Okay, great. Thank you, Andrew. Welcome everybody to our fireside session with Regal Rexnord. Today, special thanks to Louis Pinkham, Rob Rehard, and Rob Barry for joining us, especially after just reporting yesterday. Busy week. Thrilled to be able to have the chance to follow up from earnings and discuss all things Regal Rexnord. Yeah, just want to start out with a high level, you know, Louis, Rob. Just want you to describe, you know, as you sit today, Regal Rexnord's strategic positioning, the overall goal of the scale consolidation, how you see that playing out versus, you know, your, your strategy case and the main milestones of the combination to date.
Hey, Chris. Great to be here, and thanks to those listening in, and your interest in Regal Rexnord. You know, we've been through quite a journey over the last six, seven years. It really all started with a mindset that you determine the value a customer places in your gross margin, in your product by your gross margin. We've been working on improving our gross margin, which seven years ago was 26%, today is 38%, clear path to 40%. We did that through two large acquisitions and one divestiture, leveraging 80/20 and lean to drive value in our business. Our business is very different than the past. Today, it's more weighted to secular market. It's more durable through technology, moats of competition, as well as scale and scope.
We're now pivoting more to system solution sales where we can integrate all of our products into a differentiated offering that nobody else can compete with, and that's our strategy, and we're working it hard. It's not an overnight activity by any means, but we're making some good momentum. You certainly see that in 38% gross margin. You certainly see that with the orders growth we saw all through last year, and the 8.5% orders growth we saw in first quarter. You certainly see that with some of the big wins in the verticals we've been investing in, Data center, and the incredible growth we're seeing with our data center offering in ePOD. Our growth in integrated powertrain solutions.
We had, in first quarter, we commented that we saw a funnel that has increased 18% year-over-year. We're on track to meet our 2027 sales objective in 2026 through the activities of cross sell in the industrial powertrain. All of these things are making us a stronger, more durable, more bluntly competitive enterprise to grow for the future.
Okay. Louis, I wanted to jump on something you said in there, offerings that no one else can compete with. You know, maybe that there's a little semantics there. That's quite a high bar to put that out there in a, the most vibrant capitalist society the world's ever known here. Just maybe you could double-click on that nomenclature that you used.
Maybe it's a little strong, when you think about our scale and scope across the industrial powertrain, nobody has that scale and scope. We feel like we're in a leading competition perspective on that. When you think about humanoids, and we've talked about this quite a bit, where we have the ability to provide an entire joint with our solutions and integration of our servomotors, our brakes, our controls all into one system. Nobody has those offering that we can pull together in the integrated solution that we can. Our There are other competitors that have offerings that we don't have, so I don't think it's an unfair statement, Chris. It's just that what we take the strength of our products and solution, and we find how we can pull that together to differentiate ourselves from our competitors.
Yeah.
That's what we're trying to do.
Yeah. No, that's what I was looking to tie it to a specific application, just to land it there in the humanoids with the full joint ability that rings true and clear. You know, and just building off that, kind of getting into the differentiation you have, I'm sure others have some. Curious to hear you describe, you know, today's industry competitive structure, the degree of, you know, fragmentation still out there, and you know, maybe three or four top heavy guys, maybe, I don't know, 1/4 of the market. Like, just like to hear you out on a couple of those things. Also if our, if your scale consolidation has altered the kinetic competitive dynamics of the day-to-day industry in any particular way.
Yeah. you know, you really have to think about it and look at it segment by segment. IPS, we believe we are a scale and scope player. Nobody has the scope of portfolio of products and brands that we have, nor the scale of manufacturing and capabilities worldwide that we have. However, it's a highly fragmented space. Do I think that puts us in a stronger position at times? Absolutely, especially as we sell an integrated solution where we can prove the value in quality and life cycle of the offering. I think there's value there. Go to PES. PES, we've been a scale player for a while, but it's a less fragmented space. We do lead, but there are other couple, two, three that we would call out are major leaders as well.
Then you go to AMC, and AMC is highly fragmented, and it's all around technology and technology differentiation and how we position ourselves against competitors. That's where, again, I'll parallel to we look for solutions that we can put together with our offering that nobody else can. You know, is that a big part of our business? Not right now, but as we grow, we want it to be. Hopefully that's helpful, Chris.
Great. Okay. In terms of the organizational structure, you've pulled a lot together. Excuse me. Curious where things lie right now in terms of the degrees of, you know, centralized administration of the organization versus decentralized. You know, nowhere is it exclusively one or the other. But just, you know, curious as you've evolved through this integration and joining, you know, Altra and Rexnord with legacy Regal, you know, what have been the learnings along the way and, you know, where those kind of lanes of communication stand now in independence?
We call it smart decentralization, Chris, where it makes sense to be where our philosophically, we want our leaders making decisions as close to the customer as possible, but we are smart in the way we approach it. Some businesses have different profiles than others. For example, IPS's go-to-market is centralized. It's a global sales force, global sales and marketing force. PES is North America sales, but North America operations, because it makes most sense in the scale and scope of our production in PES. AMC is completely decentralized. We run it as six independent divisions, we call that smart decentralization. The day I started at Regal was centralized, highly centralized. Within six months, we were fairly decentralized. Rexnord and Altra ran their businesses decentralized. Rexnord more aligned with Regal's approach.
Altra was completely decentralized, we pulled that back a little bit when it comes to smart decentralization. For example, strategic sourcing. We have a $3 billion buy at Regal. We do that, we do the large commodities from the center to leverage the scale and scope of Regal. That's smart decentralization for us.
Okay. All right, great. You know, Rob, you'll be bridging CEO tenures here shortly, and you know, again, it's just been a lot of change, rapid pace of change, kind of, you know, nose to the grindstone here for several years. As CFO, curious what might be your top couple priorities as you kind of, you know, and continuously envision the financial organization, the capabilities for long-term enterprise performance. You know, where is the organization today versus, you know, a couple years ago, and what are kind of the structural things that you think can move the ball forward in the years ahead?
Yeah. If I think about the last couple years, I mean, I think first of all it all starts with talent, and we've made some great strides and some progress here I'd say. Overall for the organization, the finance organization, the function, we're probably, you know, maybe 3/4 of the way through where we want to be. We're building the bench. We've got some really strong talent that we've brought in. You know, each of our businesses, you know, we have, you know, roughly 20 divisions, you know, that operate with a General Manager, a CFO and an HR lead. We've embedded that structure throughout the entire organization. We run to the P&L.
Data is the part, you know, We drive the decisions through data, That's always been the way that we've done things here over, you know, since we've decentralized. We have P&Ls at every plant. You know, this is the way we run the business today, that wasn't the way it was run in the past. We didn't have P&Ls at every plant in the past. You know, we've also recently introduced a new consolidation system for the company that we went live on this year. To run flawlessly.
It also embeds an element of AI within our finance org, which we are. It's kinda early stages still, but we're working through that functionality and finding the benefits of that as we move forward, and I continue to see that as an area that we'll continue to deploy and expand as we move forward.
You know, we're just looking as a finance function to provide that value-added insight to help the business grow and partner, and that's an evolution and one that we, and I in particular, take very seriously and push very hard throughout the function to ensure that we've got that visibility and that business partnering to ensure that we're doing everything that we can to ensure that our General Managers and our EVPs and CEOs is very successful in all the strategic deployments that they have. That's where we focus, and that's what I'm most focused on. Even with a new CEO coming on board, getting that CEO up with the cadence.
We have great cadence and rigor within our organization, at a fairly detailed level and keeping that cadence and ensuring that there's that ongoing cadence of review through all of the businesses is, you know, paramount for me right now. I think that as Aamir comes on board, we'll find comfort in that, in knowing that it's really dialed in and we have a very good pulse on the business.
Okay. You know, curious how all that plays into the AMC margin story's been, you know, pretty interesting. I think the aspirational margins have been dialed back and pulled out, you know, in the construct of what you just described as, you know, value- add insights and visibility to the GMs and stuff. Curious for a little more context on the AMC margin trends. I understand various macro factors including supply chain and mix issues, but it also seems like maybe the type of stuff that, you know, certain degree of contingency planning and appreciation for natural vagaries might have a little tighter correlation between margin forecasting and margin results.
With that sort of, separation of those two ends over the past couple years in varying degrees at different times, you know, does what you just described as the value add insight, is that a place, is that a function that's sorta lagging at AMC because it's more decentralized compared to the other segments?
I think, you know, first of all, we've owned this business for a couple years. We certainly have learned along the process. I mean, as we've since we've owned them. I mean, we've come a long way. We've upgraded the talent across the board throughout the entire AMC segment. In fact, I think almost every one of our leaders within that segment is new to Regal Rexnord, maybe over the last year or so. Yes, we've made some big strides in terms of bringing in really good talent. Providing more data to help drive decision-making. I think that the business has seen the AMC segment has seen some really strong external forces that were absolutely tough to forecast.
I mean, if you think about how we came into last year, we thought that the year would've been gangbusters, and you get, you know, $150 million worth of, you know, tariffs come through and, you know, where you just don't have that visibility. I know you kinda made the point, and I think it's valid, that, you know, we had a lot of external factors that influenced the business like rare earth magnets and tariffs and these things have been, you know, plaguing the business. AMC's been pretty darn impactful. The medical destocking, for example, has been very impactful.
I think that the I do feel, though, that the strides that we've made on this, the systems side will help tremendously here because we didn't have great visibility at the level we needed to drive decision-making in the past. We're now on one system to drive the data has to be consistent and the data management is critical. That's new in the last, let's just say, six months or so in terms of us getting onto one system. That is very beneficial for us, and I do think that's gonna yield some nice benefits for us going forward.
Okay. That's just been really kinda instituted about six months ago.
Yeah. Well, we went live actually at the beginning of this year, but we started to get the, some of the benefits of that consolidation view over the last six months.
Okay. Great. You brought up the medical destocking, orders comparisons when there's been a destocking can be a little tough to interpret externally. I gotta ask you about that number. Medical orders were, what was it, up 53% in the quarter? Can you help put that in context? I mean, you know, is that set? I know it's not gonna grow 53% in sales. You have a range of lead times and maybe some blanket orders in there. Is medical a pretty V-shaped recovery in the cards?
No. I think I mean, you're right. The compare is easier, for sure, Chris, 'cause last year it was a tough year. You know, I'll just add one other thing. The year before that it was discrete automation was a tough year, if you recall, and the destocking of discrete automation, both AMC-centric product line. Medical for this year, we feel good about the business and the market rebounding. We think the demand is in the marketplace. We think the de-stocking is done, we would expect more of a natural rebound.
However, we are winning some business that's longer cycle that gives us a little more visibility, because we're selling a system, a solution that's not just an individual part, and that brings a little more stickiness too, and that's all part of the strategy. We do not expect a V-shaped recovery in medical. Hopefully that answers your question.
Yep. I, you know, was curious to hear you call the systems a stickier way of doing business with medical. I would've thought a lot of the I mean, you're getting designed into specific platforms, right? I would've thought in general that would tend to be more single source type of business, or certainly very high quality dual source. So I think maybe you implied that before the systems approach, that might not have been the case. I'm not sure.
No. I mean, historically we would've sold precision motors into medical. Now we're able to sell precision motors with micro gearing and micro sealing as an integrated solution. It's still sole sourced, it's still typically sole sourced, it's still spec'd in, all those things, but now it's an integrated where we're helping with that design more than just supplying a component. We can do that because we have all those products in our portfolio.
Right. Okay.
And we-
The stickier refers to the, you know, okay, you're a much higher profile the next design cycle and the design cycle after that.
That's right. We're actually helping with the design versus providing a component to the design, if that helps.
Yeah. Yeah, that's great. I want to get to data center because that is the hot topic. Once we get going on that, we probably won't have time for anything else. I just wanted to hit any signs, you know, I think humanoids is kind of steady-eddy. It'd probably accelerate bits here and there. What about eVTOL? I mean, that's just kind of this like out there in the future, what a cool win. It's so emblematic of everything Regal Rexnord's been talking about for higher value solutions. You know, I think different geopolitical dynamics are pulling forward a lot of aviation technologies. I think a eVTOL's maybe a little more civilian based. Curious if there's any opportunity the eVTOL horizon kind of pulls in.
You know, the L.A. Olympics is still supposed to have eVTOLs moving visitors to the Olympics. That's 2028. I am questioning that personally, but there's still a lot of dialogue that it's gonna happen. We're on those program. That would accelerate things, I think. What you said though is why we really like our position here, is we have a solution. It's a differentiated solution that's valued by our customer. We're looking at adjacent spaces where that solution fits. We actually just recently won a program on a space unit, and also on an electrical airplane with an electromechanical actuator. This is just moving up that value chain of providing our total solutions to different applications that can value what Regal brings to bear.
eVTOL, if that market takes off, we're in good shape. It's not gonna be overnight, that's for sure.
Yep. Yep, okay. You know, with the space unit program, is that, you know, you got a handful of kind of primes in space, then you have a vast supply chain. You know, is that space unit program referred to? Can that be horizontal across the primes, or how does that fit? I haven't heard you mention that before.
Well-
I don't know.
No. It's new, and maybe we should've gone public with it before. I mean, it's not a significant growth factor yet, but it just is another indicator of what we can do and the system solutions that we can bring to bear.
Okay. We'll pick that up in a broader venue. Then onto the data center. I wanted to discuss the just really impressive advance of the data center business over the past couple years and, you know, more so in the backlog in particular than the actual growth, which is good as it is. You know, what were the key decision junctures? How did the ePODs platform take shape for you guys?
I'm actually gonna go back six years. Rob and I were on a trip to see the facility and the technology, and we said, "We can do more here." We've been investing. That business has grown 30% CAGR over the last five years. Now, that was off of a $30 million base. Last year we did $120 million in switchgear. We expect to do probably double that by 2027. This is all around getting the right leadership, the right resources, and growing in the space. Couple years ago, you know, we run the business 80/20, so Quad 1 is very important. Quad 1 , highly valued customers. A couple of our highly valued customers came to us and said, "The market's moving in this direction.
We want you to move with it because we value you as a supplier, your willingness to customize, your say-do on on-time delivery and commitments, and your quality. I'll maybe double hit quality, 'cause we are known for providing quality product. We developed our program. We launched it at the beginning of last year. We bid a number of projects, which we won the majority of in the fourth quarter of this last year, and that was the announcements that we made in coming out of fourth quarter. Now it's about expanding the universe of potential customers, but we feel really good about our position, and that's also why we increased our capacity in our Canada facility by 50%, and we're doubling our capacity by a new facility in Texas.
That's really the genesis of you know what, Rob and I believe, you know, a good business is a good business. It may not be particularly core. Data center is not core to the industrial powertrain as an example, but it's a great business, and we're gonna continue to invest there and continue to grow that.
Yeah. You know, I think, like, maybe by the end of this year. That's the timeline for customers that want to reserve supply for 2028. I think maybe the 2027, that $700 million is probably not gonna move a whole lot, that delivery schedule. You know, in terms of that continuing to grow from that suddenly large level, you know, how does that work in terms of, like, the foot forward with capital and, you know, are you capacitizing for beyond 2027 now, or is that sort of like a dance with the customers and what comes first, the commitment or your capital?
You know, it's a capital, fairly capital light assembly process. Our capital that we've invested would allow us to double the output from what we're saying is likely a $900 million+ 2027. We're not worried about that capital, we can grow capacity very quickly here.
Okay.
It's all assembly and task, unlike many of our other businesses that are much more vertically integrated.
Right. Right. Okay. You're suggesting that you've kind of aligned the levers to pull where you can kind of double your output from the 900 level. Is that an indication that you expect the demand will go to that scope over the longer term?
Yes, but it's a question of timing, Chris. I mean, if you look at any of the current forecasts in the data center space, it's an expectation to grow significantly. I think we saw a stat of 200 GW of data center capacity by the end of 2030. More incremental. That's a lot.
Yeah.
We see this market as being, you know, certainly a strong double-digit grower, and we'd like to benefit from that as well.
You know, in that vein as this has caught up quite a bit with the white space now, you know, growing crazy on a little bit of a lag to some of the gray space in the early years of this cycle, manifesting and arriving. Now you're seeing more suppliers come in and have some share and in some cases pretty suddenly. You guys are a case in point. Generac's another one. With that backdrop, I'm curious if there are, you know, maybe other greenfield solutions, greenfield from your perspective, that you're like, "Hey, we're evaluating 10 of these things," and you know. Or, "Well, we might have one or two that work," or kinda ePODs, you know, where we're gonna nest.
How would you kind of respond to that kinda?
You know, it'd be a little unfair of me to say that there are other opportunities that are gonna grow the way that the data center and the ePOD space has grown for us. We work on a number of them, and we've talked about a number of them. The axis solution for humanoid, we're betting early on that. We're spending money to get ready for that market to take off. If it takes off, we're in good shape. We're in great position. We talked about eVTOL, I won't talk about that again. We've been working this in air moving for a while. We weren't a major player in air moving.
We're more so of a major player in air moving because of the new products and solutions that we've come out with. You know, this is our strategy, is understanding the application very well, then leveraging the broad portfolio of our products to provide an integrated solution that brings value. The industrial powertrain is a great example of that. More bespoke to whatever the application is, so there's not a standard offering, but it's no different. It's, again, I emphasize, you know, our goal is to grow our system sales as a greater percentage of our total sales, and that's a big part of our focus. Hopefully that was helpful.
Yeah, no, I think You took it in a little different direction than I intended, it was certainly helpful nevertheless. I understand that broad strategy and humanoids and eVTOL. I think what's distinctive about the data center market is that the opportunities come quickly, maybe out of the blue, and they would scale at a quicker and sudden, more sudden level in some cases than eVTOL. You know, you can see it coming a mile away, then, you know, you see it coming a half a mile away.
Except when it takes off, it's gonna take off quick.
Yeah.
That's our view.
Yeah. but the kind of ideation to specification, to selling cycle with data center is a totally different ballgame.
For sure.
I was wondering if you have other specific applications, named or unnamed, that the data center, the integrators are saying, "Hey, we need you here".
Yeah, I mean, other than to talk about the air moving solutions that we've been in and trying to position ourselves more in data center with those solutions.
Okay, got you. Yeah.
Beyond that, nothing's coming to mind.
Okay. Yeah. Could PES start to see a very, very discernible growth curve from air moving in the data centers?
It could, and it has been seeing some of that. You know, our commercial HVAC business has been growing, you know, pretty well. North America for sure, mid-teens for the last couple years. Could that even take off further? We think so.
Great
That's about 15%, 20% of PES is commercial HVAC North America.
Okay, great. As we're winding down the last couple minutes, I just wanted to kinda have a little capital allocation priorities, how you see them shifting over the next couple years. Any, you know, maybe different balance sheet structures, converts, any sort of, you know, thoughts you're thinking about as you move ahead with, y ou know, interest expense is still a pretty large percent of, you know, EBIT.
Yeah. We do think we'll probably land at the end of this year about 2.7 x in net leverage. We think that we'll probably, you know, once we get into that range, I think early next year is a time where we'll look at some of these capital allocation priorities. We've been prioritizing debt for quite a number of years here, as we should have to get down to where we are. I've made commitments to the ratings agencies that we wouldn't really do anything until we're closer to 2.5x. I think at that time, I think it makes sense to start looking at maybe some inorganic or possibly combining back our shares, especially if we're trading at the multiple we are today. That would make a lot of sense.
That would be probably early next year, at best. As far as the, you know, the balance sheet we were structured today, I mean, our variable rate debt should be largely extinguished here, you know, as we exit this year into next year, in short order. You know, the composition of the bonds past that point are pretty long tenured there, so we've got plenty of capacity as we continue to generate cash to do whatever we need to do. I don't see a point in the future, I caveat everything by saying I've got a CEO transition going on. One of the points of discussion here will be once Aamir arrives.
That I don't see us raising our leverage, you know, anywhere close to where it's been in the past. I think, you know, we could stay within that 2.5 x or less on anything we wanna do going forward. Our goal is to get under 2x and closer to 1.5x in the not too distant future, absent, you know, anything that we do that's kind of bolt on and maybe some more sizable repos.
Great. Appreciate that color. We're at the hour, great to see you guys. Appreciate the discussion and the timing, running the meetings throughout the day with us here.
Great.
Great. Thanks again, Chris. Good to see you.
Take care.
Bye.