Great. I think the webcast is running, so let's recontinue with Ingersoll Rand. Very pleased to welcome back to the Wolfe conference, Vik Kini, SVP and CFO of Ingersoll Rand. Vik, I think maybe some opening remarks, brief remarks, then we can get into Q&A.
Yeah. First of all, Nigel, thanks for having us. Always good to be here. Albeit on a slightly rainy New York City day here. First of all, thanks for everyone in attendance. I'll keep it brief here. You know, I can't help but reflect, we were just talking about it earlier, it's been now five years and a few months since the merger that created Ingersoll Rand. Five years has gone by very quickly, but I think we can say incredibly proud of kind of where we've come in the last five years. The transformation of the company, you know, we've had two major divestitures. We've done over 65 acquisitions. I know we'll talk about many of these in the context of, you know, where we're going forward.
Continue to create, I'd say, a platform and a company incredibly resilient to leading platforms in the ITS and PST business. You know, plenty of runway ahead of us, both from an organic, inorganic perspective, cash generation, and really being able to kind of redeploy that through this kind of compounding model that we've created. You know, Nigel, why don't we jump into it? I know we'll talk about a lot of those components, but really excited kind of what the team has done. You know, I have to say, done it through some very interesting times over the last five years, this being no exception where we are right now.
Yeah. So the five years, has there been one, what do you describe as a normal year in those five years?
I'm not sure I'd go that far, but, you know, when you've had five of them in a row, maybe that's the new norm. I think the good news for us is the team has executed through quite a bit over the last five years. And we always tell the team that, you know, guys with two divestitures, the acquisitions, wars and conflicts, COVID, we actually did the merger literally when COVID was, you know, becoming a thing, to be honest with you, integrating two companies virtually and via, you know, Teams and Zoom and things of that nature. You know, if we can work through all that, we can work through tariffs and whatever else kind of may be thrown at us. So the team has shown a lot of resiliency and, you know, give a lot of credit to the teams around the globe.
That's right. Tariffs are a piece of cake in the results. Maybe just, you know, it's been three weeks, I think, since you report results, which doesn't seem like a lot of time, but, you know, every week seems like a dog week, you know, so it's like seven weeks. Maybe just bring us up to speed in terms of, you know, how the quarter's progressing and any sort of new trends you're seeing out there.
Yeah. To your point, it's been two, two and a half, three weeks since earnings. So I'm not going to tell you that anything has dramatically changed. You know, let me kind of reflect on kind of what we spoke about at earnings in the sense that, you know, Q1, really encouraged by, you know, seeing organic orders momentum across both segments. First time, we've seen that in a number of quarters, seeing approximately 3% organic orders momentum across both ITS and PST. ITS actually saw organic orders momentum across all three regions. PST across the two largest regions in Americas and EMEA. And, you know, when you kind of dig under the surface here, you know, a couple of things that we can point to. One, you saw good momentum on both what I'll call the short cycle as well as kind of the longer cycle.
I think that's kind of very much supported by the leading indicators, MQLs, which continue to be up kind of low double digits, a little bit more akin to that shorter medium cycle business. We've been talking quite a bit about some of the elongation in that MQL funnel as well as elongation in the longer cycle funnel. It is encouraging to see that some of that is kind of now translating into the orders momentum you've seen. The same thing was true on the longer cycle project side. Did see some nice project activity kind of finally getting to that finish line in terms of the POs there in Q1. You know, from us, from our perspective, April kind of continued, I'd say, with a comparable kind of trajectory and/or performance in line with expectations.
I would say despite the fact that there's still a lot of uncertainty out in the market, encouraged by how the teams are executing, encouraged by, I'd say, the leading indicators and how we're seeing that translate into the orders momentum. You know, from our perspective, you know, gives us some nice backlog that we can continue to execute on as we move now into second quarter as well as the balance of the year.
Okay. So would it be fair to say April was also growth in orders, just to make that clear?
Yeah. I mean, April was, I would say, continue to be in line with expectations. I would say comparable regional performance in the context of what you saw through Q1. Generally speaking, you saw the pockets of growth where you would expect. I would not say regional trends have been much different in April than you saw through the balance of Q1.
That's great. I'm not going to push you on May, by the way. That was last week of May. But, you know, has there been any change in behavior that you've assessed? Because I think that's what we're trying to figure out is obviously there's been a lot of news on tariffs. There's been the rollout of Liberation Day and then the pullback and whatever else. Any sort of weird behavior you're seeing out there?
Weird behavior or behavior that's different from what we've seen? I think the answer is no. You know, Nigel, I think there is still, you know, clearly people wanting to wait and see kind of how things materialize. Yes, we're in the midst of now this kind of pause, for lack of a better way to say it. It is just that, it's a pause. We'll see where things kind of finally land here after that kind of 90-day window. I think there still is, you know, a little bit of, you know, uncertainty as we move into the back half of the year, which I think is reflected in the kind of the guidance construct we put forward. Have we seen dramatic shifts in behavior, whether it be in the last few weeks or versus what we saw exiting Q1 or in April?
Nothing I could point to of any, you know, meaningful change at this point in time.
Okay. Okay, great. I think the quarter was a little bit confusing to some because you saw that, as you pointed out, the inflection to order growth, you know, 3% order growth in both segments. Then you dialed back on your volume assumptions for the full year. Maybe just talk about that. You did use the word contingency in the guide. Maybe just touch on that because that is obviously a very important word.
Yeah, for sure. You know, maybe to kind of recalibrate kind of the original guide to kind of the new guide construct. You know, as we kind of put forth on the guidance side, you had, and I'll take them in two buckets, you had the areas that were kind of, that's in the tailwinds to the revenue equation. First and foremost was the tariff pricing, sized around $150 million, offsetting tariff costs effectively one for one. Really no bottom line impact, zero on the bottom line. Clearly, I'd say reassessing kind of through the lens of kind of what's happened last week.
I think the general answer here is even at when tariff levels get reassessed, that equation will still hold in the context of pricing slash surcharge actions, offsetting tariffs, really no impact to the bottom line. That was 2% in terms of a revenue uptick in the context of the revised guidance. The other two components being FX and M&A. FX with about a 1.5% tailwind, M&A based on deals that we had closed and announced as of the deal of earnings with another half a percent. When you put all those components together, that was 4%, you know, 2+ 1.5+0.5 , 4 points of revenue kind of tailwinds.
To use kind of, you know, kind of the word you use, contingency, taking up revenue guidance in this environment, we just thought that it was more, you know, prudent and reasonable to kind of hold the line on the total revenue guidance. We recognize that the components underneath the covers are a little bit different. As such, we took down organic volume expectations by about 4% on a full year basis. Now, from our perspective, a couple of things. One, contingency, but we think, you know, a prudent way to have, you know, kind of set the year. Two, it probably de risks the back half of the year a little bit.
It is also worth noting that the back half, if you look at back half organic volume versus first half organic volume, there is an improvement in second half organic volume still embedded in the guide. I think that that's probably a construct of, now back to kind of Nigel, how we started the conversation, encouraged by the orders momentum we've seen, encouraged by April, encouraged by the MQL long cycle performance. It is also worth noting that the second half probably does have slightly more moderating comps. We think that this guidance construct, I think, is one that makes sense just given kind of the construct of the company, the visibility we currently have. You know, our view here is we'll continue to execute through Q2. We'll continue to recalibrate as we move through the balance of the year.
If there is some potential, you know, volume upside, particularly as we get into the latter half of the year, great, we'll execute upon that and we'll kind of let that come to fruition at that point in time.
Yeah. Okay. Just contingency gets people like me very excited, so just wanted to. I'll take a couple more questions and then I'll throw the open to the room. The 150, I'm guessing the math has changed with the China pause, et cetera. Maybe under the surface mechanically, how does that 150 look today based on what we know today? The countermeasures, the pricing surcharges, et cetera, how does that look as well?
Yeah. So, you know, fortunately, we're still kind of reassessing kind of that whole kind of construct because for us, we do it all the way through the lens of and maybe a little bit, well, the way we've done it, even in the 150, we take that all the way back through what we call our tier two suppliers. For example, tier two for us means we're buying from the US. On the surface, it may not look like you should expect any tariff impact, but our suppliers are sourcing from somewhere else. As such, there's a pass-through that comes along for the ride. Nigel, the simple answer here is still reassessing, I would say, kind of how that 150 is kind of settling down. I think I go back to kind of what we said before.
We've taken, I'd say, a mixed approach of both list price and surcharges. As such, you'll probably continue to see us recalibrate that. Simply stated, that will re, you know, we don't have any expectation that even when those tariff levels settle down and normalize at whatever that lower level is, the price surcharge will offset it one for one. There will not be margin dollars kind of made on that equation. It will still be margin dilutive, just like in our current guide. You know, when you correlate that then to the second part of the equation, which is really some of the cost mitigation actions, maybe to put in perspective kind of how we talked about this at the guide a few weeks ago, we have launched a, you know, a tariff war room.
I would say it's got good involvement from, I'd say, a very limited group of us from a corporate perspective, myself, our Chief Procurement Officer, trade compliance, pricing, and then really partnering with the businesses, product management, commercial, supply chain, procurement. We're really looking at this through a lens of multiple angles. One, as you know, we're in region for region. I think one that actually sets us up probably fairly good in this environment from a resiliency perspective, but we're not 100% in region for region. There may be some pockets where we do have areas to potentially look at moving product A from X location- Y location. That's by no means the biggest piece. As you would expect, the biggest piece of the equation is much more just third-party procured materials.
Looking at potential opportunities to move source from X- Y and f rom supplier- to supplier B. The reality, though, is for all those examples, they just take some time to execute, right? Even in the 150 at the original guidance, we actually said that none of that supply chain potential cost mitigation impact is included. We're absolutely executing to it. We're absolutely moving with speed. We are not accounting for any of that impact to materially deliver any upside in year. To the degree we can accelerate and that can provide a little bit of a tailwind, maybe particularly in the fourth quarter. Great, let that be potentially some potential upside.
As far as how things are recalibrated as we speak right now, I think the simple answer here is we're continuing to run and execute generally how we were even two to three weeks ago, meaning we don't want to kind of light switch on and off activities. We want to see a little bit of stability and normalization in terms of what tariffs do settle down at. We are still working hand in hand with the business teams to continue to contemplate and spec kind of what these moves would look like in certain cases, continue with the movements. Obviously, as you can expect, once things normalize, there may be certain actions that don't make sense anymore just given the change in tariffs, at which point in time we'll make those decisions.
What we don't want to do, though, is start and stop the activities because that inherently will create just delays in the process. The good news here is the teams are, I will tell you, continuing to move forward. The actions today, the momentum, the daily meetings, everything, the cadence is effectively exactly the same today as it was three weeks ago before the 90-day pause.
Yeah. Yeah. I think that's very wise and that's a great answer. Thanks. I'm guessing it's still early days in terms of supply chain realignments, but, you know, we're certainly hearing companies that we cover de-emphasize in China, moving to Southeast Asia, Mexico, et cetera, maybe even back to the US. What does that mean for Ingersoll Rand? Because my thesis would be that we're creating redundancy, creating more capacity. That sounds like good news longer term for you guys. Just how do you think about that? You know, taking a dollar of capacity out of China, putting it into Vietnam.
Yeah. So I think for us, you know, I go back to kind of the model we've always been running. We've essentially always been, continue to be, and you could argue even more so going forward, in region for region. As an example, our China business is probably 98% supplying in region today, right? The amount of flows that go from China back overseas outside of the APAC region are extremely limited. For us, are we necessarily de-emphasizing or shifting a bunch of capacity? The simple answer is no. I think this is an opportunity to maybe look at some of those one-off pockets, particularly on your supply chain from a third-party perspective, where you can maybe build a little bit of redundancy. You can look at potential new sources in areas like Eastern Europe, India, things of that nature.
Simply stated here, we continue to be in region for region. I go back to some of the things that we've been talking about over the last few years. Whether you go back, was it now three, four years ago, you know, we reopened a plant in Buffalo, New York as an example. Interesting enough for product that actually it was the large multi-stage gear centrifugal business that had been closed down, that capacity had been moved to China. We moved it back to the U.S. for domestic purposes, so supplying domestic U.S., arguably three, four years ago because we saw an opportunity to better serve the U.S., right? We've opened facilities in Brazil now. We have a new compressor manufacturing site going live in India as we speak.
I think, Nigel, while the current environment has maybe created a little bit more, you know, pressing urgency in certain pockets, the reality is what we've been doing and how we've been executing in region for region hasn't really changed. You know, our China business, for example, has largely always been in region serving itself anyway. I don't think that there is a big need or a big concern or a big drive to shift dramatically from where we are today. I think it's just a matter of continuing to look for pockets of optimization, which, interesting enough, I think this tariff dynamic is continuing to push us in that direction.
Yep. Yep. Okay, great. Any questions from the audience? If so, raise your hand. Right here. Maybe I think there's a mic coming.
Yeah, I guess you guys talked about like shorter-term customer changes, but I'm just curious about, like, you know, are you hearing anything on companies like in 2026 or 2027 or long-term decisions? Are those all on pause as well right now for you, or are they still able to make decisions?
Yeah. So I'll go back to, great question. You know, I'll go back to kind of the longer cycle side of our equation. I think the simple answer here is you still are seeing those projects come to fruition, right? We have roughly 20-25% of our, you know, our original equipment business is longer cycle in nature. And just to put this in perspective, we have it across compressors, we have it across blower vacuum. You even have pockets of this in our PST business as well. It's not just in one component. It's pervasive across the environment. These are projects that are 6-18 months in lead time and typically speaking, just as much time in terms of speccing it out to get to the PO. The good news is you actually saw good momentum on that.
We had seen definitely an elongation in that funnel in terms of just some of the decision-making processes really through a lot of last year. Has that funnel completely, I'll use the word declogged? No, it has not. Have you seen some of that starting to get to the finish line? Yes. You actually saw some healthy project momentum in Q1. I would expect to continue to see some of that momentum here into Q2 in the back half of the year. The simple answer to your question, at least for longer cycle projects for us, which can definitely feed into, you know, late 2026, 18 months from now, have we seen dramatic pause or anything like that? Not at this point in time.
Good question. Anyone else? One more?
Yeah. Great. Just on that point on longer-cycle projects, obviously there's a momentous backlog or frontlog, if you want, of US mega projects, many of which, you know, manufacturing, heavy manufacturing, right in the sweet spot of where you play. What is the sort of, I don't know, the color or context of the conversation you're having right now with some of those ENCs and customers?
Yeah. I mean, I think the simple answer here is it continues to be constructive and healthy, right? Obviously, there's a number of factors out there that, you know, create, you know, do you pause, do you not, things of that nature. I think the good news for us is the necessity for our products in those projects is, to your point, we're absolutely kind of playing. We're one of the kind of the heart of any degree of an industrial manufacturing or process kind of, you know, application. I think the simple answer here is, and in fact, Vicente, you know, it's one of the things that he is very much actively involved.
As you know, he is very much engaged and involved in a lot of, you know, I'd say peer-to-peer conversations from his end about not just the applications of where our products make sense there, but then also bundling in probably a concept we'll talk about here, things around like recurring revenue and Care and things of that nature.
I think the simple answer here is when you look at where our projects play, the necessity, the fact that there still is healthy momentum on a lot of those projects, and then, quite frankly, a very compelling value opportunity, not just for the product itself, but then how you actually serve said product over the course of its life cycle that makes sense and can be a win-win for a customer and ourselves in the form of Care or recurring revenue, that really is becoming much more pervasive, I think. You know, Vicente is at the forefront with our commercial and, you know, product teams having those discussions, not just in the U.S., I might add. These conversations and that type of momentum and opportunity we see in all three regions.
Yep. Yep. Okay. I do want to go into Care and Service in a second, and we're running down to 10 minutes here, so I just want to make sure I get in a few rapid-fire rounds. Do you think that the incentives, so we've seen the stick from Trump, we now have the carrots of tax incentives, et cetera. Do you think that accelerated depreciation, given that obviously a lot of these projects are long, very long, long cycle in nature, long-life assets, theoretically, you know, accelerated depreciation should be beneficial to getting these things moving? Do you think that's the case?
I think without question, conceptually can be. Would I tell you that that's been a huge piece of the dialogue or things of that nature to date? I can't say I can connect those dots just yet. Encouraging, potentially a leading indicator, something that I will tell you comes up actively in discussions or things like that as an order driver, I'm not sure I'd connect those dots just yet.
Okay. Service is obviously a very important part of your business. You know, high 30% of total revenues, 40%+ of ITS revenues. Just talk about how that's evolving, you know, from sort of a break fix, sort of, you know, mechanical parts, wrench type of model to Care and Software IoT.
Yeah. So, you know, first and foremost, I'd still say early days, right? You know, to use, you know, exactly how you described it, historical context of aftermarket is exactly what you think. It's, you know, parts, service, lubricants, oils, filters, wrench turning, things of that nature. Absolutely a great business, healthy margin profile, but, you know, can have a degree of break fix and things like that to it. The way the model has been changing, we kind of were much more explicit about it a few years ago when we kind of gave this construct around recurring revenue, is how do we make what is probably a bit of a stickier part of our portfolio even stickier? Where we're looking at that is through the lens of this recurring revenue kind of initiative and really through the lens of what we call Care.
Care, for those of you who may not be as familiar with it, care is essentially, it's a subset of aftermarket, and it's really effectively at its core, it's a risk transfer agreement with our customers where our customers buy our equipment. A compressor is the hallmark product example. We essentially say, instead of you servicing it, instead of you having an in-house service tech or maintenance tech who's doing whatever, even calling us on a break fix basis, why don't we enter into a multi-year contractual agreement whereby at its gold standard, we will guarantee a certain % uptime. In return, you essentially transfer all maintenance and all essential running of said compressor to us. In return, we get an annuity flow stream of revenue. Essentially, it's a multi-year contract.
Every month, you're going to send us a check, and it's our responsibility to maintain that and maintain and ensure that it's up and running. Why that's important, Nigel, is, you know, one, it is by definition the stickiest component of the revenue base. Whether that compressor is working at 100% or 50%, you know, we're going to be getting, you know, said, you know, payment. Two, you know, it's a risk transfer agreement. Why that's important is this isn't just normal pricing like within our organization. This is looking at, you know, years and years and years of runtime across every application, across every horsepower, because effectively what you're doing is you're insuring that machine. We're actually using actuaries to actually help us run the pricing and actually come, you know, up with the right algorithm to be able to price it appropriately.
Generally speaking here, you know, it makes a margin profile that's, you know, the closest thing that we would call like software-like margins for us. You know, I've done it at its gold standard. This is 60%+ gross margins, if not even better. The beauty of this is customers love this, right? Essentially, you know, the simple example is, you know, if they're paying, you know, $100,000 for a compressor, just use an answer number, maybe they're paying $20,000 per year for a five-year basis for the Care model. That's another 1x revenue just over, you know, five years. Typically speaking, the compressor is lasting at least 10 years, so there's probably a renewal that comes up, you know, after the first five-year timeframe. Those customers, and we measure this pretty explicitly, they are our most satisfied customers.
Their net promoter score, their customer, you know, satisfaction is typically 20 points higher than a typical customer. That is because, one, this is really, you know, risk avoidance for them. The concept of the compressor going down in a manufacturing plant can be catastrophic, right? When you think about $20,000 per year, whatever that math is, the concept of the compressor being down for a day can be millions of dollars of lost revenue or profit. Not to mention they do not have to maintain an in-house service tech and they have peace of mind. This is starting to gain much more foothold. To your point, this historically has been a legacy Ingersoll Rand compressor phenomenon in North America. We announced in 2023 that we are going to expand this globally. We aspire to be at a billion-dollar revenue base in 2027.
We were around $200 million exiting 2023. Encouraged to say that 2024 was really a year where we kind of, I'd say, expanded this model across the balance of the portfolio where it makes sense. Already over approximately $300 million exiting last year. Continue to be really encouraged on a good momentum. This will continue to be a nice, I'd say, driver of margin opportunity and expansion. Even in a business like ITS, where we've pushed up across, you know, against 30% EBITDA margins, this should continue to be a tailwind to margins in the grand scheme of things.
This actually reminds me of the CSA concept that GE and other aerospace engine companies have been a very successful business model. The $3 million of revenues, what does that represent in terms of penetration of your install base?
Yeah, still relatively low. You know, we do not necessarily disclose the exact number, but I'll just say this. Not all of it, but it is still heavily a North America compressor model. As you can expect, with 2024 being that year, we are kind of now expanding it across the legacy Gardner Denver portfolio, Europe, Asia, Latin America, blowers, vacuums where they have, you know, I would say, applicability, as well as certain aspects of the PST business. Not all, but certain aspects. It is still early days in many of those cases. I think the simple answer here, Nigel, is that we are still in very early days. That penetration rate is still in that single digit, still very, you know, fairly, you know, early days in terms of the penetration. For us, that is great. That just means that continues to be a big opportunity set ahead.
Excellent. I do want to touch on M&A because it's a very important part of the story. Before that, maybe just talk about margins. You're at roughly 30% margins for ITS. Your guidance is actually slightly above that for this year. I believe your medium-term target is about 30%. Number one, confidence in blowing past that medium-term target in ITS. Secondly, PST, you know, that's been a little bit lumpier, to be fair. You know, the guidance embeds sort of high 20% EBITDA margin in one Q, going to sort of low 30s by four Q, but still 35%. Just wondering what the path is to that ramp and then to 35%.
Yeah. I'll take them in two pieces and I'll keep it quick so we can get to the M&A. On the ITS side, encouraged, absolutely, you know, I'd say very encouraged by kind of the momentum we've seen, kind of hitting the 30%. Are we sitting here today and going to say, hey, there's, you know, we're going to set a new target? No, we're not going to necessarily do that. What I will tell you is this. We don't necessarily see a cap per se on ITS margins between what I just talked about in recurring revenues, which is really probably more the upside, between just any degree of normal organic growth, the price versus inflation equation, productivity, I2V, things of that nature, not to mention the accretion we typically get on M&A that then has synergies. We continue to see a nice little tailwind there.
You know, year to year, can we still be doing 50 basis points? It is probably not a bad proxy to use. Maybe not the 100 basis points plus you have seen of years past, but still a nice margin accretion that still allows for a healthy amount of reinvestment to drive organic growth. On the PST side, absolutely right. You know, I think we kind of are encouraged by sequentially from Q4- Q1, you saw about 150 basis points improvement back up over 29%. We will continue to see step changes in the context of, you know, improvement over the course of the year. A couple of things. One, normal seasonality.
I would say some of the normal productivity drivers, as well as the continued integration of M&A, particularly on the ILC Dover side, which we'll continue to see some margin improvement as we move through the course of the year, getting back to that 30%+ type ballpark. I think the answer in terms of the go forward is exactly that. PST has clearly been the one that I think, you know, deployment of IRX, I2V, the productivity funnels, the full run rate on where synergies can get to on the M&A, that will be the kind of next catalyst to take us up into that closer to that mid-30s range over the next few years. We do not see any reason why that runway cannot exist.
I think the thing that'll change from maybe years past to going forward is that in years past where you saw strong triple-digit margin expansion, ITS, lesser so on PST, we see an opportunity for that probably to change going forward, where PST will be a little bit more of the margin leader in terms of the absolute margin, the basis point expansion. ITS will still have expansion, but maybe not at that triple-digit margin rate anymore.
Right. Right. Okay. This is the last question, but it's one question with probably two or three parts. You're good at unpacking these things, so I feel good about that. Maybe talk about the, you know, your LOIs. I think there's not, actually, I think 11 LOIs signed, I think, 9 or 11, I think it was.
Nine.
Nine, nine, sorry. You're confident in that and 45 basis points of annualized M&A this year. Just wondering, kind of just give us a mark-to-market on the LOIs and sort of the timeline to getting these LOIs into acquisitions.
Yeah.
Maybe just mark-to-markets on ILC Dover, obviously a big deal. Talk about, you know, how that's trending.
Yeah, sure. On the actually M&A front, when we did earnings a couple of weeks ago, we said that we've actually done six acquisitions year to date. Just to be clear, the blended pre-synergy Adjusted EBITDA purchase multiple for those six was actually nine times. I think the equation is very much like you've seen historically. These are smaller bolt-ons. We probably see around three turns of multiple expansion, you know, or ability to take the multiple down three turns with synergy delivery. Right in the wheelhouse of what you've seen us do. The nine under LOI, very similar in nature. I think the simple answer in terms of the M&A construct for the year is we see that path to the 400-500 basis points in year annualizing organic growth.
It'll be exclusively through smaller bolt-on acquisitions is kind of how we see the framework working now. Those acquisitions are very much piece and parcel of what you've seen us do historically. I would say they will have the purchase multiples very much in line, you know, that 9, 10, you know, in around that ballpark is probably where you can see us play, low double digits, high single digits. Actually very good global dispersion, meaning in that nine, you actually have Americas, Europe, Asia, and you actually have good mix between ITS and PST, including, nice segue into your second part of your question, including a few in the life sciences platform. The whole concept around ILC Dover being a, I'd say, a platform for bolt-on M&A in the life sciences, it's coming to fruition as we speak.
Yes, the question about what timeframe it takes for LOI into acquisition was, each one of them is different. The reality is you're dealing, most, if not all of these are smaller private family-held transactions, so they kind of move at the pace they do. The concept of, you know, last year we did, I think it was like 15 or so, you know, on average a one per month or even a little bit higher. Would I expect that to be very different this year? No. As far as ILC Dover, continue to be encouraged by the momentum we're seeing here. You saw a nice, I'd say, operational improvement from Q4 into Q1 of this year.
If you look at the kind of life sciences piece, you know, specifically kind of the hallmark product, the single-use powder containment saw a nice healthy order momentum, book to bill above one. I think the life sciences piece of the equation continues to be encouraging, playing itself out like you would expect. As you know, you know, on the aerospace side, you know, that business is now kind of reaching more stability. You know, the whole kind of next-gen spacesuit thing is kind of behind us. Continuing to execute and kind of just move past that. I think the encouraging piece as I think about the entire ILC Dover platform here is that one, the team is really adopting to kind of what I would say IRX, embedding things like demand generation.
Some of the core toolkits that we have used at Ingersoll Rand for years, those are really starting to now take hold within ILC Dover. Full disclosure, we've made investments. You've heard us say that we're going to continue to invest. As such, the margin profiles between those factors have been a little bit lower than, you know, one would have probably expected at the time of the acquisition. The reality here is we continue to see good runway going forward. That is part of, I think, the margin expansion story as we kind of move through 2025. Continue to be encouraged by the momentum we're seeing.
Thanks, Vic. That was a great conversation. Really appreciate all the detailed answers and kind of all grounds, but thank you very much.
You bet. Thank you, guys.
Great. That was good.
Thank you.