So next up, we have Standard Motor Products. SMP is a manufacturer of aftermarket parts, supplying many of the distributors that we have here today. They have 20 million shares at $30, $600 million market cap and a net debt of about $150 million. Speaking with us today is CEO Eric Sills, excuse me, and CFO Nathan Iles. Eric, thank you for being here.
Good morning, everybody, and I appreciate you taking the time with us this morning. We're going to go through just a handful of slides relatively quickly to kind of ground those of you who maybe don't know as much about us, but then you're going to open it up for questions and hear from not just Carolina, but hopefully some of you guys out there as well, so I'm going to go pretty quickly. Start with that one. Everybody's read it? Okay, good. Those are our forward-looking statements. A little bit about who we are, just kind of us at a glance. You can see founded 1919, so 105 years ago. We're very proud of that and finished last year with sales around $1.4, just under $1.4 billion.
We are a global company, and I'll talk a little bit about that map in a couple of slides, but you see we got 34 locations around the world. Our business is into two main industries: the aftermarket and then what we call Engineered Solutions. You can see on that pie chart, Vehicle Control and Temperature Control. Those are our aftermarket businesses represent about 80% of what we do, and the other 21% is in Engineered Solutions. And I'll talk about these different segments as we get into it. So with that, what are our main strategic pillars? Really four main areas. One is really nurturing our longest-standing part of our business, our North American aftermarket. Then there is our newest business over the last, newest segment over the last few years, Engineered Solutions. I'll talk about that a bit.
Obviously, as most companies do, we have a lot of initiatives towards continuous improvement, being a more sustainable company. And then lastly, what do we do with the cash that we generate? And Nathan will talk a little bit about that. All right, here's our map. Certainly not going to go over all the dots. In fact, you probably can barely see the dots, but the two main takeaways here. One is that we are a basic manufacturer, and that's getting, frankly, more and more rare in the North American aftermarket. You have a lot of companies that are really purchasers and resellers from others. We've always felt that it's a core competence of ours to be a manufacturer and a real differentiator. The other takeaway from here is that the dots are mostly on the left side of the map.
And so if you look at that pie chart, you see where our production is. The smallest slice is China. We're heavily invested in Mexico. More than half what we do in Mexico. Our next biggest area is in Eastern Europe, where we have plants in both Poland and Hungary. And so while we do have a certain exposure to China, as does everybody, it's substantially less than a lot of the other players in the space. And we think not only is that a differentiator for us, but obviously provides us with a certain level of supply chain stability and protection in this ever more complicated world. All right, moving on to the aftermarket. I'm not going to go over the details here, but you can see the Vehicle Control versus Temperature Control. The way we go to market is as a full-line, full-service provider.
So what does that mean? Full-line, all the parts for all the cars. It's easy to have a short line of just the hot licks. We have over 80,000 part numbers in our offering. Full-service, meaning it's not just a part in a box at a price, but many different services to help our channel partners really sell down and secure that loyalty of the professional installer. And the third piece is that it's professional grade. And speaking of the professional installer, the vast majority of what we do is professionally installed, complex products, complex diagnoses. And so we really have to have a program that's targeting those professionals much more so than the DIY guys. We sell to just about everybody. You see all the logos on the bottom of the slide. And we are a brand house.
So while we do a certain amount of private label, you can see some of the brands that we go to market with. And these are unknown brands to the car owner, but household names for the professional install base. Engineered Solutions. So the last slide, that was what we'd been doing for the first 105 years. Engineered Solutions is a relatively new business for us. This is selling. You can see the different end markets that this goes to. It's almost entirely original equipment sales, meaning we're selling parts to new vehicle and equipment construction, but it's largely not light vehicle, which is a tough business. You can see the other end markets we're going to: construction, agricultural, commercial vehicles. And the other, that's where you're getting into power sports and lawn and garden and so on.
This is a business that we had been in for many, many years, but had frankly been undermanaging. And the results kind of reflected that. And we realized that this is a great avenue for growth for us. So we really, we rolled it out in the beginning of 2023 as its own segment, acquired a handful of companies that helped augment what we were already doing. And what we're seeing now as we're out there with kind of a cohesive strategy to go after these end customers is growth that's actually exceeding our traditional aftermarket growth. We're very excited about what we're doing here. Commit to growing technologies. I'm not going to spend any time here other than to say, look, you don't become a 105-year-old company if you don't continue to evolve with what's going on under the hood of the car.
That's always been what we've done. So as we think about technology disruption, which is always something we get asked about a lot, we actually see it as much as an opportunity as a threat because we're committed to growing with what's going on with vehicle technology. We have had acquisitions as a growth engine for us. So you can see quite a lot of deals over the last decade. They all really are there to augment our core business, add new product capability, push into a new geography, push into a new market, such as into the Engineered Solutions. Last Friday, we closed on the biggest deal we've ever done. You can see it there in that last column, Nissens Automotive.
I just want to spend a minute talking about them because, frankly, it's really in many ways a transformational acquisition for us and one that we're really excited about as a game changer for us. So Nissens has a lot going on on this slide. I'm not going to read it all, but they look a lot like us, but just in Europe. So Denmark-based, 100-year-old company, also full-line, full-service providers, professionally accepted brands that have great brand equity out there. And really pretty impressive growth, as you can see there on the bottom right. A piece of that was an acquisition that they did back in 2021. But even beyond that, their organic growth has really been very impressive. The categories that they're in are pretty similar to what we do, but with different weights.
So you can see the biggest piece of what they do. They're calling engine and kind of powertrain cooling, radiators being the biggest piece, which is something that we don't do, but there are other categories within that column that we are. That middle section is the biggest area of overlap. It's almost identical to what we do with our Temperature Control business, but just doing it over in Europe. And then that last column, they're calling it engine efficiency. This is what we would call Vehicle Control. It's new to them. They've only been doing this for the last five or six years. And it's impressive that they've already grown it to be north of 15% of their business.
So speaking of that, one of the things that really drew us to them is this impressive track record of launching new categories and getting credibility in the market to be able to bring that new technology to the market. So it's probably a bit hard to see, but you can see that top half of the bar is products launched within the last five years. And year after year, it's a substantial part of what they do. And it's not just new items, it's new categories. And you can see across the bottom with all three of their segments, they launch it, they get traction, they move on to the next one, and it's really been a very successful model there. So that's who they are. How are we going to make this a great merge with what we already do?
So as I already said, they look a lot like us. They're just on the other side of the ocean. We have the same business strategy. We have the same product types. So it's really now, but we really don't compete with each other. So it's really now about how do we leverage the different pieces to make us both stronger companies. Really falls in three different areas. Growth, how do we expand each other's coverage with each other's strengths? And some of it is filling holes in existing categories, but it's also absolutely going to be bringing categories to each other to sell on opposite sides of the ocean. Tremendous amount of cost synergy potential. And this isn't about you have some acquisitions that are going to be plant closures and eliminating redundant heads. That's not what this is.
This is going to be more about how do we combine our product offerings, insource product that the other one was perhaps purchasing, combine our purchasing leverage to third parties. And we're out there saying it's going to be $8 million-$12 million in synergies within the next 24 months. We think that's highly achievable. And we only closed this on Friday, so we're now just getting started. But we think that there's great opportunities. And lastly, how do we make each other better companies by our mutual strengths? So that's that last column, operational excellence. How do we have a unified product development strategy? How do we bring new technologies to market faster because we combine our engineering departments and so on and so forth? So very exciting times for us. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Nathan.
He'll take you through the numbers, which will also include some of the numbers about Nissens so you can see how nice a fit it is from the financial profile as well. Nathan?
All right, thank you, Eric. Good morning, everyone. So let me take you through the numbers as I do. I'll hit on some of the five-year trends, look at some of the information from the quarter we just ended, touch on balance sheet, Nissens, and then capital allocation. So looking at the slide here, top left, our sales growth over the last five years, I would say going from 2020- 2023, about a 20% increase. About half of that was from acquisitions that Eric talked about on the engineered solution side. We got the other half, about 10%, really organic growth in the aftermarket and Engineered Solutions in that low to mid-single-digit range each year that we would expect to kind of grow with the market and continue to grow the Engineered Solutions business. Glad to see this year so far, roughly about 5% across all the segments.
Top right for gross margin. If you look at the performance there, you can see it's really pretty steady over the last five years despite a lot of inflation that happened in the middle years there in the chart, a combination of cost savings and pricing to help offset some of that pressure, but margins have been relatively stable. Looking at the bottom of the page for both adjusted EBITDA and EPS, a few things I want to point out there. You can see looking at the trend from a dollar position right now, 2024 is ahead of where we were in 2020. There's a lot of noise in the middle of the page living through a zero interest rate environment with regard to supply chain financing programs we participate in with our customers and then to a higher interest rate environment, which impacted some of the bottom- line profits.
But we are glad to see that the earnings are coming back up. We had a good quarter, like you probably saw. And we think that with some of the savings programs we have going on, we continue to drive improvement there. We announced a Voluntary Retirement Program in the second quarter. We continue to execute, and we'll look at pulling other levers there as we go over the course of the next couple of years. Looking at the quarter and year so far in a little bit more detail, on the left side of the page, you can see the three months ended September 30th. Sales are up about 3.3% there. Again, sales up in all segments, so nice to see. Nice gross margin improvement, combination of higher sales and good fixed cost absorption running through all the segments.
SG&A under control as a % of sales, really flat for the quarter year- over- year. Would point out that we are investing in a new distribution center in Shawnee, Kansas. We've been talking about that for about a year and a half now. If you backed out the investment in that warehouse in the quarter as a % of sales, we would have been down about 30 basis points. That goes for the year so far as well. Those factory expenses I mentioned on the previous page are now kind of leveling out, more under control as we're living through a more steady interest rate environment. Very pleased to see on operating profit, EBITDA, EPS, we were up in the quarter, which really pulled us ahead for the year so far. Quickly on balance sheet, cash flow, debt position as we came out of the quarter.
Working capital is in pretty good shape. Our cash flows are doing very well, a little bit lower than last year just because last year we were working down inventory levels, and that had a big cash flow benefit, but very positive operating cash flows. We are spending a little bit more in CapEx this year because of that distribution center that I mentioned, and actually all of the increase in CapEx is for that new distribution center. I'll touch on capital allocation on a few pages, but you can see we're just executing our program as we always talk about. From a debt perspective, we came out of the quarter with pretty low leverage, under one times. We did position ourselves with a new credit facility to close on the Nissens acquisition, as Eric mentioned.
So we did have a nice amount of liquidity at the end of the quarter, which we've now used to close the acquisition last Friday. Oh, and I think, do we have the Nissens page in here? Okay. So let me hit on Nissens real quick. So from a financial perspective, the Nissens acquisition will benefit us from about $260 million of sales coming in. We said mid-teens EBITDA percentage going back to the signing in the middle of the year. I think there's a lot of benefit from synergies, somewhere between 8 million- 12 million of synergies, which really brings the purchase price multiple down to about seven and a half times at the end of the day. I mentioned we did lever up to do the acquisition. We think it's really interesting. It will help us a lot.
It'll be about 3x-3.5x levered after the deal is closed, and we'll work that down to somewhere around 2x or less than 2x by the end of 2026. Then just rounding out on capital allocation, very steady program. We invest in the business in CapEx. We return to shareholders with our dividend policy that's been very steady growing over time. Then after that, we really toggle between share repurchases and M&A. Some years we do more of one or the other. This year we've done a few fewer share buybacks as we looked at doing the big acquisition for Nissens that we just closed. With that, I will stop and Carolina.
Great. Thank you so much for the overview. I think I'm going to start with two just kind of basic fundamental questions. Yesterday with the MEMA guys, we were just talking about right to repair, how this business is increasingly becoming a technology business. I visited your headquarters. You have a pretty impressive focus on engineering and manufacturing the right part. Can you kind of talk to us about that process, your ability to keep up with that demand and technology?
Sure. And it was great having you in our headquarters. As you saw through some of the prepared remarks, we sell complex products. Our products are in probably some of the most complex that are happening with automotive technology, and that does require significant investment from us. But we see that as a differentiator and something that is difficult for others to be able to match. And compound that with that we are a basic manufacturer, it allows us to have all the technical resources to really understand the vehicle systems and to set up proper validation capabilities to be able to stay on top of technology as it gets really very complex. And so this was just one of our engineering centers that you came to. We have 12 others around the world.
We think that it's vital that we make those investments because that's where it's going in the future, and that's what's going to differentiate us from those who can't make those types of investments.
Perfect. And then another point of complexity we've talked about in the conference today, it's just getting those hundreds of thousands of SKUs pretty quickly to the end market customer. Some of your customers are presenting today, GPC, AutoZone, O'Reilly. Can you talk about how you help within that process, help them get that part there when it's needed?
Sure. And yes, a combination of the fact that we are very SKU- intensive and that it's all DIFM or not all, but largely in-market availability is the key to the game. Obviously, you have to have the quality product and the brands that are requested, and you have to be priced right. But that in-market availability is critical. And so we work very closely with all these guys through joint category management initiatives to make sure that we have the best inventory mix out there that does require good investments from them in the inventory, which we do see because the guy with the best inventory, best deployed closest to the need does tend to win. And so we work very closely with them on that. But it also goes beyond that. With 80,000 SKUs, you're never going to have everything in market.
And so we need to be really good at supplying out, off of our shelves, emergency orders. We do literally thousands of EOs a day, getting out the same day to be able to get it to that car that's up on the lift. So we think it's a critical capability of ours, and it's only getting more complex.
Yep. And we did have a distributor up here earlier talking about just increasing the inventory at the local level. Can you talk about how that's kind of been a tailwind for Standard Motor?
It has. And it's not like there's, but I don't want to overstate how much it is. There's certainly a push to have expanded assortments out there, and a lot of the big distributors, as you well know, are adding stores every year. And so we need to make sure those stores are properly stocked. But then it's more now, you have to have the right inventory, and you have to be evolving it all the time, pulling things out that are at the far end of their life cycle and replacing it with the stuff that's just coming in. So it's an ongoing effort with them. It does take a partnership, and we're proud of the partnership we have with them.
Great. And you talked about some of your other growth opportunities. Obviously, you mentioned Nissens, but also you've kind of built out this Engineered Solutions segment with the acquisition of Trombetta, Stabil, Kade. Can you discuss the decisions kind of to go into those different markets?
Sure. And it began with the decision a few years ago that we wanted to do something besides the North American aftermarket. And we had always been doing this, but we had been doing it kind of poorly. And that's kind of how the customers viewed it. This is an aftermarket company with a hobby business. And we said, "That's not the right way to do it." First of all, how do we get comfortable that it's a good, strong, profitable area? And we identified the key end markets where we thought that we could really play. And then a combination of our own organic internal growth and then these strategic bolt-on acquisitions, and then launching it as a cohesive business now allows us to go into these customers showing this is not a hobby business. It's got the critical mass. It's $300 million revenue.
It's a very broad product portfolio. And with these acquisitions allowed us to share customer lists, shared product types, and that cross-selling is now really starting to happen. And we're delighted to see that as a result of it, the growth trajectory is what we had hoped it would be.
A lot of people within the industry, obviously, within these tangential businesses do talk about the potential over time for the penetration of electric vehicles. Can you kind of talk about how you're positioned to respond to that?
Sure, well, I think I don't need to tell this group that electric vehicles is not going to be what the majority of the market is anytime soon, but it is happening, and it's going to have its bumps along the way, and we saw that over this past year, but technology is changing, it's coming, and we as a company need to be prepared for whatever the cars are out there, but in the meantime, what we see on the Vehicle Control side is a continued commitment from the car manufacturers to make ICE engines more efficient and effective, and that's adding new product types to these vehicles to be able to get more out of these engines, and this has been a great tailwind for us.
On our Temperature Control side, this is a division that actually stands to benefit from electrification in that it's going to move from just passenger comfort to thermal management of the batteries, of the transmission, of the electronic inverters. And we're already starting to see that a proliferation of systems around a vehicle. It's no longer just a summer product in these vehicles. It's all year long. And so we're not scared of electrification. We're going to roll with it. We're going to keep an eye on it as it's coming. It's 1% of the car park, and they're three and a half years old on average. So it's just not ripe yet, but we're watching it.
Perfect. And then another point of conversation today is just the potential for tariffs. You showed us your map, that kind of left side of it. But can you just kind of elaborate on how well Standard Motor is positioned in terms of potential tariffs or reshoring of different products?
So we are potentially less exposed than some, but we have exposure. And so when this first started happening in 2018, 2019, we were impacted. There was an appetite throughout the market to pass it on. And so we were able to pass it on really dollar for dollar. And that's just kind of baked into the price today. Should there be another round of it, which I guess is possible, the expectation is it'll behave the same way. And again, we're pleased to see that should it happen, we think we have a smaller ask of our customers than some.
Perfect. And then another rising cost, I think we've discussed in the industry, is just the rising interest rates and kind of the pressures on the factoring programs. Can you kind of give us a little review of those programs and where you kind of are expecting them over the next?
Nathan, why don't you go to this?
So yeah, we participate in the programs. There are customers' programs, so we really participate at their request. We have about $850 million of sales on the programs now. Interest rates, as I mentioned before, went from, I guess, maybe around three to zero and then up to five, five and a half over the last three years. And that kind of swung our numbers around a bit, but we are overcoming it. What I would say is if you think about scale and volume on the programs at $850 million, every 1% is roughly $8.5 million. So that's sort of the hit we took going up. I would expect that same impact coming back down at some point.
Great. And just on a more near-term side of the business, you reported pretty great results this past quarter. While some in the overall end kind of retail market have talked about a pressured consumer, can you just review also for us that, and you've touched on it, that non-discretionary, excuse me, non-discretionary customer base that you have in product that you serve?
In tough economic times, the whole industry does tend to fare well, but it's not every product type, right? So discretionary products tend to take the first hit with a challenged consumer. And then after that, you start to see it with certain maintenance products where you're definitely seeing deferred maintenance. Can you get a little more out of the tires, out of your brakes? Most of what we sell is your car's not operating properly or you fail inspection. And so it tends to do certainly just fine in tough economic times. And if people are unable to afford a new car, they tend to have to keep the ones they have operating and operating effectively. So we tend to fare okay during those times.
Brian.
Eric, just curious on sourcing. It's something that you all have done an excellent job of doing, and market winds have shifted as far as nearshoring, etc. As you're planning the next three to five years for your products, any changes in basically how that sourcing operation is going to work itself out for you?
We continue to improve our overall footprint, whether it's where we're sourcing product or where we're manufacturing products. We're in the process right now of expanding our production further into Mexico, which has been a wonderful place for us to be. We've been there for over 25 years, and we're very pleased that when the world looked for a low-cost manufacturing region, we chose Mexico. And so we continue to look at what else can we reshore, where can we find redundancies between what we're doing in Asia and what we're doing in North America so we can navigate any challenges. And so it's really just the blocking and tackling, Brian, and continuing to look at where our vendor base is and work with them on moving into new areas. And so it's just kind of an ongoing evolutionary move.
And then just to touch on here, this past quarter as well, 80 basis points of EBITDA margin expansion was pretty impressive. And you've talked about kind of gross margin targets historically. Any update on those, Nathan?
Yeah. No, I think we were glad to see the improvement. We've kind of shifted from talking about gross margins because we have different profiles now between Engineered Solutions, aftermarket, and even more with Nissens coming into the business. So really kind of focused on operating profit, adjusted EBITDA, but just looking forward to continuing to expand that as we have over time. I mentioned the retirement program. We'll look at pulling other levers. We have a global footprint, like Eric mentioned, so we'll take advantage of that and try to continue to improve.
Okay. Perfect. Well, great. We just ran up against time, but congratulations on Nissens. Just finalized on Friday, and that two times 2026 target seems great. So thank you very much for being here.
Thank you. It's always our pleasure. Thanks.