All right. I think we're gonna get going again. Appreciate everyone's time. We have Rockwell Automation with us, kind of a follow-on to the automation panel. We're really excited to have Blake Moret, Chairman and CEO, still with us. You know, been CEO for six years and with the company since 1985. I know Blake has some comments he wants to make, a few slides to go through, and then we'll get into the fireside. Thanks, Blake.
Thanks, Andy. I know a lot of you have been following the name for quite some time, but to level set, I'll take just a few minutes to set the stage for who Rockwell is and why we're excited about the future. Rockwell's, in our Allen-Bradley hardware brand, have been well known in factories for over 100 years. Our traditional value has been providing automation products, the building blocks, if you will, for automated systems across a wide variety of industries. More recently, we've added to our value, and one of the themes that you'll hear me talk about is increased ways to win and add more value for customers. That's across different geographies with a more assertive posture outside of our home markets in the Americas.
It's across the industries that we cover, and the number of industries that weren't as important to us in the past are now, you know, key contributors. Then we look at our offering, and again, finding more ways to win, complementing our hardware with additional disruptive hardware, but also an increasing portfolio of software, both on-premise and cloud-native solutions, and high-value services like cybersecurity services in the operational part of plants. When we look at the industries that we cover across discrete and hybrid and process applications, that includes electric vehicles and batteries. It includes semiconductor. It includes warehouse automation that we talked about in the last session. It includes food and beverage.
It includes pharmaceuticals, medical devices, consumer packaged goods, energy, oil and gas, companies embarking on their energy transition and moving towards renewables and more efficient sources of energy as they decarbonize, pulp and paper, chemicals and so on. These industries give us an additional degree of resilience from when so much of our business was really centered around two or three of those industries only. When we look at our technology, being a pure play company, a pure play automation companies, gives us real value that shows up in your eyes as well. It contributes to high margins and efficiency because we have a single customer base, a single sales force, a single technology platform for our core automation that allows us to focus our energies and not have to dissipate it across multiple technology platforms, multiple sales forces and so on.
With a digital platform that provides a common set of services for all those intelligent devices and controllers, product platforms like Logix, PowerFlex drives, Kinetix motion control that all are designed with a certain common set of characteristics, and then industry solutions that take those building blocks and apply pre-engineered software so that they're most relevant for specific use cases in automotive EV production or in pharmaceutical production and so on. When we look at our go-to-market, for years, our primary move was selling those products through electrical distribution.
While that still remains devastatingly effective and is a huge differentiator due to the intimacy of our distributors with our customer base, particularly in the Americas, we've added new ways to win there as well with additional software-specific selling resources, with the acquisition of Kalypso that gives us a consultative top end to our sales process to be able to help those customers as we play an earlier, larger role in their digital transformation. Then continuing with our partners because no one company can do it all. So that ecosystem of big partners like Microsoft and small niche partners that provide specific technology solutions really give us a position that's second to none in the industry. Our outlook is for continued strong growth, second year of double-digit growth, good earnings growth, free cash flow at 95% and continuing strong orders.
This was our update as of our last earnings, as of our last earnings call, and it represents an increase. We had a beat and raise in the last quarter, and we continue to see favorable conditions. In summary, and these are comments that we made at our investor day in Chicago in November, we are delivering on the commitments that we made when we launched an ambitious plan to profitably grow to $9 billion with a well-structured delineation of how that was gonna happen. I'm happy to say that we're well down that path.
We're creating more resilience in our operations through that increased coverage of industries, increasing annual recurring revenue. Continued robust new product introduction and some of the things that we talked about that were gonna be important to the future in this journey, information solutions, high-value services, and so on, through acquisitions and through our internal development, we've become a scale player in these areas. So with that, I'll take a seat, and we'll answer some questions.
Blake, while you're coming over here, let me ask you one thought to the slides in the sense that, you know, when I was at the Rockwell Automation Fair, there literally was a Kalypso person, you know, at almost every stop that we were at. It's interesting, you know, go-to-market strategy, you know, we all think of you as very distribution-focused and all that good stuff, but it's kind of like I asked you in the last sort of panel discussion is that how much has somebody or, you know, something like Kalypso really helped accelerate your business given that they're, they seem so integrated as part of your product sales even?
Yeah. Kalypso is one of the best acquisitions we have ever made in the company's history. Like a lot of things, it's not immediately apparent, but Kalypso is a consulting organization, and they really have played at a higher level, you know, than typically, our salespeople have engaged with factories. We've been an indispensable, reliable part of a company's automation practices, but talking about, you know, helping with the overall change management as part of a digital transformation you know with the CIO isn't something that Rockwell was typically known for in the past. That's where Kalypso lives, you know, with a scale but, you know, still, you know, growing, consulting organization.
We had a lot of concerns when we were considering whether to bring them into the Rockwell family as, you know, could we be the best home for these sorts of, you know, consultants? Could we keep them and so on? By doing some things and asking them, "Hey, these are our concerns. What would you do?" Listening to what they said, it's really gone extremely well. Our salespeople, our typical salespeople, have seen those consultants as being experts who can answer, you know, the questions that their customers have when they say, "Okay, I get that Rockwell's an important part of, you know, our digitization of our enterprise, but I wanna know how I can make the next step. Here's the industry that I'm in.
Here's the concerns I have. Kalypso partners bring that expertise and allow you to have that second and third conversation at a very high level in the organization. They've catalyzed, you know, those efforts that we knew we needed to get to within Rockwell, but we needed some help, and Kalypso's provided that help.
Thanks for that, Blake j ust, you know, a couple of near-term questions. You know, you started calendar 2023. You know, you had booking, you had your report a few weeks ago. You reiterated today. Maybe talk about sort of the current environment. Any, you know, as you're having customer conversations, you know, any changes in CapEx plans? You know, I think you mentioned that there was some pull forward of orders in, you know, front of price increases in December, but you weren't seeing pull forward from your, you know, penalties that you instituted. Would you say the underlying environment for bookings is still good?
Underlying environment for bookings is still good and way above pre-pandemic levels. We had, you know, a huge orders year last year. There was also a corresponding large backlog build because of semiconductor shortages, you know, that constrained our ability to ship it all out. That backlog remains at historic high levels, but orders have continued very strong. We're expecting double-digit growth this year, as I said, 13% organic growth this year. Under, you know, really any foreseeable circumstance, we're gonna finish this year regardless of what the economy does with very high backlog on the heels of double-digit sales growth. That is a good read into 2024 and beyond. Part of what's driving that is the historic, you know, transition and build-out of automated systems in some of our key industries.
Think about the amount of EV announcements that have been made, new electric vehicle facilities, corresponding battery facilities. Those producers are not doing that with existing equipment. They're building new plants, new lines because there's just too much different between building those vehicles out and building their current ICE, you know, Internal Combustion Engine vehicles. That's objective evidence of a spend that's not likely to be deterred by whatever the economy does because those companies have a fear of missing out. They're all worried about taking a pause and having their competitors come in and build out their fleets of EV capacity.
Similarly with semiconductor, and while, you know, there's gonna be some ups and downs in terms of the announcements of these big, you know, $10 billion fabs, it's gonna be against a fundamental increase of up and to the right as the semiconductor industry increases as everybody is trying to make, you know, all products smarter. I think we're gonna see that continue on. We're not tone deaf to, you know, the pressures of inflation, but with our backlog in place, it is, you know, not gonna have an impact of whatever the economy does in terms of the results this year, and we continue to see strong orders in these industries.
maybe just following up on that, there sometimes is confusion a little bit because, you know, you got supply chain normalization on the one hand. You know, as you said.
... you know, orders are still way above pre-pandemic levels.
Mm-hmm.
Some of that may be supply chain related, some of that is, you know, Rockwell has independent cart. You know, if I go back three or four years ago, it was just really starting to sort of, you know, it was just new. You've got that. You've got more sort of bigger projects. I mean, I never thought of you as a big project company, over the last few years you've had some bigger project wins. You know, how much is the conviction level around staying relatively high on the order front because of all the things you're doing versus supply chain normalization?
Yeah. I think, you know, that's our job is to continue to build our value regardless of what the underlying economy is doing. Some of the examples you've given, Independent Cart Technology is a meaningful, material part of our overall business and our growth. Cybersecurity services, again, a meaningful, you know, strong double-digit part of our growth as well as our overall business, things that we didn't have a few years ago, and that we have added to our portfolio as well as, you know, a more aggressive posture in certain industries that we didn't pay as much attention to in the past.
You know, it is a combination of what's happening in terms of the secular attractiveness of automation and some of these industries that I mentioned that are, you know, gonna continue to invest for multiple years to come, like EV and semiconductor. It is a cycle that while under some pressure, you know, people across multiple industries are continuing to invest, in some cases because of the scarcity of workforce and the need to complement the people they do have with the automation. It's our position where we've created more ways to win.
You already mentioned sort of the secular versus cyclical debate.
Mm-hmm.
Like, how much of the portfolio would you say nowadays is really, you know, supported by these secular tailwinds?
Yeah. I mean, we've spent a lot of time in a variety of ways increasing our resilience, and about 8% of our total business is annual recurring revenue, which is a lot more than it was in the past. It hasn't continued to grow as a percentage, you know, so fast because our overall business is also growing in the teens, and but that's still, that helps. The additional industries that we're covering and the combination of, you know, what has been seen as early cycle industries like automotive and later cycle industries like energy, you know, we've got increasing exposure across that spectrum.
Even there, EV, I don't know that you can really put it in a category of early cycle or late cycle because it's not as constrained by what the SAR rate, but the, you know, the number of units produced is, as it is by those manufacturers' needs to build out capacity were nonexistent. Hopefully that's understandable that in the traditional internal combustion engine world, you know, there was gonna be increased effect by the annual adjusted rate of units produced. EVs are still a very small part of the number of vehicles on the road, and so all these manufacturers, regardless of how many units, you know, are being sold today, they know that it's gonna need to be a bigger percentage of the total vehicles going forward.
The other big topic of conversation for you guys has been supply chain.
Yeah.
Like, you know, last call you mentioned that chip availability was improving, but it's happening slowly. You know, I think we've heard that sentiment across most of the companies in our universe, but what would you say the probability is that by the end of, let's say, calendar 2023, you know, chip availability for you guys is getting closer to normal? If that's the case, you know, how do you think about capacity for Rockwell?
Yeah.
You know, obviously you've been very capacity constrained, so I'd imagine that number's a lot higher than $9 billion.
Yeah. You know, by the end of this calendar year or even this fiscal year, we're gonna be in a better spot with respect to chip availability than we are today. I think that's consistent with, you know, gradually improving chip availability. There's still gonna be products that are not gonna be back to pre-pandemic lead times. We'll have a greater number of our portfolio that is back to pre-pandemic lead times. We have some of those products back today. There was huge backlog that was built up over the last, let's say, 18 months. You know, it's not gonna be all clear, but it's gonna be better and better with each month that goes by.
We certainly saw, you know, in the last quarter some positive news that was, you know, better than we originally feared, and so that was good news for us. In terms of our capacity, we talked last year about building out our capacity to be able to handle around $9 billion worth of business and how that went from, you know, a pretty slide in 2019 that said, "This is our strategic, you know, objective to profitably grow to $9 billion, and here's how we're gonna do it," to an operational parameter saying, "It's coming." A lot sooner, you know, than it was, and we're building out that capacity. Today we're, you know, overall at about that kind of capacity, a little bit above, and we're continuing to build down our capacity.
The good news is because we're primarily an intellectual capital company, it's not like we're having to bring in new arc furnaces or forges or giant presses. You know, it's new surface mount technology. It's new testers, automated testing. We don't think that we're gonna need to add new rooftops. We've got, you know, concentrated manufacturing centers around the world, in each of our major markets. We feel pretty good with that footprint of rooftops. It's making sure that we add capacity within that, those existing building envelopes, making them as efficient as possible as we continue to build down our capacity beyond $9 billion.
Blake, since we're talking about capacity, I should ask you about beyond the swoosh.
Yeah.
You know, most of the audience will know what I'm talking about, but maybe you could elaborate. Like, basically, you know, you'll hit $9 billion in sales at some point probably pretty soon. I think one of the questions I get a lot is about your operating margin, you know.
Mm-hmm.
It's been relatively flattish really for a long time. You know, I think a lot of us know, you know, you've done a lot of M&A, you've made a lot of investments. Obviously, there's been supply chain headwind. You know, for such a high-quality company, why haven't you had more margin expansion? What do you think about margin expansion going forward?
Yeah. We, you know, when we introduced this, the so-called swoosh, which was that path to, you know, profitably grow to $9 billion, we talked about and really, you know, confirmed the idea that our conversion on incremental revenue should be between 30% and 35%. At, you know, single digit, mid-single digit, top line growth, you should expect 30%-35% conversion. This year, you know, with good growth and the gradual easing of those supply chain shortages that drove up prices of semiconductors, then we're testing that upper bound of 35% conversion. You said it was over the last couple of years, the pressures brought on by broker buys and semiconductors, for instance, and also the integration costs of, you know, pretty high activity with respect to acquisitions.
We talked about it on the last call as we move past some of the initial integration expenses with Plex, for instance, our biggest acquisition, then we see that turn accretive and, you know, we start getting some help with margins there.
I'll open up for questions in about 10 minutes, but let me ask you a related question, you know, around sort of Rockwell's DNA and pricing.
Mm-hmm.
You know, you've obviously done a good job recently with, you know, price increases. Nick talked about 7% for Q1. I think you had 4% for the year. As a CEO, how would you assess, you know, if you're keeping up with the Joneses sort of in price versus cost? You know, how do you keep Rockwell green or increasingly green as you go forward? We know what the guidance is, 100 basis points is what Nick talked about and reiterated. You know, how would you assess where we are, given you probably started out a little slowly?
Well, the yeah, slowly, beginning of last year, where it took a while for our pricing to catch up based on some structural things that were really tuned for the traditional one point of price realization a year. Based on the severity of the cost increases and the rapidity, you know, how fast those moved, then we needed to change some things structurally as well as putting big price increases in place. The combination of that, moving some things that allowed us to get faster price realization as well as robust increases, is what's showing up in the really good margins that you've seen the last couple of quarters, you know, and that we've suggested, you know, we're gonna continue to see good margins through the year. We're not sounding the all clear.
You know, there's still cost increases that are coming in, we feel confident that we have a close enough relationship with our customers, with our distributors, so that we're getting price where we can, but we're not gonna overdrive our headlights. I would also say a related question that you maybe want to ask is, you know, are we gonna have to give some of that back? We don't see evidence, you know, that those price increases aren't gonna stick. There's no, you know, evidence of that. What customers are fixed on now are, "I want my stuff, and when are lead times gonna get to, you know, shorter time frames?
Just related to that, Blake, you know, software and control, you obviously had a little bit better quarter than you thought in Q1 You were able to mitigate the issue that you had talked about.
Mm-hmm.
Nick really didn't change the next three quarters in terms of guidance.
Mm-hmm.
Like, is there still an element of conservatism in thinking about the next three quarters or something that may still go wrong?
Yeah. We're still taking a conservative approach in our operations. It's still volatile, dynamic, whatever word you wanna use out there. Again, supply chain shortages, you know, have not totally mitigated. We're still spending a lot of money on engineering redesign for components that, you know, we're still feeling like we need to have redundant sources on and to be able to look at qualifying other components in our products. We're still seeing the ups and downs of needing to keep labor in our operations while the chip supply isn't constant. There are gonna be some weeks that you're gonna see some inefficiency, but you're not gonna idle people for one week and then, you know, rush them back in when the chips show up on the receiving dock.
There's some inherent inefficiencies that we're gonna tolerate over the next, over the next few months. I think that guides, you know, some of our approach to the outlook. We're happy with the over-performance in Q1. We have a generally optimistic tone going forward, but we remain fundamentally a conservative company.
It's helpful, Blake. You mentioned ARR. It's continued to grow, up 15% in 2023. Could you highlight what you think will be the biggest drivers of ARR growth in 2023? You know, can you give us an update on Plex? I think when you announced the deal, you expected to hit about $0.30 of accretion the second full year after acquiring it. This was a little less than two years ago. If you can give us any metrics on how it's doing, you know, is it mad exceeding your expectations?
ARR for us is composed by our software, information software particularly, but with an increasing contribution from some of our traditional software that we've converted from perpetual license to subscription-based. Then it's also the high-value services, and so recurring revenue associated with tech support, for instance, you know, which is a good growing, profitable part of our ARR as well. Within that, Plex is a really important part of that recurring revenue, and we're happy with the performance of Plex. We're happy with the new logos that we're adding, the expansion into certain industries that Plex was not as strong in, didn't really have the resources to attack, you know, before they became a part of Rockwell.
Retention of people, which is always a concern when you buy a software company, has been good there, and it is accretive, this year. We see good growth and we see profitability.
Great. Interestingly, your Asian-European sales growth in Q1 was actually quite a bit higher than your North American growth. You know, I know you probably have easy comparisons in Asia, for instance, but how do you see regional growth going the rest of the year? Do you expect any volatility in China given reopening and what is going on there with COVID? Do you expect North America at the end of the year to still be your leader in growth?
Yeah. The growth that you see, and we've kind of given this disclaimer in the last few earnings calls, the growth is really more of a factor of what's in the backlog, and as we relieve that backlog, then new order trends. You shouldn't look at a shipment figure, a growth figure for a particular region and look at that as a read on what the new demand was, because so much is being filled out of older backlog. That's different than what you would've heard from Rockwell in the past. I hope it's different than what you'll hear three years from now, you know, when backlog gets to more normal levels. That's the starting point.
That being said, based on what's in the backlog, I think you will see faster growth in Asia and Europe in the full year than you'll see in North America. That's no reflection on any sort of shared gains or losses. It takes a longer time for us to come in and to state, you know, we're gaining share in a particular region there. Based on the composition of the backlog, I think you'll see faster growth in those regions.
From what you can tell in China after reopening, like still booking, all that kind of stuff?
Yeah, we still see booking. We still see strength in areas like EV in China. EV for Rockwell is not just a North American or a U.S. phenomenon. While I'm very proud of our wins in the U.S., you know, with companies like Ford and Hyundai and so on and the associated battery, we're doing some great things in China with some of the indigenous EV and battery companies there as well.
That is exactly my next question, Blake. You read my mind. Let me ask you about EVs in the sense that, you know, for discrete automation, you actually raised your guidance for 2023 after you reported up low teen was up to 10%. You know, I think automotive was, you know, moved to high teens. I think the last time you updated us, you told us EVs were a third of your overall automotive business. Does it continue to rise as a percentage of the business and could it end up being half the business or something like that as you go over the next couple of years?
For sure. Yeah, those figures are, you know, roughly correct at, you know, a point in time. EV's gonna become a bigger percentage because when EV activity is going on, it's greenfields largely, and those are projects that are multi-millions of dollars. I think we're And the percentage of EVs on the road today is, what? 1% or 2%. We're gonna only see that increase over the next decade. EV's gonna be a bigger and bigger part of our business in automotive. You have the battery piece that attends that, you know, is also growing well.
Just one related question there, Blake. I often get a question like, you know, so if I think about EV battery. You know, clearly as we put it into the U.S, this is your home turf. At the same time, the question that comes to me as well, there's some good Asian competitors there, you know, how is Rock gonna do versus competition as we go greenfield here, you know, in the U.S? How would you answer that question?
Talking specifically about the battery side of things, think of what that was replacing. That was replacing the traditional powertrain operations in, you know, the brand owners' businesses, which was an area that we had a pretty low penetration in. A lot of that is what I think of as subtractive manufacturing, you're boring cylinders, you're finishing metal surfaces, and that's largely done by Computer Numerical Control, CNC, which we don't have. You know, while we talked about our growing presence in ICE drivetrain when I came into this job, it was still a relatively small part of the business.
What we're getting in terms of battery, especially in the battery assembly with our Independent Cart, that's plus business, and that's a big application for a technology that we have that remains really differentiated from our Asian and our European competitors.
Let me ask you a process-related question, then we'll open it up to the group. You know, you mentioned pickup in oil and gas that's gonna happen, you know, mid-single digits to double digits later in the year. Is that mostly Sensia, and do you see a good runway for Sensia growth into 2024? Well, let me start with that.
Yeah. You know, we continue to see double-digit growth with Sensia, which is about half of our oil and gas business. Within, you know, oil and gas, about half of it is served by our traditional product business, which largely goes through distribution that we've had for a long time, providing the components to machine builders and users and so on. Then you have more of the engineered solutions, you know, that's coming from Sensia, the joint venture that we have with SLB. I see for a variety of reasons, a good outlook for energy. First of all, efficiency is more important than ever for these companies, and that's a lot of what we do, being able to help them produce with a minimum of waste.
Increasingly, we see as they embark on their energy transition programs, and they implement carbon capture and sequestration and direct air capture, you know, type of techniques, those are great fits for our products, and we've already started to receive multimillion-dollar orders in that area, you know, from the traditional fossil fuel providers. Then, you know, related to that, we're seeing good business, and we've talked about this for renewables. Companies like First Solar that we've talked about the last two investor days, and wind energy. The single biggest market, single biggest customer for our recent acquisition, Cubic, the Danish company that we just announced, is wind.
One more related question on process. You've mentioned metals, fine chemical strength, you know, recently. Maybe talk about that a little bit, and then the Process IO system you talked about. You know, give us a little color on sort of that rollout, and then maybe just the final one there is lifecycle services margins have been, you know, somewhat lethargic. You expect them to improve pretty significantly. Is it just a function of projects takes long, longer to price, they sit in backlog, they just take time, but you have good visibility there?
Sure. First, looking at the end markets, again, we talk about discrete, hybrid, and process. We've had a traditional focus, you know, for the last decade or so, on increasing our share in process control. Process isn't just the control systems, it's also the power control and so on, and we continue to invest in those process applications. It's the technology and the domain expertise. Domain expertise, we got a lot of through the joint venture in SLB. Technology, things like you mentioned with Process I/O. Redundant I/O was a bit of a showstopper for us to be able to compete effectively on some of these process control systems. We have it now. Additional functionality and Logix.
The trend in certain process applications to more modular systems is a real good read for Rockwell, because that modularity is a great fit for our architecture. Lifecycle services, to your second question, people-intensive business, the margins are inherently lower than our more pure product and software businesses. We expect good improvement, expansion of the margins, getting closer to historical levels. They have been affected by supply chain constraints as well, because they use a lot of the products from us and other third-party suppliers, so that's taken a toll on their margins. As we see that growth, as we see Sensia increase their profitability, then those are good factors that'll contribute to the increased lifecycle services margins in the year.
Great. Questions from the audience. Any questions? Over there.
Thank you for your presentation.
Thank you.
I usually thought about Rockwell in terms of the mid to high single-digit growth rate, and when you put those numbers of mid-teens, I was surprised. I wonder if that's the new secular trend because of all the good stuff you talk about, or maybe that's just a recovery from COVID.
Yeah. I'm not gonna give a long-term projection of what, you know, our sustainable growth rates are other than to say what we're focused on is making those higher than they were. What you see over the last couple years. Double-digit growth of last year, the guidance of, you know, double-digit growth this year is a factor of the rebound from COVID, as well as the backlog that we're now able to ship out due to better component availability, plus all the good things that we talked about in terms of secular and more ways to win within Rockwell.
Any other questions? Over there.
Hi. I was curious, and maybe this is just a China specific question, but it could be a geopolitical question broadly. If you thought the market you might be able to address three or four years ago looking forward to 2030 was X, do you think today that it's still X, or is it something less than or greater than X?
Yeah. You think about the Rockwell of five years ago, first of all, it was, you know, pre-pandemic, so you had that, you know, that, let's say, jitter in the system. We didn't have any cloud-native software, and today we have Fiix and Plex and our own internally developed programming software for our Logix controllers. We didn't really have independent card, you know, at any size that was worth mentioning in a group like this. There's a number of things that we've done in the market, in areas, in industries. EV wasn't on the same kind of trajectory. Semiconductor wasn't, you know, in the news with the expansions that they were. For sure it is xP .
It's not two X, but it is xP a lot, you know, beyond what it was five years ago. Our ability to competitively address that, because even within, say, a PAM, a Product Available Market, some parts of that market are more competitively served than others. We've increased our ability and our hit rate in some of those areas as well.
Any other audience questions? Okay, Blake, make sure I get to. I'm asking 1 question of all companies, so I wanna make sure I get to that before we run out of time. What are the top two or three innovations, mega trends or structural changes that have affected or are affecting your company over the next five years? Are there any emerging industry trends that are perhaps being overlooked, do you think, in the current discourse?
Sure. A few things that I think are important trends with business and even business model implications. The increased relevance of cloud in manufacturing, and with, you know, SaaS business models. We're not trying to become a software company, but software's gonna be a larger part, gonna continue to be a larger part of what we do, and it does bring some good things to our financial performance. Cloud and SaaS is one. The next is the convergence of robotics and our traditional line control. We don't make robots, but increasingly we're providing control systems that can control robots, and that's a huge element of simplification, not having to have a separate robot controller and line controller. You can do it with one, and we showed that with Comau at Automation Fair. Finally, the energy transition.
You know, that's delivering real results as we are a fundamental player, you know, with the sustainability efforts of companies worldwide, and we're already seeing some of the benefits of the IRA legislation here in the U.S. One area, you know, that I think is, you know, to watch, we're already seeing it, but high-mix manufacturing, you know, the ability to get closer to an economic order quantity of one, you know, one product being produced, followed by another different product, by yet another one, with zero downtime or setup time in the mechanical gearing and so on of the machinery. That's pretty exciting.
Well, I think we're pretty much out of time, Blake, so we should probably end there. We very much appreciate the time.
Yeah. Thanks, Andy. Thank you. Thank you.