All right, I think we're ready, so we'll go ahead and get started. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for the September Sidoti Conference. My name is Kyle May. I'm one of the analysts at Sidoti & Company. The next presentation will be a fireside chat with Minerals Technology. The ticker is MTX. We're pleased to have Doug Dietrich, CEO, Erik Aldag, CFO, and Lydia Kaptur, VP of Investor Relations, with us today. For those in the audience, if you have a question, please type it into the Q&A section at the bottom of your screen, and we'll address as many questions throughout the presentation as we can, but you know, again, Doug, really appreciate the time this morning. Glad to have all of you here with us. I'd like to get started.
On Monday, the company announced the introduction of SIVO, the new brand name for the rapidly growing global pet care business. What can you tell us about SIVO, and how does this change the pet care business for MTX?
Yeah, our pet litter business has grown over the past four years from, like, a $75 million business to over a $400 million business, and that's largely through three acquisitions we've made. We supply, you know, a broad base of pet litter through bulk material to branded customers and also our own brands. So, as we grew this business through these inorganic mechanisms, we bought Normerica, Sivomatic, and another Eastern European company called Concept Pet, we felt like we needed to represent it as one company to customers. So, we are now the largest global private label pet litter provider, and vertically integrated.
So we operate in Asia, China, North America, Europe, Eastern Europe, and you know, we're supporting single customers on multi-continents, yet you know, to have them know us as Concept Pet in Europe and Normerica in North America, and you know. This is a representation of that global footprint, that global capability, our mining presence in every continent, our packaging capabilities, our technological capabilities, and we needed that singular reference point to represent that kind of global footprint. And so you know, with that, now people know us as SIVO around the world. You know, we'll still have the local brands, but it's more of a B2B recognition so that the Walmarts, the Lidls, the ALDIs know who they're dealing with globally instead of four different brand names.
So, kind of a culmination of putting it together in an inorganic fashion.
That makes a lot of sense. And, you know, with that, is it primarily just name recognition, or are you able to realize synergies or margin benefits or anything, you know, with, I guess, consolidating this business?
Yeah, I think there's going to be some. Well, we've seen those synergies. There's still more to come as we've pulled the businesses together. Again, we bought four smaller businesses and now have kind of brought them into kind of the MTI fold and consolidated them, where we're operating on kind of a standard platform of back office services, a way of looking at automation, a level of quality and a level of performance at those plants that's now coming up to kind of what we call MTI standards. So a lot of the margin expansion that you're seeing in this business has come from that integration. There's still more to do, but I also think the SIVO brand, B2B brand, will be the recognition of globally, a one place to go to support your brand.
So these larger retailers now know us globally, and I think that will project more value that we can offer, right? We're able to offer them technological solutions around the world. We're able to bring those technologies and leverage them through our mining assets around the world and our packaging assets around the world. So I think there's more to come, and the SIVO brand will help us project that level of value better than we can with the four or five other brands that we had before.
Got it. That's, that's helpful. That makes sense. And one thing I've been curious about in the cat litter business, is your product compatible with robotic or automatic litter boxes or, you know, is this an area for potential growth? How does that look?
Yeah, there's a lot of innovation going on, and largely a lot of it we're driving. And you mentioned robotics. We've partnered with companies around the world, one in particular in Japan and Asia, for yes, robotic litter boxes. So we have developed and are deploying a litter and box, automated litter and box strategy. It's you know, it's quite popular in Asia right now, but I think that's going to move around the world, and yes, so we have a litter product that's going into automated boxes. We have other innovations around odor control and fragrances that attract the cat to the box, and but it's that type of innovation that we're doing in one part of the world that we can leverage in another part of the world, and we can move around.
And so again, it's that global technology platform, that global mineral asset base and packaging that we think is going to be truly valuable to customers.
Great. We're starting to get a few questions coming in, and I'll try and mix these in as we go through the conversation. But you've already given guidance for the Q3. Just curious if you can maybe give us an update on market conditions, any kind of, you know, your outlook for the different segments and just any kind of general update on the various businesses.
Yeah, so two halves of the company, the consumer and specialties, and the engineered solutions. We'll start with consumer and specialties. You know, these are a lot of our, that's where the pet litter resides, edible oil, animal health. These are, you know, stable, growing platforms that we have in the company. I think they look very positive. As we've continued, a number of these have been growing at kind of 10% per year rates. Our pet litter business has been growing in that mid-single, upper single-digit rates over the past several years. So those look very stable, and we've got a good market outlook for those going into, e specially in the pet litter business.
As we get into the winter months, pet litter hits its kind of seasonally high period as cats come inside, and people start using more litter. Paper and packaging, our residential construction, pharmaceuticals, and consumer and specialty additives, also strong. We're building five new satellites in Asia, commissioning them, or we will have over the past year. Into packaging, these are large facilities, both precipitated calcium carbonate and ground calcium carbonate, for the packaging industry, and those will be coming online and ramping up into next year as well. On the engineered solutions side, probably more of where you're seeing, especially in commercial construction and our environmental infrastructure business, that has been weak for the past year. We had hoped to see some improvements in the back half of this year in commercial construction. Didn't see that.
I think we'll start to see that into next year with kind of... It's a very interest rate sensitive market. I think as you're starting to see interest rates come down, we know that there's a lot of large construction projects on the shelf, kind of waiting for a better economic, I think those will start to go over the next couple of quarters. We're usually on the front end of that. We waterproof the foundation, so once those projects develop, once the foundations are put in place, that's where we come in. It's not in the back half. So we'll probably see some of that activity earlier on in the cycle, the building cycle in commercial construction. High-temperature technologies serving foundry and steel, largely stable.
I think the one area that we saw some weakness going into the third was the agricultural market. So think of John Deere, Caterpillar, big, big, heavy off-highway equipment's been pretty weak. I think you've seen that from some of those companies. That's impacted a bit through the back half of the year, some of the volumes in that business, but again, we think that that's probably likely to turn into next year. So the industrial side of the business, a couple of weak points, but the consumer side of the business continues to remain quite robust.
Great. Appreciate that update, and then, you know, maybe kind of continuing that part of the conversation, the company's also provided a longer-term outlook that goes through 2027, and you know, this was introduced previously, but for those who are less familiar with the story, can you talk about how you see the business evolving over the next few years?
Yeah, we laid out some projections about a year and a half ago, you know, some longer-term growth projections for these businesses. And largely built because, as I said, these consumer-oriented products growing quickly, both in just the markets that they serve, but also the geographies that we're serving them in. Like pet litter growing faster in Asia than it is North America, 7% kind of growth rates, base growth rates in Asia, 5% North America and Europe. But with our platform and being able to serve customers around the world, we see, in the private label market, being able to grow a little bit faster than that, like the 7% to 10% range, I think you're seeing that.
So we have these pockets that we've built, and assembled in the company, in these consumer markets, that are going to grow faster. They also happen to be higher margin products, and that's going to bring some balance to the company on the industrial side. You know, great positions, solid positions, number one positions in the markets we serve, growing in the more 3% to 5% range. So you have this kind of fast-growing, high-margin group over here that's kind of, you know, moving into consumer products, balancing some industrial activity. But what that does is that provides, you know, kind of this stable. You know, it'll move up and down from time to time through economic cycles, but it's going to move up and down in a more stable, upward trajectory.
So I think what you're seeing this year, with a little bit softer industrial activity in the back half of the year on the lower end of that range, but I think we'll revert to that higher end of that range and average around that mid-single-digit growth for the company over the long term.
One of the questions that was submitted from the audience. I think it feeds into the longer term outlook conversation, but can you talk about the developing PFAS remediation market and kind of the opportunity that you see for MTX there?
You know, we've always been in. We've always had the capability of scavenging things out of wastewater. We've been in industrial wastewater clean up. We've been in oil and gas production, where we're taking water and cleaning it offshore and onshore. So we've had this capability of being able to develop media to filter contaminants out of waste streams and in particular, water. You know, seven, 10 years ago, we saw that PFAS was going to be an issue, a growing issue, and so we took that capability, a core capability we have in the company, and engineered a surface modification to a particle to be able to scavenge specifically PFAS molecules. We've then, over the past four or five years, been trialing that and developing it as it's been coming.
We've been working in some acute clean up projects, some groundwater clean up, some Air Force bases. Being able to pump and treat systems, so pumping water out of a system, cleaning it and putting it back, cleaning groundwater through slurry wall systems, where the water will flow through a wall of PFAS, and it'll purify as it goes. Capping, sediment capping, so where there's PFAS existing, designing mat systems to be able to cap it. And then lately, more recently, in drinking water. And as you've seen, with the EPA regulation around PFAS in drinking water taking effect in 2029, we've been trialing this product, actually have proven this product. We're currently in six drinking water municipalities in the United States, but it's another vertical where PFAS is going to be used.
And so, we're working with the EPA right now, been selected as, you know, kind of one of their three technologies to go in 18 different municipalities throughout the United States to show the efficacy and kind of develop these solutions. I think the EPA looked at other technologies and said, "We're going to need more than one to be able to, to handle this problem in drinking water," and they've selected ours to go and, and run through some rigorous testing. And so, I think once that's done and, you know, it's going to start to grow, I think we've got a product that is extremely versatile, extremely cost-effective. We, because we specifically target a PFAS molecule, it's very efficient in system. We can put the media in existing systems, so there's no new equipment that's needed.
We work really well in conjunction with other technologies. Activated carbon, we will either be used singularly or in conjunction with others, so it's very versatile, but this is a large issue, and I think we've got a really good product. I think it's a proven product, and I think this offers the company, you know, a big pool of revenue that we can grow into long term, and I'll leave it there for another question, but we've got some real positive viewpoints on our FLUORO-SORB product.
No, that's great, and, and, and that's definitely going to be something that we're going to be watching going forward, and, excited to see how that progresses. You know, this might be a good opportunity to take a step back and, you know, for those who may be less familiar with the story, can we talk about the, the different core technologies and, and how, y ou know, you have personal care, and you have metal casting, and a lot of different things. How, how are they all connected? And, and, you know, what, what would you go back and say, excuse me, are the, are the core technologies of the business?
Yeah. So we have four product lines, and each of those product lines, as we've reorganized ourselves around, as I said, more consumer-oriented, more industrial-oriented, but then each of them are organized around a core technology, and there's four of those. One is kind of a functional additive. So we're, we're really good at being able to take our mineral reserve, not just bentonite, but calcium carbonate and others, and understand how they operate in, in a customer system, right? So we're able to use them to become a functional additive, a rheology modifier, a strengthening agent, an odor-absorbing agent, so to speak, in a product. We have something called crystal engineering, and we use this a lot in our specialty additives. We're able to create crystals of calcium carbonate to do certain things.
We can make them really big to take up space in paper and packaging, to kind of bulk things up and add opacity to the package, or we can make them really small, so that they become calcium fortification. So when you have your almond milk or your oat milk, when you shake up the bottle, it stays in suspension. So we're able to engineer crystals. We're able to take waste streams that may be mineral waste streams from our customer, characterize that mineral, adapt that mineral so that it can be reused and recycled in their product. So our ability to understand, characterize, grow, shape crystals is another core capability. An engineered blend, we use this in high-temperature technologies on the more industrial side.
This is a capability to characterize, you know, nine different components and blend them together to become a functional substrate for our customers. We do this in refractory blends. We do this in foundry systems, where we will tailor an engineered blend using bentonite and, say, anywhere from four to nine other constituent products to impart a surface finish, maintain chemistry or metallurgical properties, improve productivity or reduce scrap rates, near net performance as you're casting things. So we're able to engineer blends of things to be able to help our customers make things more effectively or cheaper or cost-effective. As I mentioned earlier, with FLUORO-SORB, it's being able to modify the surface chemistry of our particles. We're able to change the charge. We're able to change the chemistry of it so that it can target specific things.
We'll do this to become a rheology modifier in sealants, but we also do it to attract other molecules in terms of our wastewater treatment system. So though it sounds like we're in metal casting, and we're in pet litter, and we're in paper and packaging, it's two main minerals, bentonite and calcium carbonate, but they're organized around being able to take those two main minerals and apply these four technologies to add value into a number of different markets. Hopefully, that helps with the organization of it all.
No, that's very helpful. Thank you. Maybe switching gears for a moment, last quarter, the company disclosed a $30 million credit facility for BMI. I think t his may have caught some people by surprise. One of the questions that we've been getting is, are you anticipating any additional contributions from MTX that will be necessary to support or finalize the mediation?
Yeah, this one was a different. So let me take it back a couple of years. We've been supporting this process, the litigation and the bankruptcy process for a number of years. So what you've seen before is kind of this level of $20 or 30 million has been in. We've actually called out a couple of charges, as special charges, just to highlight this before we put BMI into bankruptcy. This was a charge that was taken as a credit facility. Now that BMI is separate from the company, it's on its own in terms of in bankruptcy protection, this is a credit facility that we've extended to it to help it through the mediation process. Let me say this: being in the mediation process in a structured bankruptcy process is a good thing.
It's a very constructive way of sorting out and coming to a final conclusion. We're going to continue to support that process because we think that is the most constructive, best value way of getting to a fair and final resolution for these claims. Let me tell you, these claims are, you know, the talc tort has been kind of exploded, and you can see other companies and how they've been pulled into it. We're a very small talc producer, have been. A $50 million business with a very small portion, but yet they went into consumer. But we've been pulled into this.
Our products are safe, but it's gotten to be the point where it's just been best to put it off and mediate a settlement to it and get the company past it in a final resolution. So we're going to continue to support it. I can't tell you how long that will take. We're working as rapidly as we can. We might need to continue to support that litigation beyond this. It will likely be that we will contribute into a 524(g) trust, with finality that comes with that. That is what the mediation process is. So we'll continue to support the process. We will likely contribute into that. I can't tell you what that will be, but what I can tell you a nd the timing of all of that, I can't tell you yet, it's still unclear.
But whatever we contribute to it will be make it final. It'll be a fair resolution, and I don't think it's not going to be to a level that puts any of our growth prospects, our capital expenditures, or even our inorganic opportunities at risk. Something the company will be able to handle, but we're going to make sure it's full and final. So I don't want that to be a surprise. But I guess what I'm laying out is, look, we've got this in a very good, constructive process. We're going to continue to manage it. We're going to make sure that we get it to a final and fair resolution, and then we're going to move on.
But this was called out because it was a credit line facility that, that's either going to be consumed or probably contributed into that trust regardless, and that's why we took the full charge for it. Hopefully, that makes sense.
Yeah, that helps, and I appreciate that additional color. So one of the questions that was submitted, if you could talk about the refractories business, and if that could be or maybe how you see that growing or that market growing. And then also, can you actually explain the MinScan product?
Yeah, this is a really good story of how we, you know, kind of the close work we have with customers. So we've been in the refractory business, you know, since the inception of the company, largely around refractory design and application in integrated mills. But as the market has moved away from integrated mills and into electric arc production around the world, and more green steel and more effective and efficient ways of making steel, we've developed some new technologies, but also combined some that have always been with the company. And those technologies have been engineered blends around creating higher-performing refractory products, and in this case, tailored to electric arc market, the electric arc furnace market. An ability that we've always had, robotics in the company, especially in refractories, to be able to apply.
They call this gunning, our gunning equipment. But then also a laser measurement and data collection capability. And the MinScan is working with some of our, you know, larger electric, you know, some of the premier electric arc markets. And they've come to us and said, "Hey, look, we want to change the way we make steel. It's a very unsafe environment. We want to remove people from the floor. We want better analytics, we want higher-performing refractories, and we don't want to touch the we don't want anyone near the furnace." So a safety aspect. So we took our laser measurement, our automated application, and design of new refractories, and packaged that into something we call this MinScan. So what this does is, it is a significant part, piece of equipment that goes on top of that electric arc furnace.
We'll either sell it to them or lease it to them, but it comes with a contract to use our refractory product, right? And these are like five-year contracts. But what it does is, it will scan the inside of that furnace, it will collect the analytics of where it needs to be patched or for the next heat. It will automatically, you know, put, place, and gun the refractory on it, and it will use our refractory in doing so. But now we are able to service that entire furnace in an automated fashion, and the data that we're collecting from it, we're turning into information, right? So, the customer sees the information, they see the safety, and they see the more efficient use of refractory products. Saves them a lot of money, safer application, more information.
For us, it's a piece of equipment sale, high margin. It's an exclusive use of refractory in a long-term contract. That's a different relationship than just being in there, maintaining their furnace. We've deployed 15 of these throughout 15 contracts. We're putting in eight of them this year. We're starting to expand this into Europe, but it's now becoming, you know, one of our highest-margin product lines. It's got good growth prospects as EAF markets continue to grow, and we've got a really good solution that meets their safety needs and automation needs, and it also helps us with more stable refractory supply and higher-margin refractory supply. So it's a great story.
That's interesting. Another question that's maybe more geared around M&A and the landscape there. You've made a number of acquisitions through the years. How are you thinking about the portfolio now? Are you considering maybe pruning anything? And then maybe how do you think about what's the ideal end market mix?
We like the end market mix we're in. I think there's, you know, we have opportunities in each of our product lines, I think, for some bolt-on acquisitions. There's some larger things out there that I think cross both sides of the company, both segments that fit. I would look at opportunities in two ways. There are other opportunities in similar minerals that we operate in now that are in different geographies or markets around the world that we have our eyes on, but there are also, in some of the similar markets that we serve, new minerals that we feel our core technologies apply to, so these technologies aren't just for bentonite and for carbonates. They can be applied to other similar type minerals, and you know, should we find,
You know, we have ideas of targets that we think that would be very, you know, good for the company to own 'cause it extends us and our core technologies in a certain market, or it could be the same mineral, but at a new market. That's the way I'd probably look at it. I don't think we're necessarily going out for a whole new mineral and a whole new market that doesn't apply to the technology. It's not going to be that far-fetched. There's plenty of opportunity for us in each of the four product lines, similar minerals or similar market type, but usually it's going to be something that our core technology can apply to. The markets have been, you know, past couple of years, I think, you know, there hasn't been a lot of M&A activity.
I think interest rates and, you know, being able to borrow, you know, looking at, you know, taking all the synergies and putting them into interest cost isn't a great return. So I think as you see the forward curve of interest rates come down and more of those synergies can accrete to more of that equity value, I think you're going to see more deals open up, and people that have been holding on selling might let something go. So I think the market will move to a more liquid state as we, as we move forward.
That'll be, that'll be interesting to watch and see how that unfolds. You know, another area that you often periodically update is new products and, you know, the contribution that you're expecting from that. Can you give us an update on kind of where you see new products now, how much they're contributing? And then also, you know, what do you actually consider new products? Is this something that might be replacing something else, or are we talking about a whole new category? Just any thoughts there?
Yeah, so new product development pipeline. We've got, you know, we input two to three hundred new ideas that come from the market trends and/or customer actually requesting something. We move them through very efficiently through a discipline new product development pipeline. You know, 50 or so new products come out every year. That's quite a number higher than they used to be five years ago. We used to have around 10% of our sales, or 8% or 10% of our sales from new products. We consider a new product something that's within five years, right? So once it's five years old, it's no longer a new product, and so we're constantly replacing, it's called a vitality, I guess, index.
It's we count the amount of sales of new products that we've introduced over the past five years. Well, we've taken that metric from around 10% to almost 20%, where probably 18% of our sales are from products that we've developed over the last five years. So we've almost doubled the efficacy of kind of that new product development pipeline. That level, that 18% kind of level is generating about 2% per year of organic growth unto itself. Just new products are generating that type of growth. They are both new products, completely new products like PFAS. There are also new adaptations, maybe a little bit of replacement, but they come with a higher value. We're doing them for a purpose.
We're doing them because it's an extension of something or an enhancement to a new product that generates a higher level of revenue or a higher level of margin for it. So that's also considered. So it's a mix. I will say that, you know, a large majority. I think now the majority of things that are in that new product pipeline are being pulled for, you know, kind of sustainability. I talked about some of the recycling products and paper and packaging. These are energy savings ideas. They are more efficiency ideas that our customers are pulling from us. I think 60% of everything in our new product pipeline probably has, you know, an efficiency or sustainability kind of idea to it. And that's largely directed because our customers are requesting that.
And so we're finding a great opportunity set of new products just around our customers' need for more sustainable solutions globally, and that's kind of where it's been, it's been transforming into that type of portfolio over the past several years.
Great. Well, it looks like we're getting close on time here, but I also want to, you know, give a quick mention. I know you have an, excuse me, an investor event next week. So, you know, what can we look forward to there?
Lydia, I'm going to let you take that one. Lydia is driving that investor day. I'll kick it off, and then Lydia give you some details. You know, we really wanted to, we took some time to highlight the new segment at our investor day a year and a half ago, the new segment structure, the core technologies, kind of highlighting how the company has changed over the past four years, and then laying out some targets for long-term growth. But now what we want to do is get you a little deeper into the technology part of the Minerals Technology. So we're going to take open up our laboratory at Hoffman Estates, this is largely geared toward a couple of our core technologies around bentonite, and just show you what's in there and show you that capability. We're going to do that next Tuesday.
So, Lydia, you want to give some details on what we're going to do and what you're going to see?
Yeah. It is our large R&D facility in Chicago, and it's focused on bentonite-based products. That is one of our core minerals, and we'll be able to showcase various technologies, three out of four core technologies that we apply, and that would leads to all of our, the variety of our products within three out of four product lines, but also the objective is to explain what, why, how we're positioned in those markets, why we're the leaders in those markets, and the growth opportunities driven by innovation in our R&D capabilities, as well as our technical capabilities in general. I think we have some really good line up, and hopefully we can showcase it well, but we are uniquely positioned in every market that we are in.
We're the leaders in core markets within each of the product lines, and we have a really solid growth pipeline of opportunities within each of the product lines, and for this event, it's going to be bentonite-based story, which is roughly 50% of our company portfolio.
Great. Well, we're really looking forward to it.
Yep.
Well, we're at the end of our time this morning, so, Doug, and Erik, and Lydia, I really want to thank you for your time and everybody else who's listening in. Doug, I'll leave it with you and the company if you have any closing remarks or anything else you want to leave us with.
No, I appreciate everyone joining today. So I can't see who's there, but if you do, if there's any other questions that we didn't get to answer, you know, give Lydia a call, Erik a call. We'll be happy to take other questions if we didn't get them.