Thanks for joining us. My name is Mike Halloran. We're pleased to welcome Veralto with us today. Recently publicly traded Veralto, I might add, which I'm sure nobody in this room was familiar with. Thank God I mentioned that. But we're gonna do a Q&A session following Jennifer's prepared remarks. Joining me today, Jennifer Honeycutt, President and CEO, Sameer Ralhan, CFO, and then Ryan Taylor decided to bury himself in the crowd. So if you got questions, raise your hand. I'll certainly make sure I get you involved. But there are the placards in front of you. You can email me, and I will make sure your questions get integrated into the conversation. So please, Jennifer, the floor is yours.
Well, thank you, Mike, and thanks everyone for joining us this morning. It's a pleasure to be here, and we appreciate the invitation. I wanna start here by giving you a little bit of an overview of Veralto. This is a $5 billion enterprise, represents sort of the finest industrial assets that have come from Danaher's heritage. It's comprised of 60%, which is water quality, in which there are effectively two categories: water analytics, which is the larger of the two here, and water treatment. These businesses play in everything from regulatory compliance and municipalities, all the way through process optimization, recycle, reclaim, and as well in areas that are focused on ESG parameters for customers. Strong secular growth drivers.
We play in the high value chain here within the water workflow, where these are OpEx, typically OpEx-intensive businesses, where the cost of failure is high if customers choose not to test and treat. And therefore, we've got great embedded businesses with our customers with high recurring revenue. Forty percent of our business is in water, is in product quality and innovation, comprised of two categories in marking and coding and packaging and color. The narrative here is very similar to water analytics, in that these businesses help secure and safeguard food supply, medicines, and other consumer product goods, to verify brand authenticity and integrity of the products they serve. So effectively, these are best before dates, born on dates, date codes, lot codes, et cetera, for consumer packaged goods.
Both characterized on both sides of the house in terms of being leaders in water and product quality. The brands that you see here are leaders in their respective industries and are unified in the global purpose of safeguarding the world's most vital resources. So strong brands, long track records of innovation and commercial excellence. Again, we've got highly durable business model in these high-quality businesses. Roughly 80% of our business goes into food, water, and pharmaceuticals. These are essential resources for everyday life. Again, these serve the high end of the value continuum, where the cost of failure is high. So we are in the integral part of the operation. These are not CapEx-focused purchase cycles. They are really tied into OpEx. And we've got a good diversity in sort of our end markets and geographic distribution.
They are harmonized by decades of ownership under Danaher with the Danaher Business System. We also have the parameters of the razor-razorblade model, wherein 57% is recurring revenue, which gives us a steady stream and durable, robust growth over the cycle. Attractive end markets and high recurring sales here. I think what's most remarkable, though, is our impact on the world and environment, and these are some of the ESG parameters, or deliverables, if you will, that these incredible businesses have been a part of. Every day, we ensure that 40% of the world's population, roughly 3.4 billion people, have access to safe drinking water.
We actually conserved over $80 billion or 80 billion gal of water for customers in 2022 and recycled roughly 12 trillion gal of water that get treated by our systems each and every year. We are in the top 20 consumer product goods businesses for customers including both pharmaceutical and food brands. We have about 80% that use our product quality and innovation technologies with coding over 10 billion codes per day. In one case, we were able to help one of our customers achieve their reliability and sustainability goals by removing 500,000 annual trucking miles for a single customer with our pallet optimization software.
So we were able to reduce the emissions of 2 million pounds of CO2 for that particular customer in that year. So again, these are. Plenty of businesses talk about how they cater to sustainability and environmental compliance. We actually do it, and we do it each and every day by safeguarding the world's most vital resources. Long-standing heritage, as I mentioned, with Danaher and the Danaher Business System. Moving forward, we have converted this to the Veralto Enterprise System, anchored in the core values that you see here, fueled by the four disciplines in the center ring, including fundamentals, operational excellence, growth, and leadership.
Effectively, the playbook is very much the same at Veralto as it was at Danaher in terms of taking great businesses and making them better through use of these tools in a continuous improvement environment. VES, obviously underpinned by DBS, and grounded in our values going forward. The playbook, if you're familiar with Danaher, is gonna look pretty similar here at Veralto. It's pretty simple long-term value creation algorithm and modeling framework, wherein we drive core growth. Through the cycle, we've seen these businesses deliver mid-single-core sales growth. By delivering incremental margin, we would expect that incremental volume reads through at 30%-35% OpEx, generating strong free cash flow, and delivering roughly 100% of free cash flow conversion.
You add in, strategic acquisitions, through the disciplined capital deployment, that we are inheriting from Danaher. Strong bias towards M&A to deliver compounding EPS growth and returns. So it's this flywheel, if you will, of doing these things and doing them consistently, which we have done with these businesses in the decades of Danaher ownership, to actually increase long-term shareholder value. I've talked a lot about the business, and it's only fitting that a great business deserves a great leadership team. The folks that you see here have been carefully handpicked, curated, and the team has been architected over the 12 months prior to the spin. 60% of these folks come from Danaher, with three decades of Danaher experience and over 100 years combined in total.
The remaining 40% come from outside of Danaher, and they bring critical public company experience. Together, we are 70% diverse, comprised of 50% women and 40% people of color. So highly accomplished professionals brought together in a high-functioning leadership team with the best of both Danaher heritage and outside public company experience from similar industries. So with that, I can turn it back over to you, Mike, and we can take some questions.
Absolutely, and thanks for that. So, you know, why don't we start with some high-level stuff? You know, the number one question I get when I lead all these conversations, someone asks the conversations, it's: what can this team do differently today as a separate company that maybe didn't have the same level of entitlement or capital allocation or whatever it is under the previous Danaher umbrella?
Yeah. It's a great question. We, we get that question, not only from you, but from others. And the, the reality is, is it's a whole lot different being 100% of a $5 billion enterprise than being 17% of a $30 billion enterprise. I think the attention that these businesses get now in terms of the focus, the acuity, and the directedness of the VES tool set, which we are, evolving to meet the needs of the $5 billion enterprise, as opposed to sort of the life science and diagnostic focus that Danaher kind of created as a pivot to that tool set.
But more importantly, I think, while this business will look and feel pretty similar for customers and associates, I think the biggest differentiating factor is that we have full access to our own cash flow and working capital. And the significance of that is that these businesses have tended to be underinvested in from a capital deployment relative to M&A in the last five to eight years. And for all the right reasons, we pushed that cash flow over to Danaher for acquiring these big deals like Cytiva and Pall and Aldevron and so on. But that, in fact, didn't really help fortify or augment-
Right
... the value of the Veralto businesses. And, you know, we'll be generating close to $700+ million of cash a year. The opportunity for us to spend that on value-accretive M&A is gonna be incredibly impactful.
So let's touch on that in two different ways. As long as you were bringing up the external capital deployment, let's bring up, let's maybe dig into that first. Another question that gets, I'm sure you get all the time: Are there enough assets in the water space for you to pursue to really leverage that strategy? And how tangential would you feel comfortable moving, depending on what you can or can't find in the, in the water space? And by the way, I think people are assuming that the water space is where all the capital is gonna go. Less so the PQI piece. I know you guys probably voice something slightly differently, so-
Yeah
... offsetting that would be also helpful.
I mean, people get really excited about the water space because it is a closer fit to the durable business model narrative.
The reality is that the PQI businesses are incredible businesses with just as much regulatory influence in terms of their need for use in critical applications and customers. So we feel very good about our M&A trajectory on both sides of the house for PQI, or for water quality. We wasted no time in building a team that would be fully capable of getting out of the door, ready to go with M&A, in the 12 months prior to the spin. We brought some of the best folks in Danaher that are have been involved directly in some of the largest deal volume that we've seen on the Danaher side, inclusive of strategy, and so on and so forth.
Getting to your question, however, relative to water and water assets, we feel pretty good about the funnel for the water side. We don't believe that we lack in our portfolio where we play and where we are strong, which again, is in that OpEx-intensive side of the water workflow. But there are some assets out there that would be incremental and additive to the workflows that we are in and, or near adjacent.
When you think about what that means, one, you know, if I think about Hach, your market leader-
Maybe there's some technologies that could feed in. Is that the thought process? A s we work through those three pieces? ChemTreat, maybe expanding where you play in the facilities.
Yep.
I mean, maybe just talk through-
Yep
... what that could look like.
Yep. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, for both analytics and for treatment, there are plays that we are considering looking at and cultivating. I think, you know, Hach has over 70 years of innovating in water analytics, and frankly, there are ever-increasing needs to go after detection of new parameters.
Yep.
You know, you've got, you know, PFAS is out there. That's a challenge to be solved right now, that can only be solved in a centralized lab with a multimillion-dollar mass spec- mass spectrometer. So, you know, Hach has the earned authority to be able to innovate in the space, which is at point of use or very, very near to that, and I think as long as there are emerging contaminants, there are gonna be opportunities for us to continue to innovate in that space. For ChemTreat and Trojan, you know, one of the things we did pre-spin with Trojan is we brought over the Pall Water-
Yep
... business, which gives us access and sort of closed loop control over the microfiltration and ultrafiltration needed relative to reuse. So you've got companion products with both filtration and UV treatment that create a nice bundle there. So there are plays like that that still exist out there that we're keen to pursue.
Well, that's super helpful. Now, let's shift the gears a little bit to the internal side, right? 5% R&D. You hear a 5% R&D, you don't necessarily think underinvested in.
Correct.
Right? Maybe just talk about the opportunities for internal capital allocation, how those shift, or is that more of an iterative process from here as management team continues to wrap their hands around everything, and you really prioritize as a public company?
Yeah, I mean, I think internally, we don't believe we've been, you know, underfunded in sales and marketing or R&D. Our 5% R&D is intentional and deliberate because that's really where the value is created. You know, as innovators in treatment and analytics in particular, part of that deep domain expertise and customer knowledge that we have, 75% of our sales are direct to customer, and frankly, that creates the flywheel for being able to innovate in ways where potentially competitors don't have the acuity that we do because we're, they're not in those plants. They're not side by side in the process every single day. So we think we're dialed in about right at 5%.
We think that gives us license to be able to innovate in new and different ways, that others might not be able to.
So you touched on a few thematics in the water quality piece, of which I've gotten a couple questions. You know, first, let's just hit PFAS. Twofold question: one, how do you play in the PFAS chain? 'Cause you really have two avenues as we sit here today, or at least two potential avenues. Maybe we just start there to level set everybody on the thought process.
Yeah, I mean, as I had mentioned, you know, we've always had a strong play in analytics, particularly even in emerging analytics, and even treatment. You know, the Hach business was directly involved in setting the turbidity standard and the DPD chlorine standard decades ago, working with the EPA. When the entire area of Long Island was overcome by 1,4-dioxane, you know, we spent time and energy to understand that problem, and we've got 56 skids, Trojan skids, that are installed there to actually treat and deal with the 1,4-dioxane problem so that everyone there on the island's got access to clean drinking water. So, I mean, I think, given the history, we've got fairly good entitlement in terms of innovating in this space.
I do think solving the PFAS problem at point of use is going to take some technology breakthroughs.
Right.
Right?
Yeah.
You know, right now, it's not optimal, right? The U.S. has regulated down to 4 parts per trillion. And, you know, the only way that can be accomplished is sending a water sample out to a centralized lab. You might get a result in, you know, 48 hours at the fastest. We're hearing two weeks. By that time, you've discharged hundreds of thousands of gallons to your, -
Yeah
... to your local communities, right? That is not a fit-for-purpose sort of solution. Now, we'll see, I'm sure, lots of activity around centralized labs, and so on and so forth. Our power alley really is in sort of, fit for purpose, point of use, kinds of analytics. But we equally feel that destruction on site is also part of the equation. So I think the game will be won around not only detection, but also destruction. There's plenty of companies out there that are getting excited about PFAS capture.
Yep.
The problem is all of that resin then has to be moved to some sort of landfill, where it's gonna cleave off of that and get back into the water system, and you're gonna be trying to take it out again. That's why they're called forever chemicals. They're really hard to get rid of. And so there's a genuine amount of work to do there.
Let's be realistic, forever chemicals are involved in almost anything involved in building our infrastructure today.
Yeah.
It's not like you can get rid of the use of them.
Exactly.
The follow-up question I got was essentially, you know, twofold here. One, 'cause there was a couple questions, weave them together. Average utility size, the U.S. is small. How does that pose an opportunity or challenge to adequately addressing PFAS? Which ties into the broader concern, which is: how does this really get invigorated from a time perspective? Because who's the one driving it? Is it a regulatory environment, is it private companies, is it lawsuits? How do you see all of this weaving together over time?
I think it's a little bit of all of those things, right? We got regulatory environments, where we've got, you know, the U.S. and Europe sort of at materially different levels of limits of detection. You know, U.S. is going after parts per trillion in the single units parts per trillion. You know, Europe is converging closer to sort of 100 parts per trillion as endorsed by the WHO. So there's some regulatory alignment there, I think, that obviously needs to be happened. But equally, you know, lawsuits are creating a pretty significant motivator in terms of the funding envelope that's available to deal with some of this stuff. So, you know, I think it's gonna be an intersection of a lot of those things.
We're currently working with the EPA to help them understand sort of technologies available, limits of detection, practical use, and so on.
So let's take a higher level look at the water quality piece. You look over the last decade, more like a 4% grower, you tend to think in that 5%-6-ish% range. You go prior to, like, a global financial crisis, was in that 5%-6% range. You know, why do we revert back to that range? You know, I'm in your camp. I think you do have a higher growth profile this cycle. Be curious to- at the drivers of why there might be a slight acceleration in that growth profile.
Yeah, I mean, I think we see the portfolio in aggregate delivering mid-single digits over the cycle, and it's done so for decades. PQI tends to be a little bit, you know, lower, at the lower end of mid-single digit growth. Water, as you mentioned, tends to be in the 5%-6%. You know, the reality is the secular drivers for both of these businesses remain strong and durable. There's not a situation or a scenario when people are gonna stop drinking, eating, or needing to be medicated.
So, you know, I think in light of the fact that we do fit in that OpEx part of the plants, that is to say, we're not as subject to sort of lumpy CapEx cycles, where, you know, you have to wait for funding to become available. These products and these solutions are part and parcel to the standard everyday operating of the plant. And so I think you're gonna see the durability of that driver continue to persist well into the future, and frankly, accelerate as a function of some of the incredible environmental problems that we have: water scarcity, water contamination, storm surge, hurricane. You know, all of these sort of environmental events are disturbing watersheds at levels that we have never seen before.
And so the cleanup of that water, the treatment of that water, the scarcity of it, the need to reuse, recycle, reclaim, is ever increasing, and that's just gonna continue to be the case.
Interim demand dynamics, you know, a little bit more mixed in the short terms. Again, sticking to water quality, we'll address PQI in a sec. You know, how do you see that playing out? It feels like there's just a slight air pocket getting against tougher comps, but the underlying momentum and the dynamics are favorable, and there's some other catalysts that could emerge next year. Maybe just talk to what you're seeing today.
Yeah, I mean, we've seen some certainly some water hammer, no pun intended, in terms of the comparables year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter, as a result of working out, you know, sort of, post-pandemic, sort of, you know, realities. You know, the third quarter last year, you know, we posted 16.5% growth. You know, we posted 9.5%, fourth quarter last year, right? So we do have some pretty incredible comps, for our water business to sort of step up to. But I think, you know, in the main, what you see is the long-term drivers of the cycle remain intact. If you look at any two, five, 10, 20-year period, you're going to see that water business deliver, you know, mid-single digits in the 5%-6% range. And so, you know, do we see some fluctuation here near term?
Little bit, but, you know, we remain confident about sort of the long-term profile as some of this noise levels out between the quarters.
Also, does it seem like there's as much, call it, cyclical interest rate sensitivity, however you wanna phrase it? You know, your industrial piece is even higher on the replacement curve... as a percentage of revenue relative to some of the muni pieces. The muni pieces, maybe you have some regulatory drivers that start hitting as you move into the next year, move through next year. Do you agree with that from a balancing perspective, or should I be thinking about the cyclicality a little differently?
Yeah, you know, I mean, on the industrial side, you know, so we have roughly, you know, it's like 40, 40, and 20, right?
40% of the water business is in muni, you know, 40% in industrial, 20% in sort of applied hospitals and other kinds of applications. You're gonna see some nuances that are different between how the industrial markets move and how the muni markets move. You know, between the two, you know, we've had, you know, for the first three quarters, you know, our industrial piece has held up really, really well, right? So we're seeing, you know, great growth in Trojan and ChemTreat as a function of some of the vertical markets that are growing.
You know, you've got oil and gas, you've got some aerospace in there, you've got metals, steel mills running around the clock here, in part, to keep up with demand of construction. And we've got a couple of, unfortunately, we've got a couple of wars now sitting abroad that require metal, machinery, armory, and so on and so forth. So, I mean, those are opportunities for us to continue to grow and play in. On the muni side, again, we're gonna continue to see sort of that be sort of run rate, steady as she goes business.
So you're gonna see a little bit of sort of some fluctuations and based on what industrial markets are up or down. But in the main, I think if you look over the cycle, it's pretty consistent relative to sort of that delivering on that mid-single-digit growth.
Maybe I'll just clarify a little bit, Mike. I mean, if you look at the industrial side of the business, even that is very heavy consumable business, right?
Actually, if you look at the industrial side that we talk, we put the microelectronics and semi business in it, and there we are seeing incredible tailwinds, right? So that's where the capital side is, that frankly, there's a lot of capital available, and you're seeing that in the build-out. So industrial is also very consumables-heavy businesses.
Absolutely.
It's not that sensitive to interest rate environment.
Yeah, because the sensitivity is gonna be a little bit more on the PQI side, so let's use that as a transfer point. Even there, very heavy consumable business.
Yeah.
Correct.
Maybe talk about the underlying dynamics there. You know, China seems to be having an outsized impact relative to the percentage of revenue, which probably speaks to how bad China is right now as a cumulative thought process. How do you think about the short term there? I mean, I know medium term, you're thinking that 3%-5% range, but how do you think about the short-term dynamics, and we can progress back towards normal?
Yeah, I mean, the largest part of the marking and coding portfolio sits in continuous inkjet, which is a razor-razorblade kind of business. And ink and solvent volume is consumed based on printing volume or unit volume of goods that are printed. It's just like your inkjet printer at home. You print a whole ream of paper, you're gonna be replacing your cartridges faster than if you're printing one piece of paper, you know, every other month. And so with absolute demand in consumer product goods, which is about, you know, 50% of that PQI marking and coding business being down, you know, we see consumer buying behavior shifting as a result of the CPG inflationary environment, right?
If you go to your grocery store, everybody's seeing inflated food prices, and customers are electing to buy down or buy less, in most cases, buy less. And so that's created a little bit of a short-term sort of contraction of the ink and solvent volume within our marking and coding business. Again, it's not something that we expect to be sustained, you know, over the cycle or for an incredibly long period of time. We do think as sort of inflation abates and interest rates, you know, sort of starts to renormalize a little bit, that those supply and demand curves are gonna come back in line, and we're gonna see sort of those kinds of run rates that we would've seen historically.
Then I did have a question from the audience. Any thoughts on China holistically across both your businesses? How do you think that plays out?
Yeah, I mean, China, you know, I think China is down for most businesses right now. You know, they continue to have funding challenges with foreign direct investment moving out of the country. And, you know, I think we—you know, we did our earnings call a couple of weeks ago. I think, you know, we said that we didn't see any near-term change in China, right? The demand is gonna continue to be soft. But, you know, they've got a huge global population. It still ends up being an important manufacturing, you know, country for much of the businesses around the world, and so, you know, we would expect that we will not see these rates of decline going forward-
Great
... from a long-term perspective.
Well, please join me in thanking Jennifer and Sameer for their time with us today. Management will be available outside, up one level, for a breakout session immediately following this. Thank you for your time.
Thank you, Mike.