Okay. All right. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for coming out. Day three of what has been a great global industrial conference here at Citi. I'm Tim Thein . Pleased to have Todd Leombruno, CFO of Parker with us. Thanks again, Todd, for coming out. It's great to see you.
Tim, it's great to be here. Welcome back to coverage of Parker. We missed you for a while.
It's quite a while. If someone coming back to the Parker story after being on the sidelines for a bit, it almost feels like it's a different company.
Yeah.
One that, you know, historically was like a global PMI on steroids play.
Yeah.
you know, that's transformed quite a bit obviously over time.
Yeah.
Maybe if someone newer to the Parker story today...
Yeah.
-how the company is positioned relative to maybe what you would think of Parker as old.
Yeah, Tim, you're absolutely correct. The company is a different company than it's been, you know, the last three years, the last five years, really, certainly, the last 10 years. We've spent a lot of time focusing on the portfolio, right? Certainly, the acquisitions that we've done have changed the company in a way that really has made a difference in our profile. You go back to 2017 when we acquired CLARCOR, that doubled our filtration group. That added a significant amount of filtration aftermarket business to the portfolio. Roughly in 2020, we acquired LORD Corporation, which really doubled the size of our engine-engineered materials business, brought a significant amount of technology around sealing, shielding, and adhesives to the company.
That really accelerated our positioning in the electrification space. Then shortly around that same time period, we added Exotic Metals Forming, which was a significant engine component supplier in the aerospace markets. Very precise, very technical engineered products that certainly are mission critical to a number of different aerospace applications. Then just September, not too long ago, we closed Meggitt PLC, which was a large, you know, U.K. publicly held company that basically doubled our aerospace presence. It's early days on that. We've only owned it for four months, but the signs are extremely positive and that the synergies and the plans that we have captured for that are certainly on track.
You know, certainly we've changed it from an acquisitive standpoint, but if you look at, you know, really the way the company has invested organically over many years, we have been really trying to move the company from a short cycle industrial play, like you said, to more of a longer cycle, diversified company. We really feel like we are positioned for whatever the economy holds for us coming forward. If you look at the performance of the company, the last eight years have been fantastic. We've expanded EBITDA margins by 800+ basis points. When you look at the breakdown of that, about 80% of that improvement has come from the base legacy business, and about 20% of that has come from those acquisitions that I've listed.
We've never been bigger, we've never been more profitable, we've never generated more cash, we've never generated EPS at this level. We're fully committed to our FY 2027 targets, which is the largest increase in our targets that we've ever had as a company. The company's in good hands.
Yeah. Speaking of which, there is new leadership, with Jenny taking over.
Yeah.
You know, Tom, was very highly regarded.
Yeah.
and respected in the industry. Just maybe are there areas of emphasis that you expect?
Sure.
to be the same?
Yeah. Tom obviously was wonderful. He changed the companies and changed our company in many, many ways. We are certainly glad he's agreed to stay on as executive chair through December. Jenny has been part of the management team for some time now, she's been with the company for 15 years. I would tell you every position that she's had within the company, she's outperformed. We are in great hands with Jenny. She's been part of our Win Strategy 3.0. She's been part of the Meggitt transaction. She was our COO for over a year and a half. She is totally versed with the strategy of the company, what's been going on with the company. She's had her fingerprints on it.
We're gonna continue on with the path that Tom set us on. Jenny, one of her areas of expertise is supply chain. Her background comes from automotive supply chain, so she understands the complexities of the supply chain. She has lived it. She's been in operations her entire time with our company. I think she thinks we can move from better, where we're at today, to best in class, top quartile performance from a supply chain standpoint. We think that that will help us grow differently. Certainly, that's gonna help us expand margins. Really, we've had a long time focus on customer experience, and we think that, you know, what everyone has gone through over the last three years, especially, if you're an end customer, it has been a challenge, right?
We think that we can alleviate some additional pain that our customers feel by being world-class in our supply chain operations. I think that's where you'll see Jenny focus immediately. You know, she's also very similar to Tom, focused on us being the safest industrial company in the world, making sure that our team members are engaged and empowered to make decisions and, you know, that's probably the areas that she will focus on initially first.
Got it. Got it. Maybe just switching gears. You know, the macro environment, you know, obviously did some cross currents in certain geographies. You guys have a good pulse and good lens into that, just given your diversity. What are you seeing across your major markets?
When you look at the company today, you know, the exposure we have to aerospace is probably 30% of the total company, not just the Aerospace Systems segment sales that we report, but the aerospace end markets that happen to be in our industrial segment just based on the fact that it might be a sealing technology or a filtration technology. The aerospace markets are recovering fast. I'm sure everyone flew here today. I'm sure there wasn't an empty seat anywhere on the planes that you came on, and that's a good thing for us. Aerospace is really booming. When you look at our North American businesses, they're hanging in there extremely well. Demand, very broad-based, very robust.
If you look at, you know, what we just did in the first half, I think we did total company was about 14%, 13.5% organic growth. We just did 10% in Q2. We doubled our North American guidance from 2.5% to 5% for Q3. We're starting to see comps become a little bit of an issue. North America is pretty sound. Where we do see some softness is in the international businesses, the biggest is probably Asia-Pacific, mainly China. Really that has been a little bit of the COVID startup and shutdowns, a little bit of, you know, we had Chinese New Year just recently, all in the month of January.
There's a little bit of just, you know, growing pains, I guess I would call that. We don't see that to be a long-term issue, but there has been some softness in Asia Pac. Europe, although I think it's less bad than we feared, you know, with the Ukraine-Russia crisis and the concerns about energy, those have turned out to be less bad. There still is some softness across certain areas in Europe, so we're watching that as well.
Yeah. Back to the China point, some of your mobile customers there can the things turn on, they can turn on pretty quickly-
Correct.
historically. I mean, is that-
Yeah. I mean, mobile construction in China is probably where we've seen the weakest of the markets. You know, again, the beauty of Parker-Hannifin is the diversity of the product lines, the diversity of the end markets. You're right, it'll bounce back quickly.
Yeah. Back to the point about order rates.
Yeah.
not just North America, but maybe focusing there.
Sure.
In this environment of, you know, supply chains being so constrained, there's this notion that if I really need 10, I'm gonna throw in an order.
Yeah.
for 15.
Right.
on the basis that.
You know, we've heard that, we've vetted that across our businesses and, you know, we've been doing this for quite some time now, making sure that we're serving our customers in the best way possible. In order to do that, you really need to be transparent with the information. We have not found anywhere across the business that there is intentional double ordering by any stretch of imagination. We feel good that the backlog is the backlog. We've been very cautious about this because we have seen in previous cycles where the backlog does get pushed out. We haven't seen much of that yet. You know, we haven't seen any material amounts to make us concerned, but we're preparing for that just in case it happens to occur.
Mm.
Right now, demand seems to be holding in.
Yeah. Maybe on just inventories in the channel.
Yeah.
You know, not only Parker inventories, you lens into your distributor inventories and then end customers. Anything that can give you...
You know, no. It's been hard. I'll start with the distribution network. It's been hard for our distributors to restock, right? It's really been coming out of the pandemic, the demand, it's really been, you know, very much connected to end customer demand. Most of our distributors haven't been able to get their stocking levels where they would like them to be. Now our distributors are hearing all the warning signs that we're all hearing as well. I think we're starting to see some rebalancing in that distribution network, but by no stretch has there been a movement to restock yet. On the OEM side, again, we've been curious about that.
If you remember in our Q2 call, we said, hey, we wanted to see or our Q1 call, I should say, we wanted to see what happened when we came back after the end of the year and see what happened in January. We didn't see any push-outs on that, so we feel good about where the OEMs are at. Again, we're being very cautious here to make sure that we're not overbuilding and we haven't seen any signs of that across the business yet.
You're saying pushouts of their maybe-
Correct. Yeah. Nothing material to make us worry about, you know, the near term.
Got it.
Yeah.
Got it. Sticking on industrial, and we can move to Aero in a bit.
Sure.
You know, North America being a hugely important market for you. I mean, there's in the last, whatever, two days here, I mean, there's been a consistent refrain around some of these mega trends.
Yes.
you know, pointing to some potential, you know...
Yeah.
CapEx cycle, kind of a reindustrialization in-
Yeah.
in North America. How...
We believe in that. We totally believe in that. We have been monitoring all those projects. We think it's a plus for a company like Parker. you know, we've seen the, you know, there's $ billions of new infrastructure projects around all the things that we've been talking about, electrification, semicon, ESG type clean tech technologies. Our portfolio supports that, and we feel ready to capture that. I would tell you that and just this pent up, you know, maybe a decade of underspending in the CapEx space has really given us confidence that, you know, this time we feel like we can grow differently than we have in the past.
Yeah.
That is one of the reasons why we changed our growth target from being a GDP+ number to a 4%- 6% organic growth over the cycle through FY 2027. We're starting to see some evidence of reshoring, right? Kind of localizing of the supply chain. We're doing a little bit of that within our company. You know, we're doing that as well. We're seeing some of our suppliers and some of our customers do that as well. I think we'll be able to benefit from that, you know, localization of the supply chain as well. That's been all a plus. When you look at what we've done with the portfolio, the portfolio is ready to expand as those CapEx projects come online. We feel really positive about our future.
To that last point, that you would see that in a, in your traditional stationary, if for example, how, where Parker would participate.
Yeah.
in the example you gave.
Well, we're seeing it in all of our traditional markets. You know, really, when you look at something like the LORD products and the LORD technologies, that really has accelerated our presence on electric passenger vehicles, for an example, right? A lot of the cooling and thermal management around the battery case, you know, those are technologies that we wouldn't have had five years ago.
Yeah.
When you look at the content that we have on a electric vehicle, it's a factor of 2x what we would have had in, you know, traditional Parker product lines. That has been a real plus for our engineered materials business.
Got it. Maybe we can shift gears to margins.
Yeah.
You mentioned earlier, you know, the company has kind of raised the bar over time-
Correct.
Put out a pretty lofty target for 2027.
We did, yes. We're confident in those targets.
Yeah.
Yeah.
you know, simplification being one of them.
Yeah.
I can remember years ago, at one of these fluid power shows, talking to a Parker employee, and he was talking about his group within Parker was one of, like, 130.
Yeah.
They had its own GM.
Correct.
Its own account.
Yeah.
That kind of stuff seemed like a lot of.
Yeah.
easy kind of low-hanging fruit, but.
Yeah.
still talking about it.
Yeah, we still are talking about it. You know, to your point, you know, if you look at the company today, and I would be, you know, adding the acquisitions that we made in the traditional Parker, we would have probably had over 140 divisions. Today we have, including Meggitt now, we have 95. We've really reduced the number of divisions. Tim, to your point, those divisions would have an SG&A layer in them. What we found is that, we found that we can combine those businesses, and that gives them economies of scale to invest in new markets and new technologies. It simplifies their interactions with the end customers. That has really been a positive across the company. The majority of that has been done.
There still is a few that we think we could probably benefit from combining. Also those divisions would have rolled up into what was eight business groups. We now have five, so we've consolidated eight to five. We think that that's probably the right number. That's just an example of simplification from an SG&A standpoint. We are constantly doing, like, a spans and layers is what we call it, analysis to make sure that our resources are best deployed in areas that are growing, in areas that have margin expansion capabilities. That is a big plus. Simplification for us is a big umbrella. Maybe the biggest driver of that is this concept that we've labeled Simple by Design, and that's really attacking the way we design our product, not the way we manufacture it.
You know, we capture cost out through our lean processes, our pricing processes, our supply chain processes on our conversion part of it. This is really looking at the way we design the product and the way we design the product for reuse, for commonality, for environmental purposes, and really for flow. Sometimes we can design a wonderful product that's really kind of hard to make. What we're really trying to capture with this Simple by Design is making sure we design the best product, but it's also the easiest to make.
Mm-hmm.
That improves our efficiency. It takes cost out, it expands margin. It really allows us to make more, which ultimately leads to higher growth. This is a longer-term program for us, but we feel really positive in the early returns on what we've seen out of Simple by Design.
I'll pause there to see if any questions from that.
Yes. We've got one in the front.
There you go.
Curious the kind of revenue-
I'll repeat it.
Actually received since the acquisition.
Yeah.
Meggitt in particular. Are revenue synergies baked into your FY 2027 targets?
That's a great question. We have not baked any revenue synergies into any of the acquisitions that we've done. There will be revenue synergies from those acquisitions, but we feel more comfortable justifying the transaction on cost synergies. If you look at what we've done with CLARCOR, which was, you know, it's been 2017, so it's been a while now, but that was our first big transaction. We exceeded the synergy targets in CLARCOR by, I think, two years. If you look at the next big transaction, LORD, we exceeded those one year early. Exotic didn't have a ton of synergies because that was kind of a unique standalone business, but we've got that on the cost and the revenue side of that.
When you look at Meggitt, the $300 million synergies that we're committing to, those are all cost synergies. There are no revenue synergies in that model. To your point, there will be revenue synergies that come from that. When you look at what Meggitt brought, you know, very much complementary technologies, you know, technologies and spaces that we did not play heavy, airplane braking systems, fire suppression systems, sensing systems, a lot of environmental technologies in the aircraft space. These are all additions to our portfolio. When you look at the customer list, if you took our top 10 customers and you took the Meggitt top 10 customers, we got bigger with every single one of those customers on our list.
What that has already done is that's put us in a different type of conversation with those customers. The engineering expertise that we now have has expanded and become more meaningful to those end customers. We're already starting to see seeds planted that will bring larger opportunities than what maybe Meggitt could have gotten on their own or maybe what Parker would have gotten on our own. We feel really good about that. I would say that we've seen the same thing when you look at LORD, Exotic, and CLARCOR.
You talked about simplification, you know.
Yeah.
Obviously a really important, an asset of.
Yep.
Parker. I'm curious if Lee were here, and we said.
Yeah.
If distribution in North America is at a 10, where would you say Europe and Asia would be?
You're saying, so for those that don't know...
From a 30 standpoint.
50% of our industrial business goes through a very unique independent distribution network. These, there's 17,000 some outlets of our distributors across the world. What's unique about those distributors is, their bill of material, roughly 85% of their bill of material is Parker-only product. We try not to allow them to compete with other competing product lines. The reason we're able to do that is just the breadth of our product line. We cover the entire motion control space, so it makes it easy for us to offer everything that a motion control type distributor would need in the space. Our North American distribution base is the you know, the oldest, most mature, second to none in the space.
I would rate them a ten, by the way, from a scale, scope, a application, expertise standpoint. You know, the other thing that people sometimes wonder about our distribution network, you know, they are not just handing our parts to other customers. They are further applying engineering expertise of our technologies to their end customers. They're really an extension. They're really kind of an extension of our application expertise. North America would be a, would be a ten on that. We have had a conservative initiative to grow our international distribution. The reason we like that is because it's higher margin product. It does lend itself to be more aftermarket in nature, and it just allows us to reach customers that we could not reach as a company ourselves.
We set out a target to increase our international distribution 100 basis points, the mix between OEM and distribution, 100 basis points a year, and we've done that for the last five years. We're still not at a 10 by any stretch of the imagination in the international space. I would rate Europe probably a seven, maybe I would rate Asia-Pacific, you know, a five or a six. There still is room to grow on that. That is part of our path to our 2027 margin target is to continue to expand the presence of our international distribution. I think Lee would answer that the same way.
Got it. The 85% of their COGS, that number, I always remember it being like two-thirds.
It's, you know, it would vary across the type of distributor that it is. We have some distributors that might just distribute our filtration technologies.
Mm-hmm.
We have some that would distribute all of those technologies, but it would vary by, you know, the distributors', wants, needs, desires, and the end markets that they serve.
Got it.
Either number, it's a significant amount.
Yeah.
Of their bill of material.
Yeah.
It allows us to pass price on. You know, price has been a hot topic over the last, you know, year and a half. We have constantly passed price on through our distribution network. They have the ability to pass that on to their end customers. We have never given price back in that space, you know, the 107 years of Parker-Hannifin, and we don't plan to give that back in the future. It's solid pricing, it sticks, and every year, we continue to drive that forward. Really, what allows us to do that is just the value that the products bring, right? There is tons of engineering, there's tons of IP that is wrapped in these products and, you know, it really commands it in the space.
We shift to aerospace, obviously, you know, becoming a bigger part of the Parker story. As you mentioned, you know, kind of booming markets on the commercial side.
Mm-hmm.
Booming may be too much from, the supply chain's ability to handle.
The supply chain across aerospace is catching up. You know, you look at the OEM, commercial OEM, it is very strong. The commercial MRO has certainly come back as flight miles have increased. You know, during the pandemic, we did see growth in the military OEM products. That has kind of pulled back a little bit. I think they may be pulled a little bit ahead to kind of keep that supply chain healthy throughout the pandemic. We're seeing that be a little bit negative, but we see that as only a short-term issue. Military MRO, while less positive than the commercial MRO, still positive. We like where aerospace is at. You know, if you look at the company, the company has exposure now.
Roughly 30% of the total company is aerospace and market driven. You know, we're still not past pre-pandemic flight miles. We like the long-term trajectory of what aerospace can do from a growth standpoint. You know, when you look at what we're guiding forward, we have aerospace, you know, mid-single digits of growth. Meggitt would be a little bit higher than that just because they tended to drop a little bit lower than we did throughout the pandemic. Aerospace from a long-term growth perspective we feel really good about.
Yeah. Is there much by way of dislocation in terms of what you're shipping to the airframe makers versus what they're producing? I'm thinking from a Boeing perspective, i.e. is their production not necessarily matched with what you're shipping to them?
You know, I mean, are they building inventory, are you saying?
Are they shipping stuff out that already had Parker products on it?
Yeah, I haven't heard any disconnect between what they're shipping in product-wise versus what we're pulling in. I would tell you that, you know, you've heard the well-documented supply chain challenges that the whole world has gone through over the last couple years. I think aerospace is going through a little bit of that now just because, you know, they didn't have the demand and the need and the volumes in the, in the depths of the pandemic. They may be a little bit behind the rest of the industrial world, but, you know, we're managing through that just like we managed through the industrial supply chain challenges. The OEM builds are ramping. That's requiring more content, and we're doing our best to satisfy those customers.
Yeah. Are you having to provide support to maybe your tier two or tier three customers-
Large customers.
to kinda help them along? Yeah.
I think we've constantly done that. You know, the supplier relationship is a very intimate relationship, and we are very committed to that. You know, most of our aerospace business for years, at least on the legacy side of the business, has been kind of a design, assembly, and test model.
Mm-hmm.
We have been very intimate with our supply chain for some time and, we're helping them as best we can as the ramp continues.
Yeah. It's just more kinda shorter term focused.
Yeah.
Typically from a seasonal perspective, your fiscal fourth quarter tends to be.
Yeah.
seeing an uptick. You got kinda that budget flush-
Yeah.
They're
Yeah.
preparing for the summer.
Yeah. Many years that has been the case. We hope that that's the case this year, right? When you look at the comps over our Q4, which is calendar year Q2 for other companies, the comps are really difficult because that's really when the growth started to bounce back in a big way. We're not guiding for a huge organic growth number, but if you look at it sequentially, it's continuing to increase. I think we'll feel better about that once we get through the next couple months here. We'll come out with a guide, you know, once we finish our Q3, and we'll give you our best look on that. You know, right now it's really more of a comp issue than a demand issue.
Got it. From an expense standpoint for Aero, I guess take Meggitt out of the equation.
Yeah.
That number, I remember years ago, it got up high as like 12% or 13%.
Oh, yeah. You're talking the non-recurring engineering costs?
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, as you're doing more of these kinda systems with your customers, is that a... Not that it goes back to 13-
Yeah.
what is kinda the right number for
Yeah, that's a great question. You know, really what that was there was an enormous design cycle that, you know, we participated in. We won a lot of business that, is gonna, you know, secure the future growth of aerospace for years. We had to go design it, right? The design costs really did spike to, you know, at one time, you're right, Tim, they were 13% of sales. They're very small now. I think 3% is the number that we're kind of looking at now, and it seems like that will be consistent going forward.
Hmm.
Meggitt will maybe add a little bit to that within the aerospace business, but we don't think it'll be significant, right? Most of those programs are developed. Now it's really getting into supplying that product as the OEM products build and, of course, getting to the aftermarket, so that really, that's where the majority of the opportunity comes.
Got it.
Yeah.
Got it. You know, sticking with Meggitt, certainly, well-timed.
Yeah.
From you know.
Yes, it.
-to double down in Aero.
We were hoping that it would work out that way, and so far it has played out that way.
Yeah.
You know, we're starting to see that come in, and it's early days, but I would tell you it's, it's very positive. We've had the opportunity to meet a lot of the Meggitt team members. They are excited. You know, they have seen the progress of Parker Aerospace over the last five, six, seven to 10 years, and they're interested. They're really curious on how we did what we did. We've already begun sharing with them how we've done that. We think that this is really gonna be a 1+ 1= 3 type relationship. Couldn't be happier. We actually have a location not too far from here.
Me and the team we're gonna stop by, after we finish and stop in and say hello to those team members.
Right on.
Yeah.
Any questions from the audience here?
Yes.
Got one here.
Yeah.
Yes. Go ahead.
Walk us through your EBITDA guide. I think you had a 25%. Can you just tell us where that's coming from? I think you said earlier that you weren't adding synergies into that.
Which was that again? I.
Your EBITDA guide.
EBITDA guidance for Meggitt.
Oh, yeah, for 2027 guidance.
our EBITDA guide. This is our FY 2027 targets. We have given a 25% adjusted EBITDA target and an adjusted segment operating margin target of 25%. That does include Meggitt, right? When we gave those targets, we hadn't closed Meggitt, but we had done enough of the work, and we felt pretty confident that we were gonna get to a close. All of those targets, the growth targets, the cash flow targets, the operating margin targets, and the EBITDA targets and the EPS growth targets for that matter, all include Meggitt. They do not include any other acquisitions. We hope that once we get leverage down to, you know, a manageable level, that there will be a logical one, two, three, four acquisitions depending on what's in the pipeline available.
We didn't account on any of those additional opportunities to be part of our margin targets. Again, that is an equal amount of improving the business pre-Meggitt and also improving the Meggitt business. There still is lots of opportunity with core Parker, if you will, outside of what Meggitt will bring to the company.
To that point, it you've talked about a 20% market share target for.
Yeah.
-for years. I mean, it's amazing. You're-
Yeah.
There hasn't changed a whole lot. You were at 12% even the, you know, despite all these deals you've done.
It's a large market space. We've continued with some of the acquisitions. We've continued to expand the addressable market.
Mm-hmm.
When you look at that size of that market has grown. You're right, there still is opportunity for us to hit that 20% market share. We think we can do that via acquisition, but we also think we can do that organically.
Yeah. Going back to the Meggitt integration. The, the cost structure you highlighted, was it similar to what you encountered with LORD, where I think it was pretty heavy from kind of a, you know, sales, SG&A perspective?
Yeah.
You guys were, I mean, able to take that down.
Yeah.
Are there similar playbooks that you can deploy here?
There absolutely is. You know, obviously you just get. First of all, you get the benefits of not having two public company costs, right? There's an economy of scale of that. When you look at Meggitt, it basically does double the size of our aerospace business. All of those, well, really 80% of those Meggitt businesses will report into our aerospace group. The others will go into our industrial businesses. You know, we'll be able to take out a layer of management that, you know, would be redundant because we'll have one team. We're working through that. We feel really good about the opportunities on achieving that. What we're trying to do is we're trying to build the best aerospace supply company that we can.
That is a combination of Meggitt team members. It's also a combination of Parker team members. We're moving fast. We're moving as fast as we can on that, and I would tell you we're on track. The synergy number that we've given for the current fiscal year that we're in is $60 million of cost synergies, and we're on track to achieve that in this fiscal year. That would be, you know, over three quarters, so it's not even a full fiscal year. We'll update those as we get into our next fiscal year guide and kinda show the ramp to that $300 million.
Yeah.
It's not just SG&A cost, right? There is a number of supply chain opportunities. There's a number of footprint opportunities and really just applying the tools that we've learned through our lean system over the last 20 years to the Meggitt business system as well. There's a number of things there that aren't just people count related.
Yeah. They were the result of a number of acquisitions, right? Built over time.
Yeah. Like most companies of that size, there was a number of acquisitions that kinda built them up...
Yeah.
Not unlike what, the way we have grown throughout the years.
You alluded this earlier, but the trend within aerospace has kind of moved from. I mean, it's not new.
Yeah.
moving away from a widget or a component supplier to more of a system supplier. Now you've got braking, you've got more of a complete.
Yeah.
-portfolio. You know, as these OEMs start looking at new planes to be developed, are you starting to be a bigger part of the discussion for that?
Yeah, we certainly are. I kind of mentioned that a little bit. We've gotten bigger with all of our customers, certainly the top 10 customers. Now what it really does is it allows us to play in different parts of the aircraft that we didn't have capabilities for, right? Wheels and braking, the fire suppression, the sensing, the dynamics of control of the flight craft. All of those things are now big parts of the Parker offering.
Mm-hmm.
We think it's gonna be a positive for us going forward.
This is very dated, but, you know, a couple of years ago, there was concern around the one individual, OEM talking about basically extracting more margin.
Yeah.
from the supply chain.
Yeah.
Here, you know, your, yours and others' margins have kind of marched higher.
Correct. Yeah. Well, you know, we've done that. We've always thought that the products that we have in our portfolio are mission-critical, value-packed, products. You know, they do require a significant amount of development. You mentioned that 13% R&D spend that we used to have. There's value in these products, and they're not easily replaceable. We focused on making sure that we are producing them, converting them in the most cost-effective manner, and we feel that we deserve, you know, to have a reasonable profit on those parts. To your point, if you've seen our aerospace margins, that ramp has been nice to see. You know, you gotta kinda discount it with the pandemic a little bit. That was a shock that it's a once in a lifetime aerospace shock.
We've recovered from that, and we continue to go forward.
Good. Near-term priorities are, debt pay down being it's like.
Absolutely. When you look at capital allocation, I think everybody knows we are dedicated to our dividend increase record. We've got a 66-year increase of our dividend record, and we're not gonna break that. We're committed to the dividend. CapEx, we talked about a little bit, but our target is 2% of sales. We're at that right now. That is about 40% higher than what it's been the last five years. We've been about 1.5%. It's not a huge dollar number for us, but it is a significant increase from where we've been in the past. We're gonna continue with that. We have a small amount that we use to dilute share comp that we have across our employee base.
A hundred percent of the rest of that is today dedicated to pay down the Meggitt debt that we took out. We've already paid down over $2 billion of debt on that transaction. Our target is to pay another $2 billion down, you know, over the next 12 months, and we're really committed to doing that. You'll see us focus on that until we get that leverage back to a level that we feel comfortable with.
To your earlier point about kind of the prospects, greater prospects for a CapEx cycle, I think-
Yeah.
your own budgeting is
It's indicative of what's going on in the marketplace. I think you'll see us participate in that and also benefit from that.
Good stuff.
Yep.
We got a minute. Anyone have any final questions?
Yes. Brett.
I'm curious now that you've gotten a good look at the Meggitt business-
Yeah.
and especially their aftermarket-
Yeah.
Are you seeing any low-hanging fruit in how they've been pricing in the aftermarket and serving customers?
Yeah. Yeah, it's a good question. You know, I was just in Singapore last week, and I was able to spend some time at one of the Meggitt sales and service organizations. Very impressive organization. The location that we're going to today is also in the aftermarket space. You know, this is very much a special element of what made Meggitt special, right? There is an enormous amount of really rebuilding product and servicing product that in many cases is making sure that planes stay safe, stops when it's supposed to stop. There certainly is opportunity in that. You know, I'll speak to Parker.
We have taken pricing very close to our heart because, you know, these are all engineered products that are helping our end customers achieve their objectives, whether that's cost efficiency, whether that is productivity. All of our products fulfill those needs. We've moved to a value-based pricing, really not a cost-based pricing. We think there probably is some opportunity with the Meggitt business as well.
Good stuff, Todd.
Great.
Thank you very much.
Yeah, thanks, everyone.
Thanks.
Pleasure to see everybody.