All right, can everyone hear me okay? Good morning. Fantastic to see everyone, not on a Zoom screen. It's been a long time, and being able to be face-to-face, it's really a nice change for us, and to be honest, we're really excited to be here today and kind of tell you what's going on with Quanex and what we see on a go-forward basis, but we're really thrilled and happy to be here today and very pleased that you could join us. This is usually Scott's job, but I must do this, so we do want to wish you good morning and welcome to our 2025 Investor and Analyst Day. This presentation will contain forward-looking statements and some discussion of non-GAAP measures. Forward-looking statements and guidance presented and discussed today are based on current expectations. Actual results or events may differ materially from such statements and guidance.
Quanex undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement to reflect new information or events. A more detailed description of our forward-looking statement disclaimer and a reconciliation of non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures is included in today's presentation, which is posted on the website. For us, we want to welcome you to a part of something bigger. We're really excited because for us, we've worked really hard on what is this new vision of Quanex. Simply put, our vision is to be an innovative and growth-focused manufacturing company that consistently exceeds the expectations of our customers, team members, shareholders, and communities. For us, everything that we do is going to be built around this. It's really listening, understanding the expectations, and exceeding those expectations. That's what our team's driven to do in all that we do.
So today, we're going to talk a little bit about the new Quanex, give you an insight to what I see as the blueprint. It's not guidance, it's not anything we're giving, but it's what we're driving towards and what we see. And we're going to show you what our mind's about. I'm going to introduce you and let the division presidents talk about their business segments. And then at the end, Scott will talk about some of the financial information and go into a little bit of a Q&A. With me today, you obviously know a lot of this group, but Scott Zuehlke, who's the CFO and treasurer. And then with the new segments, I've got the five division presidents. We have three new reporting segments, which I'll talk about, but each one that's involved in those is here to present to you today.
So, intro to the new Quanex. You guys mostly know all this, but some of the highlights, we're now a little over 7,000 employees globally, really increased the size of our organization and look completely different. We have 48 global manufacturing locations serving over 90 different countries, still headquartered in Texas. But the big new piece of it here is we are taking this opportunity to resegment our businesses. We've gotten away from looking at anything geographically or looking at things at specific markets that we serve. We are not a window and door company. We are absolutely not a cabinet company. We are going to be built around our core competencies, what we do from a manufacturing perspective, what we do from a material science perspective.
So you're going to see us talk about Hardware Solutions, which is the window and door hardware and screens, Extruded Solutions, which will be the spacers, the vinyl window extrusions, the pile and the weather stripping from the Schlegel, and then Custom Solutions, which will be kind of our incubator. So if you're not big enough to be your own independent reporting segment, we're going to look at it. So it'll be our wood components, our mixing, our access solutions. So in that, if we make any new acquisitions and it doesn't fit into something, you put it in that segment, grow it, and then it becomes its own unit. So those are our three segments, but all built around core competencies. And our hope is that we'll start reporting that way in Q1, although there is a potential that could be pushed into Q2.
There's just a lot of work that goes into setting up reporting actual results. But this is the way we are running our business today and will. You can see the breakout there a little bit. 40% of our business is kind of new construction focused, approximately 60% R&R. Really similar. We had a very similar footprint between Tyman and Quanex, so not a lot's changed there. Nice mix between new construction and R&R. We're well served on both sides. In the middle pie chart, you can kind of see the breakdown. The Hardware Solutions group is the largest, about approximately 50% of our revenue. The Extruded Solutions is about 30%. And then the Custom Solutions represents about 20% of our revenue. And then geographically, you can still see, even though Tyman was a London-based company, very much heavily North American revenue focused, that's not changed.
We're still about 73% of our revenue is in North America, 25% Europe, Middle East, and Asia, and then other markets, just a little over 2%. For us, the acquisition of Tyman solved a lot of things and created some new opportunities. The biggest one is it really gave us scale. Scale is important in the building product segment, as well as being a public company. It creates opportunities in a lot of different ways. It gave us a complementary basket of goods that gives us scale to go to our customers and deliver a bigger portfolio of products. It enhances our offerings of different types of materials, and that scale allows us to develop new things and listening to what our customers want, developing systems rather than selling components.
It allows us to really differentiate ourselves and our customers because we have a basket of goods, and now we can cross-sell much stronger than we ever did before. We each have competitors in all of our different product lines, but there's no one like Quanex in our space that can add this breadth of products. In a window and door and a cabinet, we can either pretty much do all the glass or finish a cabinet. We make all of the components, and that's a pretty strong position for us, and then, obviously, scale allows us to continue to generate really nice margin and improves the margin through efficiencies and size, and it gives us an opportunity to generate a lot of free cash flow, which I think many underestimate our ability to do that.
This is a really strong cash flow generating company, and you're going to continue to see that. Right now, we're right around $1.8 billion -$1.9 billion of revenue. With the $30 million of synergies, we'd be right around $300 million of EBITDA. We'll talk more about the synergies here in a little bit, which equates to an adjusted EBITDA margin approximately around 16%. For us, this transaction has been a big deal. It's been transformational. A lot of work's been going on, and I'm really proud of what this team has accomplished and where we're at. So we announced to the public we were shooting for about $30 million of synergies, and we're still very comfortable that we will meet and potentially exceed those. But we're right on track to where we thought we would be. Of those synergies, about 30%, a third of it was from corporate public company costs.
Another 30% was from sourcing and procurement issues. And then the rest of it was really driven by, when you look at Tyman's North American footprint and the U.S. Quanex footprint, almost identical. So there's obviously been a lot of structure and overlap there that we've been able to consolidate and combine those commercial teams to do things. What this doesn't include is any upside commercial benefit of that. And you'll see in a later slide, we think that they're there. We have a roadmap to go get those, but that is not in any of our forecasts today. We are on track, as I said, to get these synergies, half of them within the first year, half in the second year. And again, we feel really good. Again, that's timing-wise. It won't all be realized in our fiscal year this year, but it's the run rate.
We're right on track. Approximately $35 million needed, whether it's severance or any sort of those adjustments to achieve those. Everything right on our existing plan. Overall, again, we said what we were going to do, and we're doing what we said we were going to do. That's what Quanex is about, and that's what we've been driving to. And I'm really happy with the progress that we've made. As we continue to go through this, our work has been to retain the best of the best from both sides, and I think we're doing a really good job to do that. We're continuing to identify new synergies. The thing about these acquisitions and integrations, you can only find out so much in due diligence. So obviously, you find skeletons in the closet, but you also find gems that you didn't know existed. And I think we're seeing exactly that.
I do believe that there'll be more opportunities for us to continue to mine and find additional opportunities as we go forward, both on the revenue side and from the cost structure and process related. We haven't even got into consolidation of plants and the possibility of that. I'm really excited about where we stand. We're starting to get the groups together now that we're focused in these new groups. Imagine the amount of you get operating people together, and why do you do it this way? What about this? What about that? We're starting to see those benefits now. Really excited about that. Talked about optimization of the geographical footprint. We continue to look at that. One of the strengths of this company is our resiliency from a supply chain perspective for our customers. We have a global footprint.
If something happens in one of our facilities in one of the states, we can shift production to somewhere else. Same thing within countries. A lot of discussion on tariffs. What's that mean? We have the ability to shift and do things throughout our whole geographical footprint, which really is an advantage for our customer base and a value add for our industry. And then finally, our goal and our objective, and those in the room that are on the call know this, we are very aggressive in maintaining a very stable balance sheet. And we work really hard on optimizing our cash flow, optimizing our return on invested capital, our net assets, and we'll continue to do exactly that. And it's a process, but that's in our DNA. That's who we are.
Again, I mentioned earlier, we are not a window and door or cabinet company built on core competencies, and on this page, you'll see these are some of the things that we look at, so we're a rubber extrusion company. We extrude vinyl. We process wood. We compound and make sealants and mix sealants. We do metal roll forming, and now some of the big process that we got through the acquisition of Tyman is our powder coating, our injection molding, and our die casting capabilities, so as we build out our divisions and the sales teams look, we're looking for opportunities for new markets, new product opportunities, new system development opportunities based on this, not necessarily an end market, and in fact, we think a lot of our growth is going to be coming from adjacent markets than where we're currently at, built off of these core competencies.
So that's why we've structured the way we have. And on this presentation, you can see it kind of gives you a feel for how much assets and lines we have in each of these segments. So it's a pretty large manufacturing organization now that has a lot of useful processes and open and available capacity to be able to grow. So not a lot of needed investment to be able to capitalize on this. As I mentioned earlier, our footprint gives us the ability to adjust. Well, this kind of visually shows you where we're at. So within the U.S., you can see our footprint. Again, nice balance. We're located where we are to give us proximity to be near customers, different regions, the ability to supply different things fast, minimize freight costs for our customers, and minimize freight costs for us with our suppliers.
So, very, very thoughtful decision-making process when we look at our roadmap. We're in the process of building a new plant or opening a new plant in Jackson, Georgia, this year, and that will help us really compete in the Southeast market. That's the one thing new that some of you in this room haven't probably seen from us. More to come there, but we're excited about that. Internationally, the footprint has gotten bigger with the acquisition of Tyman, and we're pretty excited about that from both a service perspective and the ability to go out and attack new emerging markets and different markets. For example, the GCC in the Middle East on the commercial aspect of it. Tyman had a very strong presence in the GCC, and we think that there's opportunities to utilize that for our spacer product and some other things.
So we've got a really nice, diverse global footprint. We are truly now a global company, not just a U.S. company with one plant in England and one plant in Germany. It's truly international now. And as I said, this allows us to do a lot of different things. It positions us to handle international supply chain disruptions. It allows us to efficiently design our logistics routes and our cost. And it differentiates ourselves. It allows us to be a just-in-time supplier globally and a lot of strength in that process. From a macro perspective, it's some interesting times right now, but we still feel very, very strong that the underlying macro conditions are tailwinds. It's not a headwind. Yes, we're dealing with some noise. But when you look at the U.S. market, there's over a decade of the market being underbuilt from a building construction perspective.
That's really structurally left us with a lack of housing, and there is pent-up demand. The age of the current housing stock, it's aging, and the thing with that, there's estimated $35 trillion worth of home equity now that has been built up. So as rates come down and the age of those homes exist, that really taps into the potential for the R&R market to rebound pretty strongly as well, and as we said, we're well positioned for both R&R and new construction, and then finally, the demographics. There's a new generation of homeowners coming, and you see it, so there is demand that's ready to go. It's not if it's going to happen. The question now is when, and what we're doing is trying to position a company to be ready to capitalize on that so when it does break loose, we're ready to go.
I'm very confident that is the case. Not much different internationally. When you look at some other markets, very, very similar in Europe. Aging, housing infrastructure, pent-up demand. You're starting to see a little signs of life there. We noticed today that the Bank of England cut interest rates by a quarter point. Things are starting to move a little bit. We see the exact same thing. Housing stock's out of date. So whether it's in North America, whether it's in Europe, you've got emerging markets. The macro backdrop does have the potential to be a tailwind. And again, we'll be ready to jump on that. The other piece that's really changed and what we're excited about in terms of being a driver for future growth is really sustainability. The world's consumers, this younger generation, it's just a different mindset. Governments are looking at things differently.
So sustainability, it's not a woke term. It's doing the right things for the right reasons because it drives economic value. We've spent a lot of money on new product innovation. We're working hard to transition to sustainable packaging. One, it's the right thing to do, but it generates significant savings operationally. We've saved an enormous amount of money as we've looked at our carbon footprint and realized how wasteful our manufacturing plants are. So some of these things are driving significant operating results, positive operating results, but also opening up new markets because of a new generation. These initiatives become really strong. And when you look at our portfolio, especially in the window and door and the sealing side, we do a lot of products that enhance the thermal performance of a window, keep moisture out of solar panels and different things.
The wind and water ingress on our flashing tapes, some significant benefits from the products that we're developing. And that's just now starting to skyrocket. And we're going to invest a lot of money on new product development in these areas. So with that in mind, I did want to spend a little bit of time talking about the roadmap because this is what's important here and what do I see this company being able to become. We have worked over the last five years, seven years in Quanex of really trying to build a foundation. Single-digit, pretty consistent, small growth. But our strategy and what we were working on was to build a foundation to be ready to grow when it was the right time. So we were in the process of developing a bigger, deeper global breadth, working on building out our core capabilities.
What did we want to go to market with? What are the applications that we can go after? And what end markets or what's the strategy that we wanted to go after? So for us, and then with the acquisition of Tyman, we think we're now in that position to go. We've got a product line and a portfolio of products that can serve a lot of different industries, not only the window and door or the cabinets. We've got a product portfolio that can apply to a lot of different markets. We have the financial strength to do things. We've improved our margin profile. Yes, we borrowed some money, but we also issued some equity to make this deal. We are not over-levered by any means. I think we've got a very healthy operating structure and a balance sheet that can support future growth.
We have a portfolio that's ready to drive. We've really tried to simplify this company, not make it complicated, and that's what this is all about. Just simplify for you guys and the customers to understand who we are and what we do, and I think we've been able to do that. I think for us, we've got a track record of success. A lot of people, what's Quanex about? And I think if you look over the last five, seven, ten years, I think you can see it. We generate cash flow. We say what we're going to do, and we do what we say, and I think you've consistently seen that. We have a strong conservative balance sheet. We don't over-lever. We know what we're going after, and we stay true to our blueprint. That's who we are. That is our DNA.
And for us, the other big one here, and I think people don't realize this about Quanex quite a bit, the markets we get into, we work really hard not to be a commodity component supplier. We look for niche markets that we can be a leading player, top of the top or one or two in terms of the supplier in that market. And those are the types of markets that we're looking for, as well as something that can generate margins. We're not looking to sell our soul for volume. That's not what we're about. And so as we look for growth opportunities, the questions are, what's the margin profile? Is it accretive? Does it generate cash? And do we have a leading market position in that market?
If the answer is yes, there's probably a pretty good chance we're going to look at getting into those types of markets. If the answer is no, we're going to look really hard and probably walk away. So it kind of gives you a mindset of the opportunities that we look at and why we do things. You'll hear us talk a lot, and we use the acronym a part of something bigger. But bigger is kind of the roadmap for us. So it's bold, innovative, growth-focused, global, engaged, and responsive. And we break that down into a lot of strategic initiatives built off of that. So for us on bold, we're going to be acquisition-driven when it makes sense in the areas that make sense. We're not going to be afraid of doing that.
Now, with that being said, I'm not going to over-lever the balance sheet and do things that's going to put us at risk either. We're going to drive innovation. I think by structuring the way we have, by not looking at the businesses from a geographical perspective and putting things in and managing them globally, we're going to spur on innovation instead of keeping it separate and detached. It's a small world, and we're going to look at it as a global business and a global market. We're going to maximize that growth potential by pushing our sales teams to grow and looking at the technologies across all of these platforms. We've already talked about our global footprint. We're not going to be afraid to expand globally either. This is not just a North American-based company by any means. We've already talked.
We're going to use this as an opportunity to be margin accretive. We're going to spend some time looking at our existing portfolio, and this gives us an opportunity to also shed pieces that aren't up to par in what we want to be in. So these are all the opportunities, but we're going to maximize the impact for all of our stakeholders. And then for us, the hardest part here, but one that we're extremely focused on is you get bigger, you've got to find out ways to continue to remain quick and agile and not become bureaucratic and slow. And I think that that's really high on our radar of making sure that growth doesn't slow us down and make it a negative. For us, this is, again, I'll probably highlight on this slide next. This isn't guidance by any means.
This is a goal and aspiration and something I think we see a pathway to. We think that this company has the ability through a lot of means, and I'll get through the details of this on the next slide, the ability and pathway to $4 billion in revenue. We think that there is a path to double the size again in this company through a lot of different pathways. Some of it's going to be through product innovation and organic growth. I think we've set up and structured in a way now that the expectation for organic growth is a lot higher in this new combined group than it was for the individual pieces. We already did that through the acquisition of Tyman. I mean, we went from $1 billion - $2 billion effectively. We're real close to it. We did that.
It was margin accretive, cash flow positive, generates better cash than Quanex did. So all of those checklists we just did in that one, and now it gives us a platform to continue to grow. So we'll look at things like that that can add synergies, improve our margin structure, and add continued revenue. And we're going to do that all while maintaining a really strong financial foundation. Again, you hear me say that over and over. That is in our DNA. We're going to focus on cash flow generation. We're not going to over-lever. We're not going to take over-large risks just for the sake of growth, but we will grow this thing profitably.
My favorite slide and the one my team has learned to live with way too much, and I'll walk across because I think it's helpful to see that this is, it's not just me putting out some tagline or a marketing slide that we're going to double this company. There is a pathway, and this is it, so for us, if you start on the waterfall on the far left and you see pro forma-wise, we're about $1.8 billion of revenue. Pre-synergies, $265 million of EBITDA. That's where we're at today, but as you go across, you can see, assuming very small market growth, 2%-3% compounded annual growth rate, that adds around $215 million of revenue and about $35 million of EBITDA. So again, not overly aggressive, not banking that this market's going to go crazy. It's pretty conservative, low single, mid-single digit growth.
The next one is the integration. We've already said publicly, that's $30 million of EBITDA. We're going to get that, and I'm going to push the team to get more. But that adds to our EBITDA base. The commercial excellence. I still think that there's above-market growth selling. Again, we're not committing to this right now, but I would be remiss in my duties if I didn't go push my sales team and say, "You go find opportunities." We obviously create value as a bigger company that has a basket of goods. I think that there's $250 million worth of revenue globally, which would equate to about $40 million of EBITDA in our market. So if we can do what we need to do from across selling, creating new opportunities with our existing sales force, there's revenue and EBITDA opportunities there.
And that's what we're tasking our teams to go get. If you go over more, I told you that those unmined gems operationally, you don't know what you know until you buy it and get into it. We think that there's at least $25 million worth of potential. Now, there's also probably risks. So again, not a guidance or a forecast, but it's an opportunity, and I think we're going hard at it. I think that that includes looking at the footprint, portfolio, process improvements, sharing of best practices, their continued opportunities. Those take a little longer and probably take some CapEx investment, but we think it's very doable.
Then you get into the next block, which is adjacencies and some inorganic type of. We think that there are bolt-on opportunities specifically in our access business and the mixing business and a couple other ones where you can bring on a few $30 million-$50 million acquisitions, some smaller acquisitions, but that are margin accretive and that get us into adjacent markets and new growth. And we can do that with our existing balance sheet structure and our lending profile and borrowing profile that we have today. So $450 million of revenue, $75 million of EBITDA. So if we do those things that we can control, that would get us up around approaching $3 billion in revenue and almost $470 million, approaching $500 million of EBITDA, so almost 17% margin. So it's not this pie-in-the-sky go after. This is actionable, achievable, and that's what we're going after.
So that's our mindset right now, and we'll be excited to lay this out. But wanted to give this group and others that are listening the insight into what we're thinking, what we're driving to, and why we're driving that way. We think that there's a bright future and a huge opportunity for Quanex on a go-forward basis. And then if you do those things, and we're not ready for this yet, so the transformational M&A, once you get up to around the $3 billion, we will have the opportunity, and we're seeing different opportunities cross our desk. We're not ready for that now. That's not our priority today, but there will be a time where we can pull those triggers and you do that. Another one that's around $1 billion, $230 million EBITDA. You're a $4 billion company, $700 million of EBITDA.
This is not a stretch goal for us. This is actionable, and we're excited to make this a reality. So for me, the one things that, pardon, here I want to make sure I hit my points. These are the things that I want you to walk away with that I think are key to us on a go-forward basis. We are a global market leader focused on those niche markets, those niche products that can generate revenue and a strong margin profile. That's what we're looking for. We are not a commodity component supplier, and we will work very hard not to become that. I think that that's wildly important, and that will always be our focus. This helps us maintain not only our scale, but our profitability profile. We are a strong, and I think, again, over and over, I think the markets underestimate this.
We generate a lot of free cash flow, and we'll continue to do that. I think you'll see a lot of opportunity as we continue to integrate Tyman and migrating more from a make-to-stock to a make-to-order cash flow generation. It's a key priority of ours, and I think you'll see improvement in those areas. That helps keep our balance sheet healthy and allows us to do a lot of things that other companies can't do, and we're really excited about that. The material science and process engineering expertise allows us to get into these adjacent markets. That's where you're going to see a lot of the focus. So this combined company, that cash flow generation I just talked about, that enables that type of investment and growth opportunities, and we're really excited about that.
We have a very flexible business model that allows us to respond to changing markets really quick. And again, you heard me talk about we see the structural tailwinds for our end markets. It's not when it's going to happen, it's not if it's going to happen, it's when. And what we've got here now is a company that's really ready and able to capitalize on when it does grow or if it does peel back at all, just as we proved during the COVID years. We were a very resilient company that was able to scale up fast after COVID, and when COVID hit, we were able to scale down quick. That's what this company is about, and we're ready to capitalize on these opportunities. And then finally, our capital allocation strategy will always be focused on increasing our total shareholder return.
Although you saw in that previous slide, I do think that opportunities exist for M&A. I want to reinforce our priority right now is integrating these companies. So short term, we're going to focus on the integration activities, strengthening the balance sheet, continuing to do things that we can do under that. But if an opportunity arises, it's margin accretive, we can do it under our existing structure, and we're going to be bold and take it. But our priority right now is integrating these companies and making it even operationally stronger than it is today. Whew. It's a lot. I get too jazzed up about this because I think what you're going to hear today is we are excited about this future. We see it. We know what's happening.
We know what the opportunities are, and we've put a team of people in place to make this happen, and you're going to hear from them today. But this is something that's achievable and doable, and we're going to go get it. So I appreciate your time listening to hear my vision of this company. We'll take questions at the end for all the group, but right now I'm going to introduce you to Bob Daniels, who is going to talk about the Hardware Solutions group.
Good morning, everybody. I'll give you a little peek inside the new Hardware Solutions division and what we do in that. I'm excited about it. You can see below, it's a window and door hardware and the screens and other fenestration for the people that have followed the legacy Quanex for quite a few years. The screens business has always been there.
It's been there since I started with the company in 1991. Yes, I was five, and that business was there then. So let's take a look inside Hardware Solutions. We've significantly grown. We're up to almost 3,500 employees now worldwide. As George indicated earlier, we're about 50% of the revenue, and the rest of the Quanex then is 50% as well. But you can see the geographic footprint has expanded greatly. Big presence in North America, but the presence we have in Europe, I think, is going to help us in North America with the transfer of technology and processes and automation. Those guys are ahead of us on all three. So I'd like to bring that over here and use it to help us out. 22 manufacturing locations, 9 warehouses across the world. Some are dual warehouse and manufacturing, but just a few.
Let's talk a little bit about the North American products. When you hear us talk about the hardware on this slide, you're going to see where we have the manufacturing locations, two in the upper Midwest, two in Mexico, one on the southeast, and then one in Canada. They mainly make the hardware components used for locks, accessories, balances, secondary locks, things like that, things like that. Highly engineered products, though, because you're talking about security, so they have to be engineered, they have to be tested, they have to go through certification. We have our own certification labs internally, but then we have to go externally as well. Over 100 years of quality engineered solutions in this group, and then a strong manufacturing footprint and distribution within the U.S. and North America. A little bit more customer dynamics.
I think the important thing to point out on this slide is that top 10 customers is 87% of our sales in North America. And you'll see in a little bit that that's a little counterintuitive, but strategic partners, we have quite a few very long-term strategic partners in this business. We're protected. Everybody's talking about tariffs and materials and everything else right now. We do have programs in place that protect us. So if you look at our commodity metals purchasing, we are protected through programs where we index with our customers, so we get to pass through that volatility. The tariffs and whatnot are also protected. So I don't see. I can't say that, but I do think we are protected going forward if the tariffs do come to fruition. So those are good programs. They've been in place for many, many years. Strengths and opportunities.
George alluded to it earlier. We're highly engineered, and when you talk about casement windows or sliding patio doors, all those mechanisms have to be highly engineered, so number one, security reasons. Number two, longevity of the product. I think then that correlates back to opportunities, right? What's next? We have a smart home division in the U.K. I think that could be translated over to the North American market. We run a lot of hinge patio door product in the U.S. And what can we do there? I think as you look at the evolution of windows and doors in North America, there's always opportunities to develop that next product that's going to help our customers sell their end product to the consumer. So the opportunities there are look at alternative materials and look at the recycling content of the materials and sustainability and composites.
So we need to stay up on the material front and be that leader for our end user. International. Very much similar to the business in North America, but a little bit of differences there too. The key brands over there are ERA, Giesse, Reguitti, Zoo, Fab&Fix. We have a well-established customer base over there, industry-recognized brands. The market size is £3.3 billion. We think we're somewhere around that 7% of the market. So there's a good growth opportunity for us in those markets over there. And you can see the footprint. So very global footprint helps us out, gets our product to the customer quicker. Let's talk about customer dynamics on the international side. We talked about the U.S., right? And the U.S. had top 10 customers was 87%. Over in the international side, it's just the opposite. Top 10 customers are 16%.
But that's a good model, right? We need that balance. Distributor partnership, they engage efficient global coverage in their routes to market, primarily with OEMs and distributors over there. And then the commodity and cost dynamics, we do have a very good detailed bill of materials on all of our products over there that helps us monitor all of our costs. And we have raw material indexes and follow the LME for the aluminum. Let's talk about strengths and opportunities there too. Not unlike the U.S., North America market, we have the casement window hardware. We have internal door, external door hardware. Strong heritage and reputation, Giesse and Reguitti. We were just over in Italy last week. Peter and I, we went to a celebration. It was combined 250 years of brand recognition. So we had 140 years of Schlegel, 60 years of Giesse, and 50 years of Reguitti, right?
So it was a nice opportunity to get to meet all of our customers. We have a product over there that I always say it wrong, so I apologize upfront, but the CHIC product, it's concealed hardware program. So it's a really neat part of our portfolio over there where you can't see any of the hardware. So it's all concealed within the unit. It makes it very sleek, very modern looking. That's something I think we need to build off of in the very near future. The internal door, strong brand, Reguitti brand. They make pulls, handles. If you have an internal door in your house with a long handle on it, that's one of their specialty products. A lot of brand recognition for that business. And then the external door is the, again, Schlegel is part of that.
So opportunities over there, solutions for the aluminum segment to increase market share on residential. Sustainable solutions. Sustainability is big everywhere. We need to continue to go down that route. Increase innovation capabilities, develop new opening solutions. Something in the U.S. that's become popular just recently is a pivot door. We need to kind of expand our Hardware Solutions for that. And then the external door, there's a lot of room for growth there on the external door hardware, and we're going to go out to that market. And then sliding window, high-performance compact lift-and-slide systems to answer the needs of higher internal comfort. And that's an ongoing. And then automation for the convenient opening of bigger and heavier units, which they are getting bigger and heavier every day. This slide is mainly related to the legacy Quanex side of the business or our screens and other fenestration components.
This is a market share of $500 million. This is our estimate. We think we have around 33% of that market share. You can see some of the brands and products at the bottom, screens, screen doors, thresholds, extrusion. Those that have followed us for quite a few years are very familiar with this. The largest portfolio of screens and screen doors, we believe, is the Quanex brand. We believe that we're the biggest one out there with the most customizable solutions and manufacturing. Our facilities are fantastic in North America. We have strong relationships with the largest OEMs across all the sectors in North America. I think it's important. We have 12 production facilities and almost 1.2 million sq ft of manufacturing space.
George alluded to it, and we actually put the dot up there, but we are putting a new facility in Georgia to supply the Southeast. That'll be opening sometime this year. You can see, again, when you look at North America, the top 10 customers account for 87% of the sales. 200-plus active customers in this division, part of the division. And then we've been able to broaden our overall customer base through different geographical locations. We need to be close to our customers in North America. And then we do have pass-through capabilities on commodity pricing and tariffs and whatnot that may be coming. We do aluminum adjustments. We do steel adjustments, zinc adjustments. So we are very much protected on that. And we do it. Some customers are monthly, some are quarterly, but we do them very often. And I zipped right through that.
But now I'd like to introduce you to Chris Alderson, the President of our Extruded Solutions Group. Thanks, Chris.
Morning, everybody. I'd like to take you through Extruded Solutions, and that's a combination of our IG spacer business, vinyl extrusion. We do other extruded components and sealing solutions as well. So much like to Bob, the same format. I'll go through this. I'll pick out some of the highlights. It's quite repetitive in terms of some of it, but I'll give you the highlights and some of the value propositions of why this is an exciting segment. So we've got about 1,800 employees. Extruded Solutions now is 30% of the total Quanex revenue. We have 11 manufacturing facilities, six in the U.S., five in Europe. And as George has said and Bob has said, what I'm really excited about is now this global reach.
We've got products that we can globalize. We can extend our sales. We've got a lot of growth potential ahead of us because we've now got the capabilities, particularly in the legacy Quanex side of things, to put stock in regions and grow our volume. So I think that's really exciting going forward. We'll start with the IG business for North America. We have one manufacturing facility based in Cambridge, Ohio. It's 375,000 sq ft. We produce two real technologies for the IG spacers. One's butyl-based, which was the Dura family, and Super Spacer, which is a foam silicone or a foam EPDM. Both of them are specifically designed to provide energy efficiency in performance for the IG unit and the window itself, and our value proposition for IG spacers is the same in North America and in Europe.
The two key things are energy performance, energy efficiency, a solution for energy efficiency, and automation. Both of those products can be applied automatically through automated equipment, which lowers the cost for our customers from a labor and everything else. So it's very much a cost-in-use system solution that we provide to our customers. So the dynamics, it's broad. We've got a diverse number of customers and pretty low customer concentration of 23%. The Dura platform, with it being butyl rubber, is petroleum-based effectively. So we do have a pass-through mechanism for pricing. Silicone, less so, but we've got a very good track record of having that volatility in silicone or EPDMs. We have a very good record of passing pricing through to customer. The strengths really go back to our value proposition.
The strengths that we've got are excellent thermal performance, excellent customer service through a fantastic facility in Cambridge, and looking at how do we improve that, as George said, how do we improve our own internal. We talk a lot about making our customers more cost-effective through automation. We're doing more of that internally as well to drive operational efficiency internally. We will continue to push that energy efficiency because things are only going to get tighter. Energy performance in buildings and windows are only going to go one way, and they're going to get tighter as legislation drives that. Labor shortages will become a significant issue again. So if our automated solution helps our customers solve their issue around labor, an Energy Star will drive that energy efficiency as well. It's much the same internationally.
We have two facilities, one in the UK and one in Germany, 135,000 sq ft. That segment there is really our drive for growth internationally. We serve over 50 countries from those facilities, mainly in Germany. You can see the brands and the products are very, very similar. The slight difference here is in our Super Spacer product range. It's obviously mostly residential, R&R. But we do have a growing commercial, light commercial market range, and we've adapted some of the product range to suit that market. We've taken that innovation product development to suit new markets for us and growing markets. Even things we highlight, I always highlight Heritage. Heritage is just a small spacer bar specifically designed for Europe because we've got a very old housing stock, lots of timber windows, single glaze.
So we can use that spacer to make a single glazed wooden window in conservation areas a double glazed unit. We've really developed that product-market combination for the growth areas in Europe. We've got about 12% market share. We're growing, and we're growing because we are one of the few that has that automated solution. Most of our competitors, it's a very manual process to make an IG unit with the spacer bar. As we've said, concentration, top 10 is only 42%. The scale that gives us for the IG, this is a global business. I treat this very much as a global business. We've presented it in two different areas, but it's a global business. That scale really benefits with that global purchasing coordination to maximize the supply chain availability. We have European suppliers, we have North American suppliers, and we switch between the two.
It gives us great long-term contracts and support from our suppliers. Same again. We've built strong brand equity through Super Spacer. We are the market leader by far in flexible spacers. We have a wide product range, that product-market combination for the different opportunities. And going forward, George has spoken a lot about innovation, something I'm passionate about. We currently supply spacer bar, but our customers use a spacer bar and a sealant. So what we'd like to do is transition to a full system supplier. We have the technology in-house with butyl mixing capabilities. We are experts in butyl rubbers. We're experts in other sealants.
So, taking some of the expertise that we've got to manufacture potentially some of our own sealants, but also partner more aggressively with some of our industry partners on collaboration with the sealant companies so we can go with a complete system sell for our customer. So that will drive, ultimately, that will drive innovation and NPD for us. And as I keep saying, tightening of energy standards and codes is inevitable, particularly in the international markets because sustainability will continue to be the key driver. Don't forget as well in Europe, triple glazing is gaining share. We're not just talking about double glazing now. We're talking about triple glazing. That will grow as energy building regulations change. We'll force a lot of window suppliers to make triple glazed units. And the other one that was quite exciting, we've got low-cost automated IG lines now.
Our customers have Western, the North American or European suppliers, but they've now got some Chinese and Korean manufacturers that have got a cost base much lower, but allows our customers to have a good variation in terms of where they buy IG lines from. Going on to PVC for North America. Two manufacturing sites, about 500,000 sq ft. It's the Mikron business. And we're supplying extruded products, PVC products that go to fabricators to make windows and doors, etc. We've got a very well-established customer base. We've got about 12% share of the $1.2 billion market. And it's an area that, again, we'd like to drive innovation and product development going forward. It's slightly different. The top 10 is about 83%. But that's a good thing as well as a bad thing. The good thing is we've got very well-established relationships with customers.
And for customers to change, the cost of change is significant when you're changing a PVC system. So it actually buys customers in for the long term. And we've got that price mechanism through PVC pricing where we're able to push price through our customer as well. Some of the micro ingredients, less so. But again, the good thing is those micro ingredients go into all of our competitors' products. So if there's a shortage in one specific raw material, it impacts the market, not just Quanex. So that allows us to pass through pricing when we do have those concerns. The strength, again, is we're vertically integrated, mixing capabilities to extrusion. And that's a key thing. We've also invested in new technology for North America that we use currently in the UK, which you'll see in a minute. So we've put the latest extruder technology into our Kent facility.
Again, that will drive operational efficiency going forward. They're well-placed both residentially, commercially. Like I say, we're trying to leverage that expertise to become a solution provider to our customers. We've got the capability to do some pretty complex extruded products. In the UK, we're based internationally, single site in Denby in Derbyshire. It is a fantastic facility. It was purpose-built from the ground up. The operational performance for that facility is superb. It's 400,000 sq ft. We drive a lot of different markets, windows, doors, extruding PVC for the window door markets. But we're also into, in a big way in the UK, decking. We have a lot of holiday homes, recreational caravans. The trend then is to put a big deck around that caravan. We've got a very good share in decking, and that's growing.
We also produce for our customers, take the profile, and if they've got a specific window or a specific lantern roof or whatever, we've got the capabilities to be able to do that internally for our customers, and another interesting segment is the manufacturing machinery and distribution. We assemble some machinery, and we distribute window machinery. The reason we do it, it gets us into our competitors with machinery. We can build a relationship with our competitors' products, prospective customers, let's put it that way. With our prospective customers, we talk to our prospective customers about machinery. That gives us a lot of headway into selling them ultimately PVC as well. It also ties in our customer base because we're a solution not just on the PVC, we can also help them with the latest machinery. It's very complementary to what we do. We're about 16%.
When Quanex acquired Liniar, we were about 12%, so we've grown share. We're probably higher than that now, and we capitalize on that world-class manufacturing facility. Superb service levels is how we continue to gain share in the UK. No single customer represents more than 10%, and the top 10 is 32% of the total revenue. We've got about 340 customers, and as you can see, it's very similar. We don't have a pricing mechanism to increase prices. That's not common in Europe, but we do have an excellent track record of passing price as and when market dynamics force us to do that, so we've been very, very successful during the COVID period and post-COVID, and also, we've got a very good track record of holding on to price as well. The strength is obviously around that brand quality service.
That reputation of innovation, quality, and service excellence is true. We are regular. This year, we've never gone below 99.5% OTIF. It's a significant business, and our service levels are fantastic. At the same time, we've lowered our stock holding by about 30%. So the operational efficiency is driving lower stock, greater customer satisfaction. That high-skilled engineers for Avantek is a real benefit for us. The one I'll pick on the opportunities, there's lots there, but Liniar, we've developed a specific window system for triple glazing, which will come. We thought it may have come a little bit sooner through registration, but it will come. So we're now well-placed, not just for double glazing, but for triple glazing in the future as well. George mentioned, the UK have dropped interest rates today.
What the government is fixated on is the new house build target of 1.5 million homes. We are vastly underbuilt in the U.K., particularly. We have also got a very old housing stock in the U.K. that needs retrofitting to meet the aggressive government targets that are still in place. From a market point of view, I fully agree with George. There is pent-up demand that will break. Social housing, that is government housing, same thing. There is a lot of investment through social housing improvements, and our customers are well-placed to capitalize on that. Seals, this is mainly on the legacy Tyman side, really exciting segment that now is part of an extruded team. We can maximize and capitalize on the scale of that. As Bob said, we have got a 140-year legacy in Schlegel brand. We have got a wide range of products.
We've only got around about 19% market share, so there's a lot of share to go after. Manufacturing footprint, we've got four sites, two in the U.S., two in the U.K. And we will continue to drive that efficiency through the scale. And one thing it also gives us with this product range is the expertise we have technology-wise in innovation and R&D capabilities in our IG spacer. And these two teams together really can create new go-to-market products, new innovation, new product development. And that collaboration has already started. And all the way through, this is a great cross-sell opportunity because we're already selling to window companies. We can sell seals to window companies as well, more so than we've ever done before. So it will drive cross-selling, and it will drive product development. In North America, again, we have that pass-through of our capabilities.
But I can't emphasize for me on this segment, it's all about the scale opportunity now, utilizing the scale of Quanex and Tyman together as new Quanex can really drive the seals business going forward. The strengths, again, it's all brand and everything else, and we're very much a solution provider. We work with our customers to be able to fix the latest issues that they have, whether that's a new window system or whatever that is. They come to us as a solution provider for seals. Q-Lon is a reference for foamed polyurethane seals. So we have the market-leading brand there as well, and market share will increase through that dedicated commercial strategy. Combining sales teams together, having a greater commercial focus will drive revenue going forward. I'll quickly go through the miscellaneous products because we've got some ancillary and niche areas as well.
Solar being one, as George said, the solar panel industry, photovoltaics, is growing exponentially because of, obviously, sustainability requirements. We supply a seal that seals solar panels from Cambridge, Ohio. And as that technology evolves, more and more of the new technology, the new types of photovoltaics will require an edge seal, so the market is expanding. We're well established in that. It is a long testing process in there, but it's a certain area that we will put a lot of focus on because solar and photovoltaics will grow, and we've got a good presence already, so that's a good growth engine for us. We do flashing tape, and another part of we talk about a lot energy efficiency, thermal performance of our products, but to get Passive House accreditation in Europe, it's not just about the thermal performance of the building.
It's about the air tightness of the building as well, and we have a product where we seal around the window for air tightness. That's an area that we could expand. We've got the technology. It's how do we grow air tightness as a product range globally, and I think that's something exciting that we can really scale, and lots of other we sell sealants and stuff like that. So we've got a good basis, and I think we've got some very good niche products there that we can scale, and the strength of that is I'll pretty much explain that we are, particularly on the solar. I'm really excited about solar as that grows. We've got the brand, we've got the reputation. We're in with the customers. We're also in with the institutes that are developing the next generation photovoltaics.
So we're working not just with customers, we're working with the institutes that are driving the technology. So that's really exciting for us. And the product for resale is we generally go with market leaders for sealants and stuff like that to complement our product range. Okay. Whiz through that one, didn't I? I will now hand you over to John Sleva, who is the President for our Wood Solutions business.
Good morning, everyone. I'm going to start out with giving a quick overview of the Custom Solutions segment. From a product standpoint, in the Wood Solutions segment, we manufacture hardwood and engineered wood components primarily for the kitchen cabinet industry. In the Custom Mixing Solutions business, we're compounding rubbers. And in the access solution, we provide products for the residential and commercial building industry.
From a plant standpoint, we've got 15 manufacturing locations throughout North America and three warehouse locations, 1,542 employees, and we're about 20% of Quanex net sales. Now, I'll cover the Wood Solutions segment that I manage. From a product standpoint, the easiest thing to do would be to just think about your own kitchen. So if you look at your kitchen, the exterior part of your kitchen, the doors, the moldings, the decorative features of that, that's the product that we supply to our customers in a raw wood state. So they'll take our product, finish it, assemble it, add the hardware, and then market it into their end markets. So again, we're kind of a one-stop shop when you think about that. So the doors, the door fronts, the moldings, and we even get into some of the interior storage and organization.
So if you think about your drawer boxes, your cutlery organizers that are made of wood, lazy Susan trays, things of that nature, we also supply that along with the other products into the kitchen cabinet market. From a manufacturing standpoint, we have 11 facilities located from Oregon to Pennsylvania, and with that, around 1,100 employees in our facilities. So we've got one warehouse in North Carolina as well. From a market standpoint, we look at the kitchen cabinet components market as about a $2.6 billion market. And it's roughly split 50/50. So about 50% of that production is by the OEMs themselves, they're vertically integrated, and about half of it is outsourced to suppliers like us. And I'll talk a little bit more about that on the next page. From a customer standpoint, 80% of our sales, 83%, are with our top 10 customers, which also mirrors the industry.
In the kitchen cabinet industry, there's been a lot of consolidation. So the top three OEMs control a large part of the market. And much the same as you've heard from other parts of the presentations, we've had a long-standing relationship with these OEMs. We have 100 customers overall, on average 23 years. And if you think about the spend on a cabinet, we're the top spend for these OEMs. So it's very critical that we have a good relationship with them, and we're a very important part of their supply chain. From a commodity cost standpoint, our major raw material cost is solid wood. So you think about hardwood coming into the plant, it's got water in it. So roughly half the weight of that material is water. So that product is coming in. It's a commodity. It's from the sawmills.
And we look at that on a weekly basis. So there's a publication called the Hardwood Market Report that comes out every week. And it has the prices of the grades, the wood species, and the thicknesses that we use in our operation. And we index that with our customers. So typically, we're going to look at that on a quarterly basis. And when raw materials go up, the prices go up. When raw materials go down, that goes down. So the important thing there to know is there is a bit of a lag both ways. So as we look at those prices, it's not immediate. From a competitor standpoint, we're one of the top suppliers in the industry. So it's pretty much us and one other customer or one other competitor out there that controls most of the market.
And from a product standpoint, we have a broad range of products, as I mentioned before. So as we go into that smaller competitor base, it really drops off both from a geographic standpoint. So they may just be in one state or one location versus us being across the entire spectrum of the U.S. Or they may have a much narrower product line than we do. So they may just focus on producing a molding or a drawer front or doors or things of that nature. So very few competitors have the product breadth or the geographic reach that we do in our segment. So if you think about the market a little bit, the kitchen cabinet market is kind of segmented on a good, better, and best product platform.
So if you think about good being stock, better being semi-custom, and best being custom, we don't serve the custom market. It's kind of a very small part of the market. And most of those OEMs are quite honestly vertically integrated just by the nature of the work they do. So what we bring to the table to that semi-custom OEM is service, high 90% on-time in delivery. And in a lot of cases for those OEMs, they have no inventory in their system. So literally, we're providing a truck every day that's going to have the doors and the components for the cabinets they're going to make that day. So if we miss a shipment, we miss a door, they're backordering, or we're shutting their plant down. So that can't happen from that standpoint. So it's very service-intensive.
Our systems are heavily integrated into theirs from an ordering and shipping standpoint into the supply chain. From a stock standpoint, it's a little bit different. So if you think about the maybe new housing or multifamily construction, there's less SKU proliferation there. And that product line does go into an inventory. And that typically will be a five-to-eight-day lead time. And our advantage there from a competitive standpoint is we can batch all the sizes and specifications together across our entire customer base. And we have literally millions of dollars of investment in automated wood processing equipment. So we can scan a board with a camera, and that decision will be made to chop it without human intervention. So we can leverage that. So we can outperform the OEM that's vertically integrated because they only have their sizes and specifications to cut.
Whereas we can batch everyone's together. So we can compete with the vertically integrated OEMs very well. And then when you think about our smaller competitors, they simply don't have the scale to invest in millions of dollars of equipment to serve the small market share that they have. They can't leverage that across their customer base. So those are the key strengths that we bring to the table in those two market segments. From an opportunity standpoint, you heard it before. There's pent-up demand. So coming out of COVID over the last couple of years, we have seen our demand decline. There's a lot of reasons for that. Big-ticket discretionary items are down. Interest rates went up. But really, a key driver for us is housing turnover. 60% plus of our kitchen cabinet business is driven by remodeling. So we need those existing homes to turn over.
Typically, when someone buys an existing home, within two years, they're going to remodel something. Typically, where do you spend most of your time with your friends and your family? You spend it in your kitchen. Kitchen gets a lot of remodeling dollars. Once that housing turnover starts again, we feel our markets are going to be energized. Our semi-custom customers, we really don't need to do anything any different. We've got the geographic space. We've got the mechanical capacity to service that market. We just need that market to grow a little bit. We're well positioned there across the breadth of product and geography that we serve. From a stock standpoint, there's a couple of other interesting dynamics that happen when business picks up. The stock guys typically will build a little bit of their own product internally.
And that outsourcing needle will start to shift. So as they get busier, again, labor is still a constraint in the market. So it's both a challenge and an opportunity. We have to staff up too, but so do our customers. So as these customers get busier, they will tend to outsource more product because they're going to reallocate some of their labor to building cabinets, to finishing cabinets, and making sure they can grow faster when the market comes back. So that's an opportunity. The other thing that they'll do is they'll take some of the components that they buy from us, and they'll ask for us to subassemble them. So drawer boxes are a great example.
So if we're supplying the drawer box components today, tomorrow they may ask us to actually build the entire box and deliver that in just the way we do our doors and drawer fronts on a JIT basis. So we can grow faster than the market in those situations when that market starts to come back. And all our customers are saying the same thing. There's pent-up demand. This remodeling market is going to come back. It's just a matter of when. So we believe that. Our customers believe that. And there's strong tailwinds that are going to be there once that happens. The last point there is we have the capability to build other products as well. So we have wood processing equipment.
So not only are we trying to gain market share within the cabinet space with our capacity right now as the market's declined, but we're also looking outside the other markets, right? So whether it's flooring or millwork, we have the capability, and we do produce some millwork products today in our Luck, Wisconsin facility, as well as our Wahpeton, North Dakota facility. So in those facilities, we have capacity. We have a product line. We just need some front-end resources. So we're in the process of hiring sales, product development people to push those products into other markets. And that's another way to grow. So the takeaway is right now, we're focusing on our operations. We're getting ready for growth. And we just need that market to come back a little bit. And we fully believe that it will. And with that, I'll turn it over to Jim Nixon.
We'll talk about Custom Solutions, Custom Mixing Solutions.
Thank you, John, and good morning, everyone. It's great to be here with all of you today, and thank you for having us. My name is Jim Nixon, and I represent the Custom Rubber Compounding Business Unit of Quanex, which features a modern and state-of-the-art rubber compounding facility in Cambridge, Ohio. That facility offers some relatively unique and strategic advantages to Quanex from three major perspectives. First of all, we're a vertically integrated supplier. We supply a key compound that is utilized by our Extruded Solutions group for EPDM spacer bar production. Secondly, we have compounds that support complementary products in the building construction markets themselves that are outside of Quanex. These would be proprietary formulations that support, in other areas of fenestration, products like architectural glazing and setting blocks, and in building construction, specialized roofing materials and insulative weather stripping.
Third, we engage in a pretty broad spectrum of markets well outside building construction. These would be technical-grade type compounds and niche products in markets like automotive, wire and cable, industrial products like belts, hose, and rolls, agriculture, FDA, pet products, medical, and military. And the unique advantage there is that over time, we're able to leverage some of the IP and technology and chemistries we've learned in one sector and start applying them to another one over time. We estimate the size of our market to be about 1 billion pounds a year in the U.S. We have 5% of that market, although 15% of the Midwest. And what we find in our industry is that a lot of the competition landscape is regional basis because the product that we sell is a perishable good and it has a shelf life. So we find ourselves competing more regionally there.
There are three major players in our industry. That number has shrunk over, I would say, the last 15 years due to a tremendous amount of consolidation in our industry that's taken place. The photos there will show you some of the unique capabilities. It doesn't matter what market we're talking about. We have capabilities that go beyond what you would normally find in one single compounding site with the ability to produce both dense and sponge. Sponge is very, very difficult. Black and colored compounds and for a variety of different types of processes, whether it be extrusion, molding, or calender sheets. We currently have 80 active customers, but that figure just continues to grow every year. Once we grab a customer, we typically hang on to them.
Unlike a few of our other segments, we have a higher percentage of our total sales made up by relatively fewer customers. Though it's worth pointing out, again, you've heard this before, that all of those major customers that we have today, these are very, very long-standing and healthy relationships. The commodity dynamic, a lot of our raw materials do have a high degree of dependency on hydrocarbon feedstocks like crude oil and natural gas and energy. These become the major components of things like synthetic elastomers, carbon black, and oil, which are the major constituents of a rubber compound. That said, we're using innovation right now to develop new products with a lower dependency on carbon-derived energy and a very high degree of sustainability for the future. The major polymer that we produce in our plant, although we are capable of mixing just about all of them, is EPDM.
About half of all EPDM or EP elastomer goes into the automotive sector. So we do have some exposure to trends in that market. From a product pricing standpoint, roughly 30%-40% of our product pricing is indexed or formulary-based. That's not all bad. First of all, it's very difficult to index pricing and rubber compounds because they can be so unique and different in general. And that part that isn't indexed creates some unique advantages and a nice commercial blend for us from a profitability standpoint. Strengths, quality, and service. That's our strategy. You've heard that a few times today. It's really true. Quality, when it comes to our product, is all around quality of dispersion and consistency. It's a batch mixing process. Service, we move and adapt quicker than our competition.
We have advantages both in terms of transactional business, quotes, and things like that, and also executing on on-time delivery and lead times much better than our competition. I mentioned the world-class facility we have, and it truly is. We've truly broken away from the stigma that you might have in your image in your mind about what rubber mixing is. This is a clean, climate-controlled, highly automated, technologically advanced compounding site. We're well invested, and we continue to be well invested. We just added, over the last few years, full-strengthening capabilities for rubber compounds on every one of our mixing lines and recent automation and manual processes like chemical weighment. That diversification markets we already talked about, but that also dilutes our risk, right? If one industry's down, we don't feel that as much because we are so diversified in the markets we serve.
And the one that's really, really exciting is the intellectual property we hold because about two-thirds of every compound that leaves our company is of our own design. We control the intellectual property, which is a proprietary trademark rubber formulation for a specific application, maybe even for a specific customer. That happens by strong R&D work and a clear product development strategy, both long-term and short-term, to capture opportunities in the market. We also have the capability to develop prototype compounds very, very quickly, again, outstepping our competition at speed to market. The opportunities, obviously, we've developed a great foundation. Now it's all about the growth. Organically, we have the capability to add additional capacity in our current site, but we're also looking at adding capacity elsewhere to compete more regionally where we can support our customer base.
Inorganically, through acquisition partnership, things that George talked about at the opening remarks, there's going to be an ongoing need in the market for elastomers. It's a classification of materials that delivers properties that no other material class can deliver. So there's definitely an ongoing need there for elastomers, rubber polymers in general. Future trends I see in the market are all going to be around innovation technology, driving efficiency while you're getting scale at the same time. We're going to see data-driven, highly intelligent, adaptive mixers, machine learning, and use of AI for further process control and automation. Even traditional humanoid robots to handle what was previously in the industry very mundane and labor-intensive tasks. We're extremely proud and excited to be part of the Custom Solutions group here. Those trends are moving faster than you'd think right now.
We fully intend to stay out in front of all that as we have for the last 25 years. I thank you for your time. At this point, I will turn the meeting over to my good colleague, Peter Santo.
Good morning, everybody. After 13 years with Tyman, I'm really pleased and genuinely excited to transition into my new role and lead the access solutions business for Quanex. With our Bilco brand, which was founded in 1926, and the more recent additions of Profab and Howe Green, we really do have a strong and leading market position in the design and the manufacture of specialty access solutions. Our main market is the commercial and industrial markets in the U.S. and in the U.K. We also have a very well-established residential market in the northeast segment of the U.S. where our product is applied in the building types.
As you can see from the map, we have manufacturing facilities across the U.S. in Ohio and Arkansas, a low-cost manufacturing facility down in Juarez in Mexico, and we have warehousing in New Mexico and in Canada that gives us full coverage. In the U.K., we've recently moved three separate manufacturing facilities into a state-of-the-art facility in the West Midlands on a technology park where we really do have the capacity to grow and state-of-the-art manufacturing equipment to enable that to happen. Across the U.S., the core of our business really is the strong commercial presence we have.
I'll go through that in some detail a little bit later regarding the reputation we have with the specification community, the distribution contacts we have throughout the industry, and a very strong representative network across the U.S., which has really built the business and gives us the scope for growth in the future. Also, we have a developing agent network in new markets outside of the U.S. and outside of the U.K. in the areas of Europe where we now have opportunity across the Benelux, the DACH region, the Nordic regions, and really, most excitingly, in the Middle East and India, whereby the infrastructure developments over the next 10 years are ideal markets for growth for our access solutions business within Quanex. The key brands, as you can see, are access products.
So basically, for any commercial or industrial building for roof access, we have a range of safety products such as automated smoke vents, which really is a growing sector for us, and a wide range of ancillaries, so the ladder systems, the stair systems, and guarding rails that go with that. That area as well gives us real scope for growth as regulations change and increase in all applications. And we as Quanex are well placed to capitalize upon that. The core of the business is really the specification base. Our route to market is different, I would say, to most of the other Quanex businesses, whereby the specification is gained by the architect and then policed through the main contractor or the general contractor to the roofing contractor or the specialist subcontractor installer.
What we've got is Bilco with Profab and Howe Green also is a reputation within our specification community. We have differentiated and patented technology, which protects that specification. Through the rep network, we have the close proximity to police those specifications through the contractor network. And then with the distributors we have on board, the ability to supply those products on a timely basis. In terms of the customer dynamics, you can see we have a very low concentration. We sell across a wide range of customers, distributors, roofing contractors, and increasingly in the retail sector, the big box retailers. So we have a broad range of customer base. The specification base really is important.
As I've been in the business and I've started traveling around, the strength of the Bilco brand is very strong, almost used as a generic in terms of general roof access and differentiated smoke vents, automated products. Bilco is used as the generic term in that sector. So it really gives us a strong base. The relationship with the distributors is also very strong. We have relationships which go back 20, 30, 40 years, and that's built on reputation, built on the differentiation we can achieve through our technology and based on the service we give through the network we have across the U.S. In the U.K., it's more of a developing situation, but the growth opportunity there is tremendous as we develop the same kind of model across the U.K. And then after that, we look at further new territories.
So the real growth opportunity, as George said earlier, is the geographical expansion, taking what we do very well in the U.S., expanding that in the U.K., then looking at new territories whereby the opportunity for these products is significant. Sorry. In terms of the commodity cost dynamics, we obviously aluminum and steel are our major products. So we've had relative stability there. We've also invested most recently in a real program of CI in terms of cost reduction, looking at improving yields and improving productivity so to give us greater control of what we do. And obviously, with our Mexican facility, notwithstanding the current situation with tariffs, but we have a very, very capable, large-scale, low-cost manufacturing facility. Regarding our current activity, our recent investments really above CI is in modernization of the technology. Some of the equipment we have has been underinvested in the past.
We have a five-year modernization program across the U.S. base, which really gives us tremendous scope for better productivity, better cost control, improved yields, and shorter lead times. So really, I am confident that to match the commercial demand that we're expecting to grab, we can see internal operations which will improve based on solid investment in our manufacturing equipment. Trying to summarize that in terms of the strengths and the opportunities ahead, I really do see the Access Solutions business as a real growth engine for Quanex. And in dialogue with George, taking on this new role, we have a real target of what we think we can do with this business on a global basis. So the core strengths, as I've emphasized, the brand awareness of Bilco in all markets is tremendous. We have major projects throughout the U.S.
The brand is strong in Europe, and we've also done some work in the Middle East based on the back of the Bilco brand. So we've been approached to go for work because the Bilco brand is well known. And as you know, across the Middle East, the specifications are driven by either U.S. or U.K. architecture. The presence we have in the commercial space is really strong. The distribution network we have is well established, is nationwide in the U.S. and growing in further fields. The retail presence in the U.S. is a new and developing market whereby we have developing bases with a big retail, the big box retailer, sorry, Home Depot, Menards, and Lowe's. And that's a developing situation for us.
We're also looking to take the American model into Canada, whereby we don't have the same kind of density, but we do believe the model in the U.S. will work across Canada, and that's a current initiative where we expect the benefit to come in 2025 and beyond. The products really are differentiated. If you look at the patented technology we have and you look at the level of certification and regulation we have, we really do differentiate ourselves from the low-cost products which are available coming from China, for example, but really, once our specification is established, we believe that we are proof from that low-cost manufacturing because of what we can do, and the global presence we now have as Tyman and Quanex together, it gives us, and we look at more and more cross-selling opportunities.
We have facilities, and we have feet on the ground in new territories. So we can look at new opportunities and then look to resource them accordingly. But we have feet on the ground for the initial market development. So putting all that together and looking at the opportunities, there's an immediate opportunity in the U.K. whereby we really do have a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility, which is probably running at 30% capacity at the moment. We have a developing specification network which will feed that machine, and that gives us real hope for 2025 and beyond. The expansion into the rest of Europe whereby the products are suitable. You've got the same steel frame building with the same access requirements and the same increasing regulations in terms of fire and smoke prevention.
So taking the model which is becoming successful in the U.K. and taking that into the Benelux region and the Nordics and the DACH region where the building codes are very similar is an immediate opportunity that we've not yet pursued. But we're looking to do that now in 2025 and beyond and prioritize the key areas. If you look at the infrastructure developments going ahead in the Middle East over the next 10 years in Saudi Arabia and Dubai in particular, we see real opportunity there. We've done one major landmark product in Riyadh whereby we did all the access hatches for the metro station there. And that's one project out of many, many that are going ahead. We're exhibiting at the Big 5 show in Riyadh at the end of February whereby we're showcasing the full range of the Quanex products, but particularly promoting access solutions.
Equally in India, if you look at the development in India whereby we have a presence through the Giesse brand , we're exploring opportunities in India over the next 10 years as they look to formalize and increase the infrastructure projects. Across all territories, if you look at the growth of the digital revolution and what's happening with server farms and data centers, that's a core market for us, and so we see the market conditions being very positive in all territories on that basis. In terms of NPD, our scale as Quanex now gives us the ability and the new organization structure whereby we're looking at the product streams on a global basis gives us much better opportunity to have our engineers and our technologists and our product managers working together and sharing their experience and sharing the skills and looking at product development.
The new structure of Quanex whereby we're looking at global product streams really does, I feel, give us an opportunity of exploiting what we've not done in the past. Finally, we have significant investment now in the plant and equipment, which will give us productivity improvements, cost reductions through yield improvements, and improved service performance by faster reaction times. That and the work we're doing on CI and CapEx investment coupled with the low-cost manufacturing we have in Mexico gives us a perfect blend of manufacturing expertise to enable a business to seize these commercial opportunities. Hopefully, I've given you a small picture. I genuinely am excited to take on this opportunity, and I really see the Access Solutions can be a major growth engine for Quanex over the next five years.
I'll hand over now to Scott Zuehlke, our CFO and treasurer, to take you through some finances. Thank you.
So Peter, being legacy Tyman and new to the group, we may or may not have practiced him pronouncing my last name. Hang in there. This is the last section. I figured I'd start off with official guidance for 2025. As I'm sure you can all appreciate, forecasting on a pro forma basis, converting IFRS to U.S. GAAP while also resegmenting the business is a complex process. So thanks to the investors and sell-side analysts for your patience. Having said that, we're now comfortable with the following guidance for 2025. Net sales of $1.84 billion-$1.86 billion, which represents growth of about 45% to the midpoint of the guidance versus 2024. The growth is driven by the contribution from the legacy Tyman assets coupled with slight volume growth expected in the second half of this year.
Note that legacy Tyman results were included in the fourth quarter of last year's financials, and we also divested about $13 million of vinyl fencing business in the U.S. in the fourth quarter. Adjusted EBITDA of $270 million-$280 million, which should yield margin expansion of approximately 50 to 60 basis points to the midpoint, again driven by the contribution from the legacy Tyman business combined with the realization of cost synergies. As George mentioned, we are on track to have a $15 million run rate by the end of the first year, which means actually realized synergies will be something below that flowing through financials. Free cash flow of about $100 million this year. This does reflect about $15 million of one-time cash costs related to achieving the cost synergies. Gross margin of about 29% for the full year.
It's important to note that gross margin was negatively impacted in the fourth quarter due to the purchase price allocation related to the Tyman deal, which is recorded as additional COGS, reducing gross profit for a period of time. This will also impact the first quarter of this year to a lesser degree, but after the first quarter of this year, we should start to see really an improvement in gross margin going forward. SG&A of about $260 million-$265 million. For reference, combined SG&A for standalone Tyman and standalone Quanex last year was about $270 million. Adjusted EBITDA of $60 million-$65 million. It's important to note that going forward, we will be excluding amortization charges for acquisition-related intangible assets for the purposes of calculating certain non-GAAP measures. The adjusted measures are more representative of core operations and facilitate more consistent comparisons of operating results over time.
So we felt like it was definitely an adjustment we needed to make. Interest expense of about $55 million, a tax rate of about 23.5%, and CapEx of $80 million-$85 million, which is higher than we typically spend as a percentage of EBITDA, but there are a few large projects going on this year. This slide was a late addition to the presentation. We felt the tariff topic is timely, to say the least. In general, we do try to source locally where possible, but our preliminary estimate is about 17% of our COGS are exposed to potential tariffs. If we assume an effective date of Feb.
1 for the 10% China tariff and March 1 for potential of 25% in Mexico and Canada, we estimate that on a consolidated basis, gross margin exposure could be 60-90 basis points, and EBITDA margin exposure could be 40-80 basis points. Said another way, the potential exposure to EBITDA could be $3 million or it could be as high as around $10 million. Obviously, this is a fluid situation. We wanted to give you kind of a feel for the exposure. We think it's manageable. We're actively analyzing the situation and developing and implementing strategies to mitigate any potential impacts. If you recall, we were very good at managing the supply chain post-COVID. So we feel confident that we can adjust and manage any challenges related to tariffs.
I think it's worth a quick trip down memory lane really to see how Quanex has performed over the last five years with this management team in place. From a revenue perspective, the compound annual growth rate was about 11% from 2020 to 2024. Full transparency, like I mentioned, legacy Tyman was included in Q4 of last year. But now with the full contribution from Tyman, we really should see a step change in revenue growth this year going forward. The goal is to grow above market each year by taking advantage of our combined scale and capabilities. Moving over to the right side of the slide, we've been able to grow EBITDA in each year over the past five years with steady margin expansion by focusing on the things we can control. We talk about that a lot.
Things like safety culture, operational excellence, and working capital management. We're excited to see what this business can do going forward, and 2025 should be the beginning of something special for Quanex, so we often get questions about the seasonality of our business, and this slide does a good job illustrating how seasonality impacts free cash flow and Adjusted EBITDA. The punchline is our business is very seasonal. Our fiscal year starts on November 1st, so our first quarter is typically the low watermark for the year. A lot of that has to do with the holidays and then usually cold weather, and then our business picks up meaningfully as we enter the spring selling season each year.
As you can see, on average, we only generate about 10% of our free cash flow and 40% of our adjusted EBITDA in the first half of each fiscal year, which means we generate almost 90% of our free cash flow and 60% of our adjusted EBITDA in the second half of each fiscal year on average, so this slide lays out our capital allocation priorities, all of which were selected with one goal in mind, which is to increase shareholder value over time. We have a conservative board and executive management team, so maintaining a healthy balance sheet is a top priority. We have no desire in taking on excess leverage just for the sake of growing. We'll continue to be thoughtful about our capital structure and debt load.
Our target net leverage ratio is about one to one and a half times, which will and may and will fluctuate depending on several factors such as M&A, market cycles, etc. We're committed to paying a dividend. Right now, it's $0.08 a quarter. It doesn't limit our ability to invest organically or inorganically, which is what we like about it. In general, we deploy cash into areas with the highest risk-adjusted returns. At any given time, we'll methodically analyze options such as organic investments, strategic M&A, opportunistic share repurchases, and dividends. Having said that, we currently have about $59 million left on our stock repurchase authorization, and it's worth knowing that we did help support the stock in Q1 when we were in an open period. Capital allocation priorities are discussed at the board level every quarter to make sure that we are all aligned.
So we realized we did lever up to acquire Tyman , but this slide illustrates that we have a solid track record of deleveraging post-acquisition. For example, we levered up to almost three times back in 2015 when we acquired Liniar and Woodcraft. And as you can see, we decreased the net leverage ratio significantly over the next few years post these acquisitions. We did the same thing with the LMI deal a couple of years ago. The slide shows a net leverage ratio of 3.7x as of 10/31/2024. But keep in mind, this is not pro forma for the Tyman deal, nor does it reflect any credit for the synergies we've targeted. The 2.1x net leverage ratio you see is pro forma using last 12 months Adjusted EBITDA for Tyman and Quanex and giving us credit for the 30 million of synergies.
This is more in line with the ratio we use for the debt compliance, which is why we like to talk about it. We're very proud of our free cash flow profile. We've talked about it multiple times throughout this morning. We've worked very hard over the past several years managing working capital. Looking forward, we'll continue to focus on managing working capital, and we'll continue to analyze conversion days for legacy Tyman business. We think there's opportunity for improvement there. Keep in mind, legacy Quanex is very much a just-in-time or made-to-order business, whereas legacy Tyman is very much made-to-stock that has historically had higher inventory that we would like to be comfortable with.
The exciting part is that we think we can more than double free cash flow to more than $225 million by 2029 by executing on our current plan, status quo, no divestments, no acquisitions. That's just running the business we have today. We think we can get that much of an improvement over the next five years. This slide illustrates our annual consolidated CapEx figures along with a percentage of EBITDA, which is a metric we use internally. Average CapEx as a percent of EBITDA for the last five years is about 23%. You'll notice to the midpoint this year, that's about 30% of EBITDA. There are a few projects going on that we're spending more on, like the new plant in Jackson, Georgia. There's some ERP upgrade projects, and then there's also a plant consolidation project in Owatonna, Minnesota, all driving CapEx higher this year.
Looking ahead beyond this year, though, you should expect us to deploy around 20%-25% of EBITDA back into the business each year. On a pro forma basis, we expect to spend $40 million-$50 million a year on maintenance capital alone in any given year. So last slide here. In conclusion, and George went through some of this, but it's worth talking through again. The takeaways are as follows. We are a growing global manufacturing company focused on making niche products to service customers across various end markets. We're not just focused on window, door, and cabinets. Our material science and process engineering expertise enables us to expand into those adjacent markets. We are a market leader in all of the products we manufacture with a flexible business model, allowing us to flex up and down based on demand.
We generate solid free cash flow, maintain a healthy balance sheet, and our capital allocation strategy is focused on increasing total shareholder returns. So with that, we will now open it up to Q&A. And what I'll ask is, if you want to ask a question, we'll bring a microphone around, but introduce yourself and let us know what affiliation you are. Do you want to come up here? Yeah. Who's first?
Morning, guys.
Morning.
Can you hear me? Reuben Garner with Benchmark Company. I guess maybe we'll start with the tariffs thing just because it's topical. Can you talk about what is embedded in your guidance for this year? I know you laid out that kind of sensitivity analysis.
So the guidance we gave doesn't account for impacts to any tariffs. We just kind of wanted to give you what the exposure could look like.
We think we can manage that exposure. There may be some impact if actually they go through, but that's not included in guidance.
In your bridge to 29, it looks like the implied incremental margin on your growth is in the mid-teens, kind of consistent with your.
A little higher, yeah.
Yeah. Is that just a, I mean, it seems like a conservative.
Correct.
Number. Okay. So it's as simple as that.
So the idea would be as we enter into adjacent markets, theory is that those markets would be better margin than the window, door, and cabinet markets. So you're right. I think that is a conservative.
And I think we tried to highlight across all of that. We pride ourselves in being able to deliver what we say.
So you've known us long enough, Reuben, that we tend to take more of a conservative approach on anything that we doesn't mean that's what our goals are internally, but what we're going to tell you is usually conservative in nature.
And then the last one I have before I pass it on is an M&A question. In the bridge, you talk about bolt-ons, I think adjacent markets and products were mentioned. It's pretty clear you're in a lot of markets right now where you're a leader and they're still fragmented markets. Is consolidating the businesses you're already in a part of that story, or is that not a good use of cash?
I think it's a combination of that. We've noticed through the acquisition of Tyman and Tyman in the hardware segment and now the access group has numerous opportunities for bolt-ons, more so than we did.
The spacer business was already pretty tight. Not a lot of opportunities in our spacer business. North American vinyl extrusion, you guys have heard us talk about that. It's already too much capacity and consolidation is hard. So I think you're going to see it in expanding our mixing business for the bolt-ons, the access group, and then there are a lot of opportunities within hardware to consolidate potentially. Yep.
Good morning, Steven Ramsey at Thompson Research Group. Had a couple of questions to hone in on the shift on make-to-stock versus make-to-order. Just kind of the order of magnitude of percentage of where made-to-order is now, where you hope it can be in three to five years, and then any color by segment.
Yeah.
So what I would say is on average, legacy Tyman held about 120 days of inventory, which is significantly higher than what legacy Quanex did. We built in a little bit of improvement in that over the course of really not this year so much, but in the out years. I don't think you're going to ever see the legacy Tyman business get down to where Quanex was because in many cases, it is a different business and different product lines. Do you have anything to add there?
No, but I think getting under 100 days, approaching 80 days worth of inventory is a target. To reduce that, you're really looking at the operational footprint and how you go to market. So that's a long process. It's not something that happens overnight.
So you've got to make sure the operations are prepared to do that and bleed inventory down, but meaningful one-time cash improvements by reducing the amount of days in inventory. And I think you'll see that happen over the next five years.
The other thing I can add just that'll help working capital and conversion capital over time is we do have a plan and a goal to centralize more of a shared service model, first in North America, then internationally. That will improve cash conversion going forward. The only other thing that would offset that a little bit is we go into new emerging markets. I think our strategy very much will be to build warehouses and create stock before you turn around and invest in new manufacturing sites.
So it's a blend in terms of the markets that we go, but it'll be on our terms, not because we're inefficient in operations.
Okay. That's helpful. Second one for me. You talked about IG, spacer, automation. Maybe share some on the progress you've had, kind of where that can go in the coming years. And to clarify, is automation in spacers, is that the biggest area for automation penetration potential?
Externally for our customers, absolutely. Our customers are looking; they've got a labor shortage today, and that labor shortage is only going to get worse going forward. So all of our customers are looking at the long-term automation, the solutions that we provide. So yeah, that's very much a growth engine for us.
One of the things that's been a limiter over the years is that there's historically very few IG automation makers.
You've got LiSEC, Forel, a couple of the big guys, Bystronic, and now you're starting to see globally more suppliers. You've got Chinese suppliers, a couple more in the U.S. So Asian equipment is becoming more available and the rate at which automation is being able to come to the market, that's a good opportunity for us.
Hey, good morning. Julio Romero from Sidoti. Thanks so much. This might be for George or for Peter. Wanted to ask about the Access Solutions piece. Can you talk about some of the product lines there, the exposure to SmartWare and automation, electronic access, sensors and alarms, and if those solutions, which seem exposed to some pretty positive secular growth trends, can be applied to other product lines, either across the broader Custom Solutions segment or across the broader portfolio? And that's in terms of Internet of Things or digitizing the household.
Yeah. So I'll give a real quick comment, and then I'll let Peter go a little more. We're really excited about this access business. One, it was kind of buried under the AmesburyTruth section within Tyman. So for lack of a better term, it was the forgotten child kind of buried underneath. For us, bringing it out and making its own business unit or product focus under the Custom Solutions group, we think that there's huge opportunity for growth globally. Now, in terms of the applications, I'll let Peter.
Yeah. It's a good way to explain one of the benefits of the new Quanex group. In the UK, within our hardware business, we have a SmartWare business, which was technology we brought into the group a number of years ago.
So we're looking now at new technology, as you say, automated smoke vents now attached to the Internet of Things, having it digitized on your phone, so we're talking to the SmartWare people, and we've got a number of products in development now. We were at a hardware trade show or building trade show in Munich two weeks ago, and we launched our first automated CHIC concealed hardware whereby it is activated from the phone, and that was our first launch, really, into that market in the door and window market, but we have two projects ongoing now with the U.K. business looking to apply that same technology to the hatches, and so there's a scope now of doing that.
We've got the technology within the group, and it's just getting different parts of the group talking together. So it is very much on the to-do list at the moment.
Very helpful, and then just staying on that kind of portion of the business, can you maybe go a little bit more into the geographical expansion opportunity in terms of bringing some of those access solutions into I think you mentioned the U.K., the Nordics, Middle East, and other regions?
Yeah. As George said, the Bilco business in the U.S. was really part of the hardware business, and it didn't really have full exposure. And the three brands we sell in the U.K., Profab, Howe Green, and Bilco were part of the hardware business. What we've done now is taken it out of that, and we've said it's one division, so a global business.
So we've got the teams in the U.S. and the teams in the U.K. talking together. I think also from our experience we've had in the European markets, we see opportunities. If you look at the building design in the U.S. and the U.K., the similar building designs across Europe. So basically getting into those markets and taking our products to the market, the pattern that has been successful in the U.S. that is proving to be successful down in the U.K. will apply to those markets. Our challenge going forward is to prioritize. So our priority one in the U.S. is to grow into Canada because that's a direct translation, and we're currently doing that now. We're in the process of setting up the network now. In the U.K., we've got a developer specification bank because we've really been more reactive than proactive.
So that's an immediate priority for 2025. Set up the specification bank. We then look at the geography, look at Europe. The Middle East is definitely a growth area. As I say, we're at the Riyadh show end of February. Our competition in the U.S. have probably got more of a presence outside the U.S. than Bilco. Bilco is really very strong in the U.S., but they've not looked further afield. Now with the footprint that we've got and we've got the focus on the global business, we see a real opportunity of going into the Middle East. You've got the Saudi planned to 2032. You've got what they're doing in Dubai. You've got Abu Dhabi. We've got feet on the ground in those areas. So we as Quanex now, we have salespeople on the ground.
So we have the means to go out and create demand and look for the opportunities. Priority one really is Canada. Priority two is sorting out the UK business. Then further afield, the Middle East. I think India as well. We're going to a trade show in India in May, exploring opportunities there in the major cities and in Europe. But our challenge really is to prioritize and make sure that we get a good timeline for the opportunities that exist. Certainly over the next five years, as I said, if you look at the infrastructure developments, what's being built in terms of trains, metros, airports, if you look at the growth of digital and what's going on with server farms and data centers, that really is our target market. They're the markets that we see are really starting to grow.
Looks like I just reached his forecast.
Really helpful. Thanks, guys.
Yep. Thank you. Thanks.
Good morning, guys. Adam Thalhimer at Thompson Davis. I wanted to start with current, can you just talk broadly about current demand trends and kind of what's embedded in the 275 EBITDA this year?
So in terms of demand, I would tell you, and it's like what we said on the previous earnings calls, it's as expected. I think we've seen recently some impact from a very, very cold January. So January was okay as anticipated. And then you've got the issues in California that's really disrupted some of the building in California. So I think we're going to see some of that noise. Very average, slight growth to being flat year- over- year, just choppy.
I think we expect that to continue through the first half of the year, and then we think we'll see some slight growth in the second half as it relates to our EBITDA and what we're seeing. Again, everything's as anticipated. I'm pretty happy and excited about our integration efforts, and there hasn't been any surprises. We've been able to offset any things that we've missed, and I think we're creating opportunities to give us cushion and hopefully exceed.
Yeah. The only thing I'll add there is, as I mentioned, we are expecting some slight volume growth in the second half. If that doesn't materialize to the extent we think, we can probably offset that if we achieve or exceed our goal on the synergy side. So there are some offsets to being able to meet or exceed the guidance.
Okay.
And then in a lot of the presentations, we talked about international market share being lower than domestic market share. And two questions there. I was curious, is growing the international share a priority? And also kind of what the margin variance is between domestic and international?
Yeah. I would say it's a priority only in the fact that I think that there's opportunities. I don't think we're going full out and saying you need to grow around the world. I think we've got a pretty good idea. The Tyman Group had much more of an international exposure that we've been able to learn and take that and say, "Okay, here's the markets that really make sense, and there's room to grow," as we said, and exploit niche areas where we add value and are not competing just as a commodity.
So those areas are priority, and I think you're going to hear us talking about it more. But I would tell you the focus on our priorities right now are continue to finish the integration, build off of the strengths in both our core markets of the UK, Western Europe, and North America, and go from there. But there is international growth, and we're not afraid of that. But it will be very targeted where we feel like we have a niche market or an opportunity to really exploit some lack of competition. And the last one I have is on ROIC. Curious, as you think about some of the 2029 targets, where that would push you on the ROIC front. So clearly, that is going to be a focus. It's kind of a reset to where we are today post the acquisition.
The goal is always to have your ROIC above your weighted average cost of capital. We're about as close to that now, I guess. I think going up to a target of 15+% over that timeframe is achievable. Yeah, I would agree. I think what you're going to see as we exploit the scale as we go here over the next five years can really optimize our current footprint and understand the capability of our asset base that we have today. And as we've done in the past, we manage our assets hard. And I think you'll see that benefit on what we've acquired and hopefully be able to create some new opportunities, especially as we look at the footprint of the combined organization.
Great. Thanks, guys.
Thanks. All good. All right.
Anything else?
Close it down.
I think we're good.
Yeah. 20 seconds to spare. Yeah.
The little timer up here. I think I was the only one that went over. Listen, we really appreciate the time. We know it's not easy to take a couple of hours out of your day. The folks that are here, we've worked with a lot of you for a lot of years. And again, we appreciate your support and effort. And we're excited about what this new Quanex is and leave you with just wait and see some exciting things to come. So thank you all.
Yep. Appreciate it.
Good job, gentlemen. Thank you. Well done.