All right. Good morning, everyone. I'm Joe O'Dea. I'm on the multi-industry team at Wells Fargo, and we are excited to kick off the Industrials Conference with Ingersoll Rand and Vik Kini, CFO, and Matthew Fort, who runs IR and FP&A at Ingersoll. Thank you so much for being with us this morning.
Yeah, thanks for having us.
Let's kick it off. Common kind of theme. We'll just talk sort of demand trends when we think about kind of how things were going. You know, Q1, really on the organic side, orders up 3-3.5%, I think based on sort of commentary around earnings and what we've heard so far. April kind of seemed to be trending pretty similarly, but obviously choppy times.
Mm-hmm.
Just in terms of kind of how you've seen things progress over.
Yeah.
Over the course of this quarter, any clicks and takes and color on that?
Yeah. Let me just start by, well, first of all, thanks for having us. Nice to kick things off here. You know, as far as the demand environment and kind of what you said, I think we were really encouraged by what we saw in Q1. You know, we saw organic orders momentum in both segments, about 3-3.5% across both ITS and PST, which I think is the first time that we can say positive organic to that degree in both segments for quite a period of time, at least a number of quarters at least. If you kind of dig one layer deeper on the ITS side, we actually saw positive organic orders momentum across all three regions, which was great.
It was relatively balanced, including Asia Pacific, which, as we know, China's kind of had some headwinds for a number of quarters. I'd say China is at least stabilizing now, but you're seeing a little bit more of the impact of the rest of Asia Pacific, particularly Southeast Asia, which we've been talking about quite extensively as one of those underpenetrated markets. Even on the PST side, Americas and EMEA, positive. Asia's still a little bit negative, just a little bit more concentration of China there comparatively speaking. As we moved into April, as we said in earnings about a month ago, saw relatively comparable performance, so relatively stable. I'd say demand environment had not changed dramatically. You know, we'll spare commentary on May in any detail, but I think it's fair to say that at least the operating environment hasn't changed dramatically.
I think you've seen comparable, trending, at least on a regional perspective. And, you know, things like MQLs and things of that nature, which are our lead indicators, which I know we'll talk about a little bit more, I'd say continue to trend as you've seen kind of through the first quarter and into April. I wouldn't say anything has dramatically changed in terms of the demand environment. To your point, still uncertainty out there with the tariffs and those dynamics, but I think that that's kind of just a dynamic that we continue to operate through.
I think surprising to us going through this elevated uncertainty that we didn't see more demand disruption. When you think about the tariff impact, you know, in particular, and markets and regions as well, just I imagine, you know, under the surface, there are some puts and takes, but, you know, anything where you're watching it most closely, where you've either seen kind of distortions in demand patterns just tied to the uncertainty.
Sure.
That's out there?
Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't say that, you know, things have dramatically changed over the course of the last five months or things have, you know, skewed one way or the other. Obviously, it's created some degree of a pause and disruption, as I think everyone would expect. You know, clearly, with, I think, the fact that things change so frequently, has that caused a little bit more kind of potentially wait-and-see environment? Sure. I don't think that's anything different than what we talked about during Q1. I think the piece for us, though, that continues to be encouraging is we obviously report orders, but we kind of track the leading indicators that sit behind those.
If you think about the business, you can break it into two components: the kind of short to medium cycle part of the business, which kind of is a little bit more akin to MQLs, so Marketing Qualified Leads. I think even through last year, you'd heard us say that MQLs continue to trend positively, you know, upwards of double- digits up, but you'd seen this kind of elongation in terms of, what I'll say, decision-making from a customer perspective. I would by no means say that that has, you know, completely alleviated by any stretch of the imagination, but I think it speaks to the fact that in Q1, you can't get to kind of 3-3.5% organic orders growth without contribution from both the short cycle, short to medium cycle, as well as the long cycle.
We did see some of those short to medium cycle type orders translate on a global basis. The other piece was the long cycle funnel. For us, long cycle kind of comprises maybe 20%-25% of our original equipment. These are the longer cycle projects, so think of a big kind of ETO compressor package or a blower vacuum system. They run anywhere from $500,000 to multiple millions of dollars in size, and they typically are 6-18 months in terms of lead times. The funnel itself has continued to trend well over the course of the last year, 18 months. I do think, though, you have seen comparably a little bit more of an elongation in terms of people deciding to finally put the PO on.
The good news was, even through last year and into the first quarter, you had not seen these projects getting canceled. We did see some of those projects finally kind of get to the finish line in Q1, which was very encouraging. You know, our expectation is you would continue to see some of that kind of finally get to the finish line in terms of the order here, even in Q2 and through the balance of the year. I think we, despite what is still a little bit of an uncertain environment and, you know, as we've said before, you know, when you have 70-75% of your original equipment is short to medium cycle, we do not have full visibility into the back half of the year.
We're gonna have to continue to execute through this quarter and into the back half, but we're at least encouraged by some of those leading indicators that we track.
Just to drill down into that one step, what is driving customers to move forward? I mean, it's encouraging, right? You talked to 3-3.5%. It needs to be a contribution from short, medium, and long cycle.
Mm-hmm.
You know, you might intuitively say you give a elevated uncertainty that's gonna cause pause, and instead, people are moving forward and maybe more than they had been. What, you know, in the discussions you're having with customers.
Mm-hmm.
What is it that is driving them forward on those commitment decisions?
Sure. I mean, I think it's a facet of, one, there still is activity in the environment, right? When you think about our products, whether it be a compressor, a blower, a vacuum, a pump, short, medium cycle, or long cycle, they're the heart of any process-driven application. You know, I'm sure we'll talk about, you know, replacement demand versus greenfield. The reality is you need our technology to be able to serve those respective end markets and applications. You couple it with some of the activities we have around recurring revenue and things like that, which are really just much more of a sign of activity and utilization of equipment. You know, I think there is, you know, just inherent demand.
Let's be clear, when you're talking about a compressor that's, you know, up to 30% of the energy being consumed in a facility, a blower that can be up to 60% of the energy in a wastewater treatment facility, these are, while they're very low price kind of price tags compared to the overall application they're going in, they consume a lot of the energy. As such, when you go and upgrade some of these machines or things of that nature, you can actually deliver good payback, energy efficiency, total cost of ownership, which ultimately speaking, rises to the top of kind of the customer's decision-making criteria. I think it's just a balance of those kind of moving pieces and the fact that we had seen those MQLs and those funnels continue to be relatively healthy. That hadn't really changed.
It's just a matter of time before some of that starts to get a bit unclogged, as I say, and you start to see some of that demand kind of translate.
Yep. And then if we talk about complexion of the year and how things have shifted, you know, price getting better, some volume kind of cushion that might be in the expectations, but we think about the back half where to start the year, I think there was something low single- digit, maybe 3% kind of volume growth. And the revised view is maybe that's low single- digit, maybe 2 points volume decline. It amounts to about $200 million. I guess the question is, you know, can we allocate that on the this is what builds up the $200 million, or is it a little bit more of uncertain times? Let's just try to bake in something.
Yeah. I think it's the latter, right? We took a precautionary approach, and as we talked about on the earnings call, which is, you know, tariff pricing at the time, remember, China was at 145%, and all of the other associated costs. That was a, call it, approximately 2% from a pricing standpoint. M&A and FX was another approximately 2% that got 4% in additional revenue. I think at that time to say, "Hey, we're gonna take the guidance up at the midpoint," somewhere between 2-4% just did not make sense at the time.
We wanted to take a precautionary approach, hold the total revenue guide, and then again, on the tariff pricing, that up $150 million, kind of squiggle that $200 million that you're referencing, you've got to take it out of somewhere, and we took that out of volume at the normal flow throughs. And so that's kind of the how we held the revenue guide and then how that translated down through EPS.
Yep. And then when you talk about the pricing side of it, how much of that pricing is now in place?
Mm-hmm.
You know, things have been moving.
Yep.
Since then? What's happened to pricing and, you know, based on the current tariff?
Sure. I think the simple answer is all the pricing actions that have needed to be taken have been taken. We took, and as we mentioned, we took a bit of a balanced approach of both list price actions as well as surcharges. It's probably fair to say surcharges are not necessarily the norm for us as Ingersoll Rand. Given the environment and just kind of, frankly, the instability of what was going on with tariffs, we thought it was the requisite approach to be able to give ourselves a little bit more flexibility to be able to calibrate, for lack of a better way to say that, as the environment changed. As you can see, that's exactly what's happened. We took actions both on April 1st and May 1st.
As you can expect, we've continued to recalibrate those just as tariff dynamics have kind of ebbed and flowed. At this point, everything has been taken. Everything's been deployed. I think, like everyone else, we're kind of just waiting to see when we get to, kind of any semblance of stability, if you will, in terms of where tariffs will ultimately settle down.
At this point, it's not like back half of the year there would need to be more price action based on what you know today in steel and aluminum and things like that?
Yeah. I'd say that we've really been kind of taking that. It's almost been like a week-by-week approach, to be very honest with you, in terms of recalibrating and looking at things. I wouldn't say we're changing prices every week, but we've at least been, through the lens of kind of the tariff war rooms and kind of the process we have, we've been able to kind of analyze this and understand kind of what these moving components are, and make sure that we're calibrating the price appropriately, to make sure that, again, as Matthew said, you know, our intent with tariffs was really just to offset one for one, meaning price, combination of list and surcharges, just offsetting the tariff impact, meaning it's dollar neutral.
Obviously, we'll be slightly margin dilutive, but this was not an expectation to be actually making margin on the tariffs. That will be the same answer no matter where this settles down in terms of the absolute dollar value of surcharge tariffs.
Now let's shift a little bit more kind of big picture and wanted to talk about kind of cycle perspective.
Mm-hmm.
At a segment level, if we look at kind of organic volume trends and you take, you know, go back sort of 2020- 2024, and obviously a lot of price that's been in the market as well, but ITS organic volume is up kind of low 20%, maybe mid 20% versus 2020. PST is roughly flat. If we start on the ITS side.
Mm-hmm.
Can you just talk about sources of strength that you've seen, you know, there, whether region, whether end market, kind of what's been driving that?
Sure. Yeah. Let me start that, you know, we just crossed the five-year mark of the kind of anniversary of the merger to create Ingersoll Rand, which was March of 2020, of all times, right on top of COVID. You know, one of the things that we said, and was kind of almost one of the, you know, the key kind of thesis for the deal itself was, quite frankly, the hand-in-glove fit that you had between the legacy Ingersoll Rand and legacy Gardner Denver portfolios, particularly in the air compression technology spectrum. You have kind of taken the two platforms together. I think what was really intriguing is that, quite frankly, where one historical portfolio was a little bit weaker, the other one was stronger, from a regional perspective, as well as probably even from a product technology perspective.
When you put them together, you really have created this, what I would say, holistic kind of technology footprint, as well as a global coverage that really lent itself to be able to, I'd say, accelerate the organic growth trajectory, which is what you've seen. You now flash forward, and with the appropriate product technology, you've been able to kind of drive, I'd say, accelerated, yeah, a growth, not just from a compressor spec perspective, but also being able to push some of those kind of technologies that were a little bit more niche in nature, for example, blowers and vacuum that maybe kind of those examples were more legacy Gardner Denver, but able to leverage now the legacy Ingersoll Rand footprint in places like Asia to be able to drive growth there.
You have, I'd say, just the kind of, I'd say, combination of the two portfolios. Two, you have the kind of aftermarket profile, which we'll talk about, I'm sure, with recurring revenue. Around the time of the merger, that number of recurring revenue was probably closer to $100 million. As we said, as we exited 2024, that number has eclipsed $300 million. It's probably fair to say that the lion's share and the majority sits in ITS today. That's an equation we look to change over time. Growing that aftermarket profile, and particularly through the recurring revenue lens, has been one that's been a real catalyst on the ITS side. The other facet I would point to here is the M&A.
You know, if we look now over the course of the last five-plus years, we've done 65+ bolt-on acquisitions with a strong amount of those in ITS. And as you can imagine, when you've been able to do a nice amount of bolt-on acquisitions, which then you're able to then translate that technology over your global footprint, remember, most of these acquisitions are smaller, privately held, very regional companies. They've, you know, developed a good presence in one kind of region or country, but they really didn't have the means to spread kind of further than that. Plugging into kind of a global network like Ingersoll Rand, now we've been able to take those kind of global. I'll point back to our last investor day, our Asia-Pacific business leader, Arnold Lee.
He did like three or four kind of case studies, and every single one of them was essentially, I'll call it either a revenue synergy or a kind of an M&A example of how he has localized technology in the China market in those examples that he didn't have access to before, whether it be coming through the merger or coming through M&A. You put those all together, and I think that's what's lent itself to this kind of flywheel that you've seen over the course of the last five years.
Now, great color. We shift to the to the PST side.
Mm-hmm.
You know, over that period we're talking about, right?
Yep.
A couple of years of growth, but then the past couple of years where volumes have seen some headwinds.
Yeah.
Just talk about kind of the.
Yeah.
The demand trends there.
I think when you look underneath the kind of the surface, on the headlines, obviously, you know, speaks to what you said, and I'll come back to kind of the biggest drivers. When you peel kind of the onion back, I think we've actually seen nice growth when you think about kind of the base business. Americas, EMEA has shown nice progression. Obviously, there's a comparable amount of China exposure in PST as there is in ITS. So obviously, that's been a bit of a headwind. I think the biggest piece, though, that probably speaks to why you've seen a little bit more flattish kind of performance over that time is, within the PST portfolio, is our, what we call our legacy Ingersoll Rand medical business, which was probably the biggest kind of beneficiary from a COVID perspective.
This is a business that makes miniaturized compression technology that's used in medical lab, life sciences type equipment, with some of their products being in breathing applications. You know, during that time frame, it kind of reached around $400 million. As you can expect, post-COVID, it kind of saw a little bit of a reversal there. Has kind of, for lack of a better way to say this, kind of stabilized, dropped out closer to $300 million. That's about a $100 million headwind in a smaller segment that's kind of sitting on top of the numbers you're saying. That's kind of probably the biggest headwind. It's offsetting, I think, what you've actually seen as good core growth in the other kind of core components of the portfolio.
The good news for us here is this is a business that at this point in time, it's hit trough. It's been a number of quarters that we've kind of reported that. We've kind of started to see some early signs of, I'd say, momentum. By no means an inflection point yet, but the good news with that is this is a business that plays at margin profiles in excess of the PST segment margin. I know when we talk about PST margin profile, this will actually be a tailwind going forward. Any degree of kind of organic volume growth here will lend itself to kind of margin expansion, just given the margin profile of that IR medical business.
When we think about now, you know, this is a starting point, and, you know, if you've seen stabilization there as we move forward, how do you think about those growth profiles and whether, you know, is there catch-up in PST? So that's actually the stronger organic growth business. Just, you know, overall, as you've navigated through some of those swings.
Yeah. You know, I think, generally speaking, PST is always a portfolio that we've kind of positioned that over a longer-term cycle should be, you know, more of a mid single-digit plus type organic grower, whereas ITS maybe plays a little bit more like mid single- digit. I think, one, just given the end markets, given the niche kind of profile of the businesses, the fact that, yes, on a go-forward basis, I think there may be a little bit more outsized growth from some of these businesses like IR medical that have been a little bit more depressed over the last few years, that should lend itself over a multi-year time frame to being a little bit better organic grower. That is kind of always the way we've positioned it.
There are always going to be cycles and things we've got to operate through, but I don't think anything's changed in terms of our expectations in terms of growth trajectory. I think the ILC Dover acquisition, which has now eclipsed one year and will become, you know, is now kind of part of the organic number, just given its exposure into things on the, you know, on the pharmaceutical and life sciences side, I think can continue to help that trend on a go-forward basis.
and then you had touched on when you were talking about ITS, but let's talk about the recurring revenue and aftermarket side of things. And you've got kind of the billion-dollar sort of target out there. So you said, you know, last year you were over $300 million. just how do you think about that kind of trajectory to the billion and the visibility that you have into that? Like, where does this year need to be to kind of give you that confidence if you'll get to that?
Oh, with Matthew Fort and all that, yeah.
Yeah. I think, as Vik mentioned, at the time of the merger, you were looking at something like $100 million. At our 2023 investor day, we said that revenue was about $200 million in recurring revenue, and now north of $300 million. We have seen some really nice growth. Now, $100 million worth of growth, there is still a long way to go to get there. I think that how we got there was not just try harder on the legacy Ingersoll Rand compressor business. This was being able to roll this out not just in compressors North America and Ingersoll Rand, but be able to execute this in APAC, execute this in EMEA, execute it across the blower and vacuum portfolio, and in precision technologies where it makes sense, right?
Some of the smaller pumps, maybe not so much, but on something like CapEx, we think that there's certainly opportunities there. What we saw in the $200 million-$300 million was really nice growth, pretty broad base. We've created a nice foundation to be able to jump off here as we look to move forward. The billion dollars, again, was never in our long-term investor day targets, just as a reminder. I would say that they're, you know, stretch targets that we're looking to achieve. I think that, you know, with what we've done so far, we still believe that we're on the path to be able to achieve that billion dollars. That foundation comment is you're doing this in other parts of the business outside of compressors already. You're starting to see adoption.
Yeah. I almost kind of take 2024 as kind of that adoption year.
Yep.
Where, to Matthew's point, this business model has its roots on the legacy Ingersoll Rand North America business, compressor-centric. Translating it to the other regions, the other product technologies where it kind of is applicable to the Gardner Denver portfolio, where it makes sense, 2024 was almost that adoption year. No doubt, even in that $300 million today, it is still very heavily North America compressor-centric. Clearly, that will always be the biggest component. I think as we move forward here, we do expect to see contributions from all parts of the business.
It's also worth noting now that, you know, not only just the Care Model, which is kind of the heart of the recurring revenue model, but also now bundling in things like the EcoPlant technology platform, bundling in the kind of air treatment side of the equation, finding more offerings to be able to bundle into Care in that recurring revenue suite is kind of where we're looking to move the needle here on a go-forward basis.
When we talk about the IIoT-ready products, and this has been part of sort of the digitalization opportunity in front of you, and I think since 2020, you more than doubled the % of revenue from IIoT revenue, IIoT-ready products.
Yep.
Just what is that doing for you on aftermarket capture, on percent of recurring?
Yeah. So it's hard to quantify and, in full transparency, the way we look at IIoT is we don't look at it necessarily as a new revenue stream. We look at it as an enabler for more aftermarket revenue, particularly the recurring revenue model. When you think about recurring revenue and the care packages and this kind of risk transfer agreement, at its core, being able to remotely monitor your equipment is kind of one of the, you know, the catalyst to be able to execute a model like this. For us, it's really a means to an end and one that, as you can expect, every machine that goes out of our facility from a, you know, the compressor perspective as an example over a certain horsepower range goes IIoT-enabled. It's just a matter of having that turned on with the customer.
We can monitor that equipment machine, and it's, you know, ripe for being able to serve through the aftermarket, particularly recurring revenue. For us, you know, I'd say it's a means to an end. Just to put it in perspective, with still a very low penetration rate on the install base on care, right? It's still a single-digit percent is probably the best way to think about it. There's still meaningful room to run in the context of getting to that billion-dollar target.
Matthew, you talked about this a little bit, where there are going to be parts of PST that would be better suited to then when, you know, when you want to go off and out and sort of get that kind of recurring revenue stream going. When you think about sort of the total portfolio and the IIoT piece of it, you know, what percentage of the total portfolio, just broad strokes, is something where you're like, "We can connect this. We can get care packages on something like this"? When you say the percent's pretty low today, just thinking about where it's at.
I'd say the percent is low in the context of the install base that's penetrated. As far as our portfolio that can have IIoT, I would argue there's a meaningful percentage. We haven't quantified it, but it's a meaningful percentage that can have IIoT for whatever benefits IIoT can lend itself for those customers. To Matthew's point, one of the things that was kind of the big aha moments probably over the last two years is that a Care Model, kind of akin to what we're doing in ITS, can have roots and applicability across many parts of the portfolio, right?
So, you know, what was once thought of as really a compressor kind of centric model, at the end of the day, if it's something that's, you know, large machinery, has rotating equipment, has aftermarket needs, has wrench-turning service capabilities associated with it, which, generally speaking, covers all, you know, not all, but a meaningful portion of our revenue base, why shouldn't that have something that can be, you know, care, a care model expanded to it? Once we kind of got through that, and I think the other good thing about last year was, remember, this model has existed for, like, upwards of 15 years in the, you know, largely in the Ingersoll Rand compressor business in North America.
Over that last 10 to 15 years, they've learned really how to operate the model, who to sell it to, when to sell it, how to sell it, how to incent the sales teams. That was not a straight line. That was trial and error. That was, I call it, a lot of, you know, stubbed toes and sprained ankles and things of that nature. The good news is now, I think the Americas has gotten a pretty refined model. The rest of the globe did not have to go through that same learning curve, right? They were able to kind of adopt the model, leverage the learnings of the North America business to be able to translate that a little bit more efficiently. You are not going to see that same kind of multi-year, 10-year plus kind of learning curve and acceleration.
You should be able to see it a little bit more quickly, which is what we're expected to see here over the course of the next few years.
I wanted to circle back and talk about kind of the equipment side. You know, when we think about the revenue mix, I think, you know, roughly 65% equipment and then 35% that would be more aftermarket related. If we think about that 65% equipment, how do you think about the greenfield-brownfield part of it versus the replacement part of it?
Yeah. It admittedly becomes kind of tough to track just when you ultimately are selling through, you know, direct and distribution. I think the easy way to say it is I think there's an equitable mix of both. Obviously, replacement demand, when you think about just a compressor, for example, roughly speaking, a 10-year lifespan, there's always going to be a component of the install base that's ready for what I will say, you know, upgrade and/or replacement on an annual basis, coupled with the fact that, as you would expect, innovation in our business, generally speaking, is always kind of energy efficiency-centric.
You know, we're not necessarily saying that customers are going to throw away a three- or four-year-old compressor, but, you know, when it gets a little bit longer in the tooth, seven, eight, nine years, and now you can look at a next step change in technology, which can lend itself to, you know, sub-24-month paybacks, you know, it's just like us. Every year, I go through a budgeting cycle with our team, and generally speaking, CapEx projects that kind of hit the highest return profile generally are the ones that we tend to invest in. Our customers are no different. When you have a compressor that is probably the single biggest energy consumer on that facility and you can lend itself to sub-2-year type paybacks, generally speaking, that's something that's going to get that team's attention.
I think we continue to see a good equitable mix, and as such, there's always going to be that kind of replacement demand that's going on.
That is kind of where I was going with it. It is probably tough to quantify, but just curious in terms of your ability to sell that replacement because of a short payback. You know, just what you see out of customer behavior in any sense of, look, the vast majority is still going to be wait until end of life and replace versus, you know, seeing a growing shift toward people are replacing before end of life because of the economics.
I think for us, it's actually a bit of a win-win. One, yes, if there is someone who, because of payback dynamics, maybe is going to be able to, you know, replace their machine a little bit sooner than they have, great. That's replacement demand for us. Obviously, that's something that we're looking, you know, we want to do, be able to lock in that customer. The flip side of it, though, is even if you have a compressor that's 10 years old, as an example, and the customer is still using it, our means here is how do we get that locked into a care contract from a recurring revenue perspective? How do we make sure that we're servicing that machine, do the risk transfer agreement, be able to service it through a care model?
You know, a couple of things. One, care customers are our most satisfied customers by a vast, you know, a very, you know, big spread. Two, once under a care contract, it's a very high likelihood and percentage that you've got them locked in. As such, when the day comes that that replacement's going to come, it's going to come through an Ingersoll Rand machine. In our view here, we can win through both angles.
Yep. And then something that you touched on in the 2023 investor day was the multiplier effect that you have through everything that you can do on the aftermarket. And it is not, you know, it is sort of typical aftermarket. It is care. There are a lot of different kind of layers to what you can do. And there is something like a 3.5x multiplier over the original sale. How much of your revenue has that kind of multiplier that could be assigned to it?
Yeah. Listen, not every technology is necessarily going to be that. I think on the compressor side, from just a medium to larger scale machine, I think that math can work. Now, it obviously is through the lens of what I'll call recurring revenue, care contracts, getting to the EcoPlant, getting to some of the air treatment, as well as, as you've seen, many of the bolt-on tech acquisitions we've done have been things through the lens of, I'd say, supplementary type equipment that can kind of be bundled in with the compressor. I think that model will continue to be kind of a, you know, one-week carry forward, even if it's not three-and-a-half times.
You know, I think even on blowers, certain pumps on the PST side, there's a multiplier effect there as well. It's now a matter of being able to kind of, I'd say, extend those offerings. As you can expect, whether it be Care, EcoPlant, even air quality, these are models that, again, have the roots on the compressor side, but we're, of course, looking at how we can expand those to the other technologies because they have applicability on most of the other technologies we serve as well.
I wanted to shift the discussion to M&A, kind of two questions in one. One, just, you know, as you think about verticals and prioritization of verticals within M&A opportunities. Second is just overall appetite. I think that, you know, there have been some large deals of interest in the past. The largest one was ILC Dover. You know, just what your appetite is for large deals, how we should think about the size of large deals.
Yeah. Maybe I'll answer those kind of in inverse order. You know, I think, one, we've always said that maybe every three to five years, you'll see something that's a little bit maybe larger in scale, not necessarily transformational, but maybe something that's a little bit more of a platform per se, much like ILC Dover was and is on the life sciences side. I think as we sit here today, this year, and quite frankly, probably a little bit through the lens of some of the uncertainty that's existing and the concept of a larger deal is probably a little less likely just given some of the uncertainty with tariffs and things. This is probably a year that's much more of the smaller bolt-ons in nature.
As we did earnings a little over a month ago, we had done six transactions year to date, very prudent purchase multiples and nine times on a blended average of a pre-synergy adjusted EBITDA purchase multiple, one that we saw that kind of mid-teens ROIC return profile over a three-year time frame. We had nine more under LOI at that point in time. Now, interesting enough, last week, we actually closed, you saw us announce we closed one of those deals. It was actually a small in-region, four-region bolt-on in the life sciences side in China, actually. And so you actually are seeing a nice equitable spread to kind of your first point of those bolt-ons, which, think of those nine bolt-ons as very similar to what you've seen. You know, smaller bolt-ons, probably sub-$100 million- $200 million purchase price. The vast majority sub-$100 million. Good regional spread.
I would say you have assets in there that are North America, South America, Western Europe, as we know, Asia, and a spread actually between ITS and PST. As long as we continue to see, I'd say, good activity, which the funnel is as healthy as it's been, you know, end markets that are kind of a little bit more leaning towards sustainable higher growth end markets in the grand scheme, very similar to what you've seen us do, that's the model we're going to continue to execute to. I don't think we have any concerns about the ability to deliver 400-500 basis points of annualized inorganic growth this year, consistent with the model, even through the lens of doing it through smaller bolt-ons.
If you have a question, raise your hand, and I'll make sure to get to you. I want to use that as an opportunity to talk about life sciences a little bit because with ILC Dover, you know, you started talking about PST as life sciences and precision technologies. And so talk about your position in life sciences, kind of where you see your areas of strength, where you see your kind of areas of opportunity for that platform.
Yeah. You know, I think the ILC Dover transaction was a nice catalyst to be able to have what I would call a more established platform on life sciences. Today, we have a $600 million-$700 million, roughly, platform in life sciences, combined of the ILC Dover assets as well as the Ingersoll Rand medical business that we historically have, which we see some nice parallels and synergies in terms of some insourcing opportunities, being able to serve, I'd say, a larger customer base, but with a little bit more of a holistic product offering on the life sciences side.
If you look at PST, as you said, two platforms, precision technologies, we'll use round numbers, about $1 billion of niche precision pump technologies, you know, $600 million-$700 million, roughly speaking, on the life sciences side. I think now you have two very good, well-established platforms that I think, one, over the longer term, have slightly higher growth profile, you know, just given the end markets that they're serving, and also one that we continue to see good margin expansion opportunities. You know, I know one of the kind of topics is, you know, the PST kind of margin trajectory. This is one where, you know, we know that this segment is playing around 30% EBITDA margins today, but one that has multiple levers to continue to grow.
One, you know, kind of being just the precision technologies, which we've had kind of as part of the business for a while, probably fair to say being able to kind of leverage and accelerate some of the IRX kind of toolkit, things around pricing discipline, the productivity, the i2V. I think the i2V funnel is probably as healthy as it's been in that business. I think there's some good tailwinds on that end. We talked earlier about the IR medical business, one that, you know, I'll say I give the team a lot of credit that, yes, while we've kind of been at 30% EBITDA margins, probably over the last four to five years, it's kind of ebbed and flowed but stayed at 30%, that's with a headwind of $100 million at pretty healthy margins.
It speaks to the fact the base business that actually improved, offsetting that IR medical business. Now any degree of organic growth going forward should be a catalyst. Then, frankly, continued integration of the ILC Dover assets. Between all those, the concept of continuing to drive that margin profile upwards towards maybe that closer to mid-30s over that, you know, medium term, which is kind of our target, we do not see any reason why that is not an equitable target and one that we know we have levers to be able to pull to be able to drive for those numbers.
Just that, you know, foundation of life sciences, you talk about ILC Dover, and then you think about additional capabilities outside of that. You envision that path as a bolt-on path around it, or you see more foundations that you want to build around it?
I think without question, we see this as a path to be able to do nice, attractive bolt-ons. In fact, last week, we closed one, like I said, a smaller life sciences technology platform or business, in China. Again, it fits the in-region for region, but it's actually core technology that's very comparable to what we have currently within the life sciences business. I think, you know, one, we continue to have a very healthy funnel. As you would expect, when we did the ILC Dover transaction, it came with its own funnel, which has now just kind of become part of our M&A funnel. The fact that we had, you know, as of last earnings, two of our nine LOIs specifically in that life sciences space, I think it speaks to the kind of momentum.
Also worth noting, these are transactions that you're going to see being done at very comparable, I'd say, economics to what you've seen us do. I don't think 20x multiples and things like that. No, there are very prudent, low double-digit type purchase multiples, nice little kind of, I'd say, bolt-ons, and ones that we think we can drive, you know, good margin accretion and returns similar to what you've seen us do across the rest of the portfolio over the last five years.
If we just spend a little bit more time on the PST kind of margin opportunity, because I think, I mean, you've addressed a number of things within it, but if we think about a 30% EBITDA margin, get to 35%, we're talking roughly $75 million in EBITDA on today's revenue base. Just how you think about the different building blocks to that and, you know, the self-help component of it, what you can do on footprint, other cost actions versus a cycle and things just starting to go more in your favor?
Yeah. I mean, like I said, I think I almost bucketize them into three components. One is the self-help component of, and, you know, I think probably not surprising to hear that, you know, when we did the merger, ITS was probably a little bit more the focal point just in terms of the integration, the deployment of IRX, delivery of synergies, things of that nature, just because it was 80% of the revenue profile and the lion's share of the synergies. To that point, I think IRX probably got a slower start, comparatively speaking, than PST. I think you've seen that kind of getting rebooted over the last 24 months, roughly speaking. That is why, for example, I'd say the i2V funnel, for example, today is probably healthier than it's ever been over the course of the last five years.
I think, one, there's just kind of that self-help component of it in the core precision technologies platform. Two, any degree of kind of ongoing organic growth momentum on the IR medical side, which, as we said, has a better margin profile than the overall segment, and the incrementals there should be, you know, accretive to the overall segment with any degree of growth. Three, we're one year into the ILC Dover kind of transaction and integration. I think the encouraging piece here is from Q4 to Q1, you did see, I'd say, some operational improvement as moved from Q4 to Q1. I think we're continuing to be encouraged by, you know, the growth trajectory, particularly on the life sciences side of that business, which should come with nice, I'd say, flow through as well.
You put those three pieces together and the fact that, you know, the kind of maybe fourth end of the leg of the stool will be ongoing bolt-on M&A. We see an equitable amount of opportunity in total precision and science technologies, for bolt-on M&A, as you see on the ITS side, and ones that we would expect to be able to drive at two fleet margins, if not better, over that kind of three-year trajectory. You put those four legs together, from our perspective, those should be kind of the path to be able to get to that mid-30s, in the next few years.
Great color. I think that brings us to the end.
That's perfect.
Thank you very much.
Yeah.
Vik, Matthew, thanks so much for being with us today.
Yeah. Thank you for having us.