Real surprise.
It's stuff you'd expect.
Yeah. Cool. All right. Well, we'll get started. So, I'm Kyle Menges, Citi's U.S. Machinery Analyst. I'm joined by the Oshkosh team. So , I've got CEO John Pfeifer to my immediate right. And then Matthew Field, the new CFO. Happy to have you guys here. I think you guys had some quick slides just to go over kind of a little bit about Oshkosh and the portfolio. So, why don't we start there?
Great. Yeah. Thanks, Kyle. Always happy to be here. Been here many times to this conference and always appreciate it. Quickly, forward-looking statements. Matt and I will almost certainly make some statements about the future of the company. And this is just a slide saying that you cannot hold us accountable if that does not actually happen.
We are just a quick overview before Kyle and Matt and I get into some dialogue to just level set you on who we are. I mean, Oshkosh Corporation is about just under $11 billion global company, lots of different operations and locations around the world, and about 18,000 people in the company. But we are primarily our primary markets are North America. That's where 80% of the company is really doing transactions in that continent.
If you look at our company and what we're about, I mean, we're a company with a really, really powerful purpose. Any company has a purpose. Ours is on the top of our minds every day. We serve people in our communities that we consider to be everyday heroes who do the toughest work, really hard work, dangerous work, but also critical work in the function of communities.
We're talking about soldiers and firefighters and people that work in construction on the tarmac of an airport and last-mile delivery. You know, those are the types of occupations I'm talking about. You know, when you look at how we serve well over a dozen end markets. When you look at our business, what really binds us together is the purpose. It's always an end market that we're delivering productivity and safety to somebody doing tough work.
But it's always technology that binds us together, the technological advancements that we're able to make through our capabilities and autonomous functionality, whether that's full autonomy or semi-autonomous functionality with analytics, with software as a service models, connecting everything for that person around them to be more productive and more safe.
And of course, electrification is also a big part of the technology that helps drive everything. Those are common technologies to all of the end markets that we serve. And recently we said, hey, you know, we're not getting quite the recognition that perhaps we deserve in terms of what we do as a company.
And so, for the first time ever, we went to the CES show, the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. It was last month. This is the biggest. I'm sure many of you are familiar with it.
It's the biggest technology show in the world. It's gigantic, and we were there in the transportation hall, and we were able to showcase both futuristic technology with fully autonomous vehicles and what it's going to look like in the neighborhood of the future. What will a fire truck look like? What will a refuse collection vehicle look like? What will last-mile delivery look like?
T hen on the job site of the future, what does the job site of the future look like? How's technology impacting it? What are we doing with technology to impact it, and then finally, the airport of the future. How does the airport of the future function more efficiently as a result of technology that we're bringing into the tarmac of an airport, so it was an exciting time for us to really show what we're all about as a company at Oshkosh Corporation.
Awesome. I think that's a great overview, John. Thank you for that. Why don't we get into the biggest segment, Access segment, and just first talk about the JLG, SkyTrak brands. How do you think they're positioned in the market? How do you continue to win in the market, especially with, you know, some competitors building out capacity in North America?
Yeah. So, when you say SkyTrak brand at JLG, that refers to a telehandler, a telescopic material handler, which you see on the top right of this picture. So, we made a significant investment. We're the leader in telehandlers. JLG is a household name in construction markets for both aerial work platforms and telehandler products. We are continuing to gain share in that marketplace as the leader in the end market.
But we're also opening up new markets for telehandlers. And the biggest is the ag markets. We see significant opportunity for transitioning ag markets to telehandlers. We've developed a line of products to do just that. We made an acquisition of a Spanish company called AUSA, which gives us even more of a complete line of agricultural bespoke telehandlers to continue to drive our development in that market. So, we feel pretty bullish on this segment.
What do you see as the maybe key pillars of the value proposition for JLG for customers?
In terms of JLG, well, JLG is in total with aerial work platforms and telehandlers. It's the leader in the market. It's got great brand recognition. It's almost a household word in construction and markets that use aerial work platforms. We're there because of our quality of the technology that we put on products.
I talked about the technology in my quick intro, whether it's autonomous functionality for the operator, because when you're working at height, you want to make sure that the operator is focused on the job that they're there to do, not on how to operate the equipment that puts them in position to do that work.
And we do that through autonomous functionality, making it safer and easier for those operators to get into position to do the work that they have to do, which also makes them more productive.
That all over many decades has built JLG into the powerful brand that it is. And it is a great business for us. It's our biggest business.
And if we could talk a little bit about the 2025 guidance for the segment. So, you got access down about 15% this year. Just, you know, what trends are you seeing in the key end markets? Kind of what are you hearing from your customers that are leading to that down 15% guide? And then really within telehandlers specifically, just how's the impact of losing that CAT contract just playing into the access guide down 15%?
Yeah. So, there's two things that play into the guide down 15% for access equipment. Number one is private non-residence construction is down in 2025. And when I say private, I'm not talking about big mega projects like data centers, government infrastructure projects. Those are actually doing just fine. I'm talking about private construction, smaller type projects, and its interest rates being higher for longer, which is causing that to be under pressure.
So, that's part of the reason that we had our guidance down on revenue 15%. But the other part is CAT. We're the leader in telehandlers. Up to this point in time, we've made all of CAT's telehandlers for them. CAT decided to make some of their own telehandlers and become a little bit more vertically integrated. We've known about this for at least three years, and we've been planning for it.
But that's part of why we guided down is CAT's now doing their own on a few telehandler models. And we're still supplying CAT dealers. We just don't have a full suite going to them in 2025 and beyond.
Got it. And I guess that the supplying CAT dealers for the first half of this year might be kind of same as 2024, like not much disruption. But then as you get out into the second half, you see more disruption. And then it's really 2026 where you see more. Like how should we think about that plan?
Well, I think that first of all, it's in our guidance. It's probably a little bit more back half loaded than front half loaded because CAT's continuing to ramp up on those models that they intend to produce on their own. And then we'll move on from there.
But I'll just remind you that with the position that we have in telehandler production, every product we make in the telehandler world is sold by the time it comes off the end of the assembly line. So, we've got a strong position in the market. We'll continue to be the leader in the market, and we'll be able to continue to move past this speed bump as we go forward.
Makes sense. Can we touch on the AWP cycle a little bit? Just looking at previous cycles certainly have been fairly severe, but just what gives you some confidence that maybe this down cycle might not be as bad as ones we've seen in the past?
Currently we look at what we guided, which is down 15% in revenue this year on the total access equipment business. We kind of look at that as the trough year. And when I say that, the reason I say that is that we believe that now, of course, we pay very close attention to our customers and have good relationships with our customers, and they give us a lot of insights into what's happening in the market.
But when you look at the total macroeconomic dynamics in play with all of the needs for continued development of infrastructure in the U.S. and the world, quite frankly, it's pretty significant. When you look at power generation needs and data centers, other infrastructure that's already been passed in legislation, those are significant needs that the economy has.
And that drives a level of demand for equipment because everything that we need to do in our economies from a construction standpoint, you need our equipment to do. So, that's what gives us the confidence to say, hey, there's so much long-term need for construction that this will continue to move forward beyond a trough 2025 year. And we feel good long-term about where we are with this business.
You think it's just a matter of maybe rates coming down a little bit?
I think that will help a lot. Yeah. I think the interest rates, particularly with the private construction, the smaller projects, which when you add it all up, consume an enormous amount of equipment.
Yeah. Yeah. And then just quickly on the access margins, you've maintained solid margins in that double-digit % range. Can you just comment on what gives you confidence in access margins continuing to remain in that double-digit range?
We work hard at being more and more resilient in every single cycle in the access history. So, we work very hard at saying, "hey, as we're going through this downturn, we will maintain strong double-digit margins".
A nd we're confident that we can do that because the way that we're structuring the business in terms of not only a little bit more flexible use of our capacity and our cost base, but also, we have significant effort to continuously take cost out of the business, which helps us maintain the resilient margins.
So, when you look at the margins in our guide down 15% and still holding margins in the teens, you know, we feel that that's nice progress to the resiliency of our JLG business and our access business in total.
That makes sense. Let's move to Defense. A lot going on there this year, certainly. Y ou're ramping down some of the JLTV production while ramping up the NGDV for the USPS.
A lot of acronyms there. But can you just walk us through the top-line guidance and just how you think, you know, how we should be thinking about kind of the Defense revenue cadence this year as you're winding down that JLTV production, ramping up NGDV?
Yeah. JLTV, for those of you who are not familiar, stands for Joint Light Tactical Vehicle. It's an armored vehicle. It's been a staple of the U.S. Army, and the U.S. Marine Corps wheeled vehicle programs for a long time. That goes out of production at the end of this quarter for the core Army contract.
We'll still make JLTVs, but we'll make them in smaller quantities. At the top right of this slide, you see a ROGUE fire unit where we've taken a JLTV and made it autonomous. We put a Naval Strike Missile on the top of it for specific uses that the DoD has.
But the main contract goes out of production at the end of the first quarter. The NGDV, which you see on the top left, that's the future postal vehicle. That's in production today.
It's continuing to ramp almost on a linear basis as we go through this year. So, every week that goes by, we're making more units than the week before.
But with the cliff event that happens at the end of Q1 and the NGDV ramping kind of almost linear throughout the year, this is a bit, you know, in full year, we'll do more revenue in postal than we lose in JLTV, but it doesn't, you know, it drops off in Q1 and then NGDV continues to build throughout the rest of the year.
And you talked about, so in order to, I guess, achieve that higher revenue in Postal versus JLTV, you know, you talked about kind of this linear production ramp. So, I guess, like, what do you need to be exiting the year just from a kind of annualized production?
If you look at it, we'll do about 10,000 units this year. Annual production is between 16,000 and 20,000 units a year. We'll be at full rate production at some point in the fourth quarter.
Which would look like that 16 thousand-20 thousand is that?
Annualized, yeah.
With, I guess, 10,000 for the full year. Okay. Okay. Makes sense. And then, I mean, certainly a lot of just questions, I think, about, you know, the mix, like whether we go EV versus ICE, just, you know, how are you kind of thinking about that and the potential impacts if we do go full ICE?
This is a very innovative program. The vehicle you see on the top left, the most innovative, productive last-mile delivery vehicle the world has ever seen. And I mean that quite literally. And when you look at it, one of the many innovative things is that this vehicle, same vehicle comes in either an internal combustion powertrain or a battery electric powertrain.
\It's up to the United States Postal Service and the use case that they have in so many different communities around the country, whether they want a BEV or an ICE. And on the same production line, we produce both of those variants of vehicles. So, what we do is we listen to the Postal Service all the way up to the Postmaster General in terms of what mix they want. Right now, they're telling us 75% battery electric and 25% internal combustion.
They could change that in the future, and they may not change that in the future. We'll do what they want us to do, and if they want more internal combustion, we'll produce and deliver them more internal combustion units.
I guess with you know Trump's new administration in DOGE, is there any? Do you see any risk to that initial order of 50,000 units kind of going away or?
I think that would be irrational because this is such a staple of how the Postal Service is able to dramatically improve their productivity, and most importantly, enable the Postal Service to participate more fully in e-commerce delivery, which improves their revenue.
Right now, they can only partially participate in e-commerce delivery because they don't have the vehicle to do it. C hanging the program in terms of lowering the units that they want to take, that would be a little bit irrational based on what they need.
Is the bottom line kind of also they just need new vehicles anyway?
They need new vehicles.
Yeah.
The current vehicles they're using are 40 years old.
Yeah.
They need new vehicles.
Yes. Yeah. Makes sense. And then just beyond 2025, I think just some other things kind of to be excited about in Defense, especially from a margin perspective. Just, you know, what do you think, you know, beyond 2025, where do you think defense margins could go just as you reprice the FHTV and FMTV contracts and then also ramp up the NGDV?
Yeah. As a prime contractor to the U.S. Department of Defense, of course, we're subject to firm fixed price contracts as any prime contractor is. So, what happens when we go through a period of inflation and we have firm fixed price contracts, it takes a long time to get relief on your price as a result of input cost inflation.
We're finally getting relief due to input cost inflation and getting repriced contracts on our core programs with the DOD. So that's driving improved margins over the next 12 mos-24 mos. And that's going to dramatically help to improve the business.
And when you look at those core contracts being priced to input cost reality of today, plus the ramp-up of the postal vehicle that you see on the top left, that takes the margins back to a healthy level.
You know, you can think double-digit margins again in this business.
Nice. I can stop to see if there's any audience questions. All right. I guess I'll continue then. Maybe we can shift over to V ocational. Just could you give us an overview of maybe the key businesses within that segment, just, you know, backlog coverage entering 2025, how you see each of those different businesses growing this year?
Yeah. Our Vocational segment is phenomenal. We're really excited about it. You saw the strong performance in the fourth quarter, and our guidance shows that we're continuing to drive improved margins in 2025. We expect that to continue even beyond 2025.
These are stable markets, strong orders, strong backlogs, and we're taking technology into these segments that's driving an even improved position for us. If you look on the top left of this slide, that's a zero-emission Class 8 refuse and recycling collection vehicle.
It's on the market today in the early stages of production, but on the market today. That vehicle is like none other in that it's purpose-built for the job. It's not a body-on-chassis. It's purpose-built from the ground up to give that industry the best productivity that it has ever seen. A lot of autonomous functionality built in.
The fact that it's an electric propulsion system is only the starting point in terms of what it can do. Just makes the operator's life in that vehicle much more intuitive, easier, and much, much more productive. And with that, that's what our customers love about it, is it helps them drive productivity improvement, and that's real economic value to that market that we serve.
So, it's early days for that vehicle, but we're really, really excited about it. You see airport ground s ervice equipment on the top right of the chart. Similar type things that we're doing in that industry.
We're using autonomous functionality and AI and analytics to connect data points to give gate agents information about what's happening on the ground that they need to know about and what they can do to prevent problems before they happen, to keep airplanes efficiently coming in and out of gates.
T hat we're really excited about the technology that we have the opportunity to continue to drive to make a difference for our customers in these end markets. It's a pretty exciting time for our Vocational business.
Maybe just talk about the backlog as well and just how you're thinking about the growth of some of these different businesses this year.
Yeah. So, all these are continuing to grow. They're all healthy backlog businesses. The biggest backlog that we have is in municipal fire trucks, which you see on the bottom left of the chart. The municipal budgets are pretty healthy today. Property tax values are healthy. That's what drives municipal spending is property tax receipts. So, we've seen a significant surge in investment in things like municipal fire trucks, which is what's created a big backlog for us.
So, we have a bigger backlog than we would like in this business. We're continuing to work on throughput in our manufacturing facilities to get more units out the door and drive the backlog down, as well as adding some capacity. But that's all, you know, we want to bring the backlog to about 18 months for our customers.
As we do that, that drives really healthy growth and margin creation for our company. The other backlogs are, they're in the neighborhood of six to 12 months typically.
Got it. Yeah. I mean, I think that the Pierce backlog, certainly strong. Just I think you've cited that the current backlog already extends to, you know, 2027, maybe even 2028 at this point with solid double-digit pricing embedded. So, you know, is that kind of what you're seeing still today?
Yeah. We've got about a three-year backlog with fire trucks. But all these are high-margin businesses. And we lead in every one of these end markets, and they're all good businesses because they're businesses where our customers really value the productivity benefit that they get from differentiated technology. That's why they have healthy margins.
I think it'd be helpful to just hear a little more specifically within municipal fire trucks, just what are you doing to add capacity and really increase throughput?
There's a lot of investment within our current manufacturing plants. In some cases, it's higher technology. You know, we're taking operations that used to be manual, pre-paint operations, and we're using more kind of a combination of AI and robotics because we supply a variety of different styles of fire trucks.
So, they're not standard. Every one is not a standard job that comes down the line. So, when you combine some AI modeling with robotics, we're able to automate the finishing of a fire truck, which reduces one of our constraints in manufacturing.
And as we continue to work on each constraint, we get more units out the door. We're doing that. Plus, we're building capacity. We've got a new Murfreesboro, Tennessee plant, which builds that electric refuse vehicle. We're also going to be building cabs for fire trucks in that new operation.
That also helps us continue to increase capacity. We do it fairly prudently. You know, we never want to end up in a situation where we have too much capacity, but we know we have to get more throughput through our plants and have prudent increases in capacity so that we can get our backlog to be at about 18 months.
Yeah. And I mean, I think the Vocational guide for 2025, I think it implies essentially double-digit growth for municipal fire trucks. I think that's fair to say, just like how much is just increased throughput versus price, roughly.
That's both. You know, we don't say specifically, but both of them are factors in that growth rate.
Yeah. That's fair, and then it seems like also solid growth expected for the refuse business in 2025. Just how much of that is a result of just going to this dealer distribution model versus growth of the end market? If you could comment on that.
Yeah. Happy to. So, the whole market is healthy, first of all. So, that's number one, is there's just healthy organic demand from our customers. Number two, we put new products in the market, such as the one you see on this page, which our customers really want to get because they drive productivity benefits for them.
So, they want to, as their fleet ages, they want to replace with that type of a vehicle. And the third thing is that we, up to this point in time, have been a direct sales model company in the environmental services space.
We opened up this product to a dealer network, many of whom are Pierce fire truck dealers, because we knew that we were not adequately covering the market, especially some of the smaller players in municipalities. And we didn't have enough service points in the market.
When we opened it up to these big professional dealers, each dealer has dozens of different service points in their territory, meaning that it's easier for our customers to get service. And that all drives healthy aftermarket revenue for us when we can improve the service level.
So, opening up that dealer channel has really allowed us to cover parts of the market that to this point in time, we've struggled to cover. And that's part of it too.
Just remind us, when did you actually start that effort going to the dealer model?
In earnest over the past 12 months.
Yeah. Okay. I mean, so some of the growth this year must just be some dealer kind of stocking up, or is that not how to think about it?
That's some of the demand.
Some of it. Okay.
Yeah.
Okay. And then I guess, what are some of the tailwinds you see beyond 2025, just for the refuse business, just growth beyond 2025?
I think for the refuse business, the trends of opening up that dealer network along with the new product investments that we've made are trends that are going to last not just for one year, but for several years into the future.
As we continue to see operators upgrade their fleets to the latest technology, and we continue to see pull-through with the dealer network, that's all going to, we believe, will continue to drive healthy growth rates for the business.
The, you know, the environmental services business is a stable market. It tends to kind of move with GDP, even as you can imagine, you know, refuse and recycling is a need in any community, no matter what the state of the economy is. It tends to be pretty aligned with what GDP looks like.
We don't see gigantic swings.
Within refuse, I think it would be helpful just to hear a little. You touched on it a little bit, but just, you know, some of the latest innovations you've come out with. I think really at the forefront in that market. Just, you know, how is this responding to, you know, I guess, like customers providing them with solutions that they?
We showed some innovative and forward-looking technology at the Consumer Electronics Show. We won an award for something called the HARR-E r efuse collection robot. This is not a product on the market today. It's a conceptual product that we're working on for the future.
What it is, is if you go into a planned community, we see many planned communities down here in Florida. It is an on-demand robot that will come and collect your refuse or recycling right at the door of your home.
So, you push a button, and within a few minutes, it's there. You drop off your trash, and it goes back to a centralized place to dump the load. Then the truck only goes to that spot, and you don't see big Class 8 trucks running through your neighborhood. That's what it's meant to do.
It's futuristic, but it's certainly got a lot of attention at the Consumer Electronics Show. That, you know, we use AI. We're using AI now when a truck comes up and approaches a house, if it's a side loader, it knows the operator historically has to use a joystick and fumble around to try to get the can.
It'll be autonomous going forward where the camera system is learning the difference between a garbage can, a mailbox, a bicycle, what other things might be at the end of a driveway. And it can do it for the operator. So, each stop is easier and quicker.
We showed that off at the show, and we showed off some other AI work we're doing to determine what's in the load of each truck so that they know how to deal with it when they get to the site.
If there's contaminated loads with lithium-ion batteries or things like that, they know how to deal with that load.
Yeah, and I think it would be great just to touch on the AeroTech business and just how that's kind of progressing since you acquired it. I think the growth outlook for that business in 2025 and beyond.
Yeah. So that's a business that it was a great company and a great business when we acquired it, and we knew that. But we also knew there was a lot of synergies with technology by joining our company with AeroTech. We'll start to, we're already taking autonomous innovations to market with autonomous jet docking and autonomous cargo loading.
We showed off at CES a fully autonomous baggage handler cart. So, you won't need drivers on the tarmac of an airport anymore. It'll all be done autonomously. That means it'll be more reliable, and it means your baggage will be from the airplane to the belt quicker.
And that's not in the final one that I just mentioned is not in the market yet, but it will be in the future. You'll see autonomous vehicles running around when you look out the window of an airplane.
But we see this as a secular growth market. There's a lot of investments going into upgrading airports, expanding airports, and outside the U.S., building new airports. And so, with the growth of that overall industry, every time you need a new gate, you also need our equipment to support that gate.
And that's a good trend that we see over a long period of time. And our big customers, whether it's Delta or United or Federal Express, they want us to continue to apply this technology that helps them become more efficient.
I mean, you guys certainly have a pretty diverse portfolio at the same time, kind of deploying technology. You touched on autonomy, AI, et cetera, electrification as well. Just maybe talk about like the big areas where you've done, where you've seen this kind of technology cross-pollination across your portfolio and you have plenty of opportunity for that going forward.
Sure. Yeah. Well, I'll mention a couple of things. First of all, you know, you saw us come out with an electric municipal fire truck. So, an electric fire truck weighs about 40 thousand lbs. You know, it's not a simple task to electrify that vehicle and make it work reliably for the firefighter.
If it doesn't work reliably for the firefighter, it's a non-starter, and we did that relatively quickly, and we do that because we are able to apply technologies like electrification across our portfolio.
If Pierce had to do it completely alone and independently, it would have been a lot harder for them to develop a fully electric fire truck. When we use the technology of the company, we're able to do it more reliably, better performance, quicker than we otherwise could. Same thing with the refuse collection vehicle. Same thing with the last-mile delivery postal vehicle.
We're able to take our technology and apply it to these diverse end markets. You know, we do that with all these technologies. The other area that's really helped us drive better technology adoption is we own a motorsports racing company called Pratt Miller.
Pratt Miller races at the highest levels. They've won Le Mans in France more than any other team in history. You know, they're a pretty switched-on group, and they do a lot of, when you're in high-end motorsports racing, you're also doing a lot of technology development.
And we're learning from their technology development about analytics on a vehicle or, you know, how camera systems function on a vehicle to keep a driver safe. We learn about that, and we're able to apply that technology to, you know, fire trucks, for example.
I mean, when you look at a firefighter, the most dangerous spot in the day of the life of a firefighter is in the cab of the vehicle on the way to the scene, because that's where it's hazardous, and they might, you know, they get into accidents sometimes. They'll, you know, they'll flip over. All sorts of bad things happen, so we have to make that vehicle as safe as we possibly can.
Well, a firefighter is a race car driver on his way to the scene, so we put technology for the race car driver into the fire truck, and that's, it's not only is it great for the customer when we continue to make advancements, it's a lot of fun for us to develop it too.
I think you've done that in defense as well a little bit.
Yeah. Soldier survivability and driver survivability on the racetrack are very similar.
Yeah. You know, would love to get to know new CFO Matt Field a little bit better.
Sorry, man. I haven't let you talk so long.
Seven weeks in, so.
Yeah. Seven weeks in. Yeah. So far, so good.
So far, so good.
Yeah. Yeah. Maybe just talk about your previous experiences, how you think that aligns with the new role at Oshkosh, and just what excited you about joining Oshkosh?
Yeah. Really excited to join the company. So, I spent 21 years in automotive. So, I was at Ford for those years. I spent the last four in an electric aviation startup in California. So, I kind of have two ends of the spectrum, both, you know, large experienced company, but also startup company that was about 2,000 employees.
And then building, you know, bespoke aviation and building high-volume automotive. And so to me, to work at Oshkosh is really a great opportunity, not just to join an amazing and exciting company at an amazing time, but to bring those two elements into low-volume specialty manufacturing that can use some of the high-volume lessons and some of the kind of financial elements of a larger company, but also the ability to move quickly like a startup.
So, I was really fortunate to join before CES so I could go and see how everything fit together, but also see the depth of the leadership that's driving each of these segments and then each of the businesses within the segment because everyone was there. And they weren't just there. They were there with their products.
And so, it was just a fantastic chance to get to know the team but also understand the products more deeply. And I think there's a tremendous opportunity in all of these segments. You touched on the excitement around vocational. That's the one that certainly speaks to me, having spent a lot of my time at Ford with the commercial vehicle business and so forth. And so, I think it's a really exciting time and an exciting company.
That's helpful, and then I guess any early thoughts on capital allocation? You know, I think Oshkosh has done a pretty good job so far with some bolt-on M&A, but I guess just how are you thinking about that, you know, continuing that and then organic investment versus dividends and buybacks?
Yeah. So first and foremost, maintaining a strong balance sheet, I think is important for any industrial company. Something we took very seriously at Ford, certainly. You see some of the opportunities we talked about in Vocational to grow capacity. So that's a clear priority.
Spending on things that can generate quick returns with small incremental investments. I think there's a lot to be done there. I think the company's done a great job on M&A and so making sure we have the capacity for the right deal.
There's a strong team looking routinely and regularly at a portfolio of companies and opportunities. And so, we take a very strategic lens to that. And then obviously shareholder returns. So, we took our dividend up by 11% this year. We executed $50 million of share buyback in the fourth quarter.
We continue to evaluate the right portfolio of capital allocation going forward.
That's helpful. I'm going to try to squeeze one more in. I mean, something that we're asking all of our companies at this conference, just how are you thinking about impacts of potential tariffs, kind of managing that and just steel exposure, how you're thinking about responding to Trump's 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum?
You want me to take it?
Sure.
Yeah. Well, we're living through a bit of an unpredictable time with tariffs and what's going to get put in place and what isn't going to get put in place. So we have an active list of things that we need to do to mitigate depending on what tariff gets implemented. And our number one goal when there's tariffs is to mitigate the impact of a tariff so that we do not have to go with a price increase to our customer. That's our goal.
When Europe implemented tariffs about a year ago, there were really kind of protectionist tariffs on our equipment or our category of equipment coming from China. We had been supplying, as many competitors did in our market, from our China plant to the European market.
So we said, "Okay, we've got a footprint of manufacturing operations throughout Europe." We pretty quickly created a plan and pivoted and started to manufacture aerial work platforms in our Italian plant versus our China plant so that we could do what Europe was telling us to do, manufacture for Europe in Europe. And we have executed that plan, and it's gone incredibly well and allowed us to really, for the most part, mitigate most of that tariff.
We will try to do the same thing in the U.S. Whether it's a tariff on Mexico or a tariff on a variety of different countries, we'll have to pull the same playbook. But our, you know, we are an American manufacturer. The vast majority of what we sell in the U.S. is made in one of our U.S. plants.
But we're a big company, and we do bring some categories of equipment in from Mexico. We have a global supply chain. So, depending on what the tariff is, there will be exposure. We will pull out our playbook, and we will try to mitigate everything that we can so that we don't have to go to our customer with a price increase.
Awesome. Well, we'll leave it there. Thanks so much for joining us today.
Thank you.