Thanks so much. I'm Andrew Obin, Bank of America Multi-Industrial Analyst based in New York. You know, one of the most exciting presentations ahead of us, one of my favorite companies, Parker Hannifin. And we have Chairman and CEO Jennifer Parmentier. We're just gonna go to.
We're just gonna go to my slides.
Yeah, yeah.
We have the slides.
A couple of slides, sorry. Then we're gonna go to Q&A.
Yep.
Thanks so much for being here.
Thank you, Andrew. Thank you, everyone, for your interest in Parker-Hannifin and for being here today. I just wanna go over a few slides with you to give you an overview of Parker. Obviously, first off, we have our forward-looking statements and non-GAAP financial measures. This is Parker-Hannifin, at a glance. We have been engineering customer success in the motion and control industry for over 100 years now. This year will come in at approximately $20 billion worth of revenue. On the left side of this slide, you see our three businesses: our Aerospace Systems, it's now 31% of our business; Diversified Industrial International at 29% or 28%; and Diversified Industrial North America at 41%.
On the right side of the page, you see our four technology platforms: Aerospace Systems and engineered materials and filtration, now making up about 60% of the business, while our legacy platforms, Motion Systems and Flow&P rocess Controller, about 40% of the business. Across the bottom of the page, you'll see what I'll talk about in a little more detail in a couple of slides. The Win Strategy is our business system. It's our key to operational excellence. We have a technology powerhouse of interconnected solutions across all of the markets and customers that we serve. Our global distribution network has taken us 70 years to build that, and it is the envy of our competition. We strongly believe in our decentralized operating structure that has led us to the performance that we've enjoyed over the last several years.
We do have the number one position in the motion and control industry, and we consider that to be a $145 billion market size. About a year ago, we started talking about our business in these six market verticals. 90% of our revenue is in these six market verticals: aerospace and defense, coming in at 33%, a few percentage points higher than the previous page I just showed you. That is because we have about 3-5% of our aerospace business sitting in our industrial groups. In plant and industrial automation, equipment coming in at 20%, transportation at 15%, off-highway, energy, and HVAC round out the six market verticals. What is unique about Parker Hannifin is that we have those interconnected technologies that cut across these market verticals. Two-thirds of our revenue comes from customers who buy four or more of those technologies.
Our growth, as we transform the portfolio, is focused on faster-growing, longer-cycle businesses and the secular trends: electrification, digitization, clean technologies, and of course, aerospace. Why we win? Diving in a little deeper here, as I mentioned, the Win Strategy is our business system. I mentioned that we strongly believe in that decentralized operating structure. We have 85 divisions around the world. Those are run by general managers who have full P&L responsibility. They're working closely with our customers. They're executing the Win Strategy every day. We have innovative products, deep customer relationships that allow us to use our application engineering expertise, which I think is, one of the, one of the secret sauces of Parker Hannifin, is our, our engineers. They're able to use their expertise to apply those interconnected technologies to what our customers need. As previously mentioned, the distribution channel.
Over 50% of our revenue serves all of those small to mid-size OEMs that are participating in the secular trends along with us and some of those mega capex projects that you hear us talk about. Here is how we have done. This is the result of implementing and executing the Win Strategy, just looking at over the last three years. If you look at the revenue CAGR, 8% from FY2022 to our current FY2025 guide, 350 basis points of adjusted operating margin expansion, 13% adjusted EPS CAGR, and 13% free cash flow CAGR. All on the heels of the Win Strategy and our people. As the top of this slide says, it is our people and our strategy and our portfolio that drive this performance. Last May, at our investor day, we released these FY2029 targets.
Organic growth of 4-6% was a target that we had previously had out there, but we increased all of our margin targets in the center: 200 basis points increase to adjusted operating margin at 27%, 300 basis points on adjusted EBITDA to 28%, and free cash flow margin, a 100 basis point increase in that target to 17%. We're very confident in hitting these targets, by FY2029 and look forward to the discussion here today.
Jenny, as I said, thanks so much. Maybe we will start with macro. Parker reported its first quarter was positive orders in Industrial North America and eight quarters in fiscal second quarter. You know, I think half this audience probably is convinced that we're in a recession already. You know, at this stage, how are you feeling about the macro? What are you hearing from your distributors? Maybe we can start that.
Yeah. As we talked about during the Q2 earnings call back in early February and in January, Industrial North America orders did turn positive for the first time in six quarters. They turned positive on some of the longer-cycle business, some that I was, you know, just mentioning. Some of the aerospace business sitting inside of the industrial groups, we saw some strength out of Asia Pacific in Semicon, and we saw some strength in our HVAC business. Usually once they turn positive, they stay positive. This is definitely longer-cycle driven. What we also commented on at the time is that distribution sentiment is still positive.
Yep.
you know, feeling good about a lot of quoting activity, but admittedly saying that there had been some project delays and, you know, fit in line with what we've said about having a, a gradual recovery on the industrial side, things shifting to the right a bit.
Right. All of that, you've stated that already.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Yep.
How much of, and in terms of, this, the follow-up, I guess, and you have said some, these are longer-term projects, but you also said the longer-term projects will remain on this path. So how do you, how do we reconcile positive order growth with a lower fiscal year 2025, organic, guide?
You know, we think we're gonna grow differently over time, right? We've done a lot with the portfolio. We've transformed the portfolio quite a bit. Just as a reminder, we've doubled the size of filtration with our Clarcor acquisition, higher aftermarket. We doubled the size of engineered materials with our LORD acquisition, longer-cycle business, and then obviously Exotic and Meggitt, really benefiting obviously from the aerospace market right now. I would point to the core technologies that we have and the way we're able to apply those across all the markets with the customers that we have. If you take that and you look at the secular trends that I mentioned, electrification, digitization, clean tech, aerospace, again, reasons we're gonna grow differently. We have growth enablers built into the Win Strategy and our processes.
We have strategic positioning that is done at the division level. That's something we've done for about four years now. That's every general manager looking at their business and saying, how am I going to grow with the customers I have and the markets I'm in, and how am I going to run my business? Along with that, we have a metric we've talked about in the past a little bit, product vitality. That measures the percentage of sales that come from new products. Just for instance, 10 years ago, we were at about 10%, and now we're in the mid-twenties. It shows that we're focusing on the right things, the right innovative products, solving our customers' problems and making sure that we're using our resources in the right area. We also have a tool called Simple by Design.
You've probably heard us talk about that. That really helps us drive complexity and cost out of the product, but it also helps us really solve the customer's problems by making the right product for them and giving them the enhancements that they need.
No, I saw the impact when I visited the facility, like the solenoid valves and how now they've been standardized.
Right.
You can just automate the process.
Right.
It's quite incredible to see that in action.
I would tell you too, you know, we've, we've, I think, always been really good at running our businesses and in operations. You know, even though you'll hear us say we still think we have improvement we can make, you know, we're, we're getting everyone aligned. We've been getting everybody aligned to this 4-6% organic growth. One of the things that had to be done was, you know, looking at the compensation structure and making sure that, you know, almost all 62,000-63,000 of our employees were focused on the right thing. We changed our compensation structure for almost all those people. We're on year three of that. It's a very simple formula. It's sales, earnings, and cash.
That helps, you know, every team member, no matter where they work in Parker, understand how what they do every day impacts those numbers and how it winds up in their compensation.
Just sort of, you know, this 4-6% that you've mentioned. Will there be a catch-up, right? Because given where we are, you know, given where we are in 2025 in terms of the guidance, does that imply that, you know, sort of 2026 should be above the trend just to catch up, to be on target?
Yeah. I mean, that's why we set it over the cycle, right? 4-6% over the cycle. And, you know, with all those things I mentioned about us growing differently, we think we're gonna benefit, different businesses will benefit at different times in the cycle.
This 4-6, how much of it is predicated on, you know, sort of better Capex cycle and how much of it is predicated on your outgrow in the market in any of your key businesses? How much is outgrowth and how much of it is good at market?
I would say that it's a mix, that it'll be us doing everything with those tools that I mentioned to grow organically. We're gonna benefit from changes in the market and we're gonna benefit from the tools that we use for share gain.
Yep. And maybe, just, think about the tariffs.
Mm-hmm.
How should I think about your exposure to, well, let's just start. What is your exposure to, you know, the key region that have been announced in terms of the tariffs?
It's, you know, we know how to do tariffs, right? We've been here before. You know, we have exposure, but we have the tools we need to make sure that they don't impact our margin. Our goal is to remain margin neutral, and we'll be able to take care of it. We don't expect it to be a material impact to the company.
From that perspective, does '25 guidance embed any impact related to the tariffs or is it just that whatever happens is just gonna be a wash towards that?
The last guide does not have anything because that was before a lot of the discussion that's going on now. Again, we know how to deal with tariffs. We can handle it and we do not expect it to be an impact.
Have you seen any prebuy ahead of the tariffs?
No, somebody asked me that question during the last call and we really haven't, we haven't recognized anything like that.
How fast would the pricing, would those be surcharges? Have you already announced the surcharge? What happens with the backlog? Maybe can you just describe the dynamic, you know, assuming nothing happens on April 2nd, what happens at 12:01 A.M.?
Yeah. We're able to quickly implement based on, you know, the knowledge that we have about what's going on. And we use a mix of different, different pricing mechanisms depending on the customer and how we've dealt with them in the past.
Do you have the ability to reprice the backlog?
In some cases we do.
Okay. Would it take a quarter to work it through or multiple quarters?
I would say that it's different, based on the customer. Some would be shorter and some would be longer.
Okay. And in terms of sort of margin impact, is it margin neutral?
Margin neutral is.
Oh, margin neutral.
Margin neutral is our goal.
Okay. Okay.
Yeah. I mean, we, you know, we have, we have good relationships with our customers. Even though these, these are tough discussions, our customers understand what needs to be done. You know, it's not, not an area for us to take advantage of.
And, you know, I think you've done quite well on margins historically. You know, I think the margin target, well, it is 27%.
Mm-hmm.
You know, so I think for 2025 the guide is 25.8. At the midpoint, so what, what's the main driver to get 27? Is that it's simply just getting a little bit of volume?
We're really proud of how far we've come, right? We're proud of the teams. We're proud of the work they've done around margin expansion. You know, it's the win strategy. It's all of the tools in the win strategy. It's from the very first pillar, keeping people safe and engaged, and then using all of our tools inside of our lean system, Kaizen, Simple by Design, all the tools that we have out there for margin expansion. Every general manager understands what their targets are and has the plans to make sure that they hit those targets. If you think about it, over the last 10 years, we've increased those margin targets four times.
Yep.
After sitting at 15% for over a decade. It is part of what we do.
Maybe moving to long cycle, aerospace has scaled to be a third of the business. Is aerospace different in terms of, as an end market, does that require a different playbook or evolution of a different playbook relative to the rest of the company?
No, the Win Strategy, if you think we've had, we've had aerospace business, you know, for a long time. We've had that long cycle business and we've had pockets of long cycle business on the industrial side too. The Win Strategy works, no matter what the length of the cycle is. You know, I think Meggitt's a good example of, you know, how it works, the integration of Meggitt, bringing it into the company and being very successful with it.
You have the chart, you know, sort of that shows the evolution of the portfolio, how much of it is early cycle, mid-cycle, late cycle.
Mm-hmm.
Over time the company is just becoming more and more balanced, more and more late cycle. As you know, this happens, you know, how does increased visibility change the way you manage the business?
I would say that it really, it doesn't drastically change the way we manage the business, right? It goes back to the comments about having that longer cycle business and being able to use all the same tools for that business. We have the ability to analyze demand and our capacity inside of all of those businesses. So it doesn't really change things.
You know, I think Win Strategy has been with Parker for a long, long time.
Mm-hmm.
You know, for those in the audience that may be not as familiar with Parker, what are the key KPIs that you track as part of the Win Strategy? Yeah, maybe we can start there.
Yeah. I would say that the two most important KPIs are safety and engagement. If you look across the way the Win Strategy is designed, those two sit inside of the very first pillar, which is engaged people. The next pillar is customer experience and then profitable growth and then financial performance. If you do not get the first pillar right, you will not be able to sustain any of the performance in the next three pillars. We take safety very seriously and we take the engagement of our team members very seriously. Those are both measured at all levels of the organization. After that, it would be, you know, the metrics that you would think, you know, it is sales, earnings, and cash flow.
We track margin expansion through all of the tools that I've mentioned a couple of times today, right? We track it through what we get through Kaizen, through Simple by Design, through our zero defect initiatives. Each general manager and their team is well versed not only in the tools, but in where they sit with those margin expansion targets.
Maybe we can just talk about Simple by Design, and specifically in your product blueprinting. Can you just talk about shifts in your R&D strategy? A, let's just start with design and, how does, what does it do to your R&D spending? What do you spend money on R&D? Let's maybe expand on that because I think that's a big focus internally.
Market-driven innovation is on the Win Strategy. One of the tools used there is New Product Blueprinting. Another tool that is used when we are innovating products or working with customers on next generation products is Simple by Design. New product blueprinting, we started doing this, you know, over a decade ago. It is the process of not just partnering with your customers, but really understanding what their customers, the end users' pain points are. What do we need to do to improve this product, make it more efficient? That allows us to be much more efficient with our engineering resources and any R&D spend that needs to happen. Simple by Design drives complexity and cost out.
That's the process of bringing together a multidisciplinary team to look and see how we make the product, the components of the product, and how we can just make it that much more efficient and take the cost out, easier to manufacture. Those tools combined have really helped us, again, be more efficient with our resources. If you look, you know, in the past, our R&D was about 3%, you know, especially during the aerospace super cycle. Now we're running at about 1.5%. We're just much more efficient.
For a company, you know, as I think about Parker, I sort of think about decentralized structure, right? Eighty plus units. I think I was one of the units where the guy was making a decision whether or not he was gonna serve coffee like cappuccinos to folks in. He was not going to put on his P&L, but,
Glad to hear that.
Yeah. No, no, no, no cappuccino machine. But, you know, from that perspective, how do you run sort of a centralized R&D organization with a business that has 80+ units?
Mm-hmm.
You know, maybe you can describe, you know, just sort of global product platforms. How do they fall into the regional product platforms? How does it translate sort of into country-specific offerings? Because there does seem to be, you know, there's the global matrix, you know, that overlays into regional matrix. It's quite intricate, but it seems to work actually.
Right. Right. Like on my previous slide, on one of my slides, we talked about the four technology platforms, right?
Yeah.
We have five operating groups, right? And those operating groups, you know, house those technologies, those similar technologies. Actually, you have filtration, engineering materials, motion systems, fluid connectors, and aerospace. You can look at those and then see the platform, the product platforms that sit underneath those. Those products are made in different divisions. In those divisions, they decide what they need to do through their strategic positioning when it comes to R&D spend, sometimes capital investment, right, to produce the product. We will, with certain initiatives like electrification, lift that up a level to make sure that we are able to leverage not only all of our existing technologies, but our engineering expertise.
Electrification initiatives and R&D that need to happen, and that in this case, led by the Motion Systems group with involvement of the Engineering Materials Group and the filtration group. Some of those initiatives will lift to a higher level, but still very much have to be, you know, led by the divisions. They ultimately land in the division. That's where the product's gonna be made. That's where the customer interaction's going to happen.
Maybe we can sort of switch to industrial and, you know, I just sort of maybe talk about mega projects.
Mm-hmm.
If you look at the industrial starts, right? They spike a couple of years ago. If you look at the manufacturing construction activity in North America, I think it's an all-time peak right now. At the same time, you're sort of talking about Capex being pushed out. How do I reconcile the manufacturing starts data with the manufacturing construction with the fact that stuff is being pushed out to the right, right? You know, because I think there was a fear that, you know, some of these projects would just never, the company would just put up walls.
Mm-hmm.
Just sort of sit and wait. You know, if there's business, they'll fill them up. But if there is no business, you know, people sort of will highlight it that there's a risk that some of these mega projects would never really be at capacity or anywhere close to capacity. What are you seeing? As I said, you know, I would've thought that there was definite lag between starts and construction. That was as.
Mm-hmm.
Given what the construction is, you would think over the next 12- 18 months, you know, you would start putting equipment into these facilities. Yet no company will commit to the fact that there's any visibility over the next 12- 18 months exactly when this equipment goes into these factories. Frankly, over the past couple of years, I think, sort of the confidence that there will be equipment going to these factories seems to have diminished.
Yeah.
Maybe can you just sort of square the circle?
I wish I had the, the perfect answer for you. I think that, you know, everybody has their own comfort level with what's gonna make them pull the trigger or, you know, release, release the capital and get some of these things off the ground or get them to the next stage.
Yeah.
You know, we've gotten some of the best information on some of these projects, you know, from our distribution channel who, you know, often partners with general contractors and local contractors to prepare the land, stand up the walls, get 'em ready to get that equipment inside. You know, I think there's been a lot of starts and stops and delays. I think it's a comfort level, right? It's a dynamic environment right now. I think there are people, as we stated, you know, a couple of months ago with a gradual recovery coming. I think there's just some people that are waiting for what stability feels like for them.
Right.
But, you know, I would say, like I mentioned earlier, you know, distribution does talk still about a lot of quote activity.
Right.
Right out there. If you look at these list of mega Capex projects, depending on which one you look at, you know, you see cancellations, but every time you see a cancellation, you see another one pop up on there.
Right.
I think it's, you know, it's getting pushed out a little bit, but there's just been.
Is it supply chain? Is it labor? Can you attribute any of it to that or it's just level of confidence?
I think it's more level of confidence. I haven't heard of any supply chain issues.
This is not, just to make it clear, this is not a calendar Q1 commentary.
No.
This is more over the past 9-12 months.
No, this is, you know, this is no new comment from anything we've made at the last earnings call. It's just, you know, just waiting for the right time.
Specifically on semiconductor spending in North America, you have highlighted semiconductors, but it sounds like it is more of a global commentary, because semiconductor spending is such a big part and there is visibility there actually.
Right. Right.
How should we think about Parker's level of participation in these projects? Like, can you give us an example? What would you do in a semiconductor facility?
I mean, we could, if it's a greenfield, we could be right there.
Yeah. Like.
We could be there from when they're pre-prepping the land, again, putting up the walls.
Right.
you know, putting.
That would be on the mobile side.
Right. Putting different equipment on the inside, filtration, a lot of, you know, the industrial implant will go into those. There is a, we have a slide from our investor day presentation that shows, you know, just how much we play in that area. It is good for us, good participation for us.
You know, if you look at your file, if you look at your filings, right, you can actually tease out your workforce reduction. You know, sort of, I think the calculation we made show that, you know, part of the answer to your magical incrementals is, you know, you guys being laser focused on cost control.
Right.
Right. You pull those out and, you know, decrementals look fairly normal.
Right.
The question we often get from investors, you have achieved fantastic decrementals. What does that mean on the way up, right? Are these cost take-outs, are they structural, or will we basically have to go rehire people as even when volumes come back and that diminishes, you know, sort of this, your cyclical leverage?
So.
Operate, not cyclical. You will get cyclical leverage, operational leverage to a cycle.
Right. It is a combination of structural and just being very focused on demand and how we staff the operations.
Yeah.
First of all, I would say we're never waiting for a crisis. We're never waiting for a downturn.
Yeah.
We've implemented a lot of new demand and capacity tools over the last couple of years to make sure that we are not only able to meet what our customers expect of us, but that we're staffing the most efficiently. That's something that I think we're really good at. That's something that we expect our general managers, our plant managers to do. They will, based on demand that's coming in, based on, you know, machine capacity, pull levers when there's changes. That can be adding or taking away overtime. It can be adding or taking away temporary staffing or then making adjustments to full-time staffing. That's ongoing.
That's the P&L, right? Because we've met with your business units and clearly folks are aware, but if you grow, our sense, if you grow, you get the resources.
Mm-hmm.
Right? That's business unit by business unit. This is not a blunt instrument.
No. Right.
Right.
Right. I mean, performance is key, right?
Right.
I mean, there's no doubt about that. Like I started out saying, we don't wait for something to happen.
Yeah.
We're always, part of that continuous improvement culture is always looking at the organization and at the structure and having that lean mentality and that mindset to optimize.
Generally we should think that when the volumes come back, you will get your due incrementals should be healthy on the way up.
Volume makes us efficient.
Okay. Maybe just a little bit more color on distributors. Maybe it sounds like inventory in the channel you're comfortable with?
I think inventory is appropriate for the demand right now. I think that's the way that the distributors are running their inventory. Again, they've, you know, they've been positive, as we said last quarter. It's right for the time we're in.
Is there room to restock if demand go?
We think destocking is over, but we do not think they have started restocking yet.
What are their, what are their primary concerns? You know, you sort of stated that generally they continue to be fairly optimistic. What is the key concern in the channel right now?
I think they're managing all of their projects and all of their customers' demand, much like we do. They've become very, very smart with their cash and their inventory levels. I think, when the demand starts hitting their order books, that's when we'll feel it.
You know, sort of maybe you talk about market share. You, you do have a market share. You know, maybe the way I wanna ask, is there a big difference in your market share across your portfolio? Like maybe specifically on the high, forget about X aerospace.
Different businesses, there is different levels of market share. Our expectation is that we have the number one, number one or number two position in the market. That's what we want our general managers to strive for. We say it's a $145 billion market space.
Right.
We're about $20 billion. That's about 14% right now.
Right.
We wanna get to 20.
Right.
We haven't put a specific time on that.
Right.
We want them to, with their strategic positioning and everything that they do to run their businesses, target to be number one or number two in their business.
To get to 20, clearly, capital allocation is part of it.
Absolutely.
You haven't told us how much is organic, how much is, we don't know from the outside, right? This is to get the 6 percentage points of share, right?
The 4-6% over the cycle. We've said that those targets don't require an acquisition, but obviously we,
Yeah.
Yeah. We wanna do deals.
Maybe, on aerospace and specifically, I think aftermarket and aerospace has been such a great story. You know, both military and commercial. What's driving the outgrowth on both military aftermarket and commercial aftermarket, and how sustainable is it?
Yeah. We are, at the end of Q2, we were at 51% aftermarket in aerospace. That's, you know, one of the highest percentages we've seen. I think it's important to note that the Meggitt acquisition came with a significant amount of aftermarket. It increased our aftermarket about 900 basis points. I would say obviously air traffic demand has increased and it's projected to continue to increase. The big air, aircraft framers will hit their rates, right? They will get to their rates eventually, but a lot of the planes are flying longer, so we're benefiting from that in the aftermarket, on the commercial side. On the military side, I would say that we've been very successful with public-private partnerships.
Mm-hmm.
Our ability to do fleet retrofits and upgrades, the combination of the Meggitt and the Parker aftermarket organizations has proved to be very strong. We are able to leverage the technologies and the products from both businesses. You know, foreseeable, into the foreseeable future, we see aftermarket strength.
On the defense side, clearly European defense, big, big focus. Who should we think about within your defense? What's your direct exposure to European defense?
Yeah. We have broad-based exposure on a lot of the key defense programs, and we have a good bit of that is international. We think that will be even further strength for us, further growth for us.
I don't think you've disclosed the specific European defense exposure.
We have not. We have not. No. No. A third of our aerospace business is defense.
Yep.
That's about a 60% OEM, 40% aftermarket mix right now.
Right. I guess the question people always ask, right? Meggitt is U.K., but it was a U.K.-based company. Meggitt actually had a lot more DOD business than they had MOD business.
Right. Right.
That's what I, that's what people are trying to get at.
We have good exposure.
Okay.
It will be good for us.
How long would it take for you to start seeing if,
That's longer cycle business, right? You know, I'm sure we would expect to see those orders.
Maybe going to air framers, you know, from your perspective, are there inventory issues at Boeing still? Your commercial OE grew 5.5% in second quarter 2025, accelerating from 3.5%. Is supply chain improving, right? Big, big debate what's happening. Can you just, from your perspective?
Yeah. I would tell you that we do have very close relationships and collaboration with the airframe manufacturers. We have a very clear picture of what their demand is and what they're running to and what we're supplying. We feel very good about being able to continue to see them to success. We think that the supply chain is gradually improving, not as much of a bottleneck as it has been in the past. Like I said, we're going to make sure that we're doing our part to see them be successful. The more we can help the whole supply chain and improve ourselves, we're going to get there.
Excellent. And, maybe this is a global conference, so I've been asked to ask a question. You know, what are you seeing in Europe generally? What are you seeing in China?
So, comments.
Not aerospace, this is just.
Yeah. Comments that, you know, we made during the, during the last call was that we saw, you know, we saw some positivity coming out of Asia Pacific. I mentioned earlier that, that, Semicon, we saw some positive.
Yep.
Positive there, but again, easier comps. It was easier comps, but still, it was, looked better than it had. Europe's still, still very soft.
Okay.
Very soft for us.
Okay. A commentary out of Asia is very Semicon specific. It's not a China recovery company.
Right. Exactly.
Okay. Maybe look, I mean, I know that sort of I left it to Dan because I do not expect you to say much, but, you know, portfolio, and M&A, what is the latest message on M&A? You know, should we be thinking bolt-ons, should we be thinking larger acquisitions? Clearly you have been one of the best capital allocators in the industry for a decade now. So you clearly have a very strong record, but it is such a key part, I think, of value creation for you. Just what is the latest color that you are willing to share?
Yeah. I would tell you probably the same thing that I've said in the past is that the pipeline, we have a process that is very disciplined. You know, we never stop working on the pipeline. That cadence stays in place. So it's very strong. It has small deals. It has big deals in it. A lot of times it's about the timing, right? About if we can make the timing work. What's really important to us is making sure that we have those strong relationships with who we've targeted in the pipeline. That's proved to be very beneficial to us. Meggitt, over a 10-year relationship, really helps us understand the business, understand the culture, the products. Then when it is time, when the time is right, it really helps us, you know, if there's a competitive process.
We are very committed to deploying capital to continue to really increase shareholder value. We want to do deals. When the timing is right, and it has to be the right deal.
Right.
That's the thing I always end with. It has to be the right deal. If you look at the success of the last four acquisitions, it's because we had all those things I just mentioned and we could see a path to margin accretion with synergies. We could see that we were going to grow with the secular trends, the technology fit, and, you know, not only margin accretion, but EPS, cash flow, all very important to us.
High interest rates were supposed to help strategics because it was supposed to sort of flush out private equity. I think it's like a year and a half later and it's still supposed to help strategics and flush out private equity, but we haven't seen much. What's just a general M&A environment? What's available? You know, from your perspective, how has the market evolved over the past 12 months, 12- 18 months?
I would say that it's opened up, right? I think it's a good time right now, and we'll see what happens. It's, like I said many times, it's all about timing. It's not about some of those macro indicators, but the timing.
Is it fair to say that it sounds, actually, you do sound more constructive about ability to do something versus 12 months ago? Is that a fair statement?
Obviously we've paid down a lot of debt.
Right.
Right? We have paid down quite a bit of debt over the last couple of years. Our leverage is at that point now where we get this question a lot because a lot of people see us, you know, pull the lever on a deal when we get, you know, around two.
Right.
Right? We're there, but again, it has to be the right deal. We're not gonna do it just because our balance sheet says it's the right time.
And just to go back, I, you know, we sort of talked about the evolution of Parker's, you know, how you sort of cultivate deals, what it takes for a deal to move through. I appreciate that. You know, today you're a $75 billion market cap company. I think literally, I think 10 years ago you were more like $15 billion market cap. What's different about doing deals that moved the needle at $75 billion versus $15 billion? Just maybe talk about that a little bit.
Ten years ago we couldn't have done Meggitt, right? And the way we've transformed the portfolio, you know, we're on track to generate $5 billion of cash at EBITDA this year. You know, it gives us opportunities to deploy capital in different ways.
Do you think it's easier to do it at 75?
Integrations are always a lot of work, work that's worth it.
Right.
Right? When you're generating this much cash, you have the ability to demonstrate you can make the deal and you can pay down debt. You know, with our integration playbook, I have a lot of confidence in our ability to keep doing that.
Terrific. Thanks so much.