Good morning, everyone. My name is Brandon Knutson. I am on the Multi-Industrials research team here at Morgan Stanley, and today I have the pleasure of speaking with Vicente Reynal, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer of Ingersoll Rand, and Vik Kini, Chief Financial Officer of Ingersoll Rand. Before we get started, I have to read some disclosure announcements. For important disclosures, please see the Morgan Stanley Research Disclosure website at morganstanley.com/researchdisclosures. If you have any questions, please reach out to your Morgan Stanley representative. All right, so Vicente.
A lot of industrial companies are describing improvement, but your short cycle and medium cycle businesses were already growing mid-single digits. What are you seeing as the clearest evidence that the cycle is broadening?
Yeah. I will say, the first quarter you saw that organic revenues, we were down about 1%, and Q2 moved into positive mid-single digits, around 4% organic revenue growth. We also, on the last earnings call, we gave a bit of a color into the July number. Something typically that we do not tend to do, but it was just to talk about that not only the short cycle businesses was picking up, but also that long cycle business we are starting to see. I think the importance there is that it was not a one-time event, it was not a one-time single project, it was not an easy comp, and it was fairly broad-based in terms of end markets and regional side. I think we sit here fairly optimistic with what we are seeing.
We also feel that this is not just some of the market moving, but the investments that we have done over the past 12- 18 months on the organic side, whether it is feet on the street, new facilities. About this time last year, we were celebrating an opening of our new facility in Latin America, in Brazil, where we can actually localize technologies. We also expanded our compressor facility in India after continuing to see phenomenal double-digit growth in India. I think a lot of these investments are paying off as we see here moving forward.
That's great. Regionally, Americas appears to be strongest today while Europe has been more mixed. What do you think is driving that divergence, and do you see any change on the ground there?
Yeah. I'll say over the past couple of years or few years, the European business has been the most, I'll say, stable. Albeit not growing, but fairly stable. If you remember, we spoke about the North America business seeing a bit of a headwind about 12- 18 months ago when renewable natural gas was kind of peaking around late 2024, early 2025, in terms of orders, and then basically coming out to almost zero. Now we're just kind of offsetting that. Offsetting that, but also seeing general manufacturing, food and beverage, power gen, some of the kind of more general industrial end markets seeing better momentum and obviously leading to what we saw in the second quarter, which it was basically high single-digit organic order momentum in the Americas business.
That's great. How much of this recent growth would you say is underlying market strength versus Ingersoll-driven share gain and commercial execution?
It's a little bit of both. It's kind of what we like to say. Power, PMIs, as we all know, they turn to be in about 15 January. We always said that ITS business in particular takes about a couple quarters to see the turn, and that's kind of what you kind of saw here in the second quarter. So there's a little bit of that market tailwind that is happening. Again, I go back to and make reference to the comment that I made on the investments that we have done. Another investment that we have done that we're putting a lot of effort into it over the past 12, 18 months that we expect to see benefit of that is our engineer-to-order solution. If you think about as a company, we tend to be very decentralized and we operate in individual P&Ls.
We have two segments, but there's nine P&Ls that report directly into me. We launched an initiative on applying some vertical market approach for creating solutions. Whether it will be wastewater facilities or things of that nature, we can take technologies from both ITS and PST, combine them, and be able to provide a very unique solution to the customer. Or kind of working with specific end users that may want to take the same approach in a more modularized approach where we can take a kit with multiple technologies and then provide that to the customer so it facilitates the installation at the site. I think a lot of those solutions is something that we have been doing a lot of investments. We have manufacturing locations across the world that are dedicated to this. We have engineers globally that are dedicated to this.
We think that this is going to be a good outcome for Ingersoll Rand moving forward. Be able to provide the solutions that, combined with a little bit of a tailwind in the market, could accelerate how we view things organically.
You see that as coming through a little bit in the second quarter, but really the tail and return on that investment should be over the next 12 months or so?
That's our view. Mm-hmm.
Great. You mentioned July having strong inflection in orders that you talked about on the Q2 call. Should investors see that as a true beginning of the trend, or is it timing of large projects or maybe related to getting ahead of price increases, anything there?
Yeah, no, I think we are very encouraged by what we saw in July. To Vicente Reynal's point, it is not our norm to give an inter-quarter orders update, but we thought it was important to give a little bit of color on what we saw in July. We had the benefit of sitting at the end of July. We had the first four weeks of July behind us. Excuse me. What we said was that orders in the ITS side of the equation was up mid-teens. The way to think about that is, I would say comparable momentum on the short to medium cycle is what you saw in Q2. But obviously, the kicker, for lack of a better way to say this, or the outpaced growth was driven a lot by the long cycle side of the equation.
We have described our portfolio that in ITS, about 40% of our business is aftermarket. When you look at the original equipment, about 75% is short to medium cycle, 25% behaves more long cycle. Those long cycle are those larger projects that really inherently exist across, I would really say, our entire portfolio, compressor, blower, vacuum, even pumps, and they are pretty widespread from a geographic perspective. There is not really a huge concentration in one region versus another. Pretty widespread. That is exactly what we saw in July. In July, we saw a number of those larger projects that we had been talking about being in the funnel, the long cycle funnel over the last couple of years, being active and healthy. But we would acknowledge you had seen an elongation in terms of decision making, those POs getting to the finish line.
What you saw in July was a number of those normal course, longer cycle projects across a wide variety of end markets, finally getting to that PO stage. The way we describe it here is very encouraged, obviously, by what we are seeing. Obviously, we do not view it as some big flush of the funnel or anything like that. The quoting activity has been quite healthy and active in terms of replenishment and continuation of that funnel. I think, obviously, one month is just one data point, but I think we remain very encouraged by now starting to see the short to medium cycle momentum that we have been talking about for a few quarters. Now, for the first time and in quite a while, seeing the long cycle also starting to see some traction on top.
It is the first time in, frankly, the better part of the last two years, where you have kind of now seen not just organic volume starting to come back in a more meaningful manner, but also seeing contributions kind of from both sides of the original equipment portfolio.
Okay, and you made it clear that those projects were being delayed, not necessarily canceled, and now it is coming through in July and proving that out. Are you still seeing customer willingness to commit to these long cycle CapEx projects improving, or is it more elongated cycles, essentially?
No, we see the momentum on that continues to, I will say, increase. The funnel continues to grow. We continue to see investments, whether some of those could be related to nearshoring, could it be to some of the semiconductor exposure. We still believe that there is more to come around maybe the rebuilding some of the things that are happening in the Middle East and things of that nature. I think we continue to expect to see some of these kind of longer cycle projects to continue.
That is great. Is there any market that dominates the long cycle pipeline? You have talked about food and beverage, pharma, power gen, but anyone that kind of dominates and anyone that can become disproportionately large in that pipeline?
No, I wouldn't say there's anyone that dominates it, to your point, and I think the point we have long cycle exposure across, like I said, most of our product technologies, and by definition, it means it's quite globally spread. So to your point, whether it be infrastructure, power gen, air separation, water, wastewater, food and beverage, you've seen a number of different outlets and avenues. Now, to your point, yeah, historically, just based on maybe regional trends and things like that, you have seen certain end markets be able to show disproportionate growth. That's why you've seen things like, for example, in the 2022, 2023 timeframe, you saw EV batteries in China, which lends itself to some of our long cycle equipment there. Or RNG in the U.S., which lends itself to some of our gas compression technology.
But I think overall, longer term kind of duration and horizon, no, nothing that we'd say is disproportionately larger, plays pretty well across a variety of end markets.
Great. I want to shift gears a little bit to AI and data center. It's obviously the big theme within industrial is driving a lot of activity, but investors don't typically think of Ingersoll Rand as primarily a beneficiary of data center. Where exactly do compressors, vacuums, blowers, et cetera, participate in the AI infrastructure space?
Yeah. So it's an interesting one because so far it has been definitely minimal. I would say that we believe that we have the right to play in some places. And that's back to the commentary that I made about these engineer-to-order solutions and how we can combine different technologies, provide modularized technologies that could actually be co-located within a specific environment, and provide the easiness of plug and play versus what we're seeing is getting done out there. Still early days, early stages for us to participate pronouncedly. We think that there is an avenue for us to play there, and we'll see more as we move forward here in the future, and whether it could be working with hyperscalers or co-locators and things of that nature.
In addition to that, obviously there's secondary activities, second degree attachment to the AI and data center boom, whether it could be the semiconductor expansion, and that, of course, we play. We're one of the market leaders in working with some of the gas companies on compressors for air separation. A lot of these facilities, they have also wastewater facilities and need some of that as well, which we can do. There's some secondary, but I think in the first degree on how do we get closer, we have been doing a lot of voice of customer, a lot of understanding, a lot of visits to data centers to see how can we, with our engineer-to-order solutions, we can improve the way things are done, and I think there's some potential avenues there.
Now that you've been in the market for more time with these engineer-to-order solutions, are you starting to see real traction with data center infrastructure builders?
We're definitely having conversations.
Okay.
Which is good.
Early days.
The doors are not getting closed.
Right. Okay. Sounds good. Switching a little bit to aftermarket, that represents about a little over a third of the business. How quickly does aftermarket grow when equipment sales accelerate? What's the timeline for that flipping?
Yeah. Typically, I think what you're seeing here is that aftermarket as percentage of sales, kind of high 30s, call it rounded up to 40. We have aspirations for that to continue to grow. Over time, you're seeing the absolute dollar of aftermarket grow. Clearly, the OE is also growing, so that's why the percentage continues to stay in that kind of level. But typically, to your point, we start seeing almost at the time that you install the equipment, you see some aftermarket consumables. It starts as consumables because in order to maintain the warranty, you have to use a lot of the consumables, in many cases, to ensure the proper efficiency of the compressor, as an example. Then from there, after warranty, more service and solutions.
We have said a lot about that we are moving to a model where we can get a customer in an agreement for five or 10 years that provides a bit more benefit for them to be a much more sustainable OpEx line for them while we have the capability of connecting the compressor or the asset and be able to remote monitor, remote do PMs, and be able to send service technicians for the right procedure that needs to happen if something were to fail. You could argue that aftermarket, six months into the installation, starts to come in the consumable and starts to ramp sustainably from there.
Is there any application or product set where that service opportunity is not there? Or is it the whole portfolio is an opportunity, essentially, on new equipment to add service on top of it?
We view it as everything that we have in the portfolio has an opportunity to create aftermarket, even including on some of the technology that we have in our life sciences solutions. We do, for example, a lot of the robotic automation for liquid handling. There is an opportunity as well for having a service solution and aftermarket on that.
That is great. I want to shift a little bit to M&A. That is a big part of the growth algorithm. You all have shown to be great compounders and really disciplined on M&A that you do. You walked away from approximately $1 billion of potential transactions recently because valuations just seemed a little too rich. Has the broader M&A market become more or less attractive in your view?
I would say that we have, I think in the last earning call, we said that earnings call, we said we have roughly 200 companies in the funnel. We still have that or more, 11 companies on their LOI, letter of intent, and that letter of intent, typically very high percentage likelihood that it will get into a closing of the transaction. We continue to be very pleased with the flywheel that we have in the bolt-on M&A, and that we do it in a very disciplined fashion. If you look at the aggregate companies that we acquired in 2025, low single-digit multiple, 9.5 times pre-synergy, and one that we believe we can take down three or four turns on a post-synergy multiple on things that we can control, SG&A, direct materials, pricing efforts, and things of that nature.
From time to time, we then see some larger transactions, but we remain very disciplined. These larger transactions, basically one of them, we never saw. You've got to be careful now because some companies are seeing some of that second degree of AI or data center exposure, and you got to be careful because you get a discount that eventually is going to come down, I guess. I think we just remain very disciplined on how we look at the companies on a financial performance perspective.
When you're looking at these acquisition targets, how important is increasing aftermarket content when you're evaluating opportunities?
It is important. It is not the sole factor that we look at, but we always like to say that we're looking for companies that have a good gross margin that we can actually expand and companies that have a level of aftermarket that we can see that we can improve. Aftermarket continues to be a factor on that decision-making.
Is there any reason Ingersoll needs to do another large platform acquisition, or are there enough opportunities on the bolt-on side to deliver the inorganic growth that you need?
Plenty of opportunities at this point in time. We do not see the need to do a transformational acquisition. Obviously, we continue to execute on this bolt-on strategy that we have. From time to time, we continue to look and understand, is there anything out there that could be transformational in nature? But for that, it has to be something very unique and very special that will give us the ambition to do it. But for now, we remain disciplined on our bolt-on strategy, and we will continue to observe, and if we see anything that could be transformational in nature, we can do it. We have the financial power and the liquidity to be able to do it when we are only 1.7 times lever and roughly $4 billion of liquidity. We have the capability and the capacity, but we are going to continue to remain disciplined.
What do you see as how high you would go leverage-wise in order to do a large deal if something became attractive and available?
Yeah. I think we want to stay prudent. We have always said that we want to, long term, keep profile leverage sub two times. To that point, if there is something that is, quote-unquote, "transformational of nature" that we feel like is a great fit, the concept of going to arguably over three times leverage, but then having an imminent path back to that sub two times leverage in a relatively short timeframe, sure, that is something we will evaluate.
But to Vicente's point, we are going to continue to be prudent and patient. Just to give it a little color, all of the deals that we talked about under LOI are of the smaller bolt-on variety, very similar to what you have seen us execute on over the last 6- 18 months. I do not think anything is going to change in that perspective in terms of being disciplined and prudent.
Great. I want to pivot to China a little bit. That one has been a drag on ITS margins recently because inflation has been difficult to recover through pricing.
Why has pricing been more difficult in China than the rest of the world?
Sure. Yeah, maybe I will start there, maybe give a little bit of color here. As far as the margin profile, and I will kind of weave this in with the pricing question. I think historically speaking, if you were to go back two, three, four, five years ago, China or Asia Pacific as a percentage of our overall revenue was closer to 20%. China was about 15% of that 20%. So it was the lion's share of our Asia Pacific portfolio. For the factors that Vicente Reynal mentioned, back into kind of really exiting the 2023, 2024 timeframe, the big run-up you had seen in things like EV batteries kind of came back down. And frankly, just the overall China market reset that you have seen. China is now closer to about 10% of our revenue profile, whereas Asia Pacific is about 15%.
So obviously, China has kind of reset, for lack of a better way to say this, within the overall kind of portfolio. A couple of things that you have seen over the last few years. One, obviously, as you have seen that reset, first and foremost, our Asia Pacific business is a profitable region, and obviously when you have seen that kind of volume reset, you have seen some headwinds on the margin front compared to where we were a few years ago, largely attributable to that kind of volume kind of component. As far as the pricing side of the equation is concerned, a couple of comments. We did indicate that in Q2, you saw China was about a negative low single-digit headwind to pricing. So total ITS is delivering between 1%-2% price with that negative low single digit from China.
Now, if you go back in time, China really never has played at the same levels of pricing as North America or Western Europe. Think of it as being more flattish. So, maybe there is a couple of 100 basis point headwind to that, which I think is just a reflection of kind of the overall market, some of the over-capacitization you have seen in the overall environment, not necessarily just our equipment, but kind of broader speaking. For our perspective here, what is encouraging is starting to see some of that China volume starting to come back. Even in Q2, we indicated that China was actually up low double digits inclusive of that pricing headwind, which means volume was probably up more like mid-teens.
I think as we continue to see, I would say better stability and traction in China, more medium term, we would expect to see pricing get nominally a little bit better. We are not expecting China pricing to get positive necessarily or back to the levels of North America or Europe, but closer to that flattish realm over the medium term, I think is more the expectation. It is just going to take a little bit of time.
What needs to happen there? Because you said volume is already coming back, but pricing has not. What else needs to happen besides volumes in order for pricing to normalize?
Yeah, I think it is just a little bit of just time and normalization. We have been through a couple years of that entire market getting reset. So, one quarter or two quarters is not going to necessarily be the inflection point. It is going to take a little bit more time for stabilization. But I think to your point, the good news is we see encouraging trends at least just in terms of how some of the broader market dynamics are playing out there, at least saw it in Q2. I think the other piece here is if you look kind of under the covers of our China business, again, not all products are necessarily made equal in the context of pricing.
We are seeing positive pricing in certain areas like aftermarket and maybe some of the more differentiated newer products that we've brought to that market over the course of the last few years, like blower and vacuum and air treatment, as well as some of the localized product that we've brought from some of the bolt-on acquisitions. Again, I think we're going to continue to obviously manage it in a portfolio-wide approach, but it's just going to take time is kind of the basics.
If we get a few more quarters of China volumes increasing, do you have a sense for how long it usually takes for that price environment to normalize? Is it a 12-month phenomenon, 18, six?
Yeah, tough to say exactly the right timeframe here, but I think your point is valid here. If we continue to see better traction on the volume side, we would expect things will start to settle down a little bit, then we can start kind of closing some of that, narrowing some of that gap we see on the pricing side between where we are today and more of that flattish level.
Would you ever choose to exit kind of lower differentiation product categories where pricing is structurally unattractive rather than just chasing the volume that comes with it?
I think in our view, when you think about our products, we tend to be highly differentiated, which is the reason why we continue to maintain pretty high level of margin and the ability to be able to get that 1%-2% of price every single year, regardless of the market. I will say that on purpose, we want to take technologies that are differentiated. When you think about it, we are a billion-dollar, roughly, revenue company. We play in a $75 billion addressable market. Plenty of opportunity for us to be selective on technologies that we want to continue to acquire. Plenty of opportunities for us to be selective in the end markets that we want to play. We believe that we can only win as long as we really deliver that total cost of ownership with differentiated solution.
Broadening out from China, you gave the July update on the quarterly call, but as you look across the rest of the world, how would you characterize the underlying demand environment today?
Yeah, sure. I will just keep it relatively simple here. I think North America obviously has been seeing the best kind of improvement here. We talked about it in Q2. High single digit kind of orders improvement. So continuing encourage of what we are seeing in North America, particularly after kind of the last two years that have been a little bit more tougher sliding, for lack of a better way to say it. We talked pretty extensively about China and Asia Pacific just now. Obviously, Europe is the piece, or we run it as EMEIA, Europe, Middle East, India, Africa. To Vicente Reynal's point from earlier, it has been the most stable region now over the last few years. I think right now it is kind of relatively neutral. Not all parts of EMEIA are kind of made equal, for lack of a better way to say that.
I think India, for example, has been our best growing region for probably the last number of years. Clearly right now, Middle East obviously has seen some of the challenges. Central Europe, comparable areas like Italy, Spain, have been seeing some pockets of opportunity. Some puts and takes within, I would say, the broader EMEIA expanse, but when you put it all together, relatively neutral. Areas like we mentioned India, areas like Latin America, areas like Southeast Asia. We have kind of highlighted those as probably three of the four kind of major areas of, we would say, potential outsized growth as you think more medium to longer term. A lot of that is just because of we have good presence there.
We've been making structural investments, whether it be commercial investments or I think Vicente Reynal has mentioned here, we've put two new manufacturing plants into operation over the course of last year, one in Latin America for localized compressor manufacturing, a second manufacturing plant in India for compressors because we frankly had run out of capacity in our first one. Those are areas that we see, I'd say maybe slightly outsized opportunity just because of maybe our historical presence. Our share there is not at the same levels that you see in areas like North America and Western Europe. So again, continue to be optimistic there in terms of the long-term growth. But I'd say that's kind of how we're seeing the expanse from North America to Europe to APAC.
Great. Getting more specific on ITS, we saw organic growth grow 4%-ish in Q2, but EBITDA margins declined YoY. You highlighted China price cost as being a pressure there, but also investments that you're making in new technologies and commercial operations and higher corporate costs. Which one of those reverses the fastest and which one is more of a structural phenomenon?
I'll tell you, the first is going to be the price cost situation. We spoke about how as we were into last year, because of tariff situation, we were going to do price cost neutral, meaning that increasing on the price to cover the tariff, but not to kind of get the margin or benefit of that price on that side. As we kind of move here into the second half, I mean, we're comping some of that. In addition to that, we have done also incremental pricing that we typically do here in the first half of the year. So that's going to prove to kind of deliver some better improvement on the price cost equation. The second piece is that as we tend to always optimize the business, we did some restructuring kind of end of Q4, kind of early Q1 roughly.
Some of that kind of will see some of the fruit too as well as we kind of come into a second half.
Then you see the long term ITS earnings power, they are approaching 30% EBITDA margins. What needs to happen operationally for this segment to get there?
I think what I say that it is a segment that we see structurally nothing different than, I mean, it can definitely continue to achieve or will get to that 30%. Structurally nothing that has dramatically changed except obviously the tariff situation that has been this kind of price cost neutral that really affects the margin. Also in addition to that you saw the negative organic volume that clearly that created the headwinds. I mean, despite that, the segment still runs at high 20s, I mean, 26%, 27% EBITDA margins. So we are in that kind of closing to the line that as we continue to now get the price cost equation improvement, and as we start to see in the volume, the organic volume, those are going to be the main drivers to kind of get back to those levels.
On PST, that continues to be a bright spot, 31.5% margins in Q2, targeting around 32% + in the second half on a path to mid-30s. What remains the largest lever from here to drive those margins up?
Yeah, I think we are incredibly pleased with the momentum we have seen on the PST side. Just to kind of give a bit of color here, you have got the two platforms within PST. You have got these rough numbers, roughly a $1 billion Precision Technology is kind of niche positive displacement pump business. You have got a $600 million, $700 million life sciences platform. I think you have seen a lot of efforts over the course of the last few years, particularly on the life sciences side, to further integrate those assets. Obviously, a big piece of that equation is the ILC Dover assets that were acquired two plus years ago.
I think you've seen a lot of the heavy blocking and tackling in terms of the integration, getting those P&L structures set up, managing that P&L and that business in a very comparable manner to how you see the rest of the enterprise, getting things like IRX and I2V and a lot of the kind of internal kind of mechanisms and playbooks into that business. At this point in time, to your point, you're seeing good growth across both. The PT business tends to be a little bit shorter cycle in nature. By definition, you've seen that card to come back a little bit sooner just based on some of the short to medium cycle momentum you're seeing broader speaking. Then obviously the life sciences business has been frankly the best growth business of the entire portfolio.
I think on the go forward piece here, to your point, now you've seen EBITDA margins sustainably over that 30%-31% level for approximately four quarters now. The concept of getting to that mid-30s EBITDA margin profile, not that kind of far away. I think the single biggest catalyst, a number of the same blocking and tackling drivers you would expect to see across the portfolio, but obviously I think the biggest area there continues to be just the growth side of the equation. This is a healthy margin business, plays in the mid-40s gross margin profile. Just continuing to see, I'd say the requisite growth on both the PT but as well as the life sciences business, I think will continue to drive good momentum there.
Great. I want to shift a little more to pricing and margin recovery in the back half. How much confidence do you have that this price realization catches up with inflation without compromising order growth?
Yeah, I think we've been very prudent and thoughtful about that in the context of making sure that, of course, we're taking the requisite pricing actions as you would expect. We have nine P&Ls that make up the entire portfolio. Each of our P&Ls does pricing on their own cadence based on the regions, the product lines. In certain cases, there's multiple pricing actions taken through the year based on kind of what needs to be done. As you can expect, there have been pricing actions that were taken both in the second quarter as well as actually actions that are taking place as we speak here right now. So whether it be just normal course pricing to the question, whether there be some inflationary pressures where we may have to recalibrate a little bit.
Listen, the teams have gotten pretty adept at having to kind of look at this and reanalyze on a fairly consistent basis just based on what you've seen over the last couple of years with supply chain disruption, tariffs, things of that nature. I think that is what you should expect to continue to see. I think we're going to continue to remain very prudent and disciplined in the context of where we take price and how we kind of calibrate. To your point, the organic volume piece of the equation is very important. We've seen that coming back nicely here in second quarter. We continue to expect that to kind of keep coming through in the back half of the year.
I think we want to be thoughtful about maintaining that price and volume kind of balance along with kind of just some of the other self-help to Vicente Reynal's point, things like some of the restructuring actions we've taken, which should be a little bit more visible in the back half, as well as just the direct material productivity equation. Obviously when you think about the seasonality in ITS, typically speaking, Q1 is your lightest quarter, Q4 is your heaviest, with Q2, Q3 in between, and your direct material productivity follows your cost of goods sold. Inherently, as you have more of your shipments in the back half of the year, you typically tend to see that margin profile follow.
I don't think this year should be any different than that expectation in terms of just the sequential momentum you would see from the first half into the back half.
Makes sense. You mentioned earlier that outside of China, pricing's relatively normal at 1%-2%. Is that what we should think about as the through-cycle pricing contribution, or is there anything that's changed in Ingersoll Rand to make that higher?
Nothing has changed. Clearly, we are going to try to always push it be higher than that, but I think you can think about it always as that 1%-2% of price through the cycle in any environment.
Great. The second half margin ramp depends on things we have talked about in terms of pricing, normalized corporate cost, productivity. Which of those carries the greatest execution risk in your view?
Sure. Let me just state, you have improving volume, you have got some of the pricing actions that we have taken that should materialize more in the back half of the year. We did talk about some of the outsized impact for some of those targeted wins that we had, for example, in China in Q2, that should repeat themselves to the same magnitude, as well as some of the productivity factors. I think when we think about, to your question, what carries the most risk, listen, we feel good about the ability to execute across the balance. Obviously, there is some of those that are a little bit more within our control. Some are a little bit more just execution-based, based on the macro environment. But to that point, I think we feel pretty good about where we are continuing to see order trends and things like that.
Inherently, obviously, some of the areas that are a little bit more market and execution-driven probably carry a little bit more risk, but those are things that we feel like are manageable. Clearly, we are continuing to execute here as we exit through this Q3 and into the back half of the year.
Great. Looking a little longer term, you've continued to reference roughly 30% ITS and mid-30s PST margin potential. What is the realistic timeline for getting both of those businesses near those levels simultaneously?
Yeah. Obviously, the timing here, I think without putting an exact pin on it here, PST, to your point, we're approaching that 32% margin range. So I think the concept of getting to the mid-30s, whether you wanted to find that as 33% or better, you're not that far removed, to be honest. I think on the ITS side, listen, we've been close to that 30%, if not the 30% level before. To your point, obviously, we're stabilizing now a little bit more in that 27%, 28% realm here as we exit the year. I think the concept of triple-digit margin expansion like you saw back in the days post the merger, I don't think that's the realistic expectation on the go forward.
But I think getting back to some requisite amount of margin expansion here in the context of next year, assuming we have a bit of a more normalized growth environment with contributions from both price and volume, I think getting back on track with some degree of margin expansion here in ITS, of course, is the expectation. And as such, more of a medium-term approach in terms of getting back to those levels. It's not going to happen overnight, but to Vicente Reynal's point earlier, we don't see any reason why structurally we can't get back to those levels. It's just going to take a little bit of time.
Great. Thinking about the puts and takes as we start to look towards 2027 and beyond, you've highlighted July's strong order growth, general activity going well, investments you're making into growth. Where do we see, in your view, the largest upside to the earnings equation over the next 12- 18 months?
Sure. Listen, I think what we see here is clearly, as we sit here right now, we are coming off of a couple years of lows, for lack of a better way to say this, in North America and Asia Pacific, right? I think, one, those obviously will have, hopefully, the best ability to rebound here after. Obviously, North America is kind of seeing it in the order profile as we sit here right now. I think to Vicente Reynal's point, continuing to leverage some of those differentiated capabilities in terms of ETO and things like that, showcasing that, which has really become more of something we have been leaning into over the last year, leveraging this One IR portfolio. For example, we have a strong life sciences presence, about 20%, roughly speaking, of our portfolio is life sciences oriented.
But now we really have a true, I would say, connectivity closer with the ILC Dover acquisition to the biopharma, the pharma producers. How can we leverage that to pull through more of the portfolio? So it is really starting to think about that in a little bit of a different manner, as opposed to just compressor, root blower, vacuum. How can we look at things in a much more systematic approach? Then leveraging some of our ETO capabilities to really be able to provide differentiated systems and solutions. Obviously, the M&A piece will continue to be there. It has been there, it is going to continue. But I think continuing to think about how we can drive the entire portfolio in a little bit of a differentiated manner is something that we are really leaning into here.
Excellent. Well, thank you both for your time.
Sure.
Thank you for coming to the conference.
Thank you.
Appreciate it.
Thank you for the time. Thank you.