All right, I think we are ready to get going. So, good morning, everybody. For those of you that don't know me, my name is Joe Ritchie. I cover the multi-industry sector and head up our industrials and materials business unit. Really excited to be at Communacopia with you all today, and excited to have Roper Technologies here with us. We have Neil Hunn, President and CEO, as well as Jason Conley, the CFO. And, Neil's gonna start with a few opening comments, 'cause I recognize that for a lot of investors, Roper Technologies is still relatively new to the tech community. But, Neil, why don't you kick us off, and, we'll get into Q&A after?
Great. Thanks for having us. Delighted to be here. Just for, yeah, for those that don't know Roper, think of Roper as we're ±$6 billion of revenue. We have about 40% EBITDA margins, a little bit over 30% free cash flow margins. We grow our cash flow in the mid-teen zip code. We do this by running sort of a dual-threat offense. The first is on an organic basis. We operate a portfolio of 27 companies. While the end markets are very different, the business model of each of the 27 are remarkably similar. They're all leaders in very small markets. And so we like small markets because they're protected from competition. We like them even more so because the basis of competition is based on customer intimacy.
And so we're the leaders in these small markets, and everything all of our 27 businesses do are deeply verticalized or application specific. And because of that, this customer intimacy, we operate a very, very decentralized operating structure, high-trust, autonomous structure, which I'm sure we'll come on to later during our conversation. The second part of the offense, of the dual-threat offense, if you will, is we run an M&A motion, a very systemic, programmatic, repeatable M&A motion, where we take all the excess free cash flow from the enterprise and then centrally deploy it to the very best, highest use.
When we put those two together, we've had about a 20-year run of compounding our TSR in the high teens range, and so the model, both organic and inorganic, comes together to do something that's elite levels of performance.
Great. So, Neil, maybe let's try to unpack some of those things, right? So let's talk about these, like, niche market-leading businesses that you have. You mentioned 27 platforms. When I first started covering Roper, you know, 10 years ago, it was a very different company than it is today. So talk a little bit about what makes these businesses market-leading, niche, defensible, and then maybe also talk about the evolution of the portfolio over time.
Sure. So the evolution, I'll start maybe with the second part, the evolution of portfolio. I mean, I've been at the company 12 years, Jason, 17. So when I started, we were 80% products and 20% or even less software. And today, we're 75% software and 25% product. So the nature of the portfolio has changed. The quality of the portfolio has changed in terms of the organic growth rate, the recurring revenue net profile, the margin profile, and the asset lightness or lack of asset intensity. All the quality dimensions, the recurring revenue has improved as well. But the nature of what the companies did from our old days and our new days is remarkably similar. Again, leaders in small markets that compete on intimacy with a vertical or application-specific solution.
And we just find time and time again, when you solve a very hard problem for a very specific persona in a small industry, then you have a right to win. And so we don't just do ERP, for instance, ERP software, we do it for project-based businesses, and so subspecialty, for instance, is legal. So we're the leader, the clear leader for large law software. We're the leader for government contracting software, architect software, what architects use, et cetera. So it's very, very hyper-specific and functional-based, function-based. And so that's why we have this portfolio that tends to be quite durable through cycle, protective.
Yes, you started talking through some of those examples, right? And so maybe just try to elaborate. I know you mentioned Aderant, right? I think at the Investor Day, there were a few others, you know, including Deltek, that you mentioned. But maybe step through a couple more examples so that people get a better understanding for the types of businesses that sit within the portfolio and, you know-
Sure
... how those businesses have evolved, as well.
Sure. So we report in three segments. Although we run the business at the unit of the business of 27, we roll them into three segments: application software, network software, and then tech-enabled products. So I'll give you an example from the first couple of software. So in application software, we use Vertafore. So Vertafore is our largest acquisition in the summer or early fall of 2020. Vertafore is the leader in software that property and casualty insurance agencies use to run their business. So if you think about what you have to do as an agent, you're interfacing with all the carriers. You are obviously acquiring customers, so it has all the CRM functionality, the policy administration functionality, the compensation, you know, functionality.
And we had a market that is a duopoly. It's us and one other player. It's been. We basically share the market equally, have done that way since the formation of the industry 20-some years ago, and it's a wonderful business. That's a mid-single-digit+ organic growth business that's near 50% EBITDA margins in that case. And the network, so it's very much application-specific, running the workhorse chassis that the customers use. Network software is, as you would suggest, it's network-enabled software. I'll use one in media and entertainment. We have a business called Foundry. So in the media entertainment world, you have live-action production and computer-generated graphics. We need to put those on the same screen, so think Game of Thrones, the dragons, and the people.
Those, you have to, you have to put those on the same screen, and our software is used in post-production almost solely. It is exclusively used on high-end productions, anything in movie theaters or any high-end sort of streaming service will use Foundry software. There's a network effect because it has an enormous ecosystem of people that are trained in college, and then user groups and forums about how to best use Foundry software. And so it's another example of what we do.
So you basically just said property and casualty insurance software and Game of Thrones almost in like the same sentence, right?
Exactly right.
So why do those businesses belong together? And talk a little bit about, you know, CRI and how you think about, you know, creating value by having these disparate businesses within your portfolio.
So CRI, cash return on investment, is our North, North Star, has been our North Star for 20+ years in terms of of what to optimize for a financial point of view. It's essentially what's your cash flow margin divided by your asset intensity? And it's our view, analytically, that the highest cash returning businesses, shareholders attribute the highest value to. So think of railroads versus the best software company you can imagine. You're gonna have one multiple for a railroad, another one for a software company, and CRI paints all the shades of gray in between. And so, starting as an industrial business, our journey was not to also become a software company, it was become a more asset-light business, and we happened to end up in software.
We've been in software for 18 years in some form or fashion, so it's been a slow evolution to get to this point. These businesses, the 27 businesses I said at the beginning, you know, the end markets don't. There's no overlap end markets, and there's no end market synergy or go-to-market opportunities across any of our companies. But the business models are remarkably similar. As I mentioned before, small markets compete on intimacy, highly verticalized. And what we've become somewhat proficient at across the company, both in the Roper enterprise, at the center location, and then across the companies, is: how do you take and how do you coach these relatively small businesses, right? Twenty-seven businesses, $6 billion in revenue, like, the median is a $220 million or $230 million business right inside of Roper.
These are just small businesses. How do you help these small businesses become authentically great businesses that grow over a long arc of time? We can get into that to the extent you want. But that's what we... Our business model is tuned to do, around how these businesses think about strategy, right? How they execute strategy, how they run a talent offense, and put all that together in pursuit of improved levels of sustained organic growth.
So yeah, I think that that's probably the best next segue. Maybe we bring Jason in here as well. We'll talk about the M&A flywheel in a little bit. But talk, Jason, maybe just talk through the process that you undergo to try to make these businesses better once they become part of the Roper portfolio.
Yeah, sure. Happy to. Well, I would say the first thing. Well, these are great businesses, and they've typically been owned by private equity, maybe one or two turns. So, you know, there's a different objective in private equity, where obviously they're making the business better, but it's not with the forever lens. And so the first thing we do, it starts really in diligence, is we look at sort of the market map, sort of where they sit, where their opportunities are, where the investments need to be made that are gonna drive not just growth in the year four or five, but forever. And so, a lot of times, we'll just look at what the company's been focused on the last few years and how we can get them even more focused.
'Cause what we found is, management teams are spread thin, and typically they get diluted down. Maybe they're pursuing some adjacency that they did in private equity that really is distracting management and not really getting the growth that they need. And so our pattern recognition is more focused, and more sort of coherence around what the company is trying to accomplish, drives better outcomes for us. So that's one thing. The other is just sort of getting into more of the rigor of the quarterly operating reviews that we do, where we look at a variety of metrics in a very consistent manner, and so that's another thing that we do. And I would say our group executives are a key enabler to this in our organization, right?
Think of them as operating partners in a private equity firm, but with, again, a forever horizon. So we're not trying to optimize for an exit, but optimize for that long-term growth. And so they have, again, a lot of pattern recognition across the portfolio, along with their deep experience being presidents or COOs of other businesses. So that's a key enabler for us and also helps us scale. As we bring on new companies, you know, each group executive can handle seven to eight businesses, so they really, they really help the presidents be the best they can be for their organizations.
I think clarity of purpose as well. When these companies that we buy are have been previously owned by private equity, oftentimes their purpose will change owner to owner, right? So they invest under one strategy, and then they have to harvest that, invest on a different strategy, have to harvest that. Once a company becomes part of Roper, the purpose, the clarity of the singular purpose is super powerful, which is: how do you improve the organic growth outlook on a sustained basis forever, right? It's singular, and it has a forever holding period. When you have that and a performance expectation and all the coaching and everything that Jason just said, we see, as we talked about in our Investor Day a number of months ago, improvement, right?
We see businesses that grew low singles when we bought it, now it's high double or low double digits, or, you know, Deltek was mid, now it's mid-plus, maybe high. Vertafore was mid, maybe it's mid-plus up to three years into ownership. So we, we pursue increasing levels of organic growth through a singularity of focus.
First Investor Day in 30+ years as a company. For those that haven't read it, it's a worthwhile read.
Which you did yesterday.
I know. I, I reread it. Yeah, exactly. I was fully prepared for this conversation. But let's, let's, let's talk about that, that, that clarity of purpose. Like, talk about the metrics that you, that you... How do you think about long-term value creation then? Because it seems like all of these group executives and business unit presidents are all driving towards the same goal? And then secondly, you talked about the singular purpose of organic growth over time and, and, and being a better grower, faster grower over time. How do you think about investment associated with, with, with that piece of it?
So I should put a huge caveat as far as Jason hasn't already kicked me. It's like it's not growth at all costs, it's growth at better cash returns, right? It's not growth at all costs. We've seen so many examples where you grow in an undisciplined way and actually destroy value in pursuit of sort of that strategy. So this is about systemic good growth is the goal, cash with higher cash returns associated with it. Repeat your question for me, if you don't mind.
Yes, I was thinking about, you know, when, how do you then think about the, from an investment perspective-
Oh, sure
... how do you, like, how do you think about allocation of capital?
Sure. So every business. So we have 27 of everything. So when I say we're highly decentralized, we're highly decentralized. There's 6,000-18,000 people in the company, 80 in the corporate office, and so we're very much an inverted pyramid to help the businesses. So there's 27 presidents, 27 ERPs, 27 strategies. And so there's not a one-size-fits-all strategy. How Foundry, the media entertainment business, is thinking about growing, they're very much in a cloud migration, customer acquisition phase of their strategy, compared to, like, a Vertafore, who is the customers in Vertafore. This is property and casualty insurance business. Their customers are consolidating, so how do they deliver Vertafore to a much, much larger customer, which they haven't had to do historically? It's very different.
And so we don't try to paint a broad brush across the 27 companies. Each company then has its long-range strategy, and then every year, it's like, what's one good year of progress look like relative to execution against that five-year strategy or five-to-seven-year strategy? And then, when they do need to invest more, we first will say, "Okay, what..." As Jason was alluding to, "What can you stop?" So many companies are like: I'm gonna do everything I'm doing, and then some. Well, no, the focus says strategy tells you what you're gonna do and what you're not gonna do, so let's talk about what you're not gonna do and stop there. So can you fund some of the things you need to do with that? Second is, can you drive productivity? You know, generative AI is gonna be a great productivity boost for all companies, us included.
So can we fund some of the needed investment through productivity? And then, very rarely do those two buckets satisfy the need, so then we're always looking for what we can do incrementally to fund the investment, or go to market, or R&D. Fortunately, we're blessed with just wonderful business models, economic business models that underlie all 27 of our businesses, where we have very high gross margins, which is an indication of how we can capture value through pricing with the value we create. As I mentioned, you know, 40% EBITDA margins and great incremental margins from there. So our long-range model says that we're gonna have 45% operating leverage as a general matter with, you know, hopefully pushing towards high single-digit organic growth.
We think that model fully funds what we need to do from an investment point of view and yields results for our shareholders.
That's right.
Anything you wanna add to that?
Yeah, and just, just a reminder, our asset-light business. There's no really CapEx, any additional CapEx, so that flows-
Yeah
... nicely to free cash flow margin.
The CapEx for us is 1% of revenue. Equity comps, what, 2% of revenue or something like that. So it's very clean, sort of from a P&L capital intensity point of view.
What you first started discussing in that answer was your decentralized model, right? But you have a centralized function, ostensibly for M&A. So maybe Jason, turning over to the M&A portion of the discussion, which I know for a lot of tech investors, is probably very different from what you're used to seeing.
That's correct.
Talk through your M&A business model, how it works.
Yeah, happy to. So as Neil said, we have kind of a dual threat in terms of growth opportunities. So with the free cash flow that we generate organically, and the fact that we are not a vertical software company purely in a specific vertical, we have a lot of optionality for M&A, and we've had a proven process over the last 20 years in doing M&A from, you know, understanding all the opportunities that are out there in the space, developing relationships with private equity firms, understanding different sectors to a certain extent, and then being able to really... We have a proven and consistent process to due diligence through our team. Centrally, we have some outside advisors that help us. They're really an extension of our team. And so we just...
Because we're, I think we're small and we're nimble, we're able to act very opportunistically when opportunities come our way in the market, as well as going out and looking for opportunities on our own, so doing sourcing. So it's just, it's a well-honed process. It's very systematic. We do a lot of sort of learnings from the deals that we close, ones we didn't do, and sort of cycle that back into the process. We treat it almost like a go-to-market team, right? We've got a CRM that tracks everything, and we keep all our notes. So it's just a very—it's very much a part of what we do. It's a very big part of the time that we spend as the executive team.
Again, because we're so decentralized, you know, our job is to make sure we have the best leaders in the field, and once they're doing that, we're helping to coach them, then our time is spent on deploying the capital. And so that's sort of how we've evolved over the years. You know, we love when businesses provide opportunities to do bolt-ons, but we're gonna do the diligence. We're gonna make the... It's gonna have to pass our litmus test, because, again, we're just trying to find the best opportunities to deploy capital across the company.
So, Jason, I was surprised to... I thought the number was staggering, right? That you guys looked at 1,200 deals last year. And so step us through how you whittle down from 1,200 deals to six acquired targets.
Well, I think it starts, you know, Neil talked about CRI as our North Star, so we really have to look at the quality, the financial fundamentals of the business first, and that screens off a lot of targets. And then from there, it's just all the things Neil talked about: What kind of market is it in? What's the competitive intensity? You know, do we like all the fundamentals? Do we like the end market? I mean, we say we're end-market agnostic, but, you know, there's some areas like automotive. We looked at some great automotive software companies, and I don't know if we could go there, just because we don't know where the puck's going, so that's another factor for us. So it's just these. Again, we've just had this process for 20 years.
We know the areas we need to check, and we can filter very quickly.
So one of the pieces of feedback I get from new investors that are looking at your business model and track record over time is the fact that you do buy from private equity, and obviously, private equity is looking to earn a return, a good return on their investment as well. And so, help people kind of square that away and why it's still value creative to buy from private equity over time because you have developed, you know, those relationships.
Sure. I can start, and Neil can-
Sure
... certainly add to it. But I think when, when we look at platform opportunities, our sort of. When we're competing, if there is a process and we're looking at it, we're willing to pay a dollar more than the LBO model. So if it's a, it's a larger deal where private equity isn't gonna be able to, to buy down the multiple with, with add-ons down the road, 'cause that's how they're thinking about it. It's like, I can pay a lot for this, for the platform, but then I'm gonna buy down with tuck-ins. If they can't do that, then, then we're a good home. Or if there's not some edge that they have that's gonna. They're gonna take a bunch of cost out or something like that.
So we're willing to pay that premium than private equity because, you know, we've got our capital structure's, you know, in better shape. And, you know, I think for us, again, we have that forever lens, so our thesis is not what it's gonna look like in five years, but ten years from now, you know, what's the returns gonna look like for the business? And that also funds the next deal. When it comes to bolt-ons, and we've just closed two significant ones this year, in our Strata's combination with Syntellis, and then we acquired Replicon for Deltek. Those are just great deals for us, and those is where we will look at what are the opportunities to capture synergies, both on the cost side and even...
We won't underwrite it, but we'll look at the revenue synergies as well. And so that, to us, we're, and we've been much more active, I would say, on that front over the last year, and that's what got some of these deals done over the last 12 months.
So I'm gonna open up to questions from the audience in a minute or two, but just maybe just following up on that last one. So, you have also talked about, you know, maybe trying to be, like, half a click earlier-
Mm-hmm
... right? In terms of your timing. Maybe just, maybe just talk a little bit more about that, and then also, what's the environment like right now, for your M&A pipeline?
So, we talked about on Investor Day that Roper's strategy has called for two, essentially, further levers of value creation for our shareholders. First is, we've talked about extensively today, a little bit more organic growth. So this portfolio started at 5.5% or somewhere in the 7%-7.5% area now, and hopefully gets to be the 8% or 9%. We're not there yet. It's no guidance or anything like that, but that's our ambition. It's also tends to be quite defensible and non-cyclical, so it should be quite steady performance through cycle and across economic environments. And then the second value, additional value leverage, how do we buy things where, how do we capture a little bit more value through our capital deployment?
Our view of that is buying things just a touch earlier. Structurally, fundamentally, nothing changes. Still small market, still leaders, clear, clear and understandable competitive forces. We're not gonna pick winners. So to the automotive point, I mean, there are some great companies, software companies in automotive, but you just don't know how electrification autonomy is gonna change the landscape of dealers and, and OEM relationship with the end customer. And so it's like, you ultimately are picking a winner for things you have no control, so we're gonna just sit and watch that for a while. So we're talking about the same profile company, but just buying it, one click earlier in its ownership cycle, where we can capture some of that value creation for our shareholders. An example is Vertafore. It was owned by two private equity firms prior to us buying it.
Same exact company, same growth rate, same competitive position, just 8 points lower margin.
Mm-hmm.
That's, we think, having done that work in our portfolio for our own companies for the last five or six years, we have the institutional know-how to do that. So that's what we're talking about, buying things a little bit earlier. Also, likely leaning in and doing a little bit more bolt-on activity. Historically, about 10% of our portfolio capital deployment's been bolt-on. There's no budget or target, but maybe that's 20% or 30%, 'cause economically, bolt-ons are the best deals we can do because they help enhance the organic growth rate of our existing company, and there's normally, even if it's just G&A, some synergy, cost synergy in the deal, which we otherwise would not get in a platform.
All that being said, you know, one of the things, just to tie this back to the question prior around our M&A approach, it is, as Jason said, it's systematized, it's disciplined, it's got telemetry and all that, but I think the overriding is we're wildly dispassionate, right? So if we were excited to get Syntellis done for Strata, but if that deal traded to a point where it didn't make economic sense, that's fine. We only have to deploy $3 billion-$4 billion a year. It's not that much in the grand scheme of what we look at in any given year. And so we're just gonna. The dispassion gives us and our board the discipline to be patient, waiting for the exact best opportunity we can find.
It's the most liberating part of Jason and I's job around capital deployment, is that we're not trying to be the best fill-in-the-blank company. Transportation software company, where you might go do something and lose. It's strategic, which means it is with cold, you can't make the math work. So we won't fall prey to the strategic deal 'cause we're dispassionate-
Mm-hmm
... on the capital deployment.
One more from me, and then I'll go turn to the audience. The $3 billion-$4 billion that you just referenced, how do you think that kind of evolves over time?
Mm-hmm.
Is that something that you think is bankable for investors in the medium term?
I think it is quite bankable.... in the, but not on a per quarter or per year basis, per se. It's just, if you just run the model, $6 billion of revenue and 30%+ free cash flow with investment-grade leverage, and you just put some organic growth rate on it and run 3.5x leverage or whatever your model says, you're gonna see it spits out $3-$4 billion a year now and, like, $4 billion-$5 billion, seven years from now. It's just easy math to do. So we're gonna get that, whatever that is, 20± billion dollars deployed over this period of time. Now, is it gonna be a $1 billion a quarter for the next 28 quarters? Probably not.
Makes sense.
Anyone want to add to that?
Any questions from the audience? Right up front.
How does the current capital environment, just in terms of your own internal threshold on equity and the financing environment, even just in terms of leverage, affect the way you're thinking about capital deployment in the current market?
Yeah, so the current environment... Sorry, I skipped over that question.
Okay.
So thanks for holding us honest there. The current environment, there's just not a lot to do. I mean, it's, sellers' expectations are not matched to buyers' willingness to pay all around the cost of capital. It's been very, very thin in terms of the last 12-ish months-
Twelve, eighteen
... maybe 12-18 months. It will turn, so either one or two things has to happen: cost of capital has got to come down to come in line with seller expectations, or seller expectations have to come down to come in line with cost of capital. Really, it's gonna be a little bit of both.
Mm.
It probably happens, and this is my personal look into a very hazy crystal ball, probably that logjam sort of meets and expectations meet as soon as the Fed starts easing. So whether a year from now, whatever that is, 18 months from now, or maybe it's not easing, stops tightening. Maybe that's it as well, just understanding what the future direction of the cost of capital looks. So it's-
It's definitely a loaded spring right now.
Yeah.
There's a-
No doubt
... lot sitting on the sidelines. I would say relative to cost of capital, I mean, you've seen we've done two deals this year. You know, we've said it's gonna be 15x next year EBITDA. A lot of that, you know, typically a lot of that's funded with our own cash. You know, and, and you look... So I, you know, I think we're, we're mindful of that, of course. And we're, we're really excited about the two deals we did, not just for next year, but sort of into the future. When you think about this, the, the combination of Strata and Syntellis and what they can do for their their hospital customers, there's long-term sort of ARR growth that we're excited about.
The only thing, unlike our private equity competition, who are project financing everything at the spot rates, we have a very long duration capital structure. So obviously, the next increment, but we sort of look at it over a blended cost of capital. I mean, we've got, you know, bonds that basically spread out for each of the next nine years.
Mm-hmm.
So a small little bit. We're not gonna be super aggressive in this market, but if we had to do a slightly higher price, you know, financing, it's gonna modestly move our total cost of capital.
That's right. Any other questions? Back row.
When you look at doing transactions in today's environment, and your cost of debt's obviously gone up a lot, have you adjusted sort of the return on equity that you require in, you know, evaluating a deal versus your cost of capital as well?
In an indirect way, yes. So we're the way we think about valuation is not as classic as you just described. It's our Cash Return on Investment methodology, it's the LBO model, then it's looking at year five. We look at year five multiple, but if you invert that in tax effect, it's basically a year five ROIC. So if you do all of that, and our hurdle rate for year five has gotten a little bit higher, is effectively the back end of what you're saying.
Yeah.
Earlier when you referenced Deltek and Vertafore and improving the organic growth rates by several hundred basis points, could you just describe how you're actually doing that and why you think that's sort of a repeatable process when you acquire new companies? How much is pricing, how much is bolt-ons?
Yep.
Yeah.
So, so we screen for this in our diligence, so I can't say that, it's available in every, every deal, right? But we're certainly understanding, is there opportunity to grow a little bit faster? Not a lot of bit faster, 'cause a lot of bit faster means you're gonna invite tons of competition, or there's gonna be some uncertainty in the market formation. But what we do is it's, it's really kind of just blocking and tackling. And so the example of the company that I said went from low single to low double digits, this is a company that had, two products.
It's a healthcare business that, and it had a, a go-to-market, capability and, like, a franchise around these two products that were, like, unparalleled, but an R&D engine that was putting out one new product every four years, versus now it's five or six products a year, right? And so this is about how do you just get more product, relevant product to... And where we have a right to win over the, the customer call points we already have. We have a third product category that was released three years ago, and this, this year will become a leading market share in North America for that product, for instance. In Deltek's case, the software business for government contractors, it's, it's really a combination of two things: It's, it's both product and go-to-market.
In the product case, it was tech, really SaaSifying. Both the government contracting and the professional services part of the book, which enabled them to go downmarket and attack SMB, where they weren't product enabled before, and then having a go-to-market capability that could equally sort of go downmarket in SMB. So in the past, Deltek was just enterprise class, the biggest government contractors, the biggest architecture firms, the biggest engineering firms, the biggest marketing services firms in our world ran on Deltek. Now Vantagepoint, which is the professional services, project management, non-government contracting part, where we do quite well in the medium and SMB part of that market. The point is that it's company by company, right?
So we start with strategy, and one of the, not to wax too sort of theoretical, but I think most companies make a mistake strategically, that they think they go after large, shiny, growing, gigantic markets. Statistically, that's not the best thing to do. You don't increase your odds of success doing that. The, your best odds for success is where you have the right to win, right? Which might be in a smaller market, but you have a clear right to win, whether it's a customer relationship, or you're following your customer, you're following a product. And so we're optimizing strategic decisions on right to win versus, like, gigantic TAMs. Again, gigantic TAMs and, like, tons of competition, and tons of competition generally is, you know, warrants sort of headwinds relative to pricing or value capture.
When you have that North Star of what you're trying to optimize strategically, it makes a difference.
Any other questions? You talked about, you know, forever businesses in your portfolio, but the portfolio has evolved a lot.
Mm-hmm.
Right? And you've made a lot of changes to the portfolio.
Yep.
We haven't talked about the 25% of your business that's medical and water products.
Yep.
How do you think about the, you know, addition by subtraction-
Sure
-today?
Well, just to bring everybody current, so, we are forever home, but we divested 40% of our 2018 revenues, so those are sort of at odds with one another. The concept... And the 40% that we divested were all very cyclical or project-based businesses, and it was our analysis and our board discussion that felt the enterprise valuation and value is being held back by the cyclical portion of our enterprise. And so the strategic decision we made in the fall of 2019 was to reposition the portfolio to be non-cyclical. And so it wasn't to reposition the portfolio to be software only, it was to position the software to be non-cyclical, 'cause that's analytically where we felt the sweet spot was relative to the valuation of the enterprise. So that's the portfolio we have today.
The product businesses that we kept, the water meter business, a couple of RF product businesses, and a handful of medical product businesses generally don't experience or exhibit cyclical demand patterns. And so this is the portfolio that we have and are going to operate for the foreseeable future. If ultimately the decision was wrong, and then we feel like some many, many years down the road, that the valuation of the enterprise is being held back or we're not achieving full shareholder value recognition, then we'll obviously look at the portfolio and whatever construct that makes the most sense for our shareholders. Again, it goes to this passionate thing. We're not trying to be the biggest thing, we're trying to create the best value-creating enterprise we can.
One last question from me. You touched on it in the last response to the audience question, but let's talk about moat for a second, because sometimes I get the question from: Why wouldn't a horizontal software provider come in and encroach in your markets, and what gives you the right to win?
I love this question. First, I think, you know, the shareholders that cover the space sort of vote with their dollars, and the vertical cohort is generally valued equal or sometimes greater than the higher growth horizontal cohort, right? And so the vertical nature, they're wildly protective. Generally, it's because you're solving a problem out of the box with your software. You have all the domain expertise that can, you know, talk, you know, expert to expert, and total cost of ownership is just flat lower, right? You don't have to customize software. I mean, the more customized the software, the harder to live an upgrade cycle. It's just a vertical software actually wins in the long run versus horizontal in these small markets.
You know, I don't want to call out any names, but, like, our customers aren't big enterprises. They can't afford a XYZ company administrator, right? Just to administrate the software, and, and, you know, it's a huge value opportunity for us. I would also say that almost all vertical software companies that we own, if all but maybe one, were sort of born out of the nooks and crannies of what the horizontal software could not do.
Mm.
Right? So from the very birth of our companies, they had to create incremental value above what horizontal could do.
Anything else you want to leave this new group of investors with regarding Roper?
I would just say, I mean, we're excited to engage with the newer software investor. I would just tell you that 20 years of high teens of TSR on the backs of mid- to slightly higher mid-teens cash flow growth, there's durability to what we do. I know there's a little bit of trust around this M&A motion because it's new, but it is systematic and has proven the test of time.
Great.
Thank you.
Neil, Jason, thank you both for being here with us today.
Appreciate it. Thank you.