Hello, and welcome to the Ingersoll Rand third quarter 2021 earnings conference call. My name is Harry, and I'll be your operator today. If you'd like to ask a question during the Q&A session, you may do so by pressing Star followed by one on your telephone keypad. I'll now hand the call over to your host, Chris Miorin, Vice President of Investor Relations. Chris, please go ahead now.
Thank you, and welcome to the Ingersoll Rand 2021 third quarter earnings call. I'm Chris Miorin, Vice President of Investor Relations, and joining me are Vicente Reynal, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Vik Kini, Chief Financial Officer. We issued our earnings release and presentation yesterday, and we will reference these during the call. Both are available on the investor relations section of our website, www.irco.com. In addition, a replay of this conference call will be available later today. Before we start, I want to remind everyone that certain statements on this call are forward-looking in nature and are subject to the risks and uncertainties discussed in our previous SEC filings, which you should read in conjunction with the information provided on this call. Please review the forward-looking statements on slide two for more details. In addition, in today's remarks, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures.
You can find a reconciliation of these measures to the most comparable measure calculated and presented in accordance with GAAP in our slide presentation and in our earnings release, both of which are available on the investor relations section of our website. On today's call, we will provide a company strategy update, review our company and segment financial highlights, and offer updated 2021 guidance. For today's Q&A session, we ask that each caller keep to one question and one follow-up to allow time for other participants. At this time, I'll turn the call over to Vicente.
Thanks, Chris, and good morning to everyone. Starting on slide three, coming out of the third quarter, Ingersoll Rand remains in a position of strength, demonstrating again that as a purpose-driven company, we remain grounded in what we do and how we do it. In the environment we find ourselves in right now, our agility, our nimbleness, and using IRX for speed to execution has proven to be our competitive advantage. Of course, global macroeconomic factors continue to be a challenge. We're not immune to demanding supply chain inflation and labor market conditions, but we continue to outperform on our commercial and operational commitments, and we are again raising our guidance. This outperformance is propelled by continued organic and inorganic investments into the organization. Our comprehensive M&A-focused capital allocation strategy is fueled by our drive to create long-term value and compound stockholder returns.
Moving to slide four, we remain committed to our five strategic imperatives, and we'll focus our remarks today on our growth and capital allocation strategies. Before we move to those, I have two important call-outs. Our strategy to deploy talent across our organization is paying off. We just concluded our second employee engagement survey this year across all 16,000 employees globally, and I am extremely proud to share we had outstanding participation at 91%, and several of our scores improved again, placing us well above the relevant manufacturing benchmarks in results and participation. In fact, on responses to how happy are you working at Ingersoll Rand, we now rank in the top 10% of manufacturing organizations. When we talk about outperforming because of our agility, nimbleness, and IRX, it's because of our people. This is our culture.
We always say and continue to believe that the combination of a highly engaged workforce coupled with an ownership mindset is a catalyst for long-term performance. The fact that our voluntary turnover is less than 3%, even in this challenging environment, also speaks highly of the culture we're nurturing and how we inspire our employees. I want to take a moment to acknowledge and thank the tremendous contributions of each and every one of our 16,000 employees, without whom these results would not be possible. Our Operate Sustainably strategic imperative also highlights the speed at which our company moves. In less than 18 months, we have been upgraded twice by MSCI, and we sit now at a rating of A. This is an improvement from approximately the bottom one-third to now being in the top one-third of the companies rated by MSCI.
We believe based on our work, we will continue to see our ratings improve with the various ESG rating providers. Great strides have been made this year to accelerate growth and allocate capital effectively, as we have announced or deployed approximately $1 billion toward M&A. In Q3, we completed both the SEEPEX and Maximus Solutions acquisitions and announced Air Dimensions acquisition last week. We also announced an agreement to acquire Tuthill Pumps earlier this week. We shared our comprehensive capital allocation strategy with you earlier in September. Along with our focus on M&A, we completed a large share repurchase as part of KKR sale of their final equity stake in the company, as well as the prepayment of the more expensive tranche of debt taken out last year during the onset of COVID-19.
In addition, we initiated a quarterly dividend that began in Q4 and a new board-authorized $750 million share repurchase program. On the next slide is a partial preview of what's to come at our November 18 Virtual Investor Day, where we look forward to talking in more detail about the mega trends we and our customers are seeking to address, and how Ingersoll Rand products and services help make life better for all our stakeholders. The strategy enables us to compound our contribution to addressing mega trends such as Digitization, Sustainability, and Quality of Life through organic growth enablers, where we have specific advantages. For example, we continue to leverage our own unique and proprietary demand generation engine to drive a holistic approach to customer buying patterns.
One that has already captured over 3 million end user contacts and allows us to generate over 200,000 marketing qualified leads per year. We also continue to invest in our industrial IoT platform as we aim to connect or digitally enable a meaningful portion of the 5 million assets that we have identified in the field. Moving to slide six. We're not unique in needing to effectively manage the challenges of the current supply chain environment. However, our key differentiator is our ability to respond with agility and discipline, through the use of IRX to quickly and effectively minimize negative impacts from challenging supply chain conditions. I would like to especially thank our global sourcing and logistics team at Ingersoll Rand, as well as our factory buyers and planners for their tireless efforts and creative thinking using data-backed analytics to overcome delivery gaps.
We saw very early on that supply chain and logistics challenges were going to be an important issue, so we invested in this area to guarantee that we have rigorous processes and capabilities in place to succeed, and this has produced outstanding results. Moving to slide seven. We will now look more closely at our recent inorganic achievements. We signed definitive agreements to acquire Tuthill Pumps, which is expected to close in Q4, and Air Dimensions, both of which will become part of the Precision and Science Technologies segment. We also closed the acquisition of Lawrence Factor, which will become part of the Industrial Technologies and Services segment. These three acquisitions are representative of the key characteristics we're targeting with our inorganic growth strategy. Tuthill Pumps is the second asset we have purchased from Tuthill Corporation.
It is a leader in the gear and piston pumping market, which supports the expansion of our positive displacement pump portfolio. This is another example of a multi-generation, family-owned company with premium assets that approached us on an exclusive basis because of the relationship that we have built and the opportunities they saw for their company and employees as part of the Ingersoll Rand family. This is another testament to how our unique approach to employee ownership allows us to be at the front line in M&A. Air Dimensions is a market leader in gas diaphragm pumps, which is complementary to our existing lab and life science businesses and is specialized for environmental applications like emission monitoring and biogas. It has an impressive pre-synergy EBITDA margins of over 50%, and more than 70% of its revenue comes from like-for-like replacement of original equipment and aftermarket parts.
We also closed the acquisition of Lawrence Factor, which will reside in the ITS segment. Lawrence Factor is a great example of an acquisition that is well aligned with our company purpose of making life better, as the technology ensures safe work and play activities for people who depend on compressed air and gas through their proprietary air sampling and aftermarket offerings. All three of these acquisitions were valued at an attractive purchase multiple, and our synergy execution is expected to deliver mid-single digit post synergy realization by year three, in line with our disciplined pre-deal screening process. I will now turn the presentation over to Vic to provide an update on our Q3 financial performance.
Thanks, Vicente. Moving to slide eight. We continue to be pleased with the performance of the company in Q3, which saw a strong balance of commercial and operational execution fueled by the use of IRX to overcome a challenging inflationary and supply chain constrained environment. Our commitment to deliver $300 million in cost synergies attributable to the Ingersoll Rand Industrial segment acquisition remains intact as we continue to drive performance on productivity and synergy initiatives using IRX as the catalyst. Total company orders and revenue increased 37% and 19% year-over-year, respectively, driven by strong double-digit organic orders growth across each segment. Compared to 2019, as reported, orders in Q3 were up 27% and 16% on a quarter-to-date and year-to-date basis, respectively, highlighting the strong performance of our business irrespective of the COVID impacted 2020.
Our orders and revenue in the quarter were records for the company, eclipsing Q2 and setting us up well as we move into Q4. The company delivered third quarter adjusted EBITDA of $314 million, a year-over-year improvement of $62 million, and adjusted EBITDA margins of 23.7%, 110 basis point improvement year-over-year. Adjusted free cash flow for the quarter was $307 million after taking into account the unique items as pointed out on the slide. Total liquidity of $3.1 billion at quarter end was up approximately $0.7 billion from prior year. This now takes our net leverage to 1.3x , a 1.2x improvement from prior year. Turning to slide nine.
For the total company, orders increased 33% and revenue increased 17%, both on an FX-adjusted basis. Overall, we post a strong book-to-bill of 1.13x for the quarter. We remain encouraged by the strength of our backlog moving into Q4, which is up approximately 40% from the end of 2020. Improved 150 basis points, while the PST segment margin declined 100 basis points, driven by the impact of the SEEPEX and Maximus Solutions acquisitions, both of which closed in Q3. When adjusted to exclude the impacts of the SEEPEX and Maximus Solutions acquisitions, PST margins increased by 20 basis points. Finally, corporate costs came in at $35 million for the quarter, up year-over-year, primarily due to higher commercial growth investments in areas like demand generation.
Elevated at comparable levels in Q4 due to the same drivers. One other item of note is the adjusted tax. The adjusted rate is benefiting from our tax restructuring efforts that we've outlined before, and specifically a few non-recurring impacts driven by our movement of IP and implementation of a royalty structure, as well as the utilization of carry forward foreign tax credits. As a result, we do expect the adjusted rate for the year to be in the mid-teens, but as we look ahead to 2022, we would expect the rate to be back in the low 20s due to the non-repeat of some of these items. Turning to slide 10. Free cash flow for the quarter was $131 million on a continuing ops basis, driven by strong operational performance across the business and prudent working capital management.
CapEx during the quarter totaled $15 million. Free cash flow also included $220 million in cash tax payments related to the capital gains realized due to divestitures of the HPS and SVT segments. Finally, free cash flow also included a $49 million payment from Trane Technologies for post-closing adjustments related to the IR merger. Excluding these three items, adjusted free cash flow was $307 million. Leverage for the quarter was 1.3x, which was a 1.2x improvement as compared to prior year. Total company liquidity now stands at $3.1 billion, based on approximately $2 billion of cash and over $1 billion dollar of availability on our revolving credit facility.
Liquidity decreased by $1.6 billion in the quarter as we executed our capital allocation strategy by buying back $731 million in shares as part of KKR's sale of their remaining equity stake, strategically deployed nearly $600 million to M&A, and prepaid approximately $400 million in debt to remove the tranche of debt taken out during the onset of COVID-19, which carried a higher interest rate. Ability to continue our portfolio transformation strategy through M&A, coupled with targeted internal investment to drive sustainable...
Thanks, Vic. Moving to slide 11. In our Industrial Technologies and Services segment, revenue was up 14%. The team delivered strong adjusted EBITDA of 20 basis points year-over-year with an incremental margin of 33%. Organic orders were up 31%. Starting with compressors, we saw orders up in the high 30%. A further breakdown into oil-free and oil lubricated products shows orders for oil-free up over 50% and oil lubricated up over 30%. In the Americas, orders in North America were up mid-20s, while Latin America was up high 40s. Mainland Europe delivered strong performance, up high 40s, while India and Middle East saw continued strong recovery with order rates up in excess of 70%.
Asia Pacific continues to perform well, with orders up high 30%, driven by strong mid-50% growth in China and mid-single-digit decline across the rest of Asia Pacific. In vacuum and blowers, orders were up low 30% on a global basis, with strong double-digit growth across each of our regions. Moving next to power tools and lifting, orders for the total business were up mid-20s and saw continued positive growth, driven mainly by our enhanced e-commerce. We will also like to highlight one of the many ways that we enable our customers to become more sustainable. Our LeROI gas compressors are used to capture biogas emitted from landfills, dairy farms, and wastewater facilities.
As the gas is emitted, the system captures the gas, cleans the methane from other gases such as hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide, and our LeROI product compresses the methane for reinjection into pipelines or storage for power generation, both of which enable the customer to capture additional economic value. Without it, 100% of the gas will be released into the atmosphere. The base of 25,000 units will help capture 240 million cubic feet. Technologies such as to advance our ESG impact, not only with the steps we're taking internally to reduce our carbon footprint, water and energy usage, but also create significant value, both sustainability and economic perspectives. Moving to slide 12. Revenue was up 10%, encouraging given the tough comps due to COVID-19 related orders and revenue in Q3 of 2020 for the medical business.
Additionally, the PST team delivered strong adjusted EBITDA of $76 million, which was up 17%. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 29.7%, down 100 basis points year-over-year, driven by the impact of CapEx and Maximus Solutions. Again, the segment was up 20 basis points excluding the impact of those acquisitions. Overall, organic orders were up 25%, driven by the ARO and Milton Roy product lines and the medical and Dosatron businesses which serve lab, life sciences, water, and animal health end markets. All of these businesses were up double digits in the quarter. Incremental margins were up 25% as reported and 33% when excluding. In this segment, we would like to highlight the momentum our Haskel Hydrogen Systems business. To supply high capacity hydrogen refueling stations for a nationwide green hydrogen network across New Zealand.
First order of four stations with a total commitment of 24 stations to be provided through 2026. The totality of this framework agreement alone will double our Haskel Hydrogen refueling business on a revenue basis. We're incredibly excited about this partnership. As we spoke about last quarter, high growth markets are producing meaningful growth. Given the company's performance in Q3, we are increasing guidance for 2021. Our guidance excludes both the divested high pressure solutions as well as the pending acquisition of Tuthill Pumps. However, SEEPEX, Maximus Solutions, Air Dimensions, and Lawrence Factor are included in our guidance. Revenue guidance was up mid-teens on a reported basis, comprised of low double-digit organic growth across both segments. Guidance up high teens in total with low double-digit organic growth across both segments. This reflects approximately 100 basis points increase in organic growth.
FX is expected to continue to be low single-digit tailwind. M&A was previously expected to contribute approximately $60 million in revenue, but given the closed acquisitions of Maximus, SEEPEX, Air Dimensions, and Lawrence Factor, we're increasing that expected contribution to $135 million. Based on these revenue assumptions, we're increasing 2021 adjusted EBITDA guidance to $1.175 billion-$1.195 billion, which represents a $20 million improvement from prior guidance at the midpoint of the range. In terms of cash generation, we expect adjusted free cash flow to adjusted net income conversion to remain greater than or equal to 100%. CapEx is expected to be approximately 1.5% of revenues. Finally, we expect our adjusted tax rate for the year to be in the mid-teens for the reasons Vic provided earlier.
Turning to slide 14. We're very excited about our upcoming virtual Investor Day, which is fast approaching and will be held on November 18. We look forward to outlining our long-term growth strategy fueled by alignment with megatrends and compounded by our unique organic growth enablers. We will provide detail on our markets and technologies, and further discuss how our strong talent, operational execution, demand generation, and M&A capabilities, coupled with a sustainable growth mindset, creates incredible competitive advantages for our company. We will also outline future financial targets. You can register for the event using the link on slide 14, and I look forward to seeing many of you on the webcast. Moving to slide 15. As we wrap up today's call, I want to reiterate that Ingersoll Rand is in an outstanding position. 2021 is poised to be a great year despite the challenging environment.
To our employees, I want to again say thank you for your relentless efforts to execute and solve tough problems throughout the quarter. They are absolutely appreciated, and it is apparent in our company's performance. We are actively investing to deliver outpaced growth, both organically and through M&A, to continue increasing the quality of our portfolio. We continue to take our role as a sustainability-minded industry leader very serious, and our employees eagerly embrace IRX to put us in that leadership position. We're proud of the transformation we have achieved at Ingersoll Rand and are excited about the future opportunity to compound growth and deliver increased value to all of our shareholders. With that, I'll turn the call back to the operator and open for Q&A.
Thank you very much. If you would like to ask a question, you may do so by pressing star followed by one on your telephone keypad. Our first question is from Mike Halloran from Baird. Mike, your line is open now if you'd like to proceed with your question.
Great. Thank you. Good morning, everyone.
Morning, Mike.
Hey Mike.
Let's start on the guide and how you guys are thinking about the fourth quarter coming up here. Sales, obviously, you feel good about what the demand conditions look like. You're layering on some acquisitions here. Q3 is a good quarter in terms of performance. Feels like maybe the margins on an organic basis are a little lower than what the sequential trend would imply. Maybe some commentary on how you're thinking about that as you move into the fourth quarter. You know, certainly correct me if I have the wrong assumption there.
Yeah, Mike, you know, our guidance, as you heard, you know, has taken the midpoint of our product guidance up by $20 million. You can think about it being 2/3 M&A and 1/3 is organic. You know, in this current environment, we continue to be prudent based on all the overall supply chain environment, kind of noise or situations that you hear out there. In addition, just to point out, you know, ITS margins in Q4 2020 were up 400 basis points, reaching 26% margins.
What our guidance here implies is that even with all the inflation, discretionary spend, increases, and investments, we're gonna be kind of flattish in margin expansion year-over-year, which speaks to all the great actions that the teams continue to execute and puts that segment to, you know, a very solid margin performance in this environment, we believe.
PST margins for the core business, which is kind of excluding the M&A that we said is EBITDA accretive but gross margin accretive and some of the accelerated hydrogen investments that we're doing based on that frame order that we just received, the EBITDA margin profile still is in the 30s kind of range, which we view as quite healthy given the tough comps from medical shipments in 2020 as well as the inflation and discretionary investment that we have done here in 2021 and still do plan to do in the fourth quarter. We feel good about that and at the same time, prudent in terms of how we see supply chain out there.
If I'm hearing you right, you're not implying that the market headwinds accelerate for you on the margin line through Q2 to Q4 in terms of supply chain logistics, labor, transportation expenses, things like that.
Yeah, Mike, I think what Vicente is saying is exactly in line with kind of how you're interpreting it. Clearly, obviously a lot of those same headwinds persist into Q4, but like we've been doing, we think we've kind of taken prudent pricing actions to kind of remain, you know, in line with offsetting those headwinds, much like you saw in Q3. So I think, you know, in that respect, we see Q4 fairly comparable to Q3 in terms of price, you know, mitigating the inflationary risk.
Gotcha. On the order side, obviously really strong orders, good to see. Maybe some thoughts on what types of orders those are, those more short cycle in nature. Is this just a kind of MRO short cycle type move, or are you starting to see some more project or CapEx type orders coming through the funnel as well? Obviously, you highlighted the hydrogen, but I'm thinking a little bit more broadly.
Yeah. I think, Mike, we're seeing kind of both. We see sustained momentum on the short cycle, and, actually what we see is, long cycle, kind of accelerating as some projects are getting released. You know, the hydrogen being one, but others, like the biogas, is a very, substantial project too as well. I think, you know, we're pretty, you know, pleased with what we're seeing. At the same time, I can tell you that, you know, we're with the level of technologies that we have across our portfolio, and you're gonna hear a lot more about this during Investor Day, is how we're able to pretty quickly, reallocate technologies to some of those end markets that are seeing some meaningful growth.
I think with the level of agility that we have in our business, it's positioned us really well to capture the tailwind from any of those markets and continue to sustain momentum in the order rates.
Great. Appreciate it, gentlemen. Thank you.
Thank you, Mike.
Our next question is from Joe Ritchie from Goldman Sachs. Joe, your line will be open now if you'd like to proceed.
Great. Thank you. Good morning, everyone.
Hey, Joe.
Morning, Joe.
Hey. Maybe just staying with orders, obviously, you know, clearly incredibly strong this quarter. I'm just curious, are you starting to hear just more, you know, CapEx decisions being made, Vicente, where your customers are looking to deploy a little bit more CapEx in this environment, just given the supply chain has been fairly unprecedented in what we're experiencing today? Or is this predominantly still a lot of OpEx that's coming through here?
Joe, we're definitely hearing a lot more on the CapEx too as well. When we hear about CapEx, it really has to do with ESG and sustainability. I think it's exciting to see that, you know, all the technologies, I mean, the majority of our technologies are kind of enablers and beneficiary for ESG. I think the exciting thing here is that compressors can reduce energy consumption, and you can see how energy has really radically increased across mainland Europe and even also China. Whether compressors, blowers, and vacuums, we have always spoken a lot about our energy efficiency. I think customers are starting to make the move based on the targets that they set for themselves to achieve by 2030 and 2050. I think a lot of this is really going to see some continued momentum in my view.
Got it. That's helpful. I guess just maybe if you could just kind of parse out the pricing commentary a little bit more. I'd be curious to hear like, you know, how positive the price cost equation was this quarter, what the expectation is through the end of the year. Then as we head into 2022, should we continue to see like pretty decent price cost benefit coming through your numbers?
Yeah, sure, Joe. I'll take that one. In the context of Q3, price realization was a little bit in excess of 3% across the entire enterprise, which obviously speaks to the healthy performance and frankly, the proactive measures that frankly all of our business has taken. Pricing did slightly outweigh inflation in Q3, so we were price cost positive in the context of Q3. We would expect to be fairly comparable to that equation in Q4. Now, it is worth noting obviously that not unexpectedly, inflation headwinds have risen in the second half of the year compared to the first half. We always expected that, and that's why we kinda got ahead a lot of the pricing actions.
Again, I think we're quite pleased with the performance and the momentum that we're seeing. You know, as we think about 2022, I think frankly a little bit, you know, too early to, you know, start guiding on numbers just yet. Obviously we would expect to see healthy carryover on the pricing actions. I'd say the majority of the pricing actions that we have taken are list price oriented, so obviously it should be inherently a little bit stickier. Obviously we do obviously have some carryover inflation that we will deal with into 2022 as well. You know, we'll reserve commentary just yet on the price cost equation into 2022, but I think we're quite encouraged by the actions the team has taken to still say price cost positive in the context of the second half of this year.
All right, sounds good. Nice job, guys.
Great. Thank you.
Our next question is from Nigel Coe from Wolfe Research. Nigel, your line is open now if you'd like to proceed.
Thanks. Good morning, guys. Just wanna tack on the back of that question. Inflation, just how do you define inflation? Do you just look at the direct input costs, you know, the materials, or is that, you know, labor and a broad definition including freight? So that'd be interesting to hear. But just curious on, you know, obviously the orders very strong. Can you maybe talk about, you know, where we are on the revenue synergy capture from the merger? Obviously you put together a much more balanced portfolio from some clear, you know, synergies across the products. So just wondering if some of this order strength is seeing some of those synergies come through.
Yeah, Nigel, I'll take the first one, and I'll let Vicente speak to the second one on the revenue synergies. On the price cost and specifically on the cost comments that I made, you know, the inflationary numbers that I was speaking to really are what we'll call direct material and logistics or freight. Obviously we all of course measure and look at what I'll call labor inflation. The reality is labor inflation has been frankly largely in line with our expectations the majority of this year. Again, while we do look at it, the commentary that I made was specifically around price versus what we'll call direct material and logistics.
I think one thing that we're quite pleased with, and Vicente mentioned it here, is, you know, quite very low voluntary turnover, which I think Vicente spoke to in the prepared comments, speaks very highly of the culture and a lot of the employee engagement and ownership initiatives that we've put forth.
Coe, on the second front of the transaction, we're definitely seeing some of that. You're gonna hear more on some of the case studies that we will show you during Investor Day. Clearly, price of product line is moving our air treatment. A lot of the products that we have launched and through the multi-channel, multi-brand strategy that we have been giving us some good tailwind on that.
Secondly on the Investor Day, you said longer term targets. Just wondering, you know, are we looking here at sort of three-year targets but not 2022?
Yeah, that's correct. We'll be talking about what we'll call, yeah.
Our next question is from Jeff Sprague from Vertical Research. Jeff, your line is open now.
Everyone, maybe just coming back one more on cost also. I would have guessed actually you might need more than 3% price to offset inflation. I'm just wondering if, you know, in that direct materials, I would assume you are kinda sourcing and merger-related benefits. I'm sure it gets harder and harder to kind of separate those with the passage of time, but maybe just update us where you're at on that and what role that's playing in helping you kind of battle the inflation here.
In the queue when it's issued tomorrow. You know, right around 3.4%-3.5% comparable numbers between ITS and PST. Now, in the context of what I was speaking to in terms of that covering inflationary headwinds, we're not incorporating, let's call it, any of the merger related synergies or anything of that into that equation. You're right, it does become a bit of a score keeping exercise, but we've been pretty disciplined and prudent to, you know, keep those buckets separate in terms of how we actually manage and run the organization. So things like some of the direct material productivity or some of the innovative value, those are kind of separated.
I will say as we kind of said at the beginning of the call, you know, we're still on track to deliver the $100 million number that we committed to.
That's great to hear. Thanks. Just on the new M&A, you gave us the kind of total additional revenue contribution. Would you mind just ticking through those three, what the kind of annualized revenue of each one of those are?
Sure. I can absolutely do that. In terms of the three acquisitions, Air Dimensions, on $10-$12 million. The Tuthill Pumps is in the mid-20s in terms of, 25-ish is probably a good. It is about a $6 million purchase price, which is actually very comparable to the revenue base. I think mid-single digits, about $5 million. But very exciting technology on air sampler leverages very highly within our ITS portfolio.
Great. Appreciate it. Thanks for the color.
Our next question is from the line. The line will be open now if you'd like to proceed with your question.
Maybe just aggregate, you know, incremental margin or operating leverage use, firm wide. I think the back half of this year. Understand the cost constraints and new acquisitions coming in affecting that. As you sort of look at next year, you know, how quickly, I guess, do we see sort of fairly quickly, or it's just too early to tell, given these acquisitions are just come in and given the cost environment is moving around quite quickly.
Yeah. I mean, I think that the latter part of your statement is probably true. I think, yeah, obviously we're working through our views on 2022 and the kind of annual budgeting process as you would expect right now. I think it's a little too early to call. You know, I think the view right now is the first half of some of the same dynamics we're facing now with regards to some of the inflationary headwinds. Obviously we have the pricing, you know, momentum to continue to offset some of that, if not all of that. Frankly, yes, we will be continuing to integrate a lot of those acquisitions.
I think, you know, given, you know, the carryover price as well as the continued inflation into 2022, and then frankly the synergy expectations for the base business, because we shouldn't forget that we still have the kind of the third year of the merger related synergies and as well as the kind of integration on the acquired assets. You know, we would expect to continue to see that trend improve to a, you know, let's call it that 30-ish% type number that we've been seeing across the segments, if not that cadence is something we're working through and I think we'll give a bit more color as we do, you know, our next earnings call and formal guidance for 2022.
Thank you. Then just on the capital deployment. Deployed sort of M&A funds this year. Maybe when you look at sort of across those acquisitions, one or two specific ones I'm more interested in maybe. What do you think the three or five year return, sort of metric should be on that $1 billion or so that you've deployed? And if there's maybe one or two acquisitions in particular where you think the margin expansion should be above average now that they're or once they're integrated into Ingersoll?
Julian, we should definitely expect to see that kind of low double digit to mid-teen ROIC return. We always said that is a financial criterion that we have in our deals. We're still finding great transactions that are highly complementary from technology, from commercial acumen and all that, and still be able to provide a good financial outcome based on an awful lot of post-synergy activities that we can do.
Any sort of color, Vicente, on you know, specific transactions that you think offer above average sort of margin expansion scope?
Well, I mean, one that I'll say comes to mind right now, for sure SEEPEX, right? I mean, SEEPEX, when we acquired SEEPEX, we said that that was in kind of the mid-teens EBITDA. But that we see that business to be way like a segment level to PST. So I mean, that is a tremendous margin expansion. Also on the ITS, the recently acquired, the recently signed transaction on Tuthill Pumps, when you think about the prior Tuthill, I mean, it was a phenomenal margin expansion, so we still expect that to see some good momentum on expanding that.
I you know I think you know really across the board the board in a lot of these transactions we expect to see some good meaningful expansion. I mean clearly when you look at Maximus that is already acquired also Air Dimensions that is in the 50s more difficult to continue expanding on that. Those tend to be then focus more on the organic growth opportunities that we see as we look into our commercial global footprint to expand the growth there.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you.
Our next question is from Andy Kaplowitz from Citigroup. Andy, your line is now open if you'd like to proceed.
Hey, good morning, guys.
Morning, Andy.
Vicente, you've really been pushing hard into some of these newer markets over the last couple of years, you know, Lab Life Sciences, Water, Animal Health. It's obviously leading to that 35% order growth and 20% revenue growth in PST that you saw. If we look back at Gardner Denver's old medical business, it averaged, I think something like mid-single-digit growth. Given the sort of niche focus of PST and what seems like higher growth markets, is it fair to say that PST could average higher than mid-single digits, you know, as you go into 2022 and beyond?
Yes, absolutely. I mean, I think we feel you said all the investments that we're doing are paying off in terms of redirecting into these kind of very niche markets and commanding some good strong leadership positions, launching a lot of new products. You're gonna hear a lot more about that also on the Investor Day on how the cadence of new products has just been accelerated dramatically. Even during the COVID days, you know, the team accelerated the new cadence of product development, and we're seeing that come to fruition here now and into next year.
China, it looks like you had, you know, really strong compressor growth in China, and I know, you know, it's one of your key initiatives for the combined company. You know, the rest of APAC orders were down a little bit in compressors. Maybe just tell particularly in Asia?
I'm incredibly pleased with how the team continues to execute in Asia-Pacific and particularly in China. You know what we saw quarter-over-quarter Q2 to Q3, we saw actually the momentum of orders really accelerate in China, which is kinda contradictory to some of the things that you hear out there in other companies. It speaks to a lot of the self-help initiatives that the team is doing. We spoke about relaunching the Gardner Denver compressors, which obviously has proven to be a tremendous success into it. That was something that we always said we were super excited about the combination of Ingersoll Rand and Gardner Denver, we could have a multi-brand, multi-channel strategy, particularly in China.
The team has just done a phenomenal job leveraging the I2V initiative and action to then relaunch an entire product portfolio with Gardner Denver. The second piece is blowers and vacuums. You know, blowers and vacuums was a fairly small piece in China. Again, I think the team is putting a lot of good dedication and localizing. Asia-Pacific, I can maybe split it between you know, developed being like Australia, for example. That still continued to perform fairly well. Where we saw maybe a little bit of softness was on the emerging, as you know, maybe countries like Vietnam or Philippines were creating a lot of shutdowns due to COVID.
Therefore, you know, China overcoming some of that decline still drive meaningful growth in the quarter for Asia-Pacific.
Very helpful, Vicente. Thank you.
Yeah, thank you.
Our next question is from Rob Wertheimer from Melius Research. Rob, your line is now open if you'd like to proceed.
Hi, and thank you. Vicente, I'd love to hear if you have any more color on how IRX was applied to supply chain issues that maybe rose in prominence through the quarter. I don't know if you switched the quarterly cadence up or also, you know, or added to the process in any way. Then maybe just the outflow of that. We had a few unexpected cost surprises across industrials this quarter. You guys avoided that entirely. I'm curious if you think that the risk of unexpected surprises is kind of nil because whether you see, you know, more and more issues pop up that you have to deal with or whether it's stable, just, you know, general outlook on supply chain over the next couple of quarters, if you would? Thank you.
Yeah, absolutely. Great question there. I mean, I can tell you that definitely one is doing, and I would say great work supported by IRX. We have definitely leveraged the IRX tool. As you know, it's a very high cadence, high touch mechanism that we use to just accelerate how we execute and reprioritize the teams to the critical items. That has allowed us to create this massive agility and nimbleness, even though obviously we're fairly large global company, direct the teams to the proper priorities that are happening out there. For example, we leverage IRX when logistics was a major issue.
You know, you could go how IRX tool we were leveraging to track the backlog of containers that we needed to fulfill and acquire, as an example. I mean, as simple as that could be. Now we're leveraging the IRX to prioritize the suppliers and the commodities that we need to go after. Again, of ensuring that the teams continue to see a good momentum and good perspective. It's really what's giving us the outcome that you see here. I think as we continue, I mean, we think we live in a very dynamic world, but that's why we have always said that competitive advantage follows through to the use of IRX as a tool to really execute.
It's just giving us that great sense of comfort zone that the teams will be able to continue to perform well.
Thank you.
Our next question is from Josh Pokrzywinski from Morgan Stanley. Josh, your line is now open if you'd like to proceed.
Good morning, guys.
Morning, Josh.
Just a question on, just a, I guess, a question on compressor orders. I understand there's some, you know, some virtuous cyclicality going on there, but, you know, any idea of where those stand on, you know, kind of a historical basis? Like, are we at all-time highs on compressor orders today? Obviously, there's a lot of new pieces of the portfolio and the combination. And what do you think the market has done sort of relative to you guys? Cause, you know, apparently, you know, there is a recovery going on, but I would imagine that, you know, with some of the IRX tools, you're gaining a lot of share as well.
Yeah, Josh, I think in terms of compressor orders, we're definitely way above 2019 levels. You know, one could think that it could be at a record level. We haven't gone backwards with the combined company to really reassess is it record levels or not. That. We haven't done that. I mean, we're just focused on continuing to execute and take solid market share. I think in terms of against what we see in the market, I think we continue to position ourselves as a premium provider of compressor products. You see that we're focused not only on the growth, but also on the profitability. We believe in profitable growth is one of our key drivers.
With the unique differentiation that we're launching in terms of technologies that reduce total cost of ownership and great energy reductions, I think that is what has positioned us really well to continue to take some share and continue to launch products. New compressor, very large, fairly sizable compressor that some radical new technology, and it is one of the most efficient compressors of that size and power in the market today. A lot of continued innovation is really what continues to command that price positioning that we have in the market.
Got it. That's helpful. I guess maybe just following up on that last comment on kind of the pricing power and pricing to value. Notice, you know, the average Ingersoll Rand product, particularly in the ITNS portfolio, has an awful lot of ferrous content in it. If steel prices, say, got cut in half, you know, what sort of, you know, kinda cost tailwind would that be to you guys sticky in that environment?
Yeah. Great point there, Josh. Definitely pricing very sticky. As we look forward and commodities continue to get stabilized, yes, we should see that margin progression to even accelerate. I mean, not only from the commodity, but also as we continue to execute a lot of the I2V initiatives that we have in our funnel. I think, you know, we're overcoming the current market situation fairly well, in my opinion. I guess, again, thanks to the team and leveraging the tools that we have, like IRX. As this current inflationary market subsides at some point in time in 2022, we should
Thank you.
Our next question is from Nicole DeBlase from Deutsche Bank. Nicole, your line is now open.
Yeah, thanks. Good morning, guys.
Morning, Nicole.
We've been through a lot here, but I guess I just have a few, pretty brief ones. First, just a clarification. I think you talked about Vik looking similar to three Q. I know you have some more deals folding in the fourth quarter.
That's correct. Yeah. Just to be clear, that's 30% on what I call the base business overall, cause you have a full quarter now of the acquisitions, primarily SEEPEX, which you only had one month of in Q3. The overall margin profile for PST it will be dilutive, obviously, upfront here. You're thinking kind of more in the upper 20s range. I think that's probably a decent proxy you saw in Q3 just because of the full quarter impact of SEEPEX. But to your point here, the growth is margin-accretive business.
Obviously there's meaningful synergy opportunity that, you know, admittedly, you're gonna see us start to execute on very shortly here into 2022 onwards.
Secondly, on the synergy profile, so I know no change to the $300 million, you know, full run rate synergies, but are you guys still expecting to do about $50 million incremental in 2022? I'm just thinking about, you know, all the big puts and takes in the walk into next year.
Definitely a lot of puts and takes, but Nicole, at this point, that's correct. You know, just to kinda recalibrate, you know, $115 million was delivered in 2020 dollars next year, and then the tail, which would be $35 million into 2023. At this point in time, nothing's really changed in terms of that phase onwards. I'd say I2V equation are probably the more prominent driver.
Got it. Thanks.
Thank you, Nicole.
Thank you, Nicole.
Our next question is from Markus Mittermaier. The line is now open.
Yes. Hi, good morning, everyone. I wanted to.
Hi, Marcus.
Follow up. Hey. Hi, good morning. Follow up on Josh's question, if I may, on compressor orders. If I look at that particularly compared to the large European peer, they're quite impressive. This has been going on for a few quarters now. I wonder, is this product, is this channel, is this, you know, you guys maybe better. I think if you could elaborate on that would be great. Then connected to that, how much visibility do you take numbers? There could be some concern that some customers just hold a build slot. I just wonder the risk of double ordering. How do you judge that?
Yeah, Marcus, so in terms of the first question about the compressor's orders, I'll tell you. It's a little bit of everything. I mean, it's definitely the product because again, you know, how we are leveraging the entire product portfolio. It is also the channel. And I think this, it's a great lead question, Marcus, we have case studies actually that we will show you on how we have expanded our channel to really accelerate the growth and also really accelerate the growth. I think it has. We have done since back in the, I don't know, about a year ago, we spoke a lot about product summits and how the team.
It's just being very thoughtful with the use of IRX to really reposition a lot of the products on the channel, without creating any conflict. I think that has proven to be a pretty successful recipe. I mean, availability. You know, I saw the team is marketing, for example, on blowers that we have one of the best lead times and how that is accelerating now even the momentum as they see here in the fourth quarter. To your question in terms of the visibility of backlog, you know, customers for compressors, because you have to customize many times the options to the specific application, there's not a lot of pre-order that can be done on compressors, just because of the optionality.
The visibility that we have in the backlog in the compressors is really in the larger compressors, the multi-stage centrifugal compressors that we position as more long cycle business. Those, when we're doing a contract with the customer, we have caveats that we could actually pass or surcharge any specific cost increases that we're seeing through the supply chain in this environment. I think we feel that we're doing everything that we can to protect ourselves in case that obviously inflation continues to stay at this level and commodities do not go down. I think, you know, we feel good in terms of kind of how we're protecting ourselves from the cost position.
That's very helpful. Thanks. Just a very brief follow-up to that last comment. That 40% increased backlog, which is probably related to those longer cycle orders, you could, if you have to, reprice that. Do I understand that right or?
Marcus, let me clarify here. The 40% increase in backlog is overall.
It's total. Is some of the longer cycle projects a part of that? Sure. Also some of it and a good portion of it is obviously just the normal course orders that, you know, we've taken for things that are, you know, typically, you know, what I'll call shorter to medium cycle type compressors, not the larger compressors. In terms of the comment on whether you can reprice backlogs, as I said, there's components like the longer cycle that you do have some of those optionality. By and large, though, no. I mean, most of the rest of the backlog is, you know, typically a couple of months in duration, and you wouldn't expect to reprice that. You know, clearly it's inclusive of the pricing actions we've already taken, but not typical to reprice, you know, those types of backlog items.
Yeah. As a team, I'll say one more point there to our market. I mean, we track pricing on bookings, so we know we have a really great leading indicator on how that backlog is doing against the price increases that we have done.
Super. Thank you.
Thank you.
We have no further questions registered, so I'll hand the call back to Vicente for closing remarks. Vicente, over to you.
Great. I just want to say thank you for the interest in Ingersoll Rand. I know that many of our employees are participating in the call. I also see that many of our employees from the new acquisitions are on the call. I just want to say one more time welcome to those of you that are new. Excited to have everyone on board. Excited. Very thankful for everything that all of you are doing every day to make life better for our customers, our employees, our communities, and obviously our shareholders. With that, we'll leave it here for now and talk to you soon. Thank you.
Thank you to everyone who has joined us today. This concludes the call, and you may now disconnect your lines.