Right. Good afternoon. Corey Carpenter, Internet Analyst, JPMorgan. Pleased to have Mike Carlet, Resideo CFO, with me today. Mike, and sorry, Chris Lee, Investor Relations, also joining. Thank you both for coming to the conference.
Thanks, Corey.
For those that are newer to the story, maybe if you could start with just a quick overview of Resideo and how the company has evolved since the Honeywell spin in 2018.
Sure. You know, in 2018, Honeywell decided to spin off a couple pieces of the business: ADI, which was a distribution business focused on commercial security integrators, and then a number of lines of business that were focused on the residential home management aspects, and a couple different lines of business that we'll touch on. You know, they put that all together, spun it off in 2018, and I think for the first couple of years it was about bringing those things together, forming that new company. I think since then, you know, there's been a lot of opportunities to fix the building blocks of the business, to make sure we're operating effectively and efficiently, maximizing the value of our manufacturing footprint, continuing to execute on our distribution strategy.
I think that we've done, the company's done a really good job of that over the years, as we've seen in margin accretion and some other areas. Today, I think now we're well positioned for future growth, taking both that product development business and that distribution business and thinking about how we now go from a, you know, fundamental building blocks of management to really talking about, you know, how do we invigorate a little bit of growth in the business going forward.
You reported earnings last week. Maybe what's the quick recap of the quarter and just the key messages that you wanted to get across?
Yeah, I think overall, look, we were very pleased with the strong performance in the first quarter. We saw positive growth at both businesses despite, you know, an uncertain and volatile macroeconomic market that we're in. We had some weather impacts at the ADI business that caused, you know, a lot of store closure days. Overall, we had strong customer reception, demand to our new products. We've seen good traction. Overall, we're really pleased with the first quarter performance.
Tariffs and macro, full disclosure, I wrote the tariff questions before the tariffs changed a few days ago. You gave us some really helpful stats, and I think exposures in slides that you presented last week with earnings. Could you just talk through Resideo's exposure on the P&S and ADI side and just what you're doing from a mitigation perspective?
Sure. I'm going to answer the question before tariffs change tomorrow. You know, it's a constantly evolving world. I think what we've been pleased to see is as the tariff environment has continued to evolve and has at least somewhat stabilized, it looks like they're at least mostly going down, not up at this point, to the extent they are being adjusted. I think we're really well positioned both, you know, on our own and also vis-à-vis our competition. At the P&S side, we've got some significant manufacturing for North America specifically that's down in Mexico. We typically build in the region that we're providing for. We do some of our AMEA manufacturing in AMEA. We do the North American manufacturing in North America.
In the North America piece with the USMCA exemptions, over 90% of what we sell in the U.S. is totally exempt from tariffs. You know, we've got a significant amount coming out of Mexico. We've got some other small pieces. Our tariff exposure on the P&S side is, as it sits today, minimal, almost not worth talking about minimal. There's a couple things that we bring in from China that can have some small impacts, but it's rounding errors type of thing. We're really pleased with how that comes out. We think we are, in certain areas, in certain product categories, advantaged vis-à-vis the competition. We don't think there's any areas where we're disadvantaged. Really, really good. Now, you know, again, that environment might change at any time, but as we sit here today, we think that's really good.
A little bit more nuanced on the ADI side, where ADI, you know, over about three quarters of our business is selling third-party product. As we do that, you know, we are subject to where that third-party product is being imported from. We have a pretty good feel where that supply chain's coming from, and we know that, you know, there's about a quarter of it, a little bit less, that comes out of Asia, specifically out of China. As we think about that, we know that we are subject to those cost impacts impacting our suppliers, which would then we would expect them to pass through. We've seen a little bit of that so far, but not a lot. Obviously, with the changes over the weekend, we expect that to change again.
You know, we would think that there could be as much as, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars of impact on our cost base. Again, as we said, we do not think we are negatively impacted because we are distributing other people's products generally, and what we are passing through is the same thing everybody is going to be passing through. While it could, in the short term, drive some price activity, which would then, you know, drive revenue, we think we are trying to hold margin dollar constant. We think it would have very little impact on the bottom line. We have talked to our customers. Our team has great relations with our customers about those price impacts, and everybody is ready for them. Again, I think with the significant decrease in those rates now, it was for 90 days.
What happens in 90 days, you know, that book's yet to be written. I think right now we're in really good shape.
On macro, you just reported, as you mentioned, a strong quarter. You reiterated your 2025 outlook with those results. Certainly seeing resilience at this point. Maybe if you could just expand on what you are seeing in the market and the behavior you are seeing from your customers in recent weeks.
Yeah, I think that overall the market, you know, we would say, is at best, is still sort of neutral and anemic. You know, a lot of our business is tied, sort of on the P&S side and on the residential exclusive brands products on the ADI side, tied to the housing markets, both new build, the remodel, and resale markets. You know, certainly the R&R side has not been great. We're still in sort of a very neutral to down market. We're seeing within that, you know, really good reception to our products, good customer demand. We think we're winning share in a number of areas. We've been able to take some price and pass it through on a normal basis, not tariff-related, just normal activity. All that's driving good, healthy demand.
One of the things we were really pleased to see is on the security business, where we've had some headwinds. We saw that our largest security customer, after years of going backwards quarter over quarter, sort of stabilized. You know, we'll see how that, you know, story continues to evolve, but we feel really good with that relationship, which also provides good. All in all, really good customer demand, really good sort of steady growth. In the short term, we see a little bit of odd behavior every week right now as the tariff things adjust, as people might stock up. We saw very little of it in Q1, some small amounts. We saw a bit more of it in April, sort of like a bubble. You saw a little bit of a wave come through in April, sort of reversed itself in May.
Right now, I think as we're getting to the middle of May, it's normal purchasing behavior. Again, a little bit of noise through about a four-week period as people were trying to think about what might or might not happen. Right now, pretty normal activity.
Okay. I think we've covered tariffs and macro at this point. Shifting to the actual business, starting with products and solutions, you've got four segments: air, safety, security, energy, and water. Just if you could distill the business down into the key product offerings and the primary end markets for these segments.
Yep. The vast majority of our products through all four of those lines of business are in the residential market and mostly in North America. There's a little bit, you know, some that happens in Europe, but mostly North America and Europe are the two primary markets. Within, excuse me, the air category, it's a lot of thermostats. There's also other pieces of air purification and dehumidification. You know, think about it as the Honeywell Home brand. We license that brand still as part of the spinoff. We have, you know, we are the market leader on the thermostat side of the business, despite some of the high-end things that you see out there that are, you know, very sexy. You think about the entire product category. We are the market leader on the thermostat category with the Honeywell Home brand.
On safety and security, you know, we have the First Alert brand. Resideo bought First Alert about four years ago now, three and a half years ago. That's been a great acquisition, come together really well. Smoke and fire has been good. We are on the security side as well with security products on intrusion and detection, moving into video surveillance and analytics. On the water side, think about it as water controls, valve control, also leak detection. Energy is the one that's a little bit of an outlier, where there's a lot of OEM products that we're providing to people that do heat pumps and boilers, which you'll see in Europe. You'll see it up in the Northeast a lot, where we're providing some OEM products that go into those manufacturing pieces. Most of what we sell, we're selling to the professional.
If you take that OEM piece out, we're selling to the professional installer, the electrician, the HVAC supplier, the plumber that's doing that work. We get it into their hands through a variety of different channels, through the traditional distribution channel. We sell it through retail. At retail, you know, a lot of what we sell at retail, we talk about the retail channel, but it's still the professional buying at retail. If you think about, you know, like the Home Depot and their contractor and what Lowe's does with their contractor aspects. We have really good relationships with the top 20 home builders in the U.S. as well, where we work right with them to put our products into their homes. You know, a lot of different ways to get the product into the hands of professional.
If you just think about that professional, that contractor who's installing those products, that's our customer. That's who we're trying to reach out to. It's not a DIY product. There's a little bit of DIY aspects to it. It's on the shelf. You know, some of those retailers, they'll see it there, but that's not the primary focus. It is about the professional and supporting the professional as they do their installs.
Early on, you talked about, you know, shifting kind of more to growth. P&S, the organic growth, accelerated to 6% this quarter. Maybe if you could frame what the key priorities are for driving growth in P&S this year, and then maybe more specifically on the quarter, you know, what drove that performance?
Yeah, in the quarter, very much customer demand. A little bit of price, but across the board, across all four categories, across the majority of our channels, we have just seen good customer demand, you know, across it all. There is always going to be, you know, some spots. There are strengths and weaknesses, but very consistent performance across all the lines of business, which was great, great to see. As we think about the rest of this year going forward, we want to maintain those great customer relationships that we have, continue to, you know, grow those, and then focus on our new product development efforts to both refresh our existing product categories. As we go through that, then think about future opportunities for additional product development.
Just from a macro perspective, my question was, what indicators are the best proxy for customer demand? It sounds like residential, you know, housing market you've already answered. Maybe another way to ask it is, if the market did slow from not the housing, but from a broader macro perspective, just how do you think about the resilience or the cyclicality of the P&S business in particular?
Yeah, I mean, clearly it's a cyclical business, but we believe we can outperform the cycle through the efforts that we have, from the great customer relationships that we formed. As we think about going forward, our ability to continue to produce differentiated products that continue to capture share. You know, we believe we're outperforming the cycle, but we are going to move somewhat with the cycle. You think about when our products get installed. They get installed when a house is built. They get installed when you do a remodel in your house. They get installed when you buy a house and you go in and do some work on it. We are going to follow those. We do have a lot of levers in the company from a cost standpoint. We're investing, you know, tens of millions of dollars in R&D and marketing.
Now, clearly we want to continue to invest that for the future growth. In the short term, if we have to pull levers, if we felt like it was important to do that to protect the balance sheet, to protect the overall performance, we have plenty of levers to pull. I think if, you know, anything that we believe would be short term, I think we would be thoughtful about when and if we pull those levers. If we saw some long-term changes in the demand cycles and the volume cycles, we've got a number of things we can do to protect the bottom line.
Gross margin for P&S, it's improved year over year, eight consecutive quarters. How have you affected this change and just how do you think about the runway that's still ahead?
Yeah, a lot of it has been about optimizing the manufacturing footprint and the supply chain, both from a, you know, footprint aspect itself, as well as just bringing some better performance aspects. Volume helps. Having more volume running through the factories also helps from that standpoint. All that has worked together. I minimize that. That is a one-sentence answer to a lot of great work by a lot of great people on our supply chain team and our manufacturing teams to go forth and make these things happen. We have got a really good team that has been working really hard the last couple of years to make those changes. That is the most important things that we have been doing.
Last one on P&S, then we'll move to ADI. New product innovation, key priority for you. Maybe if you could just expand on what you've done and then what can you tell us about the product roadmap ahead?
I'll go to Chris to answer this. Chris has a ton of passion around new products. I figured since he's sitting here, we'll let him answer that one.
Sounds good.
Yeah, thanks, Mike. I think, you know, it starts with our new, our leader in the Products and Solutions business, Tom Suran, who, when he joined about 18 months ago, had a vision and strategy to bring out waves of new products over multiple years that address, you know, a couple important things. One, it addresses the years of underinvestment that Mike referred to earlier and, you know, helping us to regain market share in parts of the market where we may have ceded that share. I think you see that strategy tactically playing out with some of the new products that were recently introduced, for example, the Focus Pro thermostat that was targeted at the low end of the market. You know, we're seeing really good adoption there.
All the signals would point to that we're taking share and not cannibalizing our own base, which then gives us, you know, real good momentum for other releases later this year in the thermostat line, including one that's targeted to the high end of the market and to compete directly with Ecobee and Google Nest. We're really excited about that product just because, you know, I think the form factor and the features and functionality really address what the marketplace is looking for today. I think if you take that ethos and, you know, extend that to other parts of the product portfolio, it's the same type of strategic and tactical thinking. If it's in some of the water products, if it's in the security products, the safety products, there's a wave of products that, you know, are slated to come out this year.
It is not just going to be a one-hit wonder. There is going to be multiple new products, you know, in the next several years, which could include, you know, net new products or, you know, perhaps entering different markets or adjacencies as, you know, we think our products can add value. Then building off of what Mike said about, you know, how this extends the margin expansion, you know, we are really, you know, with that healthier factory and an improved supply chain, you know, we can eke out more margin with greater volume being produced. Also, given the differentiation of the new products, we also think we can, you know, achieve price. I think, you know, there is a combination of a lot of good things here that, you know, with our continued execution and leveraging our size and scale, I think we are going to capitalize on it.
Great. We will move to ADI. If anyone does have a question, feel free to raise your hand as well. Company roots in ADI in commercial security, but you have expanded to other verticals over the years. Before we jump in, maybe could you just recap ADI's footprint today, what it looks like from a product and a geographic perspective?
Sure. ADI, you know, not dissimilar to P&S, mostly focused on North America with a pretty good presence in EMEA and then some small bits and pieces around the rest of the world. Excuse me. From a geographic footprint, over 100 legacy ADI stores in the U.S., over 40 legacy Snap stores in North America, really, U.S., Canada, with a number of stores in a number of countries in EMEA and in Europe, and a very strong e-commerce platform, actually a couple of e-commerce platforms. You think about, again, Snap and ADI coming together, each one with their own e-commerce platform as we work to bring those together. Strong geographic footprint, strong e-commerce footprint, mostly North America-based.
Still ADI's legacy being in that commercial security integrator, but growing over the years to touch on Pro AV, to touch on DataCom, to touch on residential entertainment and automation, which is where the Snap One integration made a ton of sense to bring those two companies together.
ADI has also seen a nice pickup in organic growth in recent quarters. You mentioned last week that trends picked up late in one Q and into early April. What do you attribute that recent momentum to? Is this an industry-wide thing or more of a share gains thing or both?
I think it's a bit of both. I think earlier in the first quarter, that's why I was talking about some of those weather impacts. We saw more store closure days in January in the early part of February this year than at any time in the last decade. That quarter was a bit of a drag. It wasn't huge. It was, you know, about a 1% drag on the top line. Clearly that impacted us during the first part of the quarter. That sort of went away. We're seeing really strong project growth on the security side of the business, on the commercial side. That has continued to be a bright spot. The project pipeline is very, very large. We're winning a lot of that.
Not only is the project pipeline strong, our share gain, our share of those projects is also doing really, really well as ADI continues to execute from an operational excellence standpoint to be the provider of choice. You know, when you're selling specced-in products, it's all about who can best meet the needs of that installer, that integrator, that professional. ADI in many ways is the provider of choice because they operate so well. The e-commerce part of the business has been growing really, really nicely. We see more and more shift in the dealer behavior to buying through e-commerce. It's interesting. I think most of us would talk about buying online as something we started doing, you know, a decade ago. I think, you know, those businesses have been historically still walk into the store.
We really have started to see over the last year or two a migration there. ADI has invested a lot of money, a lot of resources into the e-commerce aspects of the business, which we think is really good both for the integrator and for us. It's easier for them to buy. It's easier for them to see and manage their business. It's more effective and efficient for us to serve them through that channel.
ADI acquired Snap One last year, which you alluded to and you're familiar with very well. Could you just talk, remind us of the strategic rationale where you're at with the integration process, and how that business is performing?
Yeah. So, you know, Snap and ADI, as I've said a number of times, we met each other years ago when Snap was going through a recapitalization. And we said back then, this was 2017, boy, it might make a lot of sense to put these two companies together. ADI focused on that commercial professional. Snap focused on the residential professional. But both of us, as we thought about our long-term growth plans, talking about getting into each other's territories, Snap very much in the e-commerce business, ADI, you know, was more of a brick-and-mortar business moving into e-commerce, Snap moving into brick-and-mortar distribution. So a lot of those things made a lot of sense to bring the businesses together.
Taking those Snap, Snap was very much an exclusive brands company, but taking those exclusive brands and exposing them to all the customers that ADI had created a lot of growth and synergy opportunity as well. That was all the underwriting case about why it makes sense to bring these together. We've been thrilled with how the two companies have come together. Rob and his team, Rob runs ADI and his team, have done a phenomenal job of integrating the businesses. The leadership team consists of, you know, almost half and a half legacy Snap professionals and ADI professionals over the entire organization. The organization now, we brought the sales teams together in Q1. That was sort of the last leg of the stool. At this point, it's one organization. You know, we don't talk about the org as Snap and ADI. It's just one organization.
There's the sales team, the product team, the accounting team, you know, one org. Now, there still is different go-to-market activities. There still are the legacy Snap One storefronts and ADI storefronts, the legacy e-commerce platforms. We want to make sure that as we bring those together, we do it thoughtfully in a way that personalizes the experience for the different integrators. As they come in, you know, they're not getting bombarded with things that they are not interested in. Each one's going to have their own sort of view of what's interesting to them. We have to bring that together thoughtfully. You know, we're working on that. It's a couple-year journey. I think the initial, you know, 6- to 12-month work, I'd say we're ahead of schedule both from an integration standpoint and a synergy standpoint.
Now comes the longer grind of bringing together the DCs, bringing together the stores, bringing together the e-commerce footprints, bringing together all that so that we end up down the road as one brand, one business. What is great is it is one organization working towards that goal today.
One other thing to just add. I think it's important. We're ahead of our synergy targets that we've committed to, to the street. You know, I think to remind everyone, it was a $75 million run rate commit exiting year three. You know, we're ahead now. And we think that we could either bring that amount in earlier or exceed it or perhaps do both.
Great. Two of ADI's initiatives, which you've alluded to, e-commerce and exclusive branch, maybe update us on the progress you've made on both and just how they could potentially enhance the margin profile of the business over time.
Yeah. I mean, both are really important parts of that journey. Obviously, on exclusive brands, our margin rates are much higher than third-party products. That comes with the offset. There is a much higher R&D expense and marketing expense for those products where our, you know, product supplier to ourselves. We do not ever envision being, you know, a company that is majority exclusive brands. We love our relationships with all of the suppliers that we have, and we want to continue to support them. We look for opportunities where we see there is a gap in the market, where we do not think that other providers are meeting the needs of the integrators, and those integrators are telling us that, where we can add value. We look for those opportunities. Where we have them, we will continue to invest in exclusive brands and capture that more margin.
We're going to do it in a way that, you know, we can add value, have a high level of belief that we can meet the needs in a way that makes a lot of sense for both us and the integrator. Again, those are significantly higher margin products to us. That continues to be a journey that we're on. You know, the online piece of the business, by definition, is more margin accretive to us because it's just more efficient. Now, that doesn't mean, you know, people buy online, but the part of the store and the sales team is still incredibly important.
You might end up buying, you know, every week online, but that does not mean you do not go into the store once a month to talk to your partner behind the counter and ask, you know, tell me about this new product or tell me why I should pick product A or product B or tell me, you know, what is going on with this new product launch or this problem that is out there. The role of the store, we do not believe is going away. The role of the salesperson is not going away. E-commerce as a transactional tool and informational tool is going to continue to grow in importance. It also provides a little bit more price stability. There is less negotiating online, if you will. We like that aspect. It allows us to get, you know, a more stable margin as we go through that.
It is just a more effective and efficient way of managing it. We think it is a competitive advantage. We think the way we can talk to our dealers, the way we can provide, you know, alternative products, the way we can provide suggested products as a shop that way all provide opportunities for it to continue to optimize that footprint.
We've gone through P&S, now ADI. Maybe just to wrap it up before we go to some financials on the segments, could you talk about the synergies between the two different segments and is there an opportunity to do more there?
Yeah. The beginning synergy is that, you know, ADI is the biggest customer of P&S and P&S is the biggest supplier that ADI is. From that standpoint, it's a very close relationship. They work very closely together on the products that we sell exclusively through ADI or some that are non-exclusive, the P&S products, to bring that and make sure we're meeting that customer experience on that joint way. That is the primary way we think about it. As we think about, you know, the exclusive brand product platform on residential home automation and some of the home AV, as it ties into the platforms that P&S has, we believe there's still opportunities there to continue to bring things together. You know, the business's operating platforms are sort of separate. They're different business models. You know, one's a distribution business, one's a product business.
There is some separation on things like, you know, the go-to-market activities. We think the supply chain teams work closely together. The sourcing teams work closely together. There is no manufacturing at ADI, obviously. It is all third-party or JDM or contract manufacturing. Again, looking for those best practice opportunities, those teams work very closely together to think about how to optimize those opportunities.
All right. Going to the financials, you reiterated your 2025 revenue and profit outlook last week. Could you talk about what's giving you confidence in that at this point in the year, excuse me, and maybe speak to some of the key assumptions you're making around macro and tariffs?
You know, as we said, we continue to see very good demand from our customers. We're seeing little volatility in that. It's consistent. We're continuing to see good project flow at ADI. We're continuing to see good customer demand across all channels at P&S. You know, outside of some significant macro recession, I think your team just reduced their likelihood of a recession. I noticed that. That's good. You know, listen, it might be out there. Even in that, again, I think our market that we serve directly has already been in a bit of a recessionary environment for a number of years. You know, new housing's chugging along. It's not doing great. It's not doing badly. Resale, remodel is definitely not where it's been.
Even in a recessionary environment, we do not think there is an overly significant impact on our business as we look forward. You know, worst-case tariffs as they exist today, is there some pricing upside? You know, as we think about passing that through, you know, our assumption right now has been there is going to be little of that activity outside of what we have already seen. That is the assumption. You know, odds are there will be more than we have said. That is going to provide revenue upside. It is sort of, you know, it is not organic growth, in my opinion. It is not good growth. It is just price growth. The way we think about that is we are generally looking just to offset margin dollars. We are not trying to preserve margin rate. We might see some margin rate degradation in that world, but we would not see any dollar degradation.
We feel that's the best way to be fair to our partners, our customers, and not result in a way where we're taking advantage of the situation to make more money. We would look to just pass through the dollar impacts that we have through price. That would provide revenue upside for sure, likely little impact on the bottom line.
Makes sense. Just beyond some of the moving parts of this year, how do you think about the longer-term growth opportunity or margin framework for the business in a normalized environment?
We definitely think, as I mentioned earlier, that we believe our businesses should be growing, you know, ahead of the cycle, in advance of the cycle. We think the investments we're making in new product development, as you heard Chris talk about at P&S, provide us opportunities to grow in our existing product categories, to grow adjacencies to those product categories, to look for new product categories to enter into. All of which should provide us opportunities to grow, you know, ahead of whatever that cycle is. Similar to ADI, the investments we're making from an e-commerce standpoint, the investments we continue to make on meeting the needs of the customer, being the best partner for them as they think about installing all their projects. We think both of those positions really well to continue to capture share out there.
Whatever the cycle is, the cycle is. We'll deal with it. You know, we'll protect the bottom line with all the levers that we have to pull. We do view the opportunity to grow the top line. That should be positive from a margin standpoint. You know, what we've done over the last few years as we fixed the bottom line, as Chris mentioned, you know, we've underinvested a bit in some of our new product. I do not think that's a secret to anybody as we focused on really fixing some of the fundamentals of the business. This year, we took some of that incremental margin dollars and we invested it in OpEx. You will not see as much bottom line operating margin accretion as you might expect. Going forward, we think that was a stairstep change in our investment levels.
We do not expect that stairstep change every year. We think we are at a much better investment level right now. We think it is the appropriate investment level. Again, there are always opportunities to invest more. I have never heard of a product team that did not want more money and more resource. We will always evaluate that and determine what we are evaluating. We do expect, as we go forward, to take the incremental margin accretion, the incremental top line growth, and see it grow the bottom line both from a dollar standpoint as well as an operating margin standpoint.
Yeah. One other thing to add there, I think, you know, it's worth saying to remind everyone that Resideo is a $7 billion to $8 billion revenue company with significant scale in the market, as evidenced by, you know, some of the market share leadership positions. And, you know, our brands are very well known and have great brand equity. These are brands like Honeywell Home, First Alert, Control4. And then, you know, ADI is a share leader in that security and low voltage marketplace. I think, you know, there's a lot of ingredients here to, you know, help set up that growth and the greater margin expansion downstream.
On capital allocation, just you've made a number of acquisitions, which we've discussed. You've also made some divestments over the years. What are your current priorities on the capital allocation side?
You know, first, our first priority is always, you know, invest appropriately in the business. Let's make sure we're continuing to think about the long-term health of the business. What are the investment opportunities we have? Making sure we're not cutting back where we shouldn't be cutting back. So that's always just like, you know, blocking and tackling. I think from there, we've been very clear that we want to see deleveraging of the business. We want to be operating this business with 2x leverage. We think that's the appropriate target leverage for the business. We're a bit above that right now because of the Snap One acquisition. But we generate a lot of cash. You know, this year's guide is at least $375 million of cash. You know, Q1 is always a use of cash, but the rest of the year we'll be generating a lot of cash.
We feel very comfortable with that number. As we think about building that cash balance, when we get to the middle of next year, you know, we have clarity that we can get down to 2x. As we think about getting there, you know, the debate in the boardroom is always going to be, you know, returning capital to shareholders. What are the M&A opportunities that are there? We have a very disciplined approach to M&A, as you saw in the Snap One deal where, you know, we talked about $75 million of synergy on a company that had $100 million of EBITDA. That is a huge number. Those are the type of things that, you know, if they are there, we will think about them.
Certainly, as we think about the long term, you know, starting to keep an eye on returning capital to shareholders is something that's always on the list and in the boardroom debate.
CD&R made an investment as part of the Snap One acquisition. They purchased more shares last week. Could you talk about this relationship and their level of involvement with the company?
Sure. Let me clarify. Last week, they actually, the ownership transferred last week. As they announced in November, they entered into a forward purchase agreement with UBS. And so those shares have been being accumulated by UBS, we believe, through Q1. We do not know the exact dates, but the way the program works, as far as I understand, is UBS will be accumulating those shares under that forward purchase agreement. Last week was when they actually transferred from UBS over to CD&R. There was not like it was a big $100 million block trade last week. With that being said, you know, CD&R's position is they have two board seats. Nate Sleeper, who is the CEO of CD&R, sits on our board. John Strup, who is one of their operating partners, sits on our board. They are great in the boardroom. I mean, really bright people, provide great insight.
That is really the extent of the relationship. CD&R is, you know, they are a company that looks to deploy capital. I think they believe in the story, as shown by investing in an incremental $100 million through the open market. I think they are going to continue to be supportive of the company. I think over the long term, you know, they just, they obviously want to deploy capital. If there are opportunities there, that make sense for them and for us. You know, we have started to talk to them as a provider of capital, but if we do not need it, you know, they certainly will not be providing capital for no reason. We will continue to have a great relationship with them in the boardroom.
All right. Assuming no questions, we will wrap up with a higher level question. Just would be great to hear the one or two things you're most excited about that you think could be most transformative to the business in the years ahead. Also on the flip side, what you think could be the most underappreciated part of the story or what is the most underappreciated part of the story?
I think let me take the second one first. I'm not sure it's underappreciated versus overly complicating, which is this Honeywell liability. I think, you know, people see this Honeywell liability and they get scared by it and they don't understand it. It causes all kinds of chaos on the GAAP income statement and the balance sheet. I think we've done a good job recently. I think more and more getting people comfortable that A, you know, as the company grows, it's less material. B, it's just $140 million of cash a year. While it's confusing on the face of it, if you can sort of digest it and disaggregate it, if we can take that noise out of the story, I think that then provides people the opportunity to really dig in and understand the base business.
I think that noise for the last six, seven years since the spin around that liability has really been a constraint on how people are understanding the business. I think, you know, to the extent we can help explain that, I think it causes, quote, the underappreciation of the business. With that said, you know, what gets me most excited is, you know, this was a spin for Honeywell. I think we've talked about ADI, you know, has been a great business for years. The P&S side of the business was a number of different lines of business that got brought together. It was not a single operating entity. It's taken a number of years.
If you add in this, you know, COVID chaos and the supply chain chaos that came out of it, it's really taken a while for the company to really get that P&S org positioned for success on a future growth basis, a margin management basis. We've done a really good job with that. You know, this wasn't me, it wasn't Chris long before we got here, but we're the beneficiaries of, I think that that part of the business being really well positioned to now partner with ADI, who's been well positioned. And then the new product initiatives that we're launching, the thoughts about the future growth. I think that while every company talks about growth, I don't think it's been core to our DNA.
I think really it's becoming core to our DNA of what are the growth aspects, what are the growth levers of the business, really focus on both that NPD on the P&S side, as well as continuing to be the operationally excellent partner of choice on the ADI side, creates a real synergistic opportunity to drive performance and growth going forward. That's, you know, listen, I've been here nine months and I'm much more excited now than when I walked through the door as I get to learn more and more about the opportunity and the story that's out there.
Great. Thank you all for joining us.
Thanks, Cory.