All right. I'd like to welcome everyone back to day two of the Sixth Annual KBCM Healthcare Forum. My name is Brett Fishbin, Senior MedTech Analyst, and I'm pleased to be joined this morning by Solventum, who's represented today by Bryan Hanson, the CEO, Wayde McMillan, the CFO, and Amy Wakeham, SVP of Investor Relations. This will be a 100% Q&A session. Questions can be submitted below the video screen, and time permitting, we'll relay to management.
I'll kick things off. Bryan, you know, you've been CEO at Solventum now for over two years. It's been a super eventful period. You know, thinking about the original Separation from 3M, you know, you defined a new mission, upgraded talent across the organization, started, you know, thinking about portfolio management, as well as acquisitions. I was just hoping we could kick things off with, you know, some high-level thoughts, just how you feel, you know, Solventum is in regards to standing the company up, some of the biggest accomplishments have been, and then, you know, your key priorities for this year.
Yeah. First of all, thanks for having us and looking forward to the conversation. I would say that you hit some of the things that we're proud of already, so I appreciate you listing those. Maybe if I could just take a step back and say generally, and I know that my own team, if they're listening, is sick of me saying this, but I'm very happy with the progress. I'm not satisfied with where we are, right? There's still things that we can improve, but there's no doubt that this team has done a lot in a very short period of time with a lot of things going on around them.
Maybe I'll just spend a minute or two on the three, I'm just gonna call them sections or phases that we've put into place in the transformation and talk about some of the things that we've done well and some of the areas that I wanna see us continue to improve. I'd say in that phase I that we've talked about a lot, and you referenced it, was around mission, talent, culture, and Separation. That was what we really concentrated on there, and I was very happy with the change in the mission. Gets people fired up to be here because we actually get to have a medtech mission now. We've got some really nice upgrades and talent to be able to stand up the organization. We moved very rapidly on that.
Of course, the culture that we put into place allows us to be able to be a little more nimble, a little more fast-acting and more accountable organization. I've been very happy with those changes that we've made, and people have really leaned in, as indicated by our engagement survey, which was above benchmark, even in a challenging transformation setting. Very happy about that. Separation, we're about halfway through, feeling good about the team that we brought on to separate. It hasn't been without challenges, but we've been able to manage the challenges, which says a lot about that team, particularly given the other projects that we've been running. We still have another half to go. We gotta finish it this year.
We're gonna be mostly finished with the Separation by the end of 2026, coming into 2027. A lot to do, but I have a lot of confidence in the team. Phase I feels really good, but still a lot to do on the Separation side. Phase II was around the strategic focus of the organization. We spent a lot of time looking at the markets, which markets we're gonna invest in, which markets we weren't, and then defining growth drivers inside of those, and then completely restructuring the commercial organization to match those growth drivers, and also change our innovation process to match those growth drivers.
A lot of great progress there, concentrating on growth drivers, specializing the sales organization, changing up the innovation process, and that's allowed us to triple basically the growth rate from 2024 when we looked at the 2025 growth rate. Very happy about the progress there, but we have more to do. You know, our LRP is 4%-5%. That's our market growth. We feel very confident that we should be able to get there, and then once we do, try to exceed it. But that's what we still need to prove. More of the same in that phase II, but we've got to get to our market growth and beyond at some point. In you know phase III, you know, we've done a lot there too.
You know, the SKU rationalization program, we're more than halfway through. The P&F sale was a big, big moment for us, obviously, for a lot of reasons. Then the Acera acquisition just gives you a sense of where we're gonna go from here. I'd say we've got a lot more to do here as well. We've talked about transform of the portfolio. Transformation of the portfolio is being something we're gonna continue to concentrate on, meaning that we will continue to look for assets to acquire in that small tuck-in type framework, and we'll continue to assess the strategic fit of the businesses that we currently have. Again, great progress in each of the three transformation phases, but a lot more to do in each of the three transformation phases.
All right. Perfect. We're gonna switch gears in a minute to, you know, the guidance and most recent quarter results, but also just, you know, to kick things off, it seemed like a really big priority, Bryan, for you was, you know, culture, and upgrading the culture. Maybe just simply put, like, what are some of the key elements that you've focused on and tried to implement that are different from when this company operated as part of a larger conglomerate?
Well, first of all, I appreciate you asking the question because normally it goes right to the modeling questions, and this is probably one of the most important questions you will ask. I would even broaden it. It's not just culture, it is that foundation in a business. It's mission, talent, culture. Those are the first three elements of the five that I focused on. You look at mission, talent, culture, then it becomes strategy, execution. Not to say they're unimportant, but they have to come after the foundation building. That's what we've done. We spent a lot of time on the mission and the purpose of this organization. That means a lot, Brett, because people are working very hard. In a transformation, you are sprinting. It's a long-term sprint, and people can get fatigued.
If you don't have a purpose around what you're doing, if you don't feel good about what you're accomplishing, you're probably not gonna have the stamina to get through the transformation submi ssion and purpose is number one. Talent is obvious. You just hire people that love to work in that environment. You gotta have people that love to work in that environment.
On the culture side, it's unleashing the great people that you have with the purpose that they have. That, to me, means that you have decentralized decision-making so that you have better speed, you can be more nimble, and you're more accountable for those decisions. That's what we've put into place. People are leaning in. They're enjoying it. You know, they're really enjoying this new environment probably faster than I expected them to. I would say it's more than culture. It's those three elements that have built this foundation that are absolutely required in a transformation.
All right, perfect. Just switching gears a little bit, I wanted to ask about last year before we talk about this year. You know, you finished 2025 with above 3% organic growth, which was above the initial guidance of 1%-2%. Maybe just simply put, like what went better than expected in 2025?
Yeah. You know, a lot actually, you know, and because there were some risks coming into 2025. We did a global commercial restructuring of the sales organization. There's always potential risks associated with that. We did a significant ERP cutovers in as a part of the Separation. There's always risk and distraction associated with that. We did the P&F transaction, you know, the whole divestiture and delinking, and we've done the Acera acquisition. A lot of things that could have derailed our focus but didn't. I would say that first and foremost, the ability for the organization to digest that amount of change and those many projects and still deliver was fantastic. You know, I expected more to go wrong.
I just continue to knock on wood because, you know, I think we managed it well, but very impressive. The big things in my view are that focus around the growth drivers that I said before, that you don't know how fast an organization's gonna move to that new strategic direction. We have seen a lot of movement very quickly, led to the commercial restructuring and the focus on being able to drive those growth driver elements because of the specialization and the sales operations that we built around it, and then the products that we've been launching in those areas. That's really what went better than expected, digesting all the change, all the projects, while delivering on the new strategy and the new focus. That's what it helped us deliver more than we expected in 2025, and we'll continue to do that into 2026.
Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about 2026. Just starting with the revenue growth, the initial guidance was 2%-3% or 3%-4%, adjusting for the 100 basis points of expected SKU reductions. Maybe just walk through, you know, at a high level, some of your key assumptions underlying that range. I think, you know, like a common question is what you see as the biggest like swing factors driving potential upside or downside to that range.
Maybe on that one, because it's more associated with the guide itself and, you know, top and bottom of it, maybe, Wayde, I'll flip it over to you if you don't mind answering that one.
Yeah, sounds good. Happy to start that one. As Bryan said, Brett, thanks for having us here today. As we think about our 2026 guide, starting with that organic sales growth, we gave some color on our last earnings call to normalize our full year total company 2025 at about 3.5%, and that's factoring into SKU headwind and then some of the improved Dental backorders that we saw that really boosted the Dental growth rate in the second half of 2025. On a normalized basis, 3.5%. That's an important number for us as we looked at our guidance for 2026.
We put that 3.5% at the midpoint again on an ex-SKU basis and said, all right, if we continue to see the acceleration we saw last year, as Bryan said, that was a significant improvement over the 1.2% we had in 2024. If we continue to see that kind of acceleration, we'll be at the midpoint of our guidance. If we can improve upon that and actually continue to accelerate more, that'll put us at the higher end, closer to that 4% on an ex-SKU basis. That's really built on some of the things that get us there are just what Bryan laid out, improved commercial enhancements. We've got innovation improving, and it also factors in some of the market forces. There are some market forces that could push us really to the higher or the low end.
Just a few other things we think about at the low end of that range is some of the Separation activity that we have going on. We've got certainly a lot of ERP work to be completed here in 2026 and distribution center cutovers as well as all the TSA exits. We've got a lot of additional work on top of our day jobs to complete in the Separation here in 2026. We certainly have to factor that into the guide.
Having said that, as we said in our past earnings call, we're very excited about the momentum we're seeing, the strength in the sales growth rate already after just 1.5 year , two years of being spun in a separate public company. Well on our way to that 4%-5% market growth or long range plan that Bryan just mentioned, and that's our first step in what we're targeting to get to.
Perfect. Oh, maybe just digging in a little bit into some of, you know, the specific segments. I think on the earnings call, you guys did talk about the potential for improved growth in HIS compared to 2025. I think, you know, you guys have probably been getting some more questions about AI and potential impact of AI companies on that business. Maybe just a little bit more about what gives you the confidence, you know, to kind of talk about the business that way for this year, and how you're thinking about the overall competitive environment with some of the new entrants.
Yeah, I mean, maybe just taking a quick step back. We expect, because each of our businesses have growth drivers, that each of our businesses will improve year-over-year. That is, in our view, kind of table stakes and an expectation that we're giving to each of our businesses. That would be continued, right? I mean, again, every year that we have it, we're gonna be looking for more the next year. HIS specifically, you know, for us, AI is an opportunity. You know, we look at this as an absolute opportunity because it's another tool in the tool belt, if you will, to be able to move an important initiative forward, which is Autonomous Coding.
If you look at revenue cycle management, it as a category, as a growth driver, one of the major areas of growth inside of that over the next five years for us is gonna be Autonomous Coding. One of the big variables in allowing us to make Autonomous Coding work would be AI. Now we've been using and leveraging AI for 10 years in this space, and of course, the tools are getting better and better. We don't see AI, and I think this is important, like a large language model, we don't see it as a competitor. We see it as a variable in the equation that we can use to solve the equation, right? It by itself doesn't solve the problem. It in concert with what you train it is what allows us to solve the problem.
We think that we're differentiated in the way that we can train just given our decades of experience in the space. We've been dealing with customers at scale. We have a huge data set. We have proprietary algorithms, and we have proprietary rules that we use to be able to train our AI, which sets us ahead of competitors that are trying to do the same thing.
All right, perfect. Switching to Dental, I know it's been a relatively sluggish market really since COVID, and wanted to just ask, like, if you guys are starting to see any signs of end market recovery and just how you're thinking about, like, the growth dynamic this year for that segment.
Yeah. I think, you know, it was indicative of the fourth quarter. You know, you just look at all the Dental companies that presented, it was clear that there's a little momentum in the market. I'd say it's kinda stabilizing to improving, which is great. If you think about our LRP assumptions, which, you know, goes out to 2028, we had assumed in that LRP assumption that the market by then would get back to that 3%-5%, which is pretty typical of that market in a normal environment. It's nice to see that it is stabilizing, and we are seeing some improvement. That said, Brett, we're not waiting on that.
You know, our innovation is what's driving our growth, and we're gonna continue to double down in the innovation. They've done a great job in Dental. Pretty much all of our growth in 2025 was because of new product innovation, and we expect that to continue with product launches into 2026. We do expect the market to improve. You know, we expected that from the very beginning with our LRP. I'm glad to see it's beginning to move in that direction, but innovation is gonna be the key for us to continue to drive performance here.
All right, perfect. Then just turning to the operating margin guidance, specifically, you guided 21%-21.5% for the year. You know, we viewed that as a really impressive and, you know, positive ramp thinking about the full year impact of tariffs that are baked in. Wondering if you could just unpack a little bit, you know, some of the key levers that are supporting that type of margin expansion despite, like, the tariff headwind.
Yeah. Wayde, I'll probably hand that one over to you then.
Yeah. Sounds good. Appreciate that comment, Brett. It is certainly a margin expansion story here for us, a multi-year margin expansion story for us, and we wanna continue to expand margins every year, including 2026, which as you call out, we're looking for about 70 basis points more headwind from tariffs. You know, as we annualize tariffs into 2026, we think it'd be about another 70 basis points of headwind for us. So inside of that is our 50-100 basis points of margin expansion. So it's well over 1% even at the low end when you factor in the tariff headwinds. The main drivers for that are sales leverage. You know, as we continue to accelerate sales, and we drop through more to the bottom line, and then we've got two efficiency and effectiveness projects running.
First, the programmatic savings, which is mainly targeted at our supply chain, and we gave a good amount of detail on this at our last Investor Day. Our Head of Supply Chain, Paul Harrington, laid out comprehensive plan for driving significant savings, mainly in gross margin in the supply chain. Then we're building upon that with a new program we launched at the end of last year called our Transform for the Future. Again, this program is focused not just on efficiencies, but also effectiveness, thinking about areas around process and systems and structure.
The key here is to make sure that we can continue to invest for growth. We wanna make sure that these programs drive efficiency, so it really fuels our investment for growth and drives operating margin expansion for us. When we put all that together, we do think we've got a nice margin expansion story. The Transform for the Future and the programmatic savings are multi-year projects that are designed to help us improve effectiveness and efficiencies over years to come here.
Then just one more on margins. You know, the med tech market and the market as a whole has been sluggish lately. I think part of it has to do with, you know, the conflict in the Middle East and, you know, rise in oil and commodity prices. So I was hoping you could just comment at a high level how you think about Solventum's exposure, you know, maybe from just a revenue and margin perspective if this issue became very prolonged.
Yeah. So maybe I'll start, Wayde, and if there's anything you wanna add, please do. I'd say first, we have relatively little infrastructure in the areas of the conflict, which is great. At the same time, even though it's relatively little, there's still some of our people that are there, and of course, our first priority is to make sure that they're safe, and we're doing everything we can to keep them that way, and so far, you know, mission accomplished. That's the first thing. Secondly, because we have that little infrastructure, we don't really see a lot of revenue risk associated with this today, and certainly feel comfortable with the guide that we gave in 2026, even with the conflict.
To your point, we're gonna have to watch it over time because this will have an impact to oil prices. Already has. Question is, how long does that remain? There certainly, for every organization, if you have oil prices that are sustainably higher, you're gonna have logistics cost issues, you're gonna have raw materials cost issues. For 2026, we don't see it as being as big of an issue. If it would sustain potentially more in 2027, but it would take it a while to sustain at that pricing to have a significant impact for us.
Perfect. Then just maybe to wrap up the guidance questions with just a little bit about cadence and free cash flow. First on cadence, like, I think one of the biggest just like areas of pushback from investors, you kind of look at the full year guidance and it looked good, but there's like some considerations for 1Q, and seems to be shaping up as like the lightest quarter for growth and also margins. Just kind of, like, wanna hear about what gives you confidence in, like, the type of ramp that's implied by the guidance, assuming 1Q falls in line with what you expected coming out of the 4Q call.
Wayde, you wanna take that one? Okay.
Yeah, sure. Happy to. Brett, I'm glad you brought this one up. We covered a lot in our Q1 earnings call, or pardon me, our Q4 earnings call, where we addressed some of the expected Q1 phasing. Importantly for us, it's not really a ramp for the year. What it really says is we've got a tougher comp in the first quarter. Last year when we reported the first quarter, we called out that we had a lot of additional volume in Q1, and that was related to some of the business initiatives. We're certainly getting ready for ERP and distribution center cutovers as well as SKU rationalization announcements. We ended up with a good amount of extra volume in the quarter.
As we went through the year, we said that we would see the offset in the second half of the year, and we did see that mainly in Q3. The setup for the year is on our organic sales growth rate. We've got this tough comp to deal with in Q1, but then an easing comp in Q3. It doesn't really result in a ramp for the year. It's more just a tougher comp in Q1, easier in Q3, and that's out almost perfectly for the full year. That's one of the drivers there. For Q1, we always have a seasonal pressure on gross margin and operating expenses in the quarter. We laid that out at our earnings call as well.
Our expectation was that we would see the lowest operating margin of the year in Q1, which would be consistent with last year if that ends up being the case. From there, we look at free cash flow as well. Free cash flow for us certainly has a couple transient things in the guidance on operations to finish paying for the Separation. We've got a lot of our operating expenses and capital expenditures still targeted at Separation. We've got a due to/from account that we need to clear out mostly by the end of 2026 between us and 3M. That's the Separation-related cost. We'll have much less divestiture costs in 2026, but a little bit left there. That's what got us to the full year guide.
I'll just add to that a little bit more. We wanted to make sure that people are aware that Q1 will be a low free cash flow quarter for us, and that's due to some seasonal impacts of paying out our cash tax payments as well as our annual incentive plans and things like that. From a phasing standpoint, Q1 is low from a free cash flow generation standpoint, but then that's offset with favorable Q4 cash flow generation based on the improving operating metrics in Q4 for the year. One new thing to add from what we laid out at our Q4 call is just the phasing of quarterly free cash flows.
Hey, Wayde, do you wanna maybe just take a minute here before we shift to a few of, like, the longer term questions just to, like, to address free cash flow this year? I think it's kind of like you have a little bit of a different type of year with some of the items you mentioned. Maybe just speak to what a normalized free cash flow profile for Solventum could look like, thinking like the latter part of your 2028 planning period.
It is interesting because we are a really strong free cash flow generator if not for these transient items around Separation and divestiture. To your question, in 2027, as we look ahead, as the Separation is almost all complete and the divestiture will be complete, we'll start to approach or get closer to that $1 billion of free cash flow that we would expect. In 2028, we'll be done with Separation and certainly done with the divestiture. Our expectation would be that we're starting to get closer to that $1 billion and starting to really reflect the strength of the free cash flow generation of the business once we're beyond those transient items.
All right, perfect. Let's pivot a little bit to the long-term target and then also some of the more strategic questions. Your 2028 plan, you know, talks about a progression to 4%-5% organic growth, which is above, you know, where you currently are. What kind of gives you confidence or visibility to get to, like, that range within the next two years?
Yeah. You know, we've been, somewhat, well, pretty much front-footed on this one. You know, we have seen better traction, and we talked about this in the beginning, actually, Brett, when you asked the first couple of questions. We're seeing more traction than expected, quicker than expected with some of the changes we've made. That's indicative of the nice growth increase that you saw in 2025 versus 2024 and 2023 beyond that. We're already seeing the momentum. Our confidence level is very high, not just that we're gonna get to the 4%-5%, but as we've been saying, we believe that we're ramping faster than expected to that 4%-5%.
Of course, remember, once you get to the 4%-5%, then we're gonna look at how do we get beyond the 4%-5%. The 4%-5% is just get us to the market growth that we deserve, make sure that we get that sustainably, and then let's start to ratchet it up and try to be above that. Our confidence level is very high, and it's, you know, it's not just a, we're pointing at something and we're having you hope that we get there. We're showing the progress faster than expected.
Maybe just to follow up there, we talked about HIS and Dental a little bit, but a lot of the new product innovation has really been focused in the three growth categories that you've defined in the medical segment or the MedSurg segment. Maybe just hit on, you know, some of the recent innovation that you've brought to the market, how that's helped trends in that category. Maybe like a little bit of a directional preview about like where the, you know, cadence of future new products are focused like within those categories.
Yeah. I mean, so I love that you know that we've got three growth drivers of the five, three of those are in MedSurg. Five growth drivers are gonna drive about 80% of our growth, more than 50% of our spend already. That focus from the organization, as we referenced before, is happening very rapidly on those key areas of growth. That'll be the same for MedSurg. You will see disproportionate spend and focus in those three growth driver areas, which are negative pressure wound therapy, soon to incorporate Acera as well. Then you've got our IV site management, which is an IP&SS, and then sterilization assurance.
All three of those have seen really strong product launches in 2025, and we expect additional product launches between 2026 and 2027. Those are the same areas that got the specialization of the sales organization. So just expect more of the same, right? Those growth drivers are not a flash in the pan. Those are areas that we're gonna continue to invest in, hopefully adding new growth drivers over time. But the intent is to continue to focus in those areas, continue to launch new products in that more optimized sales organization, and obviously as a result of that, continue to drive the revenue growth rate up.
All right, perfect. Maybe just double-clicking on one of those categories, which is negative pressure wound therapy. Like, you've talked a lot at the Investor Day, like during that portion, about how under-penetrated of a market that is, and it seems to be one of the faster-growing end markets that you participate in today. Like wondering what you think it takes for utilization of like those products to increase materially, and then like what that could mean for Solventum if we see that, you know, adoption rate pick up.
Yeah. If you look at negative pressure wound therapy overall, it's not as a total category one of the faster growth end markets, but the sub-market, which is probably what you're referencing, is the single-use negative pressure wound therapy which is a strong double-digit growth market. That's a very attractive sub-market. Both are under-penetrated. It's both traditional negative pressure wound therapy, which is slower growth, and single-use are under-penetrated today, so a lot of opportunity for expansion. The nice thing is you get a natural mix benefit in the market and also in our business as single-use grows at a faster clip and becomes a larger percentage of the overall pie.
When that occurs, you get a natural mix benefit to market growth and to our growth, and we're gonna continue to push that as an organization, and I'm sure the market will continue to push that as well. The ways that you do that are kind of the same that we've been talking about. Specializing the sales organization and getting them clinically refreshed is a great way to sell clinically in the clinical differentiation of these products. Not just the clinical differentiation between our product and the competitor's product, but our product and every other type of competitor. It doesn't have to be negative pressure wound therapy, right? You gotta be able to take other people's business because of the capabilities of negative pressure wound therapy. That takes a clinical sale, it takes a specialized sales organization, and a MedEd team that's extremely focused on it.
That's what we've been doing. It takes innovation. You've got to make this easier. You got to democratize the technology. It's a more challenging technology to use, and as a result of that, you see limited usage of it. As we make it easier to use with products like Peel and Place, we have that specialized sales organization, we start to leverage our clinicals in a more effective way and our contracting, that's the way you're gonna see this market continue to move. We do get that natural mix benefit, because of the single-use piece becoming a larger portion of the overall market. Very importantly, it's a smaller portion for us and a smaller portion of the market, but we're the largest player in single use. So it may be a smaller piece of our overall pie, but we're the largest player in the single use space.
All right, great. I was going to ask about the long-term market growth expectation in Dental, but you kinda hit on that already. Maybe I'll shift a little bit to revenue cycle management with just one or two more questions there. You know, RCM is one of the five growth categories. You know, we talked about the three in medical, and I think it's an area where some of like the medtech investors may be a little bit like less familiar on what a typical growth playbook could look like. I'm just curious kind of like how you think about driving growth in that, you know, call it like defined category of the five, and like where you see opportunity, and white space with that business.
Yeah. I'd probably say less around white space and more around unless you define transforming a space as white space, right? Because we're gonna play heavily in revenue cycle management. That's where we're gonna focus a lot of our attention. Really the three growth vectors that we see inside of revenue cycle management is number one, the 360 Encompass System program that we already have, international expansion of that. I mean, there's all kinds of opportunity to continue to get traction with that program. Autonomous Coding is gonna be a transformation of the space that we're going to lead leveraging AI that I just talked about before.
That is a significant opportunity to go to our customers today, which we have a large share of the market, as you can imagine, and convert them to technology that reduces their cost to do revenue cycle management and increases their revenue capture. Those are two pretty good things for the customer. For us, we can get an increase in price because we're bringing that value. We see a great opportunity for Autonomous Coding in current customers that we can go to. We get more price, they get lower cost because you take out the coder. There's a big infrastructure cost associated with coding. If it's autonomous, you don't need those FTEs. Because you're gonna have fewer mistakes, you're gonna get more revenue. That's a nice trade-off between the value that we're gonna provide and the value they're gonna give us.
The other one is just broadly international expansion. You see very little infrastructure of these types of tools on a global basis, and we've now put teams in place around the world to be able to get after that building that market development, and we're seeing great traction so far. Those are really the three areas. It's the traditional 360 Encompass System, it's Autonomous Coding with our current players, and it's international expansion with both of those tools.
Just one more on HIS. Just curious. I feel like it's a little bit early, but moving fast, and I'm just wondering, like, if you guys have thought or evaluate maybe, like, additional partnership opportunities in the AI space. It feels like, you know, you have a lot of experience and data and rules, that you can bring to the table, but there may be, like, some external AI tools that are, you know, could potentially, you know, fit into what you do. Maybe just curious how you think about, like, those opportunities.
Yeah, that's kind of the beauty of it is that we don't have to be the large language model or even small language model owners, right? The tools are coming, and we're fungible. We can change the tools and just plug them into our formula based on whoever is best. That's the benefit to us. That's why we see AI by itself as not really a competitor, but a toolset that we can use, and given what we can provide it, we can use anybody's off-the-shelf AI.
As AI progresses and gets better, gives us an opportunity to be able to leverage it on a go-forward basis. We have a lot of AI capabilities. You can imagine, we've been doing it now for 10 years in the organization. These technologies are getting so good that we just would rather use it off the shelf, and leverage it as a tool. Again, we see it as a significant opportunity given what we have to train it and how differentially we're positioned to train AI.
All right, perfect. You know, we have a few minutes left. I wanted to just wrap up with one or two questions on margins and capital allocation before we sign off today. Just maybe turning back to the LRP, you know, the specific target is 23%-25% operating margin at the end of the plan. Thinking about, like, a potential 2026 exit in that, like, 21.5% range, just, like, wanted to hear a little bit more about key, like, visibility and the biggest levers driving that, you know, additional 200 or 300 basis points that are included in the LRP.
Yeah, you can hit that one, Wayde. You kinda already hit the elements, but maybe just go through them again.
Yeah. Sounds good. As you said, Brett, we're targeting that 23%-25% margin in 2028, and that's a 200-300 basis points, you know, step up from where we are today. I would just highlight that certainly we didn't know tariffs existed at the time we set the targets, so that's over 100 basis points. We know we've communicated in the past that as part of the Separation, we have about 2% of higher cost on raw materials coming from 3M. That's over 3% headwind with those two things that did not exist before we spun. With that 23%-25%, that's really a 26%-28%, you know, type of a margin target. We think it's a really good target.
When we get there, we'll be achieving an operating margin higher than this business was achieving prior to the spin. It's a good objective for us to get there. As Bryan mentioned, it's really the same three drivers that we're leveraging here in 2026 that will continue to contribute the major portions of that expansion. It's sales leverage as we continue to accelerate sales into our LRP sales targets, and then it's the programmatic supply chain savings plans that we have, as well as the Transform for the Future restructuring project that we've laid out. When you put all three of those together, it gives us high confidence that we're on track to achieve that 23%-25% operating margin by 2028.
All right, great. I think we'll have to save some of the M&A and capital, you know, portfolio management questions for next time. Wanted to thank all three of you so much for joining today, and thank you to everyone in the audience for listening. Bryan, if there's any final thoughts you wanted to leave the group with before we sign off, I'll hand it back to you.
No, I appreciate it, Brett. I think the questions were great in the way that you framed them. I think those are the more important ones to get across. I think I'd just end with kind of the way we started. Very, very happy with this team, and anyone who's listening, I wanna say congratulations again on a super strong year in 2025. I feel the momentum coming in at 2026. I know that we've got all kinds of opportunity ahead of us, and that's kind of the nice thing.
When you've been able to perform the way we have in 2024, 2025 relative to, you know, our the value we've created for shareholders and still know that we have that much opportunity for revenue growth, margin expansion, and free cash flow expansion that we've just laid out, you don't typically see an organization with all three vectors ahead of them with the opportunity that we have. So as much as we've progressed, there's still more meat on the bone, if you will, on each of those three vectors. So I just wanna leave that as the final words. Congratulations to the team. Expecting big things in 2026. To our investors, I feel very confident we've got a story that you're gonna be happy about.
All right, great. Thanks again, everyone. Have a great rest of the conference.
Thanks so much, Brett.