, we've appointed Dr. Christian Hansen to lead our, our digital effort as a company. Christian's team consists of 50 experts in hardware, software, controls, analytics, and e-commerce that are centralized, but work every day with the teams in each of our business units to drive the digital journey forward. We execute that using IRX. Importantly, we've begun the transition to monetization. The simple illustration on the right shows what I'm talking about. A very simple connected machine communicating information to the cloud services, providing data and insights that we then monetize in one of four primary pathways.
The first, alerts from connected machines that allow us to execute with parts replacement, complete equipment replacement, or new services, subscription revenue from system optimization offerings, QR code scans that allow ready ordering of parts from a website, and an asset life plan that functions much like a maintenance reminder for your personal automobile, providing reminders to order consumables or replacement parts when needed. Beyond revenue, it's delivering value as well in terms of service productivity, allowing us to be more surgical in dispatching service technicians with exactly the right parts at exactly the right time to make sure the machines at our customer sites are optimized. Let me back up a minute and provide some context. Great strategy always starts with meeting customer needs. Long-standing customer needs are intact: uptime, return on investment, operator safety, and product integrity. Long-standing customer needs that continue to persist today.
But what's very exciting is the fact that we're hearing with increasing frequency, two new and accelerating needs. The first, customers are asking us to help them decarbonize in service of meeting their 2030 or 2050 net zero commitments, and reducing Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions. Two, they're asking us to help outsource servicing to us. They don't wanna be in the business of servicing rotating equipment. They lack the talent, they lack the desire to be experts in that, and are turning to us with increasing frequency and saying, "Help us do that." So the way we meet those needs is shown on the right. Beyond our original equipment offering, our comprehensive aftermarket portfolio consists of a number of elements. The first, hard parts like rotors, motors, and bearings. Secondly, consumables. This would be coolants, lubricants, filters that are replaced frequently.
Third, accessories like piping, tanks, condensate management, and then equipment service and system-level service as well. Let me bring the opportunity to life with an example from our compressed air business. Air compressors are obviously important to us. It represents about 70% of ITS revenue. We know that they're important to customers as well. Approximately 70% of customer and manufacturing industrial sites use compressed air, and compressed air can represent up to 30% or more of an annual electricity expense for an industrial customer. It's ubiquitous, right? Compressed air is everywhere. It's often called the fourth utility. But unlike water, electricity, and natural gas, customers are often left to provide their own, right? And that introduces a lot of complexity at customer operations, both at the component level or the compressor level and the system level.
This would include things like missized machines, right? Leakage, lack of piping, adequate storage, lack of redundancy. The result is that customers often suboptimize their systems. The Department of Energy has estimated that up to 50% of all produced compressed air is wasted, right? It's a staggering amount of waste. So the opportunity for us is clear. Just a 15% improvement in compressed air system efficiency in the U.S. would result in 15 billion kWh saved, 9 million metric tons of CO2 avoided, and over $1 billion in savings annually for U.S. customers alone. So the obvious question is: how can we help? One of the most powerful tools in our arsenal is something we call the Air System Assessment. It creates customer awareness of issues and catalyzes action.
It's executed by a team of experts that we have around the world, that will go on-site and work with customers using their expertise in the science of compressed air. They follow a three-step process. One, score the site. This is a simple on-site walkthrough, a dialogue with the customer to understand their issues and needs, typically using a scorecard, as shown there on the lower left, to identify preliminary areas of opportunity for improvement. Second, assessment. This is a more detailed process. It can take a week or two. Our systems are instrumented with sensors and monitors, so we're logging and collecting data, and then using that data to provide a recommendation or a remediation path forward.
I should mention that assessment often includes the creation of a digital twin, as shown here in the lower right, an example of a model that we created for a customer in the southeast U.S. Step three is implementation. This is where we hope the customer pursues the remediation that we've proposed in the form of new equipment, new parts, or new service actions. What's exciting is that Air System Assessments deliver real impact. In 2022, we executed 1,300 assessments that resulted in over $130 million in orders. That's up 12% year-over-year, with the value of those orders typically exceeding 2x the value of a traditional order that does not follow an Air System Assessment. Let me bring that to life with a few examples.
The first, a leader from the paper industry with 20 mills and over 150 compressors in the U.S., asked us to conduct an assessment across all 20 sites. We did so. We identified a number of areas for opportunity. We estimate the potential revenue from execution of those actions over the next 5-10 years to be in the vicinity of $360 million, an enormous potential for us. But typically, we can find opportunities for fast payback for the customer as well. In one particular site, you can see there, 19-month payback by eliminating the use of a rental equipment and a number of leaks that were existing at that site. Quick anecdote, at that same customer, our major competitor of ours offered a 30% discount below their typical pricing, an attempt to get that customer to convert.
Customer refused to convert, and I think that's a sign of the power of our partnership and the strength of the relationship that's created when you help customers solve problems. Second example comes from the construction materials industry. This customer had 30 sites with over 90 compressors. The assessment revealed a high risk of downtime potential at 12 sites with very old machines and lack of redundancy. So in a market that will be flat to down this year, an end market that will be flat to down, we'll grow revenue with this one customer 7x, and more than 2x again next year. Okay, let me provide a look at unit economics to make it even more clear, the opportunity that we're engaging on here. The total cost of ownership for a typical rotary compressor over its 10-year useful life is shown on the left.
It might consist of 10% upfront equipment cost, 10% parts and maintenance, and over 80% of electricity costs. For a small to medium-sized site with 3 compressors, running at 6,000 hours a year, that could be more than $1 million of an electricity expense over 10 years. So it's a big, it's a big number. Creates a big opportunity for us to generate revenue throughout the life cycle of that equipment. To illustrate even more clearly, in the center of the page, for a single 100-horsepower compressor that we might sell for $50,000, when you add the typical aftermarket add-ons of parts and service, you might get a 1x multiplier of that original equipment price.
But when you think about the recurring elements, recurring revenue elements of care, system optimization, air quality, and testing services, you quickly get to a value that's 4x that of the original equipment. And we're very excited about the size of that opportunity. What's also exciting is that we know that this is extensible beyond air compressors to other equipment with high value and long useful life, such as a progressive cavity pump, a blower package, or a turbo vacuum unit. Okay, so with that as background, let's talk about where we're going. As I mentioned earlier, we've established a bold aspiration to move recurring revenue from $200 million to $1 billion by 2027.
We're very focused on growth and aftermarket overall, but we're particularly excited about the growth in recurring revenue, where we define recurring revenue as revenue from multi-year agreements that deliver equipment or system-level services or outcomes to customers. We're gonna pull three primary levers: care, system optimization, and air quality, and I'll cover each of those in turn. First, care. Care is our industry-leading comprehensive service offering, typically takes the form of a 5- to 10-year agreement, where we assume responsibility for the performance and maintenance of a compressor. It's priced according to the age of the machines and the operating environment of those machines. Customers absolutely love it. Delivers peace of mind, predictable operating expense, reduced downtime, and no internal requirement for expertise.
We love it because it delivers recurring revenue, it drives very high customer satisfaction and loyalty, great gross margins at north of 60%, and we win for several reasons. The first, consistent delivery and pricing across sites, important for multinational customers that want consistency and experience. Two, accumulated insights from millions of assets managed over decades of time. We think that's unmatchable. Three, execution by experts. As I mentioned, we have experts trained in the science of compressed air, trained in the execution of service contract execution. And third, we're often competing with local providers, self-service or inaction, and we like our odds against each of those competitors. CARE is delivering results. At the end of 2023, we'll have approximately $375 million in order value of CARE contracts yet to be delivered. That's up 80% from 2021.
Customers on CARE contracts report customer satisfaction 20 points higher than those not on CARE contracts, and are seeing greater machine uptime as well. Let me share just a few examples from a few different markets. First, a leading semiconductor manufacturer gave us a nice equipment order several years ago. They asked us to engage. 80 machines across multiple sites awarded us a $4.5 million contract for CARE, and in a sign of the strength of the partnership that we have, not only are we executing on-site and off-site service, we're also managing their parts inventory for them.
Second example, a solar equipment manufacturer, exceptionally frustrated with the inconsistency of the service experience they were getting from a network of local providers, asked us to standardize that service through CARE and awarded us a $2.6 million contract, and have been exceptionally satisfied. Finally, a raw material provider to the steel industry gave us a $5.5 million contract to look after their compressors across multiple sites, and are so satisfied with the service execution that they're beginning to convert their competitor compressors to Ingersoll Rand. So it has impact. Let's turn next to system optimization. I'm so excited today to introduce you to EcoPlant. EcoPlant is our revolutionary technology for optimizing compressed air system efficiency. It sits squarely at the intersection of digitalization and sustainability.
It was founded in 2016 by Aviran and Moti Yaacov and Yaron Harel in Tel Aviv, Israel, and joined IR earlier this year. The system uses amazing patented IP, proprietary algorithms, a controller, and a sensor array to dynamically control, in real time, a compressed air system to deliver exactly the amount of air needed by the customer in the most energy-efficient way. It works with multiple compression technologies and is brand-agnostic, and it yields fast results. After a less than 2-day installation period and a short training period for the algorithm, the system is switched on and begins immediately controlling the system, delivering typically 15%-20% energy savings and a less than 1-year payback. We're so excited about the potential of this technology.
Quick anecdote: when we were working with the board of directors to review and approve this transaction, I shared with them that in my 24 years with the company, this is the single most exciting project that I've had a chance to be a part of. Okay, air quality analysis, the third and final driver. Just as ensuring the quality of air in buildings and environments, home environments is critical, the same is true for compressed air systems, especially so in sensitive environments like food and beverage and pharmaceutical manufacturing, where air purity is critical, as well as human breathing applications, including hospitals, divers, and fire and rescue personnel. What we're doing here is talking about ensuring that the air is free of contaminants, particulates, water, oil, and microorganisms, as well as helping customers meet their regulatory requirements.
The foundation of our offering is a company called Trace Analytics that we acquired earlier this year, based in Austin, Texas. Trace is the only lab in the U.S. to test all classes of the ISO 8573 standard and has contracts in place with all five major pharmaceutical companies in the U.S. We're so excited to have Nikki Smith and her team of air quality experts on board and are excited to scale this platform around the world. Okay, before I wrap up, a quick view of the future. What you'll see from us in a, is an extension of the CARE portfolio from the traditional Ingersoll Rand brand of compressors to the other brands within the compressor portfolio. An example shown here as it relates to CompAir that we executed in 2023.
In the future, extension of CARE into the PST business, as well as integration of CARE, EcoPlant, and air quality analysis into bundled services and offerings that deliver greater value for our customers. So in conclusion, our investments in digitalization are paying off. We're on track to achieve our 25% by 2025 target. We're setting a bold aspiration for recurring revenue growth and intend to achieve $1 billion in revenue by 2027, and we'll get there by the growth of our CARE comprehensive service offering, our EcoPlant system optimization platform, and our Trace Analytics air quality and testing services. So with that, I will say thank you for your time and invite Vicente, Vik, and Mike to join me on stage for the first Q&A session. Thank you very much. Thank you.
You know what? You're gonna get a lot of air time. Matthew, you're good.
Yep.
Julian.
Hi, good morning.
Good morning.
Julian here. Maybe a first question for Vicente around the end market split that you put up on-
Mm-hmm
... slide 17. Yeah, the top few there, things like clean energy, food and beverage, life sciences, you know, are those kind of three where we should expect most M&A capital to flow in the next sort of 3-5 years?
Mm-hmm.
Also the other, slide 21, you had the geographic site footprint, you know, very Europe-heavy. Should we expect over time there's a more even distribution, perhaps less in Europe, more in Asia?
... Sure. So on the first question, I think one of the beauties of our technologies is that they can be agnostic to the end markets. Do we wanna be more pronounced on those end markets that have a higher growth and more sustainable CAGR over the next few years? The answer to that is yes. So could that lead some M&A to be more specific to those end markets? Potentially, yes. As we want to continue to penetrate those markets, obviously organically as we build technologies, but also inorganically as we continue to add adjacencies to a lot of the technologies. So yes to that. On the next one, I think we like to be in region for region because we can be really close to our customers.
It has shown that to be a very good strategy for us over the past few years. So we don't foresee that we need to shut down a factory in Europe and move it to Asia. You know, right now, as we speak, you know, what Arnold does is that he takes the technology, and then he localizes that in the region for region. Now, if there's eventually a moment in time that we need to consolidate, yeah, that offers a great opportunity for footprint. But at this point in time, we don't see that to be a lever that we have to pull in order to achieve our margin targets.
Great.
Yeah.
Just a quick one for Mike Medaska on the profitability of the recurring piece.
Yeah.
You know, any color at all, do you have a sort of an investment phase up front, and then the margins move up towards the back end of the period?
Sure.
You know, any, any perspective on, on profits on that piece?
Sure, I can start, and I ask for Vicente to add on. Yeah, as I mentioned, we've shared typically our care contracts come in at revenue, or sorry, gross margin, 60% or higher, depending on the particular application. You should expect to see that continue going forward and grow. But certainly, as EcoPlant and Trace Analytics are both new additions, relatively new additions to the portfolio, you would expect to see early investment to scale those, and that's in process now. But eventually to reach and exceed, you know, recurring revenue targets consistent with what we're seeing for care—for care.
Yeah, and that's a great question, Julian. I mean, definitely EcoPlant, we're in investment period. Same thing with Trace as we ramp them up. So from a gross margin perspective, they're even better than, than the CARE gross margin. But from an EBITDA, based on the investments that we're doing, definitely not as good as a, as the CARE. But net net, I mean, super excited of what we can create there.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone.
Good morning.
You know, the brand situation is very interesting, right? You see that 80 brands and, and particularly the SPX example of how they homogenized the brands and destroyed them. But the question is, how scalable, you know, is this? I mean, are we back here in 2 years, and there's 120 brands on the, you know, on the slide? And does that customer on the 80th brand know that they're dealing with Ingersoll Rand? Like, is there... You know, how do you make sure you capture the cross-sale? Clearly, you do it. I'm kinda asking how you do it-
Mm
... is really the question.
Yeah, I'll say, Jeff, I'll say a few things, and then, Mike, you, you jump in. I, we, we believe in this multi-brand, multi-channel because it really helps us create just a blanket of coverage. As you remember, back in the days when we merged GD and IR, we said it was perfect to keep both brands because GD, more distribution, IR, more direct, and that kind of gave us an ability to, the, in the channel, protect other entrants from coming in because we were owning the channel, while also pushing direct brands. So is it gonna be 120? I don't know. But we also have rationalized some brands. So we showed that these are kind of the 80, but we have very systematically rationalized some brands that we don't see the need to have them moving forward.
But I... You know, these are very highly respected premium brands that I think are just very highly recognized by our customers. So we think that right now, the strategy is working really well, and we believe that we continue to move that way. In terms of the cross-sharing, I think this is the beauty of the demand generation. Because, you know, when we acquire a company, we take all the contacts and put them into our contact database, and now we can flex from there to be able to cross-sell other technologies. And you're gonna see some examples of that on the PST segment, when Andy will come here and tells you about four technologies across PST, different brands.
We went into an electric vehicle battery production, and we were able to be very uniquely positioned to optimize the process with our four technologies, all via driven demand generation. Mike?
Yeah, the only thing I would add is maybe the other side of the demand generation benefit: think about the single hosting from a single website. So a lot of times, I mean, I think either ego or complexity usually ruin brands. I mean, people wanna put a big brand on or the complexity to, I think, the point you're raising, which is a good one. We don't have that complexity at that level, and we do pay a lot of attention to the brands as we acquire them. And to Vicente's point, you know, we love the multi-brand, multi-channel. So I don't know, you know, we don't have a goal for brands, much like IDMs, but we're not afraid of adding more brands.
Maybe just a quick one on the IIoT-enabled equipment. To what extent are customers buying it because it's enabled, or is it more you embedding the capability to come back on the back end at some point in time and drive the service that you're talking about?
Yeah, Jeff, great question. It's really more of the latter. We're-- it's embedded. And we do it via GSM network, cellular network, so we don't have to be inside their firewalls of the customer, so we can see it immediately. Service tech goes in, flips a switch, we can see data. I think the beauty of that allows us to even see, you know, efficiency and usage of compressors by end markets, by regions, and so on. So it offers another leading indicator.
Hey, guys. Good morning.
Hey, Joe.
Hey.
So, my first question, that end market slide that you showed us, you know, 12% of your business tied to general manufacturing. Yeah, there's a lot of talk right now about mega projects, and just, you know, that we haven't yet touched on that topic. So I'm just curious how you think Ingersoll plays in that, especially considering that, you know, typically compressors are in most facilities. So any commentary around that would be helpful.
Yeah, Joe, absolutely. I think we all see all these announcements of the mega projects, and even Hyundai now in Georgia putting in their new electric vehicle and all that. And that's all of those mega projects are, yes, to your point, I mean, they're good news for us, because we get the chance to play in those mega projects. So I'll just say that, you know, we're excited about it. We see money flowing. I mean, it's kind of, I would say, steady, not in a big exponential way. But yeah, you can bet that our teams are chasing a lot of those projects.
Okay, good to hear. And then I guess, Mike, still love the jokes. Keep using them. Going back to, you know, IRX, clearly, it's been a differentiator for you guys. I'm curious, how often do things bubble up to Vicente and Vik? And then ultimately, what is kind of like the impetus for things to bubble up?
Well, the impetus, and some of you have heard this before, is, Vicente, Vicente calls it a staff meeting. I tell him it's an IDM, and then we reverse argue the other side of the... So weekly. Weekly. And again, these are—you know, one of the things we've thought about, and, and some of you have even written about, is that in those 100-day cycles, there's a lot of tension, which means we think it pulls the bad news forward quickly. So you're gonna see bad news in week three, four, or five. And bad news, we love it because it just means we're gonna flex the plan or countermeasure. So I, I would let these guys answer for themselves, but weekly, minimum.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I'll give you another good example of Roots. We acquired Roots. A week after the acquisition, we took a factory floor, and as you'll hear from Liz, on day one, we're already showing them IRX and IDMs and all that. So five days later, I'm on the manufacturing floor, and they have on the board the areas where they need my help. So it's just that quickly that it happens. I mean, that ability for employees to be able to speak up and say what help they need, they grab it. It's our duty to then take action so they can speak up more often.
Hey, Rob Wertheimer. Thanks, everybody.
Hey, Rob.
My question is on recurring revenue and business model. Should we think about air quality and optimization as being sort of software-like, and we elaborate over time, and is CARE rolling trucks, or is that too tough? And then, you know, is CARE an evolution of things you already do now in service, and you think you can do better, or is it really kind of a new push to be more into service and evolving what your staffing is and how you kind of go to market with
So let me. I'll take the first piece, and Mike, you take the CARE. Yeah, EcoPlant is purely like a software revenue. And I think it's very. I mean, I know Aviran and Yaron, they're listening to the call, so those guys are incredible. And Trace Analytics, it's a very unique lab. I mean, if you were to go to that lab, they use the highest level of spectrometry and spectroscopy, and they do microbial analysis, so it is really high-end lab. It's one of the only, like, four labs in the U.S. that are only ISO approved, and you saw that all the pharma facilities are actually coming to us for us to do that analysis.
So that today is really more about sending a sample, but as you can imagine, we already applied for, or applying for patents and so on, on how do we do that more remotely on a software-like basis. I don't care?
Yeah, as it relates to care, care, care, is really mature when you look at the base that we've started from in the, in the United States, for example, where, you know, the majority of the care revenue is generated today. Of course, we're gonna intend to grow pretty quickly outside the U.S., but we've got very, very, excellent process in place for understanding where the assets that are on care agreements are, what the maintenance schedule requires. So we're executing service very efficiently to make sure that those machines are up, running, customers are satisfied. And depending on the maturity of the customer, it, it may be the case that we might put personnel on site to look after a network of compressors that are, you know, on a customer location.
So in terms of improvement, we'll intend it, we'll, we'll get more efficient at executing CARE contracts, but really, it's, it's meeting the customer on that journey of outsourcing service. And I would say, if you look back 10, 20 years ago, the percent of companies that were intending to do that themselves were much higher. That's what I mentioned, when this, the trend is accelerating, more and more customers are saying: "We want to be out of the business of maintaining compressors. You're the expert. Why don't you take over that for us?" Right, and we're, we're glad to, and that's what, that's what's driving the impetus for CARE and the focus on CARE, and we're, we're really satisfied with it.
Thank you.
... Thanks. Hi, it's Joe Ode. Can you, can you talk a little bit about the conversion through the chains? You talked MQL to, to sales qualified lead is, you know, roughly a 30% conversion. What are you generally targeting from, from sales to order? And when you think about that value chain, you know, where do you see the biggest opportunities today in terms of growing? Is it more, you know, the bigger pipeline in MQL, or doing better on that conversion to sales, or better in that conversion to orders? You know, where, where are you most focused on the opportunities?
The first part of the question is on the math from MQL to SQL?
SQL to order.
Oh, to order. Well, it varies, right? Because all—we put the opportunities in the funnel equally, which it is a—it ends up in a weighted funnel. We do think that marketing qualified leads are three times higher than a non-marketing qualified lead. And what that means is that, as it comes through marketing, it's warm, so we would think there's three times more likely positive outcome through the funnel. And then the second part of your question is, we're problem-solving, and we want both. I mean, we wanna raise that conversion level. We wanna raise that conversion level from MQL to SQL, and as importantly, the cycle time. We think if we can get on that pace of knowing that customer database, providing them the right information, we can move some of these projects through the pipeline faster, so...
I think maybe the other important piece as well, and Mike mentioned that, but I, I wanna put an emphasis to it, is that these MQLs, like, half of them are from new accounts, which is obviously penetrating an ability to take share. That is the beauty of this demand generation.
And then when you think about the 27 targets, I mean, obviously, a defining feature of the past couple of years was the price contribution. As you move forward and you think about the next four years, you know, how are you thinking about that sort of mix of price and volume? Really, you know, markets, how much you depend on the end markets versus how much you can drive the volume outgrowth, and then, you know, what the setup is for price, whether you're seeing fatigue out there with the inflationary factors we've seen.
Yeah, I'll take that one. So I think very simply stated here, you know, we're going to be quality variance focused, but given the mission-critical nature of our products, we think that generating 1%-2% price on an annual basis is, without question, kind of the target going forward. So if you take that mid-single digit kind of overall target, you would say 1%-2% from price, the balance obviously coming from volume. And I think you've seen this historically. Obviously, the last 2 years, you've seen pricing levels at clearly differentiated levels.
But even prior to that, we've seen it, you know, particularly even in the Gardner Denver days, even before, even when you saw even slight, you know, corrections in markets and things like that, we were still able to generate price, given the, you know, the differentiated mission-critical nature of our products and the fact that, frankly, they're still a very, very, very low cost to the overall enterprise and system that they're going into.
So again, we have no concerns about that ability, and it's worth noting here that even in this year, as we came into 2023, we said that, you know, we're still taking some targeted pricing actions, and you should expect that we're gonna continue to generate an incremental 1%-2% price in addition to all the carryover that came into this year, and that's absolutely proven itself out to be true.
Hey, guys, a couple questions. This is Mike Halloran. So first, staying on the service side, you know, one, how does that network look today from a footprint perspective? How much do you have to build it out?
Mm-hmm.
And then the follow-on to that is, what's the opportunity then to leverage that more aggressively on the new equipment side, ultimately pull through more content, whether it's expansion or just making sure you keep sticky on any kind of replacement needs?
Yeah, let me take the first part of the question. Mike, do you wanna touch on the, on the stickiness? But really strong service network. I mean, I think one of the investment thesis when we were contemplating the Ingersoll Rand acquisition, it was about that service network because it provides a huge barrier of entry for others. So we have over 400 technicians just in the U.S. alone. And I think you saw on one of my slides that I say over 5,000 employees that are touching our customers, and that includes a couple thousand on a global basis of service techs.
So I think we have a really strong service network that we're now making more efficient, and I think as we scale the CARE, it's not a 1:1 ratio because we do concentration maps in terms of how concentrated is the specific technologies, and then reallocate service technicians. We're also now doing route optimizations in many of the countries. So I think the efficiency of that is getting improved, so we don't need to do a 1:1 as we grow. I think it's, we're gonna be able to leverage the scale.
Yeah, and I would add to that too, as well. In addition to our kind of company-owned customer centers and service centers, don't forget about the scale that we've got through our authorized distribution network. Very, very powerful. You know, we're recruiting new distributors or working with them each year. You know, the ability to execute service on our equipment is of paramount importance, and so when you think about the data point that Mike shared, 87,000 paths to market, you know, the 45-55 split of direct and indirect, we've got great capability, either direct or indirect, to make sure that, you know, we're servicing customer equipment. As it relates to stickiness, absolutely. I mentioned the one data point I shared, that, you know, care customers are 20 points higher, 20 points more satisfied than non-care customers.
We know with certainty that they're happy about the quality of service and experience they're getting with CARE, and they're very likely to come to us when they need to replace equipment or even convert competitive equipment in the future.
The second one, then, DGX. You know, you almost make it sound like it's easy to take market share, right? I certainly understand the process behind everything. What are the competitors doing? I mean, is there a response, or are we just talking about enough fragmentation that you're going against unsophisticated competitors? You know, is there something the bigger competitors are doing? Kind of any context to the other side of the coin?
... the competitive side?
Yeah, I tell you, Mike, as you know, and you clearly know the story, that you know, this demand generation started, you know, back in 2015, one person, and it was a lot on right now building up a proven engines that we had seen, in particular here, an engine that we saw that it was working really well with Mettler-Toledo. You know, as we look at this space, we don't see anything that really compares to what we have. And we feel confident on saying that because it's difficult to know what good looks like if you don't know where to go and find it.
And look at us, I mean, we went to Mettler to be able to find it, and then replicate that engine into everything that we do, and it's working really well in industrial space, but also life sciences, and also some of the other markets, because of a high level of fragmentation. So I think you said it that well, is that when you have a high level of diverse end markets with such a massive fragmentation of customer base and decision makers, it is the one way on how you can improve the efficiency is by doing it the way we do it. And I think the other competitive advantage that we have against any of the competitors is our contact database.
I mean, I think 5 million contacts, unique contacts in our contact database, that we can extrapolate inside data and use a lot of these artificial intelligence to understand where we take one technology versus other. I'd say it's incomparable.
The only, the only thing I would add is, I haven't seen... I mean, this is not a, it's not a new playbook. I think it's, it's executed here in a very unique fashion. It doesn't work without scale. It just can't. I mean, I've seen it fail time and time again without any scale. So Vicente and I were talking the other day, in our past history, if you went back, so let's just say today, whatever company said, "We're gonna globalize this, we're gonna take this fragmentation, we're gonna put it together," you would shatter the company. I mean, just the, the GMs, the regions, the so on and so forth.
The way this is built up organically over time is- and you'll hear a lot of the other people you're gonna hear from on the P&Ls works pretty seamlessly between the business units and this centralized team.
David Raso. Two quick questions. One, obviously, there's a lot of idiosyncratic self-help to your story, and, and you're well positioned for secular trends. But when you were contemplating the, the commentary, we're on target- on track for our 25 targets, you thought about your 27 targets, what was the macro thought in that? Do you contemplate a downturn, near term, from the rate hikes, from a cyclical kind of angle?
Mm.
And then I have a follow-up question about M&A.
Yeah, sure, David, I'll take that one. Specifically, are we thinking about what's gonna happen distinctly in 2024 over 2025 or 2026? Listen, we recognize, and just look at the last two years, there's always gonna be ebbs and flows in the markets. No one could have foreseen, for example, what's happened over the last two years. I think what you're hearing from us here is, we think we have a proven model, the economic growth engine, that over a multi-year timeframe, just like you've seen over the last two years, if you flash forward to the next four, we can overcome weather, whatever might be in the markets. We play in a very, you know, diversified end markets. We're in multitudes of geographies.
You'll hear it, even from Arnold, you know, where one market may be down, we can pivot, refocus, demand generation, point to, you know, campaigns, point to another market. We see, you know, the opportunity to outperform, even when, if, for example, things do, you know, take a step backwards. Over that four-year timeframe going forward, we absolutely see the ability to deliver on those targets as we indicated.
Okay, thank you. And then the M&A question. OxyWise recently felt-
Mm-hmm
... a little, a little more of an adjacency.
Yes.
Just curious, your appetite, how is that building? And if you maybe indulge us on what are those adjacencies you would be willing to expand your platform, you know, the whole ecosystem?
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Yeah, no, great, great question. Yeah. I mean, OxyWise, those of you that don't know, it's technology we bought in Slovakia, and what they do is they do oxygen generation on-site by attaching a compressor. So think about hospitals that may need that, or pharma industry that may need that, or other labs. And so it's very, very unique technology. And so that's one that we can see they're adjacent, pretty close to where we are. And Liz, Liz is gonna touch base a little bit more on those, and you'll see more on that, so I don't wanna kind of get their punchline, her punchline out. But yes, I mean, I think we continue to look at these adjacencies that are closely connected to us.
And she'll give you maybe a couple examples on that, on that view, but absolutely, David. I mean, that's... Those are areas that we see... Yeah, good.
And just quick on that, obviously, Ingersoll legacy, a little more direct GD distribution.
Yep.
When you think of going to adjacencies, is that more through distribution, more shelf space, or do you think you can go to adjacencies because of the strength of the direct Ingersoll legacy?
Both, to be honest. Both in those cases. I mean, we even... Yeah, both. Yes.
Mm-hmm. All right, we have time for one more here. Steve?
Great, and I'll just keep it to one. Steve Volkmann with Jefferies. Mike, I think you gave an example of a situation where you were able to actually convert some competitor equipment-
Mm-hmm
... because of the care.
Yeah.
I'm curious how much of your current, say, $200 million or the targeted $1 billion, would be sort of non-IR equipment-
Mm
... that you'd be-
Good question
... taking care of?
Yeah, I don't think we'd give you an exact figure, but what I can tell you is that there are a large portion of compressor rooms out there in the world that, sometimes called rainbow rooms or multi-brand rooms. There's a lot of compressor rooms out there that we are servicing, and we are engaging with our care agreements, where adjacent to our equipment are competitive machines. And so we're excited about the potential to convert those. And yeah, it's a variety of applications and situations that we're walking into. But we walk into each one of those with confidence that at the end of the day, by delivering a satisfying care experience for the customer, that in the short or long term, they'll be coming to Ingersoll Rand equipment customers.
All right. Well, thank you, everybody. We're gonna take a quick 20-minute break. We'll reconvene at 10:05 A.M.
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Okay. Welcome, welcome back. Hopefully, you get a chance to watch that video. It's a, it's a very impressive technology, and I'll just tell you a little story as well, as you kind of grab your seats. You know, Aviran, who I'm sure he's watching—Hey, Aviran, and Yaron, very young, very entrepreneur software individuals. And Aviran's dad, he was a compressor person, service tech that did a lot of air audits, the air audits that that Mike Medaska was talking about. And Aviran said: "Hey, this is an unmet need. It's a lot of work. Why, why don't we automate this?" And that's how the entire story really started with Aviran and Yaron, and now a, a team, you know, team of 25 individual software technicians are continue to develop and, and in, in a place where we continue to invest.
So next section here, I'm gonna kick it off, Industrial Technologies and Services, the ITS. And here's what you're gonna hear today. ITS is a segment with pretty good scale, $6 billion. It plays in a $40 billion addressable market. High level of fragmentation provides great opportunity for us to continue to grow organic and inorganic. You're gonna hear today, too, as well, it's a segment with great profitability, 28% EBITDA margins, and one that we continue to see improvement here. Second bullet point is kind of the key core of what Amar and Arnold are gonna show you, which is: how are they driving differentiated growth in challenged markets? Back to the question in terms of what - how do we do it? How do we do this self-help?
You're gonna see that it's all about leveraging our technologies to have great return on investment, leveraging demand generation to pivot from one end market that might not be growing to the one that is growing, because our technologies can be very easily moved to those specific end markets. The third is leveraging our global commercial footprint by taking M&A that we have done in other regions and then applying that in the regions where they're more participant. ITS, the way to think about ITS is just basically a leading technology platform that allows our customers to reduce energy consumption and improve efficiencies. That's it. Compressors, blowers, vacuums, technologies, but it's all about energy efficiency, water conservation, with all the technologies that we have.
It's a segment that has been performing really well, 15% CAGR, and again, not because of the market, but because of a lot of the self-help that you'll see that the team is driving with the help of IRX. And great EBITDA expansion at almost 500 basis points in just the past three years, delivering great performance. It's a segment that about 36% is aftermarket, but one that, as you saw from Mike Medaska, we expect that to continue to inflect over- upwards as we drive these recurring revenue streams at an even higher margin. So this is-- these are kind of the leading technology platforms. 70% of the $6 billion is, compressors and air treatment systems. And, and the way to think about it is that we think about them being connected, because, you know, we can generate...
What was one of the questions before? You can take a compressor, air treatment system, and you can generate on-site nitrogen, on-site hydrogen, on-site oxygenation, and I think that's really what's gonna drive the future of the connectivity of our technologies. 25% is blowers and vacuums, and roughly 5% is power tool. So this segment, the way we structured this is, again, all case studies, so you can get an example of a view on how we're driving execution. We're gonna be beginning with Amar. Amar is gonna focus on ROI and sustainability. How do we drive that in mainland Europe?... but providing great ROI to our customers by showing them how can they reduce water and energy to be able to drive paybacks that are less than two years. Amar is also gonna start by talking about India.
India, some of you remember a few earnings calls ago, probably like two years ago, I said that India was gonna be a market that we were going to double down, and we have doubled down in India. And you'll see that acceleration that we're seeing in India growing at approximately four times the GDP of India, a GDP that is already seeing some good growth. And then we're gonna have, Arnold Li, and Arnold Li is gonna talk, even though Arnold Li manages all Asia Pacific, he's gonna be focusing specifically on China. 'Cause I know there was a lot of questions on China from many of you, on how do we drive that differentiated performance? And Arnold Li is gonna show you that.
He's gonna show you how he's driving, pivoting from one market to the other, how he's taking oil-free technology after the merger of the two companies, and overdrive performance, how he relaunched Gardner Denver into now one of the top brands in China, and how he's taking M&A that we have done in other countries, whether India and the U.S., relocalizing in China and penetrating new end markets. So with that, I'm gonna hand it over to Amar. Amar?
Thanks, Vicente. Good morning, everybody. My name is Amar Kaul, and I'm the Vice President and General Manager for ITS Compression Systems, EMEA. I've been working with Ingersoll Rand for 12 years plus, have enjoyed every moment of it. But what stands out is last three years, graduating my thinking to ownership mindset. Now, what is this ownership mindset? It's very simple to me. Empowerment to strategize, take bold decisions, steps, and execute. That's what it looks like. And today, I'm standing in front of you talking about some success stories that we had in the last three years, and how our innovative solutions are helping our customers in being successful, and we inching more towards our sustainability goals. Now, first one, as Vicente said, about our journey as a growth market in India. Now, this journey has been fueled by five key pillars, starting with markets.
So the markets, we think global but act local, because we always believe that being close to the customer, understanding their buying behaviors, and strategize according to that, will always be helpful rather than staying 10,000 feet above the ground. That's something that leadership focus has been there. Channels, direct and distribution channel. Now, distributors also, you know, what kind of distributors do we need? Onboarding, rationalization, and optimization of those channel partners so that we grow together. Products. 7 times increase in new product launches we had since 2020, and that's the big jump where we used Ingersoll Rand and Gardner Denver technologies to bring the best to the market. Demand generation. You heard Mike talking passionately, cutting some jokes, et cetera, but you see the outcome of demand generation.
You know, we could not have reached such a wide spectrum of customers physically going to all of them. By focusing on NPS, which is Net Promoter Score, having that sense of urgency for responding to the customers, since 2020, we increased 6 times the bookings out of demand generation in just 3 years. Now, what does it mean in terms of numbers? It's very simple. You know, on the right bottom corner chart says it all. From before 2020, 7% compounded annual growth rate to 26%, which is 4 times GDP, as Vicente mentioned as well. Now, by applying this economic growth engine with the robust foundation of Ingersoll Rand execution excellence process that we have, we continue to have sustained business results. A couple of case studies, as you know, that our products have application across the industries.
But for today, we have picked up two industries, which is food and beverage, and paper and pulp industry. Now, let me start with the first one. In food and beverage industry, large account, large customer, a competitive account, we did an air assessment for this customer, and the outcome was that they had about 11 oil-free rotary machines, which we upgraded to the latest technology in centrifugal with just 3 machines. And what did customer get? $1.1 million in energy savings per year, 875,000 kg of carbon emission reduction or avoidance, which means simply 2.2 million passenger car miles were avoided. And return on investment for customer was 15 months. Now, establishing this credibility with the customer for their two plants, this happened in U.K.
For next 2 plants, we got the package care contract for 5 years. You know, that's the way we are establishing and creating more and more business for ourselves. Second case that you have, another large customer in food and beverage industry, they asked us to conduct the air assessment for 18 of their sites. The team conducted the assessment, made a plan to upgrade all the sites over the next 10 years, created an opportunity of approximately $98 million worth of business, including the service. Now, this is just the tip of the iceberg of the potential that the business that we are trying to create while partnering with our customers on the sustainable journey. Now, on paper and pulp industry, now, 2 of our big businesses, compressors and Runtech turbo blowers. Now, let me talk about compressors first.
The compressor team carried out air system assessment at 88 sites across Europe and made a plan for next 10 years on how it can be upgraded, optimized with energy efficiency and savings for the customer. Initial results, the first order we received, $1 million. Second one, $1.5 million is going to come, and you can do the math, what will happen to 88 sites? And that's the way we are creating more and more opportunities. Second excellent example is Runtech, which is our turbo blower team. So their play, the, the, the action that we had with the customer was on 6 turbo blowers, out of which 3 have already been executed, 3 sites, and 3 more sites are in the pipeline.
Now, once this is done, there is potential energy saving of 61.5 million kWh, avoiding 15,900 metric tons of carbon emission. In simple terms means 112 million passenger car miles. This is about the energy, which is electricity. Now we talk about water. With this change, the customer was approximately consuming 264 million gallons of water, which will get close to zero, because these are highly efficient turbo screw blowers. Next one that I have is on the steel industry. Now, why is, why am I talking about steel industry and hydrogen compressors in this? Because globally, 11% of carbon emission is coming from conventional steelmaking process. Now, this becomes a very, very critical industry for us, especially with our commitment on decarbonization. Now, DRI is a process which is direct reduced iron.
Where we utilize hydrogen versus the blast furnace, which you already know how much of energy is consumed for that to make iron. Now, our recent acquisition, Roots. Now, this team really worked with the technology in partnership with Midrex, which is a large industry player, and developed a solution for this DRI process. Okay? Now, this technology is non-invasive, which means it can be implemented for the existing sites as well as the greenfield sites, thereby generated an opportunity of $500 million worth of opportunity, which practically was not existing. And also, this kind of segment will also grow by about 10 times because of being carbon neutral over the next decade. Now, this is how we are unfolding the opportunities by getting these acquisitions like Roots and unfolding the opportunities and create more revenue for us.
A simple example of each opportunity for these DRI sites is approximately $15 million, and we already have the first order in hand in Q3. So ladies and gentlemen, this is just the beginning, so stay tuned for the exciting times ahead, and thank you for listening to me. With this, I will hand it over to my friend, Arnold.
Okay. Thanks, Amar. Hi, good morning. My name is, Arnold Li. I'm with the company for 17 years, in charge of ITS Asia Pacific. Today, I'm very honored to be here to share the story about ITS China. In last three years, ITS China, we grow our business at 18% CAGR, which is four times the market growth. In the meantime, we expand our EBITDA by 380 basis points. In China, we have around 2,100 employees, including commercial, operation, engineering, and other enabled functions. We build a very strong channel and sales in China. In total, we have more than 30 customer centers to cover the market. We have more than 500 sales and service people in our commercial organization, plus we developed over 300 authorized distributors and dealers as our extended sales arm.
We build in region for region, in country for country, engineering innovation capability. In last 3 years, we launched over 140 new products in China for China. As of this year, all this MPD account for more than 30% of our revenue portfolio. If we talk about China market, okay, overall, the China market trend is very tied to the global meg trend: sustainability, quality for life, et cetera. While there are headwinds, geopolitical issues, declining in international tradings, some multinational company, they experience business year-over-year declining. While we, ITS, we still grow the business over the last 3 years. The major reason behind it is the strong ownership mindset, the culture of our team, control what we can control. With the differentiated results, if you look into the right-hand side, these are our growth strategies.
For example, how we grow in a growth vertical, sustainable market, how we grow the blower and vacuums in China, how we play multi-brand, multi-channel strategies. I'm going to share with you some stories in the following section. EV and battery, electric vehicle and battery. Here, I'm going to share with you a story about how we grow in a growth vertical, in a sustainability vertical, EV. And particularly in this vertical, how we are able to provide the best solution to our customers. EV is a big vertical, is a big market globally. It's grow very fast, 50%-60% CAGR. And China is a very big market of EV. It accounts for almost 60% of the global market.
Back to 3 years ago, ITS China team, we already start a vertical market approach to study the EV verticals, not only for EV itself, but we also study the whole value chain... including the midstream and upstream, like a chemical business and the material industries. After this study, we come back to revisit our offerings. We did product expansion and upgrading from oil-free rotary compressor to centrifugal compressor, to blowers, vacuums, and the service counter offerings. So as a result, we are able to see, we are able to grow the business at 14 times in the last 2 or 3 years, just in EV vertical. And here I show you 2 wings we have in China. Both wings are from our key account from this vertical.
The reason why we are able to make the success here is we understand the customer requirement, we understand the customer's applications. And in the meantime, we have the ready now offerings, which require very, very limited modifications. So we are able to provide the best solution to our customers in terms of the best cost of ownership, return on investment, lead time, and the services, et cetera. All these are from the vertical market study we did in last three years. So we plan and get ourselves ready ahead of the curve. Okay, oil-free rotary compressor. In this session, I'm going to share with you about how we grow the oil-free rotary business in China by relentlessly focus on innovation, technology, and in-region, for-region supply chain and their operation.
On the engineering and the innovation side, we build full capability in China for China, from design to upgrade to I2V. Last year, we launched in China a 500-kilowatt oil-free rotary compressor. This is the biggest frame oil-free rotary compressor globally. Just for this frame, we registered 12 patents in China National Patent Association, just one frame. And in the next 12 months, this frame bring us $25 million incremental business to ITS China, just this frame, one frame, which is fantastic. On the supply chain and the manufacture side, we push very aggressively in-region, for-region. As of now, for all the oil-free compressors we have, over 98% of the package and the components are made in China. Beyond the cost advantage we have, we are able to squeeze our lead time to be less than 4 weeks.
4 weeks lead time for oil-free compressor is very, very competitive in the market, compared to 6-8 weeks lead time from our major competitors. With all the effort made, we see differentiated results. If you look at the right-hand side, we are able to drive the business growth at 35% CAGR, year-over-year, in the last 3 years. We expand our gross margin by 500 basis points in oil-free space. With the strong momentum, we target to triple our business by year 2026 versus year 2020. Okay, Gardner Denver brand compressor. Gardner Denver is a very well-known brand globally. Very good technology, great offerings, but in China, before the merger, it is not very well executed commercially.
Here, I'm going to share with you a story about how we relaunch the Gardner Denver compressor in China, and how we play multi-brand, multi-channel in China. Look at the results first. We are able to see we grow the business at 60% CAGR in last 3 years, with margin expansion about 680 basis points. With a strong momentum, we target to grow the business at 10x by year 2026 versus year 2020. How did we get there? Our multi-brand, multi-channel strategy are from 3 aspects. Firstly, differentiate the product. In 2 years, we revisit and upgrade, and refresh all the frames 100% for Gardner Denver compressors. This is leveraging the technology between Ingersoll Rand and the Gardner Denver.
So we use air end from Ingersoll Rand, and we leverage the package design from Gardner Denver, which equip a 5%-10% efficiency improvement. And now, all the Gardner Denver compressors in China are IoT equipped, which provide a better customer experience and improve our aftermarket business as well. Secondly, go-to-market strategy. In order to avoid cannibalization, we decided to put dedicated sales team and the dedicated channels just for Gardner Denver compressors. As of now, we newly developed 45 new or new distributors. They are qualified, they are authorized, and they are exclusive just for Gardner Denver compressors. Thirdly, strong brand awareness by demand generation. In China, we promote Gardner Denver brand through different channels. If you look at the pictures on the bottom side, these are the most popular social medium in China, TikTok and the WeChat.
In the meantime, we promote Gardner Denver brand in exhibitions. So as of now, we are very happy to see, for Gardner Denver brand compressors, the marketing-driven order has increased by 300% compared to 2 years ago. Fantastic results. Okay, blow and vacuum. Blow and vacuum is a great, great business globally. Very good technology, very good offerings, but before merge in China, the blow and vacuum business is not very self-sufficient... So here I'm going to share with you a story about how we drive the innovation, technology, localization, organically and inorganically, to grow the business at 23% CAGR in the last 3 years. Organically, in last 13 months, we launched 31 product for blow and vacuum in China. A quick math here is, for every 30 days, we launch 1 new product in China in the blow and vacuum space.
Just this month, in November, in China's biggest exhibition, China International Import Expo, we launched a magnetic drive blower publicly, officially. This is the first launch we have globally. Inorganically, we also go one step further to explore the new technology in the market. One great example is the most recent M&A we did in China, Gaopeng. Gaopeng is one of the top players in China for dry screw vacuum. In the due diligence phase, we already start to study and learn the technology and the design. And in the meantime, we also purchase other competitors' equipment to tear down and learn. So after the deal is closed in summertime, our engineering team, they are able to spend only six months to finish the design of the first frame, which is high performance, high efficiency. MD- Kinney.
MD- Kinney is a global M&A we did. In China, we leverage the global expertise, global technology to do localization. We localize it in China for China, plus we leverage the sales and the channels we build in China to sell. So as a result, you are able to see in the last three years, we are able to increase the sales by approximately eight times just for this product in China. On the technology side, I'm very happy to share, for the new designed dry screw vacuum, we are ready to launch it in China in next month. Just December, next month, we are going to launch the new product for dry screw vacuum.
Overall, our in-region for region and our localization target for blower and vacuum is: we want to move ourselves from approximately 30% in year 2020 to be 90% by year 2026. As of now, for this year, we will be very close to 80%. So we are, we are on the right track. We are on the right path. Okay. Here is kind of the wrap-up for the whole ITS session. So key takeaway here is ITS, we have a very, very strong offerings for product and services. We are playing the leading position in the market. We are winning. We are winning in different market: traditional market, growth market, sustainable market. Always, we provide the best solution to our customers in terms of the best cost of ownership, return on investment, energy efficiency, et cetera.
When we grow the business, we also improve the quality of our business. Margin expansion, EBITDA improvement by pricing I2V and aftermarket. One thing very important, most important thing for us is in ITS, we have a great team. We have a great team in ITS. Team are very, very ambitious. Team have desire to win. Team always deliver commitment, deliver results. So these are the culture of our team: ownership mindset, ownership culture, control what we can control. With that, it conclude the ITS session. Thanks for listening. I want to pass over to Santiago for PST session. Thank you.
Thank you, Arnold. Good morning, everyone. My name is Santiago Arias Duval, and I lead the Precision and Science Technologies segment, also known as PST. I have been with Gardner Denver and Ingersoll Rand for the past six years, and I have witnessed firsthand the transformation that Vicente highlighted earlier. I am excited to present to you this unique and high-performance business. Today, my team and I will go over our historical results, strategy, and how we drive value for our customers. Here are some of the things that you will hear today. PST is a $1.3 billion leader in precision dosing, fluid management systems, and positive displacement pumps, operating in a highly fragmented and high-growth $15 billion market, which gives us room for both organic and inorganic growth.
You will also hear through a series of case studies, how we win and how we differentiate. We do this in three simple, yet powerful ways. We do this through our precision portfolio, sometimes to the nanoliter level. We do this through customer intimacy, through brands that are over 75 years old, and we do this through our ability to connect and automate workflows. This allows us to create high ROI for our customers and above-market-level growth for Ingersoll Rand. You will also hear how this strategy, paired with IRX and our highly recurring revenue, allows us to drive 30% EBITDA. Finally, everything that you will hear today is built on the backs of IRX and demand and demand generation. It help us control what we can control, and it also helps us adapt to changes in the market.
I think a neat example is some of the pumps that you will see later today that we have historically deployed in in vitro diagnostics and DNA sequencers. We have used IRX to pivot those pumps and use them in industrial applications such as air bending and other industrial applications. Now, let me give you a high-level view of our business and performance. PST is made up of highly valuable brands, which are either number one or number two in the markets that they play in. Furthermore, our products go into critical steps in niche applications within large markets. This allows us to grow. As you can see in the top middle chart, we have been growing at an impressive 15% CAGR over the past three years. We're also a very profitable business with EBITDA margins of 30%.
However, you can see in the chart in the top right that we have only expanded our margins by 10 basis points over the last three years. This is mainly due to the SEEPEX acquisition in 2021. I am happy to tell you that today, SEEPEX is close to our fleet margins. Also, 20% of our portfolio is above the 40% EBITDA mark. More importantly, is that we still have a lot of room to improve. We're going to do this through I2V pricing and continuing to deliver on synergies. Now, going to the bottom of the page, you can see that we have a nice balance between high growth end markets and geographies. It's important to note that over 50% of the revenue comes from outside the United States.
Now, moving to the bottom right, and this is perhaps my favorite chart here, you can see our revenue split. 45% of our revenue comes from original equipment sales, and 55% of our revenue comes either from aftermarket or like-for-like replacements. What this means is that our products are specced into applications, and they become very, very sticky, which creates a stream of ongoing revenue as these pumps get replaced. Next, I will turn the presentation to Andy, who will walk you through our strategy and a couple of great case studies.
Thank you, Santiago. Well, my name is Andy Heider, Vice President of Strategy for PST, and I appreciate the time here today with you all to talk a little bit more about what PST is and how it wins. So PST's 20 businesses, which are spread across the center of the page, they have a majority presence in, and a strategy focused intently on, the 5 high growth end market applications you see listed across the top of the page. And while each of these 20 businesses have carved out their own niche, unique leadership positions over the last years, as Santiago has mentioned, there is still a unified strategy across all. And in short, that's listed down the left-hand side of the page. It is in how PST, firstly, leverages its unique portfolio; second, its deep application expertise; and third, digital automation.
We're gonna give 5 case examples, myself and my colleagues, of how this strategy works, and you can see these case stories listed here highlighted in red. Let's start with portfolio. PST has the most diverse portfolio of positive displacement, or PD, pumps on the market as the market leader, and it uses this to solve customers' most precise fluidic needs. We're gonna give an example here in the next slide, where this advantage in electric vehicle batteries. In fact, we're the only manufacturer that has 4 critical PD technology types, which, when designed into the customer process together in the right way, can actually reduce battery manufacturers' scrap rate costs by 20%. The second component to PST's strategy is in how it harnesses deep application expertise across all 20 of these businesses together.
Here, we're going to give an example where PST pulls application expertise from three different parts of the business together to solve one of wastewater treatment operators' biggest pain points, which is sludge, and reduces the cost associated with sludge by 80%. And then the third component to strategy is around how PST rolls out new digital solutions to automate customers' most, most critical workflows. Here, we're gonna give three examples. First, in cannabis fertigation, where PST can help growers increase their yields of various plants by 20%. Next, where PST uses the industrial Internet of Things, or IIoT, to help natural gas pipeline operators reduce costly methane leaks by 10%. And then lastly, in genomics and biotech R&D, where PST's liquid handling automation can reduce lab costs by 50%.
So to recap here, PST's unique advantage in strategy lies in its portfolio, application expertise, and digital automation, which together provide massive savings to customers, be it the 20%, 50%, or 80% I just mentioned, all in these high-growth, high-margin end markets. So let's start with the first case example of how the portfolio advantage works in the electric vehicle battery market, where PST's unique breadth of PD pumps is helping these battery manufacturers with one of the most pressing needs: reducing costs. The cost to manufacture electric vehicle batteries will effectively need to be halved as the industry scales up in the coming decade to 6 terawatt-hours of annual production. This is essentially, as a point of reference, 170 times the theoretical capacity of Tesla's Nevada Gigafactory.
To get cost savings of this scale, battery manufacturers are gonna have to focus on scrap rates, which can reach as high as 30%, and especially so in the electrode production process, which accounts for over two-thirds of the total battery cost. Here's where PST's solution center came in and brought the 4 positive displacement pump types you see listed down the center of the page together, where each of these PD pumps provide their own critical place in the battery manufacturing process. No other manufacturer out there has this breadth of PD pumps in the battery space, and therefore, can do things like PST can. For example, to reduce defects and impurities in things like the electrode slurries, like PST can. And this can have a major effect on scrap rates.
In fact, it's been shown that scrap rates can be reduced by 25% when these types of pumps here are designed into the battery manufacturing process together, in the right way together, to do things like dispense the pure homogenous slurries right down to 100 micrometers. These pumps together have been designed to then maintain that down to the nanometer level. So with this portfolio advantage and these compelling cost savings from scrap rate reductions, the PST business has already been growing in electrical vehicle batteries strongly in the double-digit rate, and it expects that to continue with all the major battery manufacturers out there, like BYD, CATL, and others. Not just to tag along this EV battery growth, but in fact to be a forcing function to furthering EV adoption.
So let's change gears now and go to the second component of PST's strategy: application expertise, but in a different industry, in water. Now, one of the most challenged, yet steadily growing areas of the water treatment industry happens to be in the by-product of wastewater, which is called sludge. The U.S. alone generates 14 million tons of this sludge annually, and it chews up over a third of wastewater treatment electricity. And with emerging contaminants like PFAS and microplastics, which are harmful to humans, there's only more and more regulation coming out that requires water utilities around the globe to ensure that they have appropriate disposal and treatment of that sludge. So what does this mean for the utilities around the globe?
Well, you could take Thames Water's Reading Water Treatment Plant as an example, where they're having to use their existing legacy pumps to convey sludge over longer and longer distances to get it to a point of treatment and disposal. And that results in higher and higher energy costs of conveyance and higher wear and tear costs on those pumps. And here's where PST's SEEPEX business, in fact, has 50 years of market leadership experience in conveying viscous fluids like sludge. So what did PST do? We brought together that application expertise, along with our market leadership experience in air compression and lubricant dosing, to develop and patent a truly novel approach to conveying sludge, called Smart Air Injection, or SAI, that's shown here. And in short, what SAI does is it injects lubricated plugs of compressed air into the sludge for far more efficient conveyance over long distances.
It can provide, it provides 50% less energy costs and 80% less maintenance costs as compared to alternatives. So with this patent-protected solution, PST expects to grow more than double the market rate over the coming years, 10% plus annually, and in a market sector that has long-term secular growth trends and low cyclicality. So now, in these couple slides, I've shown two examples of the first two components of PST's strategy. Firstly, the portfolio; second, the application expertise. In the coming three slides, my colleagues, Pam and Santiago, are gonna show the third component of PST's strategy, digital automation. So with that, it's my pleasure now to hand it over to my esteemed colleague, Pam, to take it from here. Pam. Yep.
All right. Hello, everyone. My name is Pam Timko, and I'm the General Manager for AgriTech Americas. I'm responsible for both Dosatron and Maximus. Dosatrons, these are water-powered chemical delivery pumps, and Maximus is control-based automation for monitoring and managing all of the parameters inside of agricultural buildings. Today, I'd like to talk to you a little bit about my background working for a family business, my experience integrating into Ingersoll Rand as a new acquisition, which was just about a year ago, and then provide some examples of our deep-rooted customer relationships and how we're leveraging these relationships in combination with IRX in order to drive our growth. A quick summary of my background: I began working for our family business, Dosatron, when I was 16, so I have over 32 years of experience with our products.
So when I, when I decided to take over as general manager, when my parents really took a step back, I was able to grow the business from $9 million in revenue to $40 million in revenue. And one of the key drivers to our success was the ability to understand emerging trends inside of markets, our core markets. One of these trends is the cannabis industry. Cannabis, right? A little crazy. So kind of all of our traditional growers. So if you see these poinsettias over here, they're grown, most likely used with a Dosatron to fertilize them. So a lot of our growers at the time were like: "You guys are crazy. What, what are you doing? Cannabis?" But as legislation began to take center stage, I decided to jump into the market and really understand, what do these growers want?
What do they need in order to make themselves successful? And what did I find? I found a group of customers really hungry for knowledge and hungry for tools to make their jobs easier. And this is really where we come in. So as we start to look at the case study behind me, this is, this is Green Dot Labs. They're a Colorado-based cannabis grower, and their mission at the time was to upscale. So what they were doing prior to using our equipment was they were literally hand-mixing fertilizer, hand-applying fertilizer, plant by plant. So as you can imagine, this process is, like, wildly labor-intensive, you know, applying all this fertilizer. So this is really where we came in. So in combination with our equipment, with Dosatrons, in combination with our control-based technology, we were able to get in there, help them, give them consultative selling advice.
They were able to see a rise in their harvest yields by 30%. They eliminated this need to hand-mix because our equipment automated that process for them... I'm often asked, why do customers even use our equipment? And it's really about the precision and the efficiency. It really cuts down on labor costs. So the annual growth rate for indoor growing applications is forecasted to grow at 12% through 2027. And as I mentioned earlier, we're a brand-new acquisition integrating into Ingersoll Rand. And it's really two key factors that I'd like to take-- I'd like you to take away. One is, when I understood the ownership mindset, think and act like an owner, I was like: "This is exactly what I did. This is exactly how I think and how I ran our business." So to me, that really resonated, you know, wildly.
Then the second piece is IRX, not only for execution, but also for accountability, accountability that we really needed. So with this, we were able, over this past year, to increase our EBITDA by over 37%, all the while jumping further into demand generation, taking a deep dive into the world of e-commerce, but also being able to preserve and maintain our entrepreneurial spirit. And to me, this is the winning combination, and that this is what makes Ingersoll Rand really a standout. So with that, I'd like to turn it back over to Santiago. He's got a few more case studies on some of the exciting things we have going on at PST.
Thank you, Pam. Next, I will tell you how we're using our application expertise and position in the market and pairing it with an acquired technology in order to reduce methane leaks for pipeline operators. First, a little bit of trivia: Do you know there are over 3 million miles of pipelines in the U.S. alone? Not only that, but there is also increasing regulation in the U.S. and Europe to reduce methane emissions, as this is a greenhouse gas, and pipelines are an important piece of this. This is a challenge because pipelines go through remote areas that many times lack power, so operators are blind, and they cannot fix what they cannot measure. This is where we come in. Today, one of our brands, YZ, is a world leader in order instruction, injection, and sampling systems. So you can already find our equipment all over that map.
Also, we recently acquired Aircom, which is a manufacturer of long-range and low-power monitoring systems serving pipeline operators. These systems are so low power that the battery can last up to 10 years. So what we're doing is we're combining the reach that we have through our YZ business with Aircom's technology in order to reduce methane leaks for pipeline operators. And this is only the beginning. We're also working on a solution that will allow these operators to regulate pressure based on demand, further reducing these leaks. And we can not only do this with natural gas, but we can also do it with renewable gases, such as hydrogen. This has allowed us to help pipeline operators reduce methane leaks in hard-to-reach areas by 10%.
As a result of this, we have been able to grow orders in our Aircom business by 400% through Q3. We're also projecting that we're going to be able to grow in this market by a 30% CAGR through 2027. Now, let's move to our last case of the day, and this is perhaps my favorite case, because in this case, we use all three PST strategic levers in order to drive value. We use our precision dosing portfolio, we use our application expertise, and our ability to automate in order to accelerate the personalization of medicine. As you may know, cancer is the second leading cause of death in the U.S. and in the world.
Something that gets missed sometimes is that this is not only happening because the population is aging, but younger people are also getting diagnosed with cancer at a higher level. This has led to an increase in funding, both in the R&D side and on the treatment side, and this increase in funding has led to innovation. One of these innovations is the personalization of medicine. What personalization of medicine means is doctors can now look at your disease, they can also look at your genome and decide a customized treatment for you that will lead to better outcomes. This is a fast-growing area that is fluidity-heavy and an opportunity for us. At a high level, this workflow has three parts: you have diagnosis side, the genomics profiling, and the treatment personalization.
On the diagnosis side, doctors and researchers are using in vitro diagnostics and flow cytometers in order to diagnose the disease. Manufacturers of these devices turn to our pumps because of our life, sometimes to the millions of cycles, and also to our repeatability. On the genomic side, doctors and researchers are using DNA sequencers in order to design treatments. DNA sequencer manufacturers turn to our pumps because of the precision, sometimes to the billionth of a liter level, and also the life of our pumps. Finally, on the treatment personalization side, biopharma companies turn to our sensor robotics, both on the R&D and the manufacturing side, where we win due to our ability to customize our robotics to their very specific workflows and our application knowledge.
As a result, biopharma companies that have turned to our robotics have seen a 50% ROI due to increase in productivity. Not only that, but they also seen higher quality drug substance. This has made us the number one mRNA automation supplier. Also, our pumps are spec'd in top sequencer manufacturers for years to come. This will lead to a 20% revenue growth in this area through 2027. Now, to conclude, let's do a recap of what my team and I have gone over today. PST is a leading provider of niche solutions, and we operate in niche applications in large, sustainable, high-growth markets. We will also continue to drive our strategy based on our portfolio, customer intimacy, and ability to automate workflows and combine technologies, along with IRX and demand gen, to continue to drive growth.
Finally, we will continue using our strong brands, highly recurring revenue, pricing, and I2V to continue to expand margins. Thank you for your time today, and now we'll turn the presentation over to Liz for an update on M&A.
Hi, I'm Liz Hepting, Senior Vice President of Strategy and Corporate Development. I'm excited to be back for my second Investor Day, and to have the opportunity to talk to you about the inorganic component of our compounder model. Today, I intend to give you a better sense for what we've done, which is execute a highly successful acquisition program, how we've done it, which is through an IRX-driven, disciplined process, and how we will keep doing it, which is through proactive pipeline development. Let's start with what we've done. Since the merger in March 2020, we've enhanced our portfolio with the 41 businesses highlighted here. These strategic transactions have expanded our product portfolio, enhanced our geographic reach, and our channel positions. They've accelerated our top-line growth and helped us drive margin improvement.
They've increased exposure to high-growth, sustainable end markets, while adding $7.5 billion to our addressable market. In aggregate, we've invested approximately $2.3 billion across these 10 transactions, and we've done that at a weighted average purchase multiple of approximately 12x adjusted EBITDA, which reflects our discipline as a buyer. We expect to reduce this multiple by more than four turns by our third year of ownership through the execution of synergies. Approximately 90% of our transactions were internally sourced and transacted on a bilateral basis with sellers outside of competitive processes. Finally, we target a year 3 ROIC of mid-teens in every transaction in order to ensure we deliver appropriate returns to our shareholders.
A lot of you have asked questions about the performance of our acquisitions, so what I've done here is highlighted a few of our larger transactions to show how we've created incremental value through top-line growth and margin improvement. That's really where the magic is, through the power of compounding higher growth rates and margins over the long term. While the specifics vary across transactions, these, the results demonstrate the power of joining Ingersoll Rand. We have the ability, through IRX, to leverage our global footprint and commercial channels, add sophisticated demand generation and pricing capabilities, and launch innovative new products, all while driving down input costs and executing cost synergies. Instead of taking you through every deal on this page, I'm going to hit a few highlights.
I will start with our early 2021 acquisition of MD- Kinney, as this is the only deal where we can almost calculate a 3-year ROIC. We've already achieved mid-teen returns, and they keep increasing. MD- Kinney is also a great example of our ability to take our global platform and use it to jumpstart growth. Since the time of acquisition, we've nearly doubled top-line revenues, and we've taken a business that historically was 100% U.S.-focused to one that today, 15% of sales come from international markets. Let's move on to SEEPEX. SEEPEX is a great example of our ability to dramatically improve profitability while still driving growth. When we acquired SEEPEX, it had adjusted EBITDA margins in the low teens. In just over 2 years of ownership, we've driven these margins to the high twenties through focused execution.
All of Ingersoll Rand has benefited from SEEPEX's IIoT capabilities. Our current head of IR Digital, Dr. Christian Hansen, came from SEEPEX, as did a lot of his leadership team. It is such a huge win when we can leverage the talent and capabilities from an acquired business across our whole platform. In the interest of time, I'm going to skip to the end of the slide to the two most recent transactions. While we have less history on these, we've actually made significant progress beyond even the financial metrics highlighted here. Let's start with Everest. Everest added blower and vacuum manufacturing capabilities in India, which we did not have, and we've been able to take the Everest footprint and insource the production of select Ingersoll Rand blowers to dramatically reduce the cost of this product.
The SPX Flow Air Treatment business was a carve-out, so that introduces some integration complexity. In less than a year since we've owned them, we've already exited more than half of the transition service agreements that were in place at close, and we've regionalized the business to align with our ITS segment operating model in order to more effectively drive global growth. So I'm going to switch gears for a second and talk about how we think about inorganic growth. You guys have probably seen this slide before. It was in our last Investor Day deck, and that's because our strategy has not changed. We are focused on mission-critical flow creation technologies and digital solutions that enhance our value proposition.... We will also make selective investments in strategic channel partners in order to increase our market share in key geographies and products.
We measure every acquisition opportunity against our strategic and financial criteria, and we're really focused on only pursuing transactions that improve the quality of our portfolio. When we talk about improving the quality of our portfolio, that really means removing cyclicality and increasing margins. If we look at our strategic criteria, we know that from a strategic standpoint, market position and differentiation drive sustained higher margins. We look for businesses with leadership in niche technologies, geographic geographies, applications. We see two key paths to reducing cyclicality: increasing exposure to high-growth, sustainable end markets or increasing aftermarket or recurring revenue streams. We look for businesses with these characteristics.
As you all know, acquisitions are most successful when one plus one equals three and not two, so we place tremendous value on our ability to execute cost synergies, which increases margins and buys down the upfront purchase multiple. From a financial standpoint, we target businesses with mid-single-digit or greater organic growth and gross margins at or above 40%. We want to buy good businesses, and we view gross margin as a key indicator of the mission-critical nature of the products and their differentiation in the marketplace. We also value capital efficiency, so we look for businesses with long-term net working capital needs, less than 20% of sales, and CapEx of less than 10% of sales.
Finally, like I said earlier, we use ROIC as the guiding criteria for what investments we make, and we target a mid-teens ROIC in every transaction, with an absolute minimum threshold of exceeding our cost of capital by year three. But it's not enough to just do good deals. The real moment of truth happens during integration. A critical competitive differentiator and the key driver of our acquisition performance is the use of IRX integration in every transaction that we do. IRX integration is a standard, highly efficient process that we adapt to each unique acquisition and team. Having a standard playbook enables us to run integrations in a highly decentralized fashion, where they're owned and managed by the acquiring business unit and not some corporate team. This model results in literally hundreds of employees having integration expertise, which enables us to run multiple integrations simultaneously without resource constraints.
We start integration planning well before we ever close the deal, so we are ready to go on day 1. During the planning period, we identify the unique must-dos for the integration, and we set up an integration IDM with the Ingersoll Rand team. At this stage, we're really focused on blocking and tackling. We've got to make sure that our new employees are gonna get paid, have benefits, have email addresses, et cetera. We know that these highly personal items can set the tone for the integration, and we must get them right. We kick off each integration with a day 1 celebration, where the Ingersoll Rand team is on-site to welcome the new employees to the family, introduce them to our culture and values, and set expectations for the first 100 days.
In the days immediately following, we invite the acquired team into the integration IDM, and we introduce them to our commercial accelerator. By the end of the first IDM cycle, the majority of those must-do integration items should really be closed out. What that does is it enables us to shift our focus to our commercial accelerator program. At this time, the acquired team should understand our strategy and synergy targets and be able to implement a plan to execute against these. Most integration IDMs officially end after 2 cycles. That being said, if there's some critical path must-dos that haven't been closed out, we will run another cycle. We have built significant integration muscle through the 41 transactions that we've done, and we continue to build and strengthen this muscle every time we do a deal. How are we gonna keep our inorganic growth engine going?
Our funnel is the key driver of acquisition activity, and we take a very proactive approach to funnel development and management. Funnel generation resides with our business units, with the M&A leader in that business unit. M&A idea generation starts with our business unit strategic plans. Inorganic growth is incremental to these plans. Are there product, technology, geographic holes we need to fill? How, how can we accelerate our organic growth goals? We supplement this thinking with market-back work focused on new and emerging trends and technologies, and we survey market segments to create comprehensive lists of potential targets, and then we use desktop research and market insights to prioritize this list, and then we start proactively calling and cultivating potential sellers. We are very focused on creating proprietary opportunities and transacting unilaterally with sellers outside of auction processes.
Approximately 90% of the deals we've done have been internally sourced, and that's one of the reasons that I love working for Ingersoll Rand. People genuinely want to sell to us. Our culture resonates with both owners and management teams. The combination of our highly engaged workforce that think and act like owners, the use of IRX in everything we do, and our commitment to speed and decisiveness, all while being focused on making life better, helps set us apart and establishes us as, as an acquirer of choice. A key differentiator is our employee equity program. We make every employee of an acquired company an Ingersoll Rand owner after the first-year anniversary of the transaction through a one-time equity grant. This model is extremely unique and particularly resonates with founders and multi-generational family companies. So now I'm gonna take a second and dive into our funnel.
We use IRX to run a very standard funnel process, much like a salesperson would use. Our funnel has 6 stages, with weightings from 0% to 100%, based on the likelihood of deal closing. Our funnel is tracked and reviewed in detail on a weekly basis through MyM&A IDM. Our funnel is large and dynamic. Today, it's currently more than 5 times larger than it was at the time of the merger, and it includes 5 transactions under LOI, which provides great runway and momentum going into 2024. So I am very confident in both our current funnel and our runway for future growth. Let me spend a minute to talk about what you can expect to see from us going forward. You will continue to see us do bolt-ons in our core product categories.
We'll use this type of acquisition to fill white space and to enhance scale. You'll also see us continue to expand our addressable market through the addition of adjacent technologies that are used in connection with our core products. This type of transaction extends our offering. We can offer more products and services to the customer, and it can create a new platform for growth. Let me give you an example. This year, we've made several investments in air treatment, specifically air dryers. Why? Well, the air coming out of nearly every compressor needs to be dried in order to remove moisture or other impurities. So it makes sense that dryers are frequently sold with compressors, and therefore, it's pretty logical for us to offer both. Let's take a second to think about the dryer. Well, almost every air dryer uses a filter.
So now that we have a large dryer, dryer business, maybe we want to expand or enhance our filter capabilities. And just like that, we have a new hunting ground for acquisitions. Over the past several years, we've been intentionally focused on doing smaller bolt-ons. In our recent earnings call, you may have heard Vicente reference the potential for a couple near-term deals in the billion-dollar size. It is true that we've been looking at some more scaled options to further extend our core and increase our addressable market. But let's be clear, we are not talking about a third leg here. These opportunities are still highly aligned with mission-critical flow creation and related markets. We view this type of larger deal as a mechanism to increase our relevance in good, higher growth end markets and add recurring revenue streams in a meaningful, needle-moving way.
That all being said, given the episodic and highly uncontrollable nature of transactions, our core focus is gonna remain on the highly synergistic, proprietary bolt-ons, where we have such a strong track record of success. So thank you for the time. I appreciate you listening. As I wrap up here, I'm gonna leave you with just a few parting thoughts. First, inorganic growth is a key pillar of our compounder model, and we have the engine and runway to continue to drive mid-single-digit annual growth from acquisitions. We are a differentiated buyer with a large and growing pipeline of proprietary opportunities, and we're a disciplined buyer who is committed to remaining highly selective about the transactions we pursue. The use of IRX integration in every transaction has driven our acquisition performance, and so we're not gonna deviate from that practice.
And finally, as you'll hear momentarily, M&A remains our top priority for capital allocation, so I expect to remain very busy. And with that, I will hand it over to our Chief Financial Officer, Vikram Kini, for the final section of today's presentation.
Thanks, Liz. Good morning to everyone. Vikram Kini. I think I know everyone here, but been with Ingersoll Rand for nearly 13 years, of which 3.5 years as CFO. I'm really excited to share both, you know, a snapshot of our historical financials, as well as our long-term financial framework, which, not surprisingly, is grounded in the strategy that you've heard from all of our presenters today. So what are you gonna hear today? I think if there's one thing that I can... you know, you can take from this section, it's frankly what you've heard for the entirety of the morning today. It's that our economic growth engine is the core of how we operate.
I think that's seen in the financials of the company over the past 3.5 years, where we've delivered very, very strong results and generally delivered on essentially every aspect of that economic growth engine, all enabled by IRX. I think what's even more exciting is the runway that we have ahead. We have a proven model to deliver compounding results, and it's really backed by a disciplined capital allocation strategy. As a result, we're excited to provide an update on our, our long-term financial framework and, one that we believe is gonna continue to establish Ingersoll Rand as a premier growth compounder. So let's jump right into it here, in the financials. I'm gonna start from a top-line perspective. I'm gonna start with orders.... Now, one thing you've heard from all of our presenters is that really that focus on organic growth.
You've heard demand generation, you've heard innovation, alignment to higher growth, sustainable end markets. Christian, I'll point to you again, IoT. 'Cause these are all organic growth enablers that we think is gonna continue to drive compounding growth. And I think you see that on the left side of the slide, it's visible in the orders, which, you know, on an LTM basis, Q3 2023, $6.6 billion, which is essentially a CAGR of 15% since 2020. Not surprisingly, you transition to the right side of the slide, and you see that similar trend on the revenue side. $6.7 billion of revenue on an LTM basis, also a 15% CAGR since 2020.
I think one thing to kind of, you know, compare the two sides of the slide here, if you look at the gray bars, which is 2020 to 2022, you see actually the book-to-bill ratio, if you compare the bars, well above 1. And for the LTM period, you've actually seen that book-to-bill normalizing a bit closer to that 1x level, which is very much in line with what we guided for as we entered this year for 2023, particularly due to supply chains and lead times starting to normalize a bit. But importantly here, we should be ending the year here with a comparable backlog to what we started the year, which sets us up nicely as we move into 2024. So I think everyone has talked about their favorite slide in their respective sections.
I think I'm gonna, I'm gonna have to vote for this one right here. You see what that top line result has translated to onto the bottom line. So first and foremost, that double-digit revenue growth, you see it there translating very nicely. First, on the left side of the page, we've delivered over $1.7 billion of adjusted EBITDA in the LTM period, and we're expecting that to actually grow to approximately $1.75 billion, based on the midpoint of the range that we provided earlier this month at our earnings.
If you take a look at that LTM performance, that $1.7 billion, I think it's pretty impressive here that that's 80% higher than where we were in 2020, which I think speaks to what all the speakers today have been presenting, particularly on growth and that delivering the bottom line and doing things like, you know, honoring our commitments and hitting merger-related synergies and things of that nature. It's impressive that that represents a 22% CAGR from an earnings perspective. But I think one thing that, you know, we're just as pleased with is that the quality of that earnings. You can see that margins have grown over this timeframe, 410 basis points to nearly 26%.
Not surprisingly, on the right side of the page here, adjusted earnings per share grown at a 30% CAGR to $2.81 in the LTM period. I'm gonna pause here 'cause, you know, I think this, the last two slides, this is really the power of IRX, really delivering compounding results, and you see it kinda shining through in the financials. Let's do a little bit of a double click here and look at the segments. I think what you're seeing here is continued strong momentum on margins, really driven by our quality of earnings enablers. Starting first on the top left with ITNS. ITNS margins are at 27.5% in the LTM period, nearly 500 basis points of margin expansion since 2020. I think this is one that's an incredible milestone for the team.
Last Investor Day, we said we were gonna be getting to that high 20s by 2025. High 20s EBITDA margin by 2025. We essentially are there 2 years early, right? So again, fantastic momentum and progress by the team. And on the PST side of the equation, we're encouraged that we're getting back to that 30% threshold, that 30% margin barrier. And as Santiago spoke to, you can see that, you know, over the 2021 and 2022 timeframe, kinda the biggest catalyst for why you haven't seen more margin expansion, the primary driver was the SEEPEX acquisition. Fantastic business, great products, great gross margin profile, differentiated technology, but as we said, it came in at a lower margin profile, one that was dilutive, and I think Liz just spoke to it.
You've seen well over 1,000 basis points of margin expansion now reaching that high 20s, closer to fleet average, and now sets us up nicely as we move from 2023 onwards. So how did we get here? You know, how have we driven this performance? A multitude of levers. First and foremost, the merger-related synergies. As a reminder to everybody, when we announced the merger, back in 2020, we said we were gonna deliver $250 million of cost savings attributable to the merger. Well, in less than a year, we raised that target to $300 million, and I'm happy to say here, we're now in kind of the final legs here.
This was the last year of that kind of timeframe, and we very much are on pace to deliver that $300 million cumulative by the end of this year. Second, has been the pricing side of the equation. You've heard many of our speakers speak to our pricing processes. And I think this is one that, for those of you who followed the story from the Gardner Denver days through the merger to today, you know that this evolution of pricing has continued to be part of the narrative and, and the story. And, it speaks highly to the efforts of the team, as well as on DGX, that we've been so nimble on the pricing side.
You've seen all the direct material inflation that's come over the last two years, particularly, and happy to say that over that timeframe, we've been actually dollar cost positive from a pricing perspective, so dollar cost positive as well as margin positive over that entire timeframe, which I think speaks to the ability of the team to not just take price, but do it in a nimble manner, targeted, that really delivers results. As you can see, we continue to be focused on productivity like I2V, as well as probably a part of the equation that maybe doesn't get as much airtime but is equally important, with 41 bolt-on acquisitions, there's continues to be a nice tailwind on the synergies from our bolt-on M&A. But I think what's even more exciting here is that we have plenty of room moving forward.
You know, first and foremost, as we've spoken to here, we always had a higher funnel for the merger-related synergies than the $300 million. In fact, we said we've always had $350 million plus. So that gives us a nice $50 million funnel on opportunities that'll fall into the productivity equation going forward, particularly in areas like supply chain and supplier optimization and footprint. Another big opportunity is on the gross margin side. You heard Mike Medaska speak to the recurring revenue and our aspirational targets to get to $1 billion and hopefully even higher. Well, that's gonna come at a margin premium. And then we also have a big opportunity on the direct material side. Obviously, everyone knows kind of the supply chain equation we've been in over the last few years.
You know, as a reminder, direct material is approximately 70% of our cost of goods sold. Chris Neubauer and his team are very much focused, I think Vicente said, moving from the defensive now to moving to the offensive, and how we're gonna start to see some of that direct material clawback opportunity as we move forward. Switching a little bit now to the asset base of the company. We continue to operate an asset-light model. You can see from our historicals there on the left side of the page, CapEx, approximately 1.5%-2% of revenue, split approximately evenly, 50/50, between maintenance and growth CapEx. In the middle, you can see the operating working capital side of the equation, which has been approximately around 20% for the last 3-4 years.
But it's worth noting here that in the LTM period, you can see that that working capital level has risen to about 21.3%. And I'd say the biggest driver of why you've seen that increase has been inventory levels. We today are carrying approximately $200 million plus of inventory as compared to the end of 2021, primarily due to supply chain conditions, as well as the elevated level of backlog. But we view this as a huge opportunity going forward. Again, as supply chains continue to normalize and we execute on that backlog, that should be a nice tailwind from a working capital perspective as we think about 2024 onwards. But that's not the only opportunity. We have opportunities in areas like accounts payable and accounts receivable as we think about further deployment of shared services, for example, across our enterprise.
At this point in time, there still is meaningful opportunity to push shared services in areas like our PST business, as well as those 41+ bolt-ons that we've acquired over the last 3-3.5 years. And I think this, this kind of cash mentality and kind of how we've been thinking about things, it really permeates the enterprise. You might remember back when we did our, our, our all-employee equity grants, whether at the Gardner Denver IPO or at the merger, we really tried to educate our employee base about how they can drive values as share-- as, as owners of the company through unlocking working capital. And fundamentally, it's because every employee in the company, we feel, can touch some aspect of that working capital equation: inventory, accounts payable, or accounts receivable.
We've now taken that 1 step further, and we've really kind of aligned our annual incentive plans for those employees who are eligible for that within the company to now be focused on free cash flow, whether it be at the business level or at the enterprise level, to continue to drive what we consider to be that cash mentality for the company. So speaking of cash flows, nice segue to the next slide here, and it could speak to the cash generation power at Ingersoll Rand. So you can see over the last 3 years, 2020-2022, we've been generating on average approximately $800 million of free cash flow, or let's say mid-teens free cash flow conversion.
In the LTM period, you've seen that actually grow to over $1 billion, and we're actually expecting, based on our guidance that we provided earlier this month, for that number to be approximately closer to $1.1 billion of free cash flow generation for this year. So we're really pleased with the performance and this acceleration in terms of the absolute cash generation, but I think you know us, we're obviously excited about the opportunity ahead because we really see an opportunity to get this free cash flow margin to closer to 20% free cash flow margins. And you can see on the right side, how are we gonna drive that?
Well, first and foremost, continued opportunities on the capital structure, we're going to speak to this in a moment, and reducing our annualized interest expense, continued optimization of the tax rate, as well as the working capital opportunities that we've discussed. And again, we shouldn't underestimate the opportunity of 41 bolt-ons being integrated and driving margins and working capital opportunities as they become part of the larger Ingersoll Rand enterprise. So to kind of take a step back here, and Vicente showed this slide earlier, and look at the performance of the company really through the lens of the economic growth engine. I, I think it speaks to the fact that we really are differentiating IR as a premier growth compounder.
I think with IRX as the enabler, as Mike Weatherred spoke to, you've seen that we've delivered on all of our stated targets to date on organic and inorganic growth, as well as margin expansion. This has translated nicely to the right side of the page on double-digit earnings growth and strong free cash flow generation. I think as you've heard from Vicente and others, we're really excited about the future because we remain committed to this framework, and we believe it'll drive continued, differentiated, above-market performance for the long term. Switching gears here now to the balance sheet. I think this is again, this is a great story in terms of the transformation you've continued to see of the enterprise and really seen it in the results.
So starting first on the left side of the page, on the leverage side. I think since 2020, and if you even go back further in history into the Gardner Denver days, you see that prudent gross debt management, coupled with the earnings power of the company and strong free cash flow generation, has led to a leverage profile that now sits below 1, actually at 0.9x at the end of Q3 2023, which is well below our stated 2x leverage target. And I think as Liz just mentioned here, we continue to have a really strong funnel for M&A.
And so whether it be some of those, you know, potentially billion-dollar-sized deals, we feel that we're in a very good position, that we can continue to flex up for larger deals and be able to kind of integrate them, and as well as continuing to see a strong path back down to that less than two times leverage in a reasonable timeframe through good integration, strong cash generation, and managing that leverage. I think one thing that's really exciting, though, is the right side of this slide. We're joined here today by Bert Jamison, our treasurer. He's at the back corner back there, I think celebrating his one-year anniversary, if I'm not mistaken here. And Bert's really been a huge catalyst to really the efforts you see on the right side.
One thing, to kind of flash back here, we've always said, whether it be, you know, pre-merger, time of the IPO for Gardner Denver, we always aspired to be an investment-grade profile company. Well, due to the strong financial profile of the company, improved credit metrics, a positive outlook going forward, I'm excited to say earlier this year, all three rating agencies upgraded us to an investment-grade credit profile, which is a huge milestone for the company. And as such, due to Bert's efforts, as well as the entire team, we took the opportunity to start to transform our capital structure. First and foremost, as you might remember, we historically had an all-term loan structure, $2.7 billion.
We took the opportunity to refinance $1.5 billion to unsecured bonds, and that's led to the metrics you see at the bottom of the slide there. We now have approximately 75% of our debt that's at fixed rate, fixed rate structure. We actually extended the entire maturity of the debt stack two years, and we reduced annualized interest expense by approximately $20 million. But I'll say that's just the first step. And you can still see at the top of the page, first line there, that we still do have some legacy term loan debt still on the balance sheet.
So as we look to continue to transform the capital structure to a fully investment-grade structure, we're gonna take further steps in the what I'll call the short to medium term, to fully refinance that $1.2 billion and really probably make it look much more like you see the rest of the $1.5 billion, more of an unsecured structure, like we did earlier this year. So shifting gears now to what does that mean for capital allocation? Just frankly, easily said here, we're reaffirming our commitment to what we have historically executed from a capital allocation perspective. So first and foremost, again, you're gonna see from the company a commitment to driving organic growth. So there will continue to be a healthy amount of reinvestment within our existing business, and you're gonna see that.
That's part of our long-term framework and part of the numbers that we're gonna be providing on a go-forward basis as far as that framework. But for efforts like DGX, IIoT, aftermarket recurring revenue initiatives, and commercial feet on the street, 'cause fundamentally, we just see that that's going to continue to drive that ongoing, let's just say, compounding growth on a year-over-year basis. So if we flip to the three kind of aspects that are shown on the page in terms of capital allocation, not surprisingly, and Liz spoke to it, you know, in her section, the focal part of our strategy will continue to be M&A. You've heard that we've done over 40 transactions over the last 3.5 years, deployed over $2.3 billion cumulatively over that time.
If you, if you look at the, the donut chart on the far left side, you can see that since the merger to date, we've deployed over 80% of our cumulative capital towards M&A. We fundamentally believe that this is an equation that should still continue to work on a go-forward basis. On the delivering value back to shareholders, you'll see the other two elements, first, starting with our share repurchase plan. So a little bit of a reminder, approximately two years ago, the board did authorize a $750 million share repurchase plan. To date, as of the end of Q3 of 2023, we've executed on approximately $377 million of buybacks. Here in Q4, we expect to do another $130 million of share repurchases within the quarter.
And so that's gonna essentially bring us to approximately $500 million over the last two years, which nicely works out to about $250 million per year, and we feel that that's a good requisite amount that we're gonna look to target and execute on, on an annual basis. In terms of the dividend, simply stated, the dividend's at $0.02, and it continues to remain at $0.02 per quarter. We don't expect to change that for the short term, but as you would expect, we will continue to reassess capital allocation with the board on a periodic basis and obviously update you guys in due course, as and if things were to change. So exciting slide here. Vicente showed this graph earlier. I think it really speaks to the transformation of the company since 2017.
If you go back over this kind of 6+ year timeframe, a lot of milestones, but if I can kind of simply boil it down to a few key points: first and foremost, you've seen us continue to reduce our debt profile as a company since 2017 onwards. We've successfully completed and integrated the Gardner Denver and IR merger, and now I'm happy to say, in the tail end of delivering those synergies that we committed to as a result of the merger. We've divested businesses that didn't fit, the Club Car business and the upstream energy business from Legacy Gardner Denver. Both good businesses, but they came with a level of cyclicality that we just didn't see fitting the overall enterprise. And we've removed the private equity overhang that used to remain in our stock.
And now you're starting to see us kind of transform the capital structure, which we know we have plenty of opportunity going forward. All at the same time, we've delivered strong organic growth, consistent margin expansion, and added 40+ new businesses through M&A to the enterprise. And I think you can see here on the slide, Vicente spoke to it, it's really the results have been differentiated shareholder returns. We've outperformed the S&P 500 and peers, 250%+ share price appreciation, and approximately $25 billion of market cap being generated over this timeframe. So again, we think the model works, and we're really excited to continue this momentum and continue to deliver that shareholder value creation that you've seen over the last six years. So that kind of brings us now to updating our long-term financial framework.
First and foremost, I think it's worth saying here that folks on the left side of the slide, with IRX really at our core and as our enabler, really happy to say here that we continue to be on track to deliver all of our original targets, which you can see indicated by the green check marks, and if you look at the black column here, effectively extending many of those targets now out to 2027. So let's touch upon what those kind of different elements are. First of all, on the growth side of the equation, we're committed to continue to deliver out to 2027 mid-single-digit organic growth and mid-single-digit inorganic growth, which should equate to low-double-digit overall total growth. We're now raising that Adjusted EBITDA margin profile.
You can see on the page, 28%-30% on adjusted EBITDA margins, nearly reaching that 30% level, which would be an incredible milestone for the company, and that should equate to double-digit earnings per share growth. As I mentioned earlier, on the free cash flow side of the equation, we expect free cash flow margin to reach approximately 20% and leverage to remain below 2 times. And as Mike Medaska stated in the morning section here, we expect that revenue from IIoT-ready products to surpass 30% by 2027.
Now, one thing I wanted to kind of speak to here is do a little bit of a double click on the right side, the chart on the right side of the page, which speaks to the performance from 2021 to expected 2023, and then layering on these kind of new long-term framework from 2023 to 2027. And I think if there's one thing that you can take away from this, is that on that first column, I think it really speaks to the degree of outperformance that you've seen since, you know, our last Investor Day. Mid-teens overall growth, comprised of low double-digit organic and then mid-single digit inorganic.
I think one thing here to really focus on is that EBITDA margin side of the equation, where on average, based on our guidance for this year, we're expecting to deliver, on average, approximately 130 basis points of adjusted EBITDA margin expansion over the last two years. So, as we look forward here, we are slightly refining our margin target expectation from 2023 to 2027 to approximately 75 basis points of margin expansion for the next four years. But I think what's more important to take away is the far right column there, that if you look over a six-year timeframe, that's still gonna equate to approximately 100 basis points of adjusted EBITDA margin expansion, whereby delivering close to 30% adjusted EBITDA margins for the overall enterprise by the end of 2027.
So again, we think this speaks to the differentiation that we continue to provide, and really, over this six-year timeframe, I think the differentiated growth and margin expansion you should continue to see from Ingersoll Rand. Wanna provide a little bit of a double click here into the margin side that fits with these long-term, these long-term targets, as we continue to see meaningful room for continued revenue growth and margin expansion at the segment level. So ITS, as we've said here, we're on track to deliver our prior targets, continue to see a runway for mid-single digit organic growth.
As I mentioned before, the margin profile today, we're two years ahead of effectively our last targets, on pace to deliver approximately 150 basis points on average of margin expansion over the last two years, and reaching that high 20s Adjusted EBITDA margin profile here in 2023. So as a result of that outperformance, we are refining our expectation for ITS going forward to approximately 50 basis points of margin expansion per year going forward. But I think what's incredibly important here, and, and again, like I said, a huge milestone, is by 2027, with this framework, delivering 30% approximately Adjusted EBITDA margin profile for the segment.
Which again, is a level that, you know, I think once upon a time, you know, if we could say 30% adjusted EBITDA margin profile in, you know, the foreseeable future, that's something that, you know, is, is something that we're very proud of. On the PST side of the equation, continuing to deliver mid-single digit plus organic growth, and we're recommitting to that target out to 2027. I think one area here that we'll say obviously is now kind of pushing out to the 2027 timeframe, is the margin profile. We are expecting now to deliver mid-30s adjusted EBITDA margin profile by 2027. And, you know, one area that kind of gives us conviction is kinda how we're gonna drive that, which would be approximately 100 basis points per year, is that chart on the bottom right.
You heard Santiago reference this kind of in his portion, but we still have approximately 35%, so over a third of the portfolio, that's under 30% adjusted EBITDA margin. So again, the inverse of that is we have 65% of the business that operates above 30%. There's no reason why those businesses on the far left side of the chart can't continue to push to the right and continue to be able to get into that 30%+, and in certain cases, over 40% adjusted EBITDA margin profile. We've done it with several different businesses. We know we can do it with the left side, and now we know we have the engine with IRX to be able to deliver that. So we'll shift a little bit of gears here and focus on the short term.
Very simply stated here, we're reaffirming our 2023 guidance that we gave earlier this month on November 1. It's worth noting here that that marked actually the third time this year that we raised guidance for the year. In terms of the components, the guidance calls for 14%-16% overall revenue growth, comprised of 9%-11% organic growth, a 1% headwind on FX, and approximately $360 million of revenue contribution from deals that we had closed as of November 1. On the Adjusted EBITDA side of the equation, expecting to target a range of $1.73 billion-$1.77 billion, and adjusted earnings per share between a range of $2.81-$2.89.
One thing I do wanna make sure that you take away from this page is that if you look at the midpoints of those two respective EBITDA and EPS ranges, they each mark over a 20% growth as compared to the prior year, which we're pretty pleased with in terms of performance and, obviously, this environment. We continue to expect free cash flow conversion to be approximately 100%. In the bottom right side of the page, we do continue to expect to see orders in the fourth quarter up sequentially and year-over-year on an organic basis. Gonna leave you with a few takeaways here from the finance section. First and foremost, IR, Ingersoll Rand, continues to differentiate itself as a premier company that has a proven economic growth engine with IRX as our enabler.
Since the merger, you've seen us deliver double-digit revenue and earnings growth and strong cash generation while prudently deploying capital. I think what's most exciting here is we continue to have a long runway ahead to continue delivering compounding results and delivering differentiated and substantial shareholder value creation for all of our investors. With that, I'm gonna turn it back over to Vicente for a few closing remarks.
... Thanks, Vik. So what a, what an exciting day for me, for sure. I hope for you, too. And for sure, for all of our employees and our team members that are here. But I think simply stated, I think we have proven to you that we continue to be a very attractive investment, that Ingersoll Rand, it is an attractive investment. And the reason for that is that because a lot of our levers in the economic growth engine, we get a chance to show you how they're helping us to achieve an economic growth engine that can deliver this compounding value of double digits of earnings growth at a free cash flow margin that continues, that is good now, but it's gonna be great. I hope that you get a chance to see as well that it is sustainable because of our culture.
You get a little bit of a glimpse, deeper insights into our team members from across the world, that consistently deliver the same message of embracing our values, but executing always with humility, with the levers that we have, IRX, demand generation. I hope that you get a chance to see that how we have completely changed our growth profile, that we remove cyclicality, and we have proven that we've been able to overdrive differentiated growth performance, even in a year, in 2023, that has seen PMIs below 50 and other factors that have been affecting the market. I also think that you get a chance to see that our recurrent revenue stream, which is very important to us, will continue to accelerate and will dramatically change the profile of our margins, too, as well.
And how we think and hope that as we get together at the next Investors' Day, we can continue to increase that bold target that Mike and the team show you today. I think you also got a chance to see how committed we are to the power of the and in between, the performance and doing what is right for the environment, and doing what is right for the employees with this very unique culture that we have of ownership mindset. I think for me, the most important piece, and I said it on that one slide that I showed early on, that I was very energized back in 2016 when I took over Gardner Denver, because I saw the potential of what we could create with the platform.
I am even way much more excited today, as I stand here today, of what we can create with the platform that we have at Ingersoll Rand. Thank you again, and we're gonna go into Q&A. Thank you.
Hey, hey, everyone, Mike here. So, a couple questions here. First, you know, Vik, could you build up or provide a bridge on that mid-single-digit organic growth profile? I know that's a flexible number, mid-single digits, but, you know, you listen to what you talked about today, 1-2 points a price. You run some math on the $200 million of service going to a $1 billion-
Mm-hmm.
... It's a couple points of growth. You talk about demand generation, you talk about the organic, the ability to compound the inorganic on the organic side. You know, it's pushing the upper bounds, it feels like, with any kind of end market growth. So maybe just talk to a little bit on that build-up, if I'm thinking about it wrong on any level, or if there's just some flex in there to make sure you understand what the environment gives you, and you have some flexibility there.
Yeah. I'll start, and I'll let, you know, I'll let Vicente add. You know, I think, I think it's the latter here, that, you know, obviously, we wanna provide what we consider to be prudent but ambitious targets over a multi-year timeframe. And I think the question we got earlier in the day here, that obviously, not all years are gonna be held equal here in terms of what the macro may look like over the next four years. But very simply stated, whether it be the mid-single-digit side of the equation in ITS or the mid-single-digit plus in PST, you are correct. You know, about 1-2% price, we, you know, we've shown the ability to deliver that. We think that's a prudent number going forward. The balance coming from a volume perspective on the organic growth side of the equation.
Yes, it is comprised of a multitude of drivers, whether it be the innovation side, we think probably the single biggest driver over the entirety of that timeframe, that's kind of the kicker here, is the recurring revenue side of the equation, going from $200 million to $1 billion over that 4-year timeframe. As well as, you know, you know, what we'll say here, demand generation kind of being that enabler to be able to, you know, drive that over a multi-year timeframe. You know, I think in terms of you taking a step back and looking at the numbers here, we think mid-single digits and mid-single digits are prudent. We like the composition of how we've kind of outlined things.
Are there gonna be opportunities to exceed that potentially in certain areas, depending on market conditions as well as our own internal, internal initiatives? Yeah, absolutely. But we think that that's a prudent number to outlay here for a multi-year timeframe, and one that, you know, hopefully, coming back here in two years, one we can say hopefully, maybe we've even out delivered on.
Yep, makes sense. And then just one quick follow-up. And, you know, Liz, your section, really a lot of good detail here. I'm, I'm guessing the answer is gonna be around, you know, ownership and the ability to, you know, scale what you're bringing in. But, competitively, are you seeing any change in the dynamic of, you know, maybe private equity coming in, trying to roll up some of these subsystems or some, some of the subverticals, or, or, or just, you know, price competition or whatever it is? Are you seeing changes there that would-
... you know, maybe force you to change the philosophy at all or make you more concerned?
No, I think in these, proprietary, you know, smaller bolt-ons that we've done, this has been a great environment. The world's been through a lot, COVID, supply chain, et cetera, lots of challenges. So for some of these family businesses, right, they're tired, and they're ready to sell, and we're offering them an alternative to private equity, right? If they wanna stay with Ingersoll Rand family, like Pam, we love to have them. If they don't wanna stay with Ingersoll Rand family, we can also exit the owners, right? Because we have management teams. So I think it's been a really good time for us to be doing transactions. And I think, you know, we've got a very robust pipeline that makes me feel good that, you know, that model doesn't need to change right now.
Mm-hmm.
I think, Mike, that the uniqueness of the ownership mindset, it's a big, big differentiator, too, as well, of what we can offer these, these companies. That the ability to pass on the legacy, keep the brands, and have employees become owners.
Thanks a lot. Maybe just the first question following up on M&A. You know, you've done one deal a month for whatever 45 months or something. I don't think that's what you envisaged two or three years ago. So maybe kind of help us understand why have we ended up there, and it sounds like it might be changing, that maybe there'll be some more $1 billion-plus acquisitions, but I have to think you were exploring those already the last two or three years. So maybe help us understand, is something changing internally, or it's the environment around you changing?
Sure, you know, I'll say that maybe a couple of years ago, when we expressed that target of mid-single digits inorganic piece, I know that we received the questions, "How could you do it? I mean, is there enough?" And we were very confident based on what we were seeing in the funnel. So I mean, we always knew that we could do it and be able to achieve those targets in a very strategic kind of way. I'll say that, you know, the couple of large targets that we've been mentioning is that I think every...
In every point in time, and we always say that, you know, every three to five years, you kind of see maybe, like, a large transformational or anchor acquisition that can clearly continue to do more, or it could be a very larger bolt-on, while in between, continue to do mini bolt-ons. We think that this bolt-on strategy, and Liz alluded to that, it kinda, it's kinda like going to the gym every day. I mean, you're gonna be in shape because, I mean, the teams continue to execute, continue to deliver. They don't have to wait and being sporadic and doing one big one now and then just wait three years and kind of dust off the playbook and do it again. So I think the team is ready for doing that.
The strategy was always that we always saw a competitive advantage, and we always said, if we could do a lot of these small bolt-ons and be a roll-up, why let others, like private equity, do it when we know we could do it, in a probably better way? Because we're gonna keep them for a long term, and strategically, we're gonna bolt them on to be more holistically together.
Great. Just a quick follow-up, the PST margins. You know, you talked about 100 points a year on average, and that's a big step up from where they've been for 3 years. Is that step-up kind of linear, or it's more towards the back end of the period? Like, do you think next year, you can start to see that step-up-
Yeah.
That's, That, that's a great question. Thank you. You know, I am really encouraged what I have seen in these past few months, great teams, and there is a lot of potential to continue to be driving IRX further into the business. I think something that excites me about our margin profile, it's what Vik had in one of his slides, where we still have a big chunk of our portfolio that it's under the 30% EBITDA margin, right? And that is, that is what we're gonna be focusing coming up, trying to get those up, and, and therefore increasing our margins. Vik, anything you wanna add?
Yeah, I think Julian, I think Santiago said it well. To answer your question, is there any reason why we wouldn't expect to continue to, you know, see it, you know, in a relatively linear manner? No, we're not expecting for it to all be back-end weighted. Simply stated, we expect to see good margin expansion-
Mm
... on an annual basis.
Thank you. First, just one on service. I think, previously, you had an explicit target on service of mid-40s.
Mm.
Now, we're kinda talking recurring revenues, which is a subsegment, but maybe just update us. Are you pushing towards 50-ish? Is there something explicit in the plan that we're talking about today?
Yeah. No, absolutely, Jeff. I mean, I think we're always have really high aspirations on that number to be 50 and above. So clearly, we're gonna continue to push that number to be higher. Clearly, you've seen a lot of the outgrowth that we have seen with new products and M&A on the equipment. That's why that needle hasn't moved as rapidly. But we're continuing to have that line of sight, and that is definitely. We don't see any reason why, without these recurring revenues and also the ongoing aftermarket and also applying these service models to a lot of the M&A, that we can continue to move that percentage higher.
Just on the M&A, adjacent versus aligned-
Mm
... was the OxyWise acquisition an example of aligned, or how would you define aligned versus adjacent?
Sure, I'll view that as adjacent. So kind of aligned or core is when we say compressors, blowers, vacuum pumps, and then adjacent will be anything that can be attached to that core, technology.
So-
OxyWise will be an adjacent to that.
Aligned, give us an example of what aligned then would, might mean.
Aligned, meaning, within the core?
... Was it in a? Maybe I'm looking on the framework wrong-
On the framework, you know, we said core, adjacent, aligned. So aligned would be-
Aligned, a little further out, yeah.
... like a further step, but still in, you know, a high growth, a high growth, sustainable end market-
Filtration.
Right, and highly related to the things-
That's right
... that we're doing.
Filtration, the example that Liz mentioned, that-
Yep
... you know, core was a compressor, adjacent was basically the, the oxidizer.
The dryer
...or the dryer. And then inside, you have all these, like, filtration, for example, that can give us that higher revenue, but also higher consumable side.
Great. And then maybe just one for Pam. Pam, was your- just kind of the sale process for you?
Yep.
Was this one of these Ingersoll Rand internally generated ideas? Was your business shopped? Maybe just kind of, you know, tell us how you guys connected and how the process went.
Yeah, it was really internal. You know, to be honest, we weren't sure we wanted to sell the company. But... I'm not gonna say this because Vicente's standing right next to me. But it really was a turning point when he flew down, met with our family, sat across the table. We really got to understand more about Ingersoll Rand, and then clearly, you know, he was understanding where we were coming from with our business. So to us, that was a piece. But no, we never shopped it, and because we loved it, so, and we still do, so it's really fun.
Great. Thank you.
Hi, thank you. Two questions for Arnold, if I may, and maybe for the team. So for one, China's been a bit of an unexpected drag in the global macro, and you guys have grown right through it, so congratulations. But could you give us a little bit of a teach-in on market positioning within China, your price points versus others, where the market is going, whether it's moving upmarket or not? And then my second question is, China's way ahead of the rest of the world in clean tech and batteries, as you guys mentioned, and in solar and other places. So is there any cross-pollination from positioning for Ingersoll Rand in China as the rest of the world tries to replicate some of what has been built out there?
Okay. Thanks for the question. I think, I'll answer the first one, and then following by the second one. So I think overall, for the market, we have a lot of moving dynamics in China. Some market is up, some market is down, as I shared in the vertical market study for EV and batteries. So actually, for us, on annual basis, we have this as our standard process. In the beginning of the year, we study the market, we lay out, like, top 10, top 20 growth market we want to penetrate, and these are the market we're not going to play at all. And this year, because of the external moving dynamics, we did it twice, once beginning of the year, and the second time in June.
For some strategic reasons, or, I'm not going to share a lot of details on what kind of the particular market we are going to penetrate, but something I can share is, starting from June, when we lay out a new vertical market approach, we pick the top 5, top 10, and on a monthly basis, on a weekly basis, we track all the pipelines, all the visits, and all the wins. Looks like we're on track. And also on a monthly basis, in our MBR, with our monthly business review with Vicente, we review and we talk. Looks like we are on a good track. So different performance for different market, definitely. In terms of the, relationship or geopolitical issues, I think for Ingersoll Rand, our advantage is we think globally, but we act locally.
The reason why I mention this, even in my share story sharing here is, we play very, very strong in region for region, in country for country in China. So I think as I share for supply chain, for commercial, for engineering, design, everything, we have already in region for region. So, yeah, I think that this is our competitive advantage in the market compared to a lot of multinational companies in the market. And also, in the meantime, we are authorized to make a very good decision locally. I remember very few times I go to Vicente for some approval or for some decision-making, so lot of local decision. So this is our competitive advantage.
To answer your question, too, as well, on the... Yes, I mean, EV and battery, the players that we have play with in China, as they move to other countries, we're expecting already in the processes, kind of like what Andy Heider showed on his slide.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Thanks. Over here. Hi. Just first, a question for Vik, just to confirm, in the EBITDA margin target for 2027, I assume you haven't embedded any sort of M&A dilution, because I know that was a factor in why PST has been kind of behind the curve.
That, that's correct. I don't think there's anything necessarily explicit, but what I will also say here is that, even if you've seen, for example, with SEEPEX, if you think now out from a four-year timeframe, so even if there was a deal that looked like SEEPEX per se, that came to fruition now, given, you know, what our, what our synergy targets are, given the return thresholds that Liz laid out, we'd probably expect to be able to consume that if it was done kind of in the next year by that 2027. Is there anything that's explicitly in there for, you know, deals to be able to... No, but we feel very confident here that we can overcome, just like you've seen with SEEPEX, as long as there's, you know, a two- to three-year timeframe to be able to consume and digest.
Okay, makes sense. Thanks. And then, Pam, I have a question for you, too. So you talked about how the EBITDA has improved by 37% already.
Mm-hmm.
Can you talk about some of the initial focus areas that the Ingersoll Rand team had as you came together, and what you're still excited about from a margin expansion potential prospects? Thank you.
Yeah, so to be fair, you know, coming in with Ingersoll Rand, the power of IRX really gave us the professionalism, right? And this accountability of getting things done. So what's been so great for us in that process is when we say we're gonna do something, we actually get it done, and then we're also holding each other accountable. So this is a piece that I love. So Mike kind of was speaking about that a little bit before. We never really tracked our numbers. We're a family business, right? So if we shipped it one month, didn't ship it the other, it really wasn't that big of a deal. But now we are keeping score, and we love it. We're watching it every single week. These are some of the, some of the cleanup items, so to speak, that's really helping us accelerate some of the growth.
... Hi, guys. So my first question is for Santiago. Can you maybe give us an update on how the life sciences business has been trending? You know, that's—you've seen some negative orders now for several quarters. And I'm also curious, you know, when you think about getting to that mid-thirties margin target, how important is that business coming back?
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for the question. So yeah, our like-- we're not invisible to the market, and we have seen our life sciences business run behind the rest of the business. We still see that business continue to be depressed for Q4 as well. And as you said before, it is an important part of our margin because our... that business actually runs a little bit above, or runs above, our fleet margin. So as that business recovers, we do expect also to help our margins.
Great. And then my second question is for Vik. Vik, I remember when, you know, back in the Gardner Denver days, when we, when we went and toured that, that, facility in Sedalia, you had a ton of working capital opportunity, and you highlighted that as a, as an opportunity on the free cash flow margin side as well. Just curious, like, how much is actually left, to get to that 20% free cash flow bridge?
Yeah, it's still meaningful now. So just simply stated, from those days, you're right. You know, I think just as a reminder, at the time of the IPO, you know, we were above, like, 30% working capital percent of sales. So, you know, a ton of credit to the teams, many of whom are on the stage here, for bringing it to the, you know, the 20-ish, 21% level where we are now. But we would fundamentally say whether you want to look at it from a, you know, dollar inventory growth perspective, turns perspective, we know there's opportunity. You know, dollar for dollar, we've grown over $200 million since the end of 2021. Now, that's been in reaction to the market.
We think those were great strategic investments and has obviously positioned us well, particularly over the last, you know, let's call it 1-2 years, to be able to deliver in this environment. But is that a sustained level that we need to operate at as we think forward? The answer is no. So, you know, I think easily said here, we would expect to be at a company that operates below 20% working capital. We've been there before. We expect to get there again. That definitely is a meaningful catalyst and a driver of getting that 20% free cash flow margin, but not the only one, right?
Like we said, whether it be accounts payable, accounts receivable, a lot of the opportunities that Bert's working on in the capital structure, tax rate, a lot of the deals that we're bringing in from an M&A perspective, where we know, you know, relatively healthy, you know, working capital, you saw the targets, but they're not part of things like shared services and things like that. So there's an opportunity to even drive further efficiencies. You know, there's a lot of different levers to pull.
Good. Still morning, everyone. First one, I guess, is probably for Vik. You gave us a update on the cost synergies-
Yeah
out of the merger. There were clearly going to be revenue synergies out of that deal, and
Yeah
You've highlighted some of those today. Is there a quantification you can give us on what you think you've generated in terms of revenue synergies over the, you know, three and half year period, and what inning we are on that? Like, is there considerably more revenue synergies to generate on that deal? Have you squeezed most of the juice out of that?
Yeah, I'll answer it maybe backwards forwards here. No, we don't fundamentally feel like we are, we are done. I mean, you, you've heard, frankly, every one of our presenters today, and particularly the, the, the two standing next to me here, Amar and Arnold, speak to a lot of the, you know, the, the synergies they drove. I mean, the case studies, think about the Gardner Denver compressor and the blower vacuum. Those are literally the epitome of revenue synergies. Two historical great technologies, but frankly, underpenetrated in the China market. This was part of the thesis, and you've seen that. We spoke at our last Investor Day about the US market and being able to drive the synergy between the Gardner Denver and Ingersoll Rand brands.
So again, I think we're still, you know, we still got plenty of room to run in that respect, whether it be in region or even the globalization and localization of some of the product lines there. Maybe the first part of your question, have we quantified it? We haven't. You know, and to be honest with you here, you know, we've seen it across a multitude of layer, you know, levers, whether it be some of the volume, market share type opportunities you spoke, you heard spoken to. And one of the other fundamental areas where we talked about, you know, a pricing opportunity that we started, you know, improving and taking advantage of, you know, late 2020 into 2021.
And that was one area that, you know, we said we knew we had some opportunities to bring parts of the portfolio closer to parity with others, just based on our historical knowledge of where Gardner Denver and Ingersoll Rand historically had played. And it worked to our benefit, not just because of the pricing impact, but as we were taking actions well before the supply chain disruption started. And so that's been a big catalyst of how we've been able to kind of get ahead of the curve, but then also continue that momentum through IRX, IDMs, all the work that Chris Neubauer and Mike have done to make sure the visibility is there, and we continue to take those actions. So are we gonna quantify a revenue synergy number? No. But do we think there's plenty of room to run still? Absolutely so.
I've got one for Santiago. The 35% of revenue that you highlighted that comes from like-for-like replacement, can you give us some more color on kind of what the average lifespan of these products are, what kind of your retention rate on that like-for-like replacement is, and, and what kind of things you're doing to move that higher?
Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. So that like-for-like replacement, it's basically us, right, we're really spec'd into those into those applications. So then what happens is when that life ends, they replace the pump with the same one. I think it varies, that life varies depending on which technology it is. Right, if you look at some of our water and wastewater, you're going to find that that is shorter, and some on the industrial side, it's a little bit longer. I'm trying not to be very specific here for competitive reasons. But I would say on average, you can see about seven to 10 years.
It’s very, very high, yes.
Hi, good morning. Vlad Bystritsky from Citigroup. Over here.
Oh, right.
Just going back to the service opportunity, and as you ramp your service offerings and penetration, can you talk about different skill sets that you may need to bring into the company to support that growth, and also how you're thinking about IRX's applicability to these newer service models?
Mm-hmm
... versus your traditional OE offerings?
Yeah. So I think one of the things that, that we see more and more. Well, I'll say two things. In terms of, providing those solutions, a bit more software engineers. And but you saw how in Christian Hansen's team, we have already a deep bench of software technologists. That is even in addition to what we have in EcoPlant, which is even in addition to what we have embedded on the businesses. So if you were to think about everything that we have across the spectrum of, for developing the technologies, we feel we're pretty good where we have now. In terms of providing that service in the field, yes, I mean, we have different levels of, of service technician.
I mean, we have an entry level one to master service tech, but that is already in existence and one that we continue to build upon. So I don't think that, as we continue to ramp, as I said before, we don't need a one-to-one ratio growth of that service network. I mean, we have good service network. We can continue to optimize it and make it better. And the second part of the question was?
Just the applicability of IRX to the service models versus, you know, your historical OE businesses.
Fully applicable. Fully applicable. I mean, even, even right now, I can tell you that. To give you an example, I mean, I know David Thomas here in the US is watching carefully because we're pushing him hard for more CARE contracts. But he's gonna deploy down to the sales guy for attachment rate of CARE agreements at the local zip code level. So yes, I mean, IRX, very applicable to how do we accelerate the penetration of these service agreements.
Thank you.
Yeah.
One more question.
All right, thanks. Arnold, I wanted to ask about sort of in-region, for-region and the product development process, and how you do that from a localized approach, but then how you leverage sort of global Ingersoll Rand capabilities to try to do that in perhaps the most efficient process, because when we're talking multi-brand and multi-region, I imagine it gets pretty complicated?
Mm-hmm
... but how the organization is structured to do in-region, for-region, but, but leverage global scale?
Yeah. I think, from this part, as always, I think we are working on both. One is how we are able to leverage the global technology, global expertise to localize in China, in China for China. The other piece is locally developed design and for the China market. So I think for our organization, we have, Asia Pacific, EMEA, and the Europe, and EMEA and, US. And also on the, the teams, it set up some cadence between the product management team and engineering team. They really share information together. So just like this week, I think, EMEA engineering team, they share all the great designs to American engineering and Asia Pacific engineering.
Very, very exciting to team in Asia, in China, they're able to learn what the team over there, they develop, and anything applicable to China, we are able to localize. We're not going to double investment or double make the effort to, you know, duplicate all the process in China. But in the meantime, for some very specific area, like, the case I share, like a big, big frame, oil-free rotary compressors, this only exist in China because of such a big scale of facility requirement. So this is the area I think we designed and localized, and designed, and only designed in China for China.
All right, well, that concludes our 2023 Investor Day. For those of you here, we will have a luncheon out in the lobby there. For everybody else, thank you for joining.
Thank you.