Hi, everyone. My name is Debbie Jones. I'm the head of ESG for company research at Deutsche Bank. You have joined our session with Ingersoll Rand. We have Vicente Reynal, chairman, president, and CEO of Ingersoll Rand today. Just to give you a little bit of background, although I think some of you probably already know, he served as CEO of Gardner Denver, responsible for driving growth and profitability, leading to the IPO of Gardner Denver in 2017, and subsequently in early 2020 acquiring Ingersoll Rand in the industrial segment. Sorry, the industrial segment. Before joining Gardner Denver, he spent 11 years at Danaher [corporates] several leadership roles. You're also on the Board of Directors at American Airlines. Thank you for coming back this year and having this conversation with us. We really appreciate it.
Your company is a leading global manufacturer with a range of innovative mission-critical air, fluid, energy, and medical technologies, providing services and solutions to increase industrial productivity and efficiency. I'm sorry for reading that, but I just wanted to make sure I said it all. We'll expand a little bit about this in our conversation. There's a lot to talk about here. Vicente, again, thank you so much for coming.
Yeah. Thank you for the invitation. It's a pleasure and great to be here. Thank you. Thank you, Debbie.
I wanna start in just, kind of setting the stage here. You've really ramped up your sustainability focus probably since you got here, but really over the last 3 years, you know, and you've also merged two businesses together. From a sustainability standpoint, what were the key challenges, you know, for doing this and putting all of this together?
Yeah, Debbie, I think if you think about it, as you said it, you know, in 2020, it was February of 2020 when Gardner Denver and Ingersoll Rand, the industrial segment, kind of came together. A week later, pandemic hits. We had to completely integrate these, kind of mega merger all, kind of remotely, and be able to still deliver the commitments that we made to Wall Street in terms of synergy savings and growth and things like that. Kind of highly complicated to be able to achieve that. Needless to say, we're very excited because we have come out super strong out of the integration and over-delivered to a lot of the commitments that we made.
One of the commitments that we had is also how can we be recognized as a leader in ESG and sustainability. It really started by creating a very ambitious target on our own and having a very clear glide path on how we're gonna be able to achieve that. Ultimately, we leverage our own processes, the process that we call IRX, to be able to drive performance across the multiple different initiatives and ESG and sustainability being one of those.
It speaks to the power of IRX that we have that capability inside Ingersoll Rand today, that we can take a process like that and really leverage it, not only for execution of financial performance, but also execution of other things such as sustainability and some of the bold, ambitious targets that we set out to be.
Let's just take a step back here and say, okay, when we talk about sustainability, what does that mean for Ingersoll Rand? If you could give us, you know, a couple of the pillars that you focus on.
Mm-hmm.
For me.
Yeah, Debbie. We see sustainability not just as the right thing to do for our planet and the community, but also we view it as a tremendous tailwind for growth. If, if you look at our company, we have five strategic imperatives, and one of those is we say lead sustainably strategy, which is kind of twofold. One is grow sustainably, and two is operate sustainably. Operate sustainably is that how we as a company will achieve our 2030 and 2050 greenhouse gas emission targets that we set out to be again, pretty aggressive targets that we say net zero by 2050, 60% of the way by 2030.
Growing sustainably, which is how do we ensure that all of our products and services are around high levels of efficiency, circularity, circular economy, and making sure that we help our customers enable that ability to be able to achieve their Scope 1 and Scope 2 targets that they see.
You are a global company, which I think can make it a little bit more challenging to make sure the message gets to everyone, this is your focus and this is what you're trying to do. Could you give us an understanding of how do you push that message down, especially for things like emissions reduction? How do you make sure that everyone is kind of on Board for this process that you're trying to push?
Yeah. And to that question, Debbie, you mean internally in the organization?
Yeah.
How do we execute? Yeah. Yeah. We leverage that, the IRX. IRX today, there's something that we call IMPACT Daily Management, and we have roughly 300 of those events that are happening every single week across our company. That's how we take our targets and our bold ambitions and deploy that into very actionable activities that we can actually then drive to ensure that we achieve our targets. For example, we have five sustainability IDMs in place. We have one around Scope 3, we have one around health and safety, we have one around product sustainability, we have another one around operational sustainability, and then we have, you know, the last one, the fifth IDM that we drive is around rating agencies and sustainability reports.
We, as a company, we take our ESG targets that we put out, the 2030, 2050, and then start deploying that on what does it mean, what do we have to accomplish this year. Then what do we have to accomplish every quarter and what do we have to accomplish every month and every week and every day. Then we break it into very small chunks that our teams across the entire company can really start executing on that and be able to report the news pretty quickly up and down in terms of what's working, what's not, what help do they need.
That's what we do to really leverage that as a total company to accelerate the improvements in sustainability, which ultimately, you know, is a great reflection on how we're performing in an external environment, but also inside the company, leveraging our processes.
Thank you for that. I do wanna get in a little bit to the more sustainable products that you have. I think that's a big part of the story. Just right before I do that, can we just discuss the Inflation Reduction Act in general and how, what, kind of, your thoughts on how that changes things for you, if it does, and just kind of what areas, you know, that might be more impactful for you?
We were, you know, as we all know, the Inflation Reduction Act is kind of coming through fruition, so a lot of the funds, perhaps may start kind of seeing here come through this year, 2024 and 2025. We're already seeing a lot of good movement. Give you one great example, renewable natural gas, RNG. You know, this is an area that we have a pretty unique technology around gas compression and which is basically utilizing some of our unique technology on compressors to really compress the gas. It is one of the best market acceptance products that we have in the U.S. here. It is really accelerating the growth around RNG.
As we see that IRA is expanding, you know, whether the tax credits or even the funds to ensure that, you know, mid-level farmers or small farming solutions can actually obtain technologies like this, we're seeing an acceleration of growth on that. Clearly, hydrogen is another one with these hydrogen hubs. It's another vector of growth for us, and we have spoken in the past how we definitely continue to see good momentum on hydrogen. The third big area is around, you know, carbon capture solutions.
You saw on the earnings call, we spoke about how we as a company, we were selected as a core technology with our centrifugal blower technology to be able to be at the core of that process of being able to capture carbon and sequester the carbon capture and store it for ultimately, you know, have a better, safe environment. I think those are three key areas that even though it's early stages, we're already seeing good tailwinds and good momentum that we think this is the early innings of the game and expect that momentum to continue as we move forward.
Can we talk about, just digging a little bit more on the growth outlook for some of those products, and what you're excited about when you're having discussions with your customers, you know, on the hydrogen compression. I realize that the, carbon capture might be a separate conversation, but I just would like to get your sense of, you know, where you are with customers around these.
I think that this is where we think the intersection of the technology that we have with how we execute commercially around. We've spoken a lot about demand generation and how demand generation is our own internal marketing automation engine that help us generate roughly, you know, 5,000 qualified leads per week. Every single week, we're reaching out to great amounts of customers to proactively educate them on our technologies and our products, and that delivers to us that level of marketing qualified leads that then we translate into revenue, obviously.
I think that's a great way on how we're taking the technologies that we have, which are applicable into a multitude of processes, but being able to educate customers on how they can take our technologies and utilize that for their own end use. I would say that that has been what we call the self-help on the commercial side that has allowed us to be front and center into the customer as they're trying to come up with new ways or solutions on how they can actually accomplish some of the targets that they're putting out in their market.
Debbie, I think this is one of the reasons why we're excited with when there's good market changes and good market conditions, we can leverage our engine of demand generation to be able to accelerate our growth. That is what is really driving this good momentum. I mentioned before, give you an example, the renewable natural gas. This is coming through a company that we have in our portfolio with a brand called LeROI. LeROI was an acquisition that we made back in late 2017, early 2018. At the time, we purchased the company for roughly $30 million.
And today, you know, we're probably generating equal amount in EBITDA as to what the purchase that we made that company. That tells you the amount of growth that we have seen on that type of technology, which obviously, a lot of that has been around renewable natural gas and other processes around natural gas compression, allowing customers to be able to work more sustainable in their applications.
For a lot of companies right now, for the world, you have this post-COVID backdrop changing kind of geopolitical environment over the last year, hyperinflation, I can say that. You have discussion about the idea that maybe CapEx, we shouldn't be spending as much on more sustainable investment or activities. From what you're saying, sounds like your conversations with your customers are still pretty healthy on demand for those types of products. I'm curious, one, is that true? Two, what are your thoughts on that kind of idea around in the current environment, do we still think about sustainability the same?
Yeah, Debbie, I'll say today we have not seen any type of deprioritization of ESG in conversations that we have with our customers. I think on the contrary, I think what happened is that, for example, the energy crisis in Europe, that really was a bit of a wake-up call to a lot of our customers to realize how energy dependency or how energy can really affect their operations. They're now realizing that there is actually better ways on how they can actually drive their operations and create acceleration of energy efficiency. Even though the energy cost in Europe has still come down, still the level of conversations with our customers in Europe in particular is pretty high around how can we, as Ingersoll Rand, help them achieve energy efficiency.
They realize that, hey, compressors and air treatment systems in any type of process of a manufacturing facility consume roughly 30%-40% of the energy that is produced for a specific manufacturing site. This is a manufacturing location. When you go to a wastewater treatment facility and roughly 50%-60% of the energy consumed in that wastewater facility is because of the blowers that generate the aeration in the initial stages of a wastewater treatment facility.
They're realizing what we've been trying to say for so many years is that, "Hey, let us come in and show you and tell you how we can actually optimize that energy efficiency by connecting that compressor or that blower in a remotely fashion and be able to provide you, a better, you know, a much higher return on that investment, not only by connecting it, but also by bringing new technology," because technology has advanced dramatically in terms of how we make compressors, blowers, and vacuums. I will say that, even though, you know, as you said, maybe conversations around deprioritization, we have not seen that.
We think that what just happened here, over the past, 12 to 18 months on energy, supply chain, logistics, everything else, has just really accelerated customers to have that deeper conversation with us on how can we help them do an air audit and also optimize their energy consumption in their facilities.
Okay. Thank you for that. I find that whole combination like very important, very interesting. I'm gonna move to something that not everyone cares about as much, but I think it is still important from an investment perspective. Investors do look at third-party rating agencies. Last year, I think when we talked, you had either just got an upgrade from MSCI, or you did right shortly after. You score quite well there, so I just wanna point that out. At the same time, they've highlighted your lack of clean tech opportunities relative to peers, and R&D spend is relative to peers. I just wanted to give you the opportunity to discuss and address that if you know, you agree with that context.
Yeah. Libbie, I'll say that to your point, yes. I mean, we've seen acceleration, you know, MSCI AA, and we were just incorporated into the Dow Jones Sustainability Index. Not only incorporated, but now we're number 1 in North America in our category and number 2 across the world. We're making great strides and improvements. Specifically to the MSCI, even though we kind of got to the AA, our current score is based on our 2020 sustainability report, which is now more than 2 years old.
Our 2021 sustainability report contained roughly 10 pages on clean tech opportunities, including product highlights, you know, clean tech markets and products, you know, and circularity, around what we do in terms of remanufacture our products and kind of put them back into service. I think that as now, you know, MSCI gets a chance to re-review our scores, this is what we're excited is that so far, you know, that was not very well understood because we did not incorporate that level of detail on our 2020. Our 2021 report included a lot of good details, and obviously available to everyone.
I think it's just that we have, you know, opportunities in clean tech are abundant from compressors, vacuum systems for carbon capture, the hydrogen refueling stations that we just talked about. Hydrogen, but also hydrogen refueling stations. I think the opportunity for us to continue to accelerate and improve our scores is exciting. Hopefully, you know, we will continue to see that we can demonstrate that we can continue to be upgraded in our ratings.
Okay. Thank you for pointing that out because I'll take a closer look at that to maybe. Next time they review you, they'll incorporate that information. I have one more question on kind of product benefits, and then we'll switch to some human capital priorities. You do mention in your sustainability deck, you talk about circularity benefits of your products. Can you just give us a little bit more color on that angle and how you really help your customers with that?
I'll probably give you two examples. You know, one, with our compressors, which is obviously one of our largest product lines that we have. We can take what's inside the compressor, what we call the heart of the compressor, which is the air ends, and we can take it back into our facilities, and we can remanufacture the air end and then put it back into service. What that does is that really extends the life of the compressor. Not every customer is opting to do that, but there's many customers that really prefer to go through that process.
That's one of the things that we offer. On our other product line, we call Nash, which is our liquid ring vacuum solution, heavily used in, you know, pulp and paper, but many other kind of harsh environments in petrochemical facilities or chemical facilities as well. On that one, we have a very rigorous process on how we can really remanufacture and condition those liquid ring Nash pumps back into the market multiple times. We had, we have, you know, Nash branded vacuum blowers out in the market in some cases for, you know, 40, 50 years.
Because again, you know, the, the castings and what's on the outside is very robust and all you have to do is just kind of continually to service and remanufacturing the internal guts of the, of the machinery. I think those are things that we definitely do for our customer as a way to create that, circularity, environment where we can continue to reuse, a lot of the metal and the product that we have in the market.
Thank you. Thank you for walking me through that. Shifting to human capital priorities. I'd like to start with D&I. I believe you have a target of 25%.
Mm-hmm
...female representation. Want to just make sure, clarify if I have the nuances on that correct? Where are you today and how do you plan to get to where you'd like to be?
Yeah. Debbie, honestly, human capital is definitely one of our kind of core things that we believe that we're very unique. I'll talk about the D&I here in a second, but also highlight our ownership mindset that we drive with our employee base, where all 16,000 employees in the company have ownership in Ingersoll Rand. You have seen our story, how, you know, 2017 when we became public as the current member, we gave about $100 million of equity to all employees. This is the non-management equity participants. 2020, when we combined the two companies, we did it again with $150 million of equity at that time to all 16,000 employees.
Now every year at the 1-year anniversary, for those companies that we acquire or new employees that we bring, we award them with again, some level of equity in the company. They have that skin in the game and continue with us on this long-term journey that we have ahead of us. In terms of D&I, we're proud with a lot of accomplishments that we have done. For us, it really starts at the Board level. When you look at our Board, our Board is roughly 60% diverse already from gender and ethnicity. We're probably one of the only companies that have, you know, two Hispanics, two females, an African-American in our Board.
We did it in a way that it was not only that level of diversity on gender and ethnicity, but also diversity in the way of experiences and thinking process that is very well aligned with our strategic priorities. Taken from the Board level, and it just kind of trickles down. In the past 3 years, we have now created, you know, 7 inclusion groups. We have drove incredible improvement in engagement and retention, and we're focused on a process to develop and promote internally. You know, additionally, you know, we have made a very strong external partnership to attract talent. Actually, I was just last week at Georgia Tech, one of the universities here close by to us, to recruit diverse engineering candidates.
I think it's really kind of core to our strategy. Me as being Hispanic and, you know, one of the, maybe, I don't know, maybe half a dozen Hispanic CEOs in public companies today, proud of what we can do and what we can accomplish around this effort. It is very conscious for us, something that we're driving consistently, that we can continue to improve and accelerate. As you very well said, we have some pretty aggressive targets that we want to continue to execute towards to.
Thank you. Thank you for walking us through that. I think last year you were also just coming back from recruiting as well. It sounds like that's.
Yeah.
...something good to do. Okay. Just wanna shift gears a little bit, let's talk a little about water scarcity. For those of you that don't know, we had COP 15 this past December. A lot of discussion around commitment to, preserving 30% of the water in the world. I think we've now had some actually pretty big commitments, globally come out recently. You have, you know, made efforts to help, companies with this and on this effort. I think that this is gonna become, an even bigger and more growing topic, than it already is. Can you walk us through that and how, Ingersoll Rand can help?
I mean, this is, we talk a lot about energy efficiency. I mean, let's not forget about the water conservation and efficiency. It's also an area that we pay particular close attention. Give you an example here where we have a technology that we acquired around circa roughly late 2018. A company in Finland called Runtech. Runtech has a very unique technology around blower technology, particularly applicable to the pulp and paper industry. We acquired this business because of the potential. At the time, it was roughly a, you know, technology. Now we have continued to develop and penetrate that pulp and paper market very extensively.
If you think about it, if today a piece of paper consumes I think it's like 20 liters of water to be able to be made. That tells you in perspective, just one, you know, A4 paper, how much water consumes. It has to do on when you go to a pulp and paper facility, it's just the way you transport the pulp, the way you kind of de-decompose the pulp, the way you put the chemicals and you fix it. Our technology actually saves 90% of the fresh water consumption at a pulp and paper facility. Very dramatic improvement.
If you think about it, and we take our technology, which is penetrating pretty quickly and growing very rapidly because of that, and you apply to all pulp and paper facilities across, you know, the world, the larger ones, you can actually save over 50 billion gallons of water per year. It is a lot of water that could be saved. I think this is, you know, customer adoption is starting. We're seeing some good phenomenal growth that we're actually having great conversations with customers around how this technology can help them on the water, but then also on the energy savings. It's actually a dual savings for customers where paybacks are call it a year or less, in today's monetary situation.
I think it's just one of those that we expect will continue to accelerate as we go forward in terms of helping our customers be able to conserve this very scarce, you know, resource that we have with fresh water.
Internally as well, I think you're making some commitments to reduce your own water, to imagine is a, is a nice thing to be able to talk to your customers about as well. Can you talk a bit about that?
Absolutely. So to meet our 2030 goal of 17% reduction in absolute water, we're very focused on we have one facility in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, that where we actually have our own die casting facility. Now we have upgraded and run a pilot where we're using closed loop water for cooling down the die casting process. And it has dramatically reduced, you know, already, you know, close to 25% water reduction in this facility alone. I think it's just one of those and now as we continue to expand to the other machines, we expect that we should be able to get to that 2030 target without any issue whatsoever.
Again, it's just something that internally we're putting a lot of attention to as well on how can we drive technologies to be able to achieve that water conservation. Which is a great example, Debbie, in terms of, hey, we're doing a lot of our own work internally, and a lot of our customers are doing it. That's why going back to that pre-prior conversation around, you know, capital investments and how customers think about whether deprioritizing, we don't see that because, I mean, it's the right thing to do, and customers are viewing it as a way, hey, it's not only the right thing to do for the planet, but it's a great return on that investment that they're making. In our case, the same thing. It's reducing the water, but it's just reducing the cost dramatically as well.
Let's shift and move on to another target you have, which is your net zero target. Can you talk about a little bit about your roadmap to that? I mean, I think someone else at this conference said, you know, technology to get to net zero probably hasn't even been invented yet, right? But we're...
Mm.
We're still moving forward to try to figure out how we can get there with what we have today. What are your plans there?
Yeah. I will tell you that, for our Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions, we got a very clear line of sight to our 2030 and 2050. That's clearly not an issue there. Scope 3, which is, you know, the impact of our products, it is always the most difficult scope to kind of calculate and analyze. The good news is that we have a great way on how we're calculating that. It has been audited, and now we're going into the execution mode.
I have no doubt that based on how we're leveraging our IRX and processes on execution, once we know the target and when we know where we are, we know where we need to be, we're just gonna go into that execution mode to be able to achieve our Scope 3, Scope 2 as well. Again, Scope 1 and Scope 2, clear line of sight. Scope 3, we now have a baseline, and now we're going into execution mode.
Okay. I imagine that you kinda you're gonna have to really be engaging with your suppliers, too on all of that, and not just on emissions. Can you talk about how you do have those conversations, with them? You know, what is the ask of them? What is the expectation?
Yeah. great point there, Debbie. I'd say, you know, 3 critical priorities that we have. One is consolidating the supply base, so we can generate, you know, cost synergies while we're maintaining and improving the quality and the lead time. If you think about it, we're still early stages on that because over the past couple of years, with the supply chain disruption that happened globally, it was something that we just could not do. As we continue to see better stability and moving forward, continues to be a very core strategy for us to be able to achieve that.
The second step is, you know, 95% of the critical tier one suppliers that we call, and this is by spend, in order of spend, we're creating a newly established preferred supplier program. This supplier preferred program goes into our third strategy, which is that we have standardized systems, reporting metrics that create an ongoing and comprehensive view of the sustainability across these tier one suppliers, which are kind of the majority of our spend. You know, and I think that's gonna give us to better connection with our supply chain. You know, we also created a independent third-party partnership with IntegrityNext. I think this is gonna give us, you know, a great ability to understand potential risks in environmental protection, human rights, labor, anti-bribery, anti-corruption.
just go beyond what the supply chain and the suppliers are doing. We'll go deeper into this and be able to make sure that we have a very clear four-step process today engaged with IntegrityNext, where we can quickly identify and request corrective actions as needed for sustainability risks. I think it's something that we're launching here in 2023. But we have again, very good kind of clear line of sight of three steps and also partnering with a third-party company that can help us accelerate this auditing process and have a very clear line of sight to key metrics that we can drive with our suppliers as it relates to the sustainability risk.
Yeah. I'd like to ask you how that's going next year. That sounds like a good effort that you're putting together to drive that engagement. I also noticed that you guys recently completed a life cycle assessment. I've seen other companies do this, and I'm just curious, what did you learn? Were there any surprises for you when you went through them? Usually it's a pretty cumbersome process to understand, and you tend to learn maybe a little bit more about things you didn't know, but...
Yeah, it was a pretty exhaustive process, as you said it. We completed the baseline in 2020. We also had that reviewed by a third party to make sure that, you know, as a way on how we can create that baseline and start measuring from here. Through the process, we were able to determine that, you know, the total greenhouse gas emissions and water impact for the lifetime of our products in their use and in their phase. That gave us a very good perspective on how we can then from here on move and improve. We launched something that we call Design for Sustainability Standard Work. This is embedded within our new product development process.
It basically prompts our engineers and product managers to think about sustainable product options, efficiency, circularity, safety. As they are developing new solutions for customers, there's actually standard work around these design for sustainability that allows them to think differently and if nothing else, just ask the question as to, "Hey, have you thought about doing ABC?" Or, "What is the process for ensuring that you are achieving these safety or energy efficiency standards?" I think it's changing the way we continue to design new innovation products and solutions. It has been deployed across our global engineering team. Again, it's one of those that we expect to see continue improving moving forward.
We'll continue the life cycle assessment process for 2021 and 2022, which will be published in our 2022 sustainability report at the end of June. You'll be able to get a chance to read more of that, as we publish our next sustainability report here.
Okay, thank you. We do have one question from the audience, and it's about aligning some of your incentives, your management incentives with the ESG goals.
Mm-hmm.
What your thought process is around that?
Yes. Very recent with our comp committee, I mean, we are definitely engaging in that conversation. We have actually something that we are driving today, mostly for our long-term incentive program. It is in what I call a test mode period here in 2023. By 2024, you'll see that we will be launching something more formalized. Yeah, it's top of mind to all of us, and one that, you know, we're doing a bit of a metric tracking internally in 2023, and including something that we continue to report to our Board on an ongoing basis. As specifically tying that to our compensation, the compensation of a senior management team, we expect that something will come out here in 2024.
You mentioned your Board. You've had a handful of Board changes, I wouldn't say incredibly recently, but recently. Can you talk about what type of, or talk about those changes and what type of perspective you think that these newer people will bring to the Board?
Debbie. We have been very thoughtful in terms of the domain expertise that we bring into our, into our Board. If you go back when we moved from being a private equity company and we went to public and we start changing our Board composition, we wanted to do something that is very well aligned with our core strategy. We start looking for. We're big in the combination of organic and inorganic growth as a way to be a compounder of long-term industrial premier compounder value. From an organic perspective, we went on and kind of hired Bill Donnelly from Mettler-Toledo. Mettler is a company that has seen phenomenal organic growth for 25 years organically and has compounded their value tremendously.
For inorganic, you know, John Humphrey from Roper, which obviously Roper transformed itself by being an inorganic compounder. Most recently, we brought Mark Stevenson to our Board, who comes in from Thermo Fisher, who as you very well know, Thermo Fisher has completely dramatically changed themselves. Over the past 20 years by a combination of organic and inorganic, and being very well aligned to high growth, sustainable growth markets, which is also something that we aspire to actually continue to align ourselves to these high growth, sustainable end markets. We brought in also Michael Stubblefield from Avantor, which again, very good organic, inorganic, and high growth alignment into those markets. Jennifer Harting from Cargill.
She comes in with a technology background, a technology mind, and as you think about our IoT and how we connect a lot of our compressors and machines and devices, we just need to ensure that we're protecting our company from an ERP perspective, but also from a technology of data transmission. You got Mark Jones that came in from Silicon Valley, where he runs a company that translate that data transmission into revenue models and revenue streams, which again, this is exactly what we wanna be able to accomplish. And so on and so on. That's, that has been the transformation of our Board.
It's been very specific on domain expertise that we need in our company in order to ensure that we continue to compound our value and for them to bring just this dramatic kind of great amount of knowledge, while at the same time being a great group of diverse way of thinking, backgrounds, ethnicity, and gender.
I have two more questions for you, and I'll start by saying I find the companies that attend this conference are usually pretty comfortable with their sustainability story, and they're usually, you know, making a very good effort along the important metrics that they need to focus on in product development. That said, what do you think or do you think investors fully appreciate this? If not, you know, what do you think that you're not having conversations with investors about that you think that they should be paying attention to on this topic?
Yeah. I think that... I think we have, over the past maybe 2.5, 3 years, we have radically transformed this company. We divested assets that were cyclical in nature with, you know, that we no longer have in our business, that were not that very well aligned with sustainability. Now we take in the core of our technologies, which is mission-critical flow creation technologies. These are technologies that are so diverse in application that we can be very specific and very targeted where we want to play, in which end markets, and where we don't want to play, and still achieve the growth that we have been able to achieve. Double-digit growth for the past, call it, seven to eight quarters.
I think it's just still investors trying to understand our transformational journey. We believe that we're still, you know, in the early innings of the game because there are just a lot of tailwinds. The tailwinds of ESG is real. We see it. The tailwind of onshoring is real. I mean, we as a company, we are doing it ourselves. Meaning, whether expanding footprint in India, Europe, the U.S., reopening facilities. We're doing it. We see our customers doing it, and we can play with that. That's a great tailwind. The tailwind of this IoT and how we connect our devices and increase our recurrent revenue, that's still to come.
investors trying to understand how a lot of these tailwinds can help achieve and overgrow in our business. It just takes time to understand, time to see it. But we just continue to execute and leverage a lot of these sustainability topics as a way for us to be very focused and clear some good growth vectors that we know can help us, you know, overgrow our market
Yeah. I think some of those themes came up on during our conversation today.
Yeah.
nice to walk through that. The last question I have for you, and you can give this me your broader view or you can apply it to Ingersoll Rand, you can choose. I would like to know what are you from a sustainability perspective, what are you most optimistic about, as we sit here today with maybe some pessimism, to be fair, in the environment? What are you most optimistic about?
You know what I am very optimistic is that I am as a company, we do think that sustainability is real. It's Companies are just not talking about it, they're doing it. it is amazing how now the conversation, in my opinion, has gone from having to talk to the plant manager, let's say in our customer base, when we talk to our customers, sometimes we knock on the door and we talk to the plant manager. Now the conversations are happening at the C-suite level. at the C-suite level, where they're global operation leaders for, you know, very large companies, having conversations with me and my team on what we can do to help them with energy efficiency and sustainability.
I think this is now the conversations are, have been risen to go from the plant level to that global corporate level, which obviously I think is just gonna drive that level of higher accountability and acceleration of potential investments around sustainability. I do feel that companies are finding that core and customers, our customers, and we are too, finding that core that sustainability, as I said at the beginning when I opened the call, is great for the planet, but it's also great for companies because they can achieve great return on that investment and they can achieve actually growth. It's also important to recruit talent. I mentioned going to Georgia Tech. I mean, it is top of mind to the younger generation of engineers and students on what companies are doing to help the planet.
It is top of mind. It's probably one of the number one questions we get. If someone is just kind of faking it and just talking about sustainability but not doing it, they're gonna have trouble hiring great talent, and they're gonna have trouble getting into a new end markets, and they're gonna have trouble getting that performance that they need to achieve. I think the difference now and the optimistic view for, from my view and for us, is that it is real. We see it. We live it every day, so we're doing it, we're acting on it. At least the customers that we're getting aligned to, it's real for them as well.
The younger generation can make you optimistic as well.
Absolutely.
Thank you very much. Always nice to speak through all of these issues and topics with you. Hope that we get to do this again next year.
For sure.
Thank you all for participating and listening, and see you next time. Bye.
Yeah. Thank you . Bye-bye.