Well, thank you so much. Welcome to the second session of the last day of our Industrial Software and Automation Summit. And with us, we have Aaron Sikh, President of Gilbarco Vitterroot, obviously part of Vontier. Aaron has served as President of Gilbarco Vitterroot since 2018 and previously he was at Tyco and GE. And of course, what I want to say is that maybe people don't appreciate, but Frontier actually is one of the more established players in software and SaaS in our coverage just given the company's history.
And I'm not sure that's necessarily how people think about it, but the company has a very long history of being a large software player. Software is actually in our model should be a fairly meaningful contributor to margin expansion going forward. As I said, the company actually does have very mature software strategy that stems of being part of Fortive and even going back to Danaher. So I think the way we're going to do it, Aaron has a slide deck. He's going to go through some slides.
And then we're going to go into fireside chat. And for those attending, feel free to type in questions. And we tend to incorporate vast majority of the questions you ask the company on the Veracast software piece. So thank you very much. Aaron, thank you for joining us.
And let's get to it. Thanks.
All right. Hey, good morning, Andrew. Thanks for having me. Really appreciate it. Thanks for the introduction and the context you've given as well.
So I believe the audience has slides that are up that they can advance through. So I'm going to take a few minutes here. Andrew, as you mentioned, kind of go through those. I'll just announce what slide I'm on so people can ground where I'm at. But I did want to take a few moments just to provide an overview of Vontier, to your point, Andrew, to make sure everyone's familiar with the company, albeit somewhat new since our launch from Board of just about a year ago to the day.
And then talk in more detail about Gilbarco Vita Root and our history and our strategy. So for those who are viewing the slides, let me start at slide number four, which is an overview of Bonnier. As I mentioned and as Andrew said, Bonnier is really a long standing, in terms of its core assets, company, but new as a public company, really positioned as a premier industrial technology player with a focus in mobility and transportation technologies. We have a very wide and broad customer base in the markets that we play in. And for many, many years, in fact, decades, we've had increasing growth of the company, both organically and through M and A, and a very solid financial profile that I'll talk to here in a minute.
As Andrew mentioned, the heritage of the company really starts more recently with Danaher, going back now almost twenty years. We were part of Fortive as Danaher did their split of the industrial assets. And then in October, we separated with five operating companies inside Fortive to form Volunteer, again focused in mobility and transportation technologies. Over that course of the last many years, we've grown organically. We've done M and A, and we continue to do that today.
And we really see that as part of our flywheel for both margin expansion as well as growth of the company. So when you take a look at the financials on the right hand side of this page, Frontier last year ended at about $2,700,000,000 in sales, most of that coming from North America, approximately 70%, but really spread over a wide set of solutions that are both hardware and software. And as Andrew alluded to, today, we have over 20% of our revenue coming from recurring sales, software and services, with, we think, very strong operating profit margin expansion that continues and over 100% free cash flow conversion. So hopefully, that provides a little bit of an overview and context for Volunteer. I'm going go ahead and go to slide number five to talk more specifically about Gilbarco Vita route, or GVR for short, as we call it.
For those who aren't familiar with GVR, we're the number one supplier of fueling and mobility infrastructure equipment into the convenience store and commercial fleet market worldwide. That really spans everything from a fuel dispenser that a lot of us are probably familiar with week to week to the in store point of sale software systems, and more recently, an expansion of our offerings around EV charging solutions. We have about 5,000 employees worldwide, a little over that now, with manufacturing in nine countries. And we sell directly in over 40 countries around the world. And we're headquartered in Greensboro in North Carolina.
So when you think about the company and our key growth strategies, obviously it starts with, particularly as a new public company, driving profitable growth. That's very foundational for us. And I think we have a long, proven history of doing that. But the growth trajectory we're really focused on, and I think it's germane to the conversation here today, is around how our customers are evolving, C stores in particular, and how their workflows are becoming more complex and they're digitized. And that's a core focus for GVR and our growth.
And it's also taking that into high growth and emerging markets around the world where we still see infrastructure expansion. So that's a very key part of our growth strategy inside of GVR, along with adding on new offerings such as EV charging solutions that we'll talk about here a little later as well. So overall, when you look at GVR, we are the number one platform in the world in retail convenience and commercial fleets for fueling infrastructure. And we really operate with a significant global scale. So to help you literally with a picture understand what we do in a little more detail, let's go ahead and go to slide number six, which is a snapshot of the convenience store.
And so our strategy here is to provide the most complete portfolio of technology leading solutions to this retail convenience market. And it starts with everything from tanks below ground and automating those so they can record the fuel inventory levels and trigger responses to send more fuel in and optimize the logistics flow of fuels. To above ground, the dispenser, but it's not just the hardware, it's the software as well that runs that dispenser and integrates with payment solutions to provide very seamless interactions, whether that's with credit cards or with mobile payment, to inside the C store, which is an increasingly important part of our business. That's centered around our point of sale offering, where we have a very strong offering, particularly in The United States and Europe, that is now expanding to both what we call the head office and back office software systems. And of course, as I mentioned, EV charging.
So we really want to help our customer go through the transition of their business that's moving from a historical gas station to a convenience store to a much more sophisticated retailer. And these solutions are really focused on providing improved operational efficiency, but also improving the consumer experience. And it's both that are important to our customer. So with that being said, I'm going go to slide number seven. And as Andrew mentioned, we've been at this for quite a long time.
Really, the origins of the company go back over one hundred years, but more of the modern history starts as part of Danaher almost twenty years ago with the acquisition of Gilbarco and Veeder Root by Danaher, really two hardware companies that had sensors as part of their core offering. And it's been a very deliberate strategy over the course of these last two decades to diversify the company and use M and A as an accelerator of the strategy around software, around analytics as part of the solution stack, and to diversify geographically to make GVR now a much more global, multi product, multi solution company. And then we use DBS. So for those who know of the Danaher business system that we were very much part of and helping to champion for a long time, We've evolved that to VBS, the volunteer business system, as part of the launch of the new company, focused not only on operational improvements but on growing and accelerating new product launch. So we see GVR today and are positioning GVR as a mobility infrastructure solutions company, where over the course of these last two decades, we've moved from $400,000,000 of sales to now ending 2020 at almost $2,000,000,000 attractive operating margin expansion now and operating margins in excess of 20% and geographic diversification, the company now approaching 15% of the businesses outside of developed markets.
So it's a very disciplined flywheel that requires capital deployment, which we continue to do with application of VBS to expand our margins. And so with that, if you go to slide number eight, I wanted to talk and put in context what we see are some of the macro drivers impacting our business. And I want to start with all the way on the left hand side, the first one, which is a belief in the continued growth of the car park. And we think most people around the world would agree with this, that the car parks, so the fleet installed vehicles on our streets and highways every day is going to continue to grow and eclipse right at about 1,200,000,000 vehicles. And that that fleet, at least through 02/1930, is going to be a vast majority powered by internal combustion engines.
We think that's roughly 90% of the car park will still be ICE by 02/1930. So that gives us a very long tail on our business for both upgrading infrastructure, maintaining equipment, and also doing the needed upgrades for regulatory requirements. Now, with that being said, we certainly know EV is an opportunity for us and one both for us and our customers we want to take advantage of and we're organizing around. But with that said, what fuels this business and what continues to fuel it today and into the future is a lot around regulation, both in security and payment regulation, but environmental regulation. And so we continue to focus our product development efforts on these type of regulatory drivers that we see continuing in different parts of the world for the foreseeable future.
And then thirdly, we have the build out of infrastructure in high growth markets or emerging markets. And I'll talk to this in a few slides, but what we see here is a continued investment in building out the fueling infrastructure, but also upgrading the technology, in a lot of ways driven by regulatory drivers, but also by operational improvements that can be made in terms of efficiency and improving the consumer experience that all of these retailers are focused on. Which brings me to the last fourth item, which is retail sophistication. And I think for all of us, at least those here in The United States, we've lived through in the last few decades this evolution from going to a gas station that just had a few pumps in the 1950s and '60s to, in the '70s and '80s, the emergence of C stores that really became convenience retailers in terms of how they viewed themselves, to now very high levels of sophistication in the product offering, from food, quick serve restaurants comingled with convenience stores, to lockers, to dry cleaning, a whole host of services that are building out around this feed format. And the retailer is becoming much more sophisticated as well.
And that ties right into our automation strategy of how we follow this product evolution and the lifecycle evolution of our customer into a more complex retail environment with more sophisticated workflows. So I think a really good example of that, maybe just to put that case to practice, is in slide number nine, which is a case study I wanted to highlight to show how this works out in our market, at least in The United States, with a customer very important to us called Terrible Herps. If you don't know Terrible Herps, they're a large convenience store chain in the Western Part Of The United States. They've had very solid growth over the last several years, and they've done consolidation and acquisition to grow their network. But what that brought with it is complexity and multiple software systems that were running their stores.
So they made the decision that they wanted to standardize and really simplify their operation to go to one software system, And they chose our Passport branded point of sale software. We think really one of the leading point of sale software offerings in the world. Now, with that, though, comes the opportunity for us to bring in a full automation offering. That includes the hardware and the software to improve the operational efficiency of the site, to improve also the customer experience. So that's where our full broad set of solutions comes into play.
So not only were we able to upgrade the point of sale system, and that's why Terrible Herbs used to run their stores, we were able to add in new dispensers which interface with that point of sale system. And more recently, add in what we call Passport Express Lane, as shown here on the slide, that's really self checkout. And that's something not only being driven by consumer demand, by efficiency in the store, but certainly during the COVID period has helped provide a frictionless experience or more frictionless experience for consumers. So when you put all that together, we use automation, automation coming from our Passport system, to help drive the full portfolio of our offerings. It improves our share of wallet with our customer.
It helps drive more recurring sales and revenue. And we continue to see it as a way we can continue to expand our portfolio with customers like Terrible Herps. And this plays out day in and day out across the world for us here as GVR. Now with that being said, there's a very interesting dynamic occurring outside of The US in high growth markets, in emerging markets by another name, that we're taking advantage of as well. And it's really a journey around automation and applying software as the customer matures in terms of their business model.
So I want to ground this first just on the left hand side of this chart in terms of fueling station demand and how we look at it almost per capita across the world. So The US has the highest density of fueling stations per capita. It's about double that of Europe. But if you look at China, India, and The Middle East, it's significantly lower. And so this is where you get into the dynamic of the infrastructure being invested in and built out.
And in fact, in the case of India, the government is expecting to almost double that station count over the next five years. And the best way to kind of envision that is through some pictures. And that's what's on this slide. Right in the middle is a picture of one of our customers in one of our fueling sites in India, where you see a very basic gas kiosk. So this is one or two fueling dispensers where a car drives up, an attendant fuels the vehicle and the car drives out.
That's obviously really the most basic application of a fueling depot. But at the same time, what's occurring and accelerating is the customer is transitioning to the picture that you see under modern C stores. So this, again, is a customer in India that has just opened a C store that rivals and looks like any that you'd see here in The United States, with convenience offerings, food offerings, multiple sites for fueling. This is the journey that customers are going on today in a lot of these high growth markets. And it's fundamentally about the infrastructure build out, but it requires new technology and automation of the fueling and convenience experience.
And so we feel very well positioned with our offerings to help our customers on that journey. So with that, and with those two examples, Andrew, I'll just kind of come to a conclusion here. Hopefully, it provides a little bit of an overview of who we are as GVR, also as Volunteer, and how we're positioned in the market as the number one provider of technology solutions for fueling infrastructure and retail convenience. A long history here, as you mentioned, at the outset of organic growth, but also M and A and applying our volunteer business system to improve margins. I think there's a lot of regulatory drivers in our industry with a car park that's going to be very large and our upgrades for a long period of time.
And then some real transformational opportunities, both in infrastructure build out in high growth markets, applying more automation and software solutions that we have, and also around EV charging. So I'll pause there. And happy to kind of continue the discussion.
Yes, sure. So thank you so much. First, so for all the attendees, just want to highlight that please ask questions using the Veracast system. I do want to say this is a very, very well attended session. So definitely a lot of interest in the story.
So let me ask you a question. So you definitely you sort of started talking about Passport and it's GVR's point of sale software for gas stations. So can you just sort of give us more detail? How do you leverage your installed base of hardware to Win and Software? And how often are software upgrades actually tied to new hardware upgrades, right?
Is it do they go together? Is it eitheror? Just maybe you can talk about how the sales process works? Thank you.
Yes, sure. So certainly, initial point of contact with customers over many decades has been with the hardware, as you know, Andrew. And there, we have a very strong market presence both in The United States, Europe and the high growth markets. But the interplay now between the dispenser and the software to run the station is essential. It's not really a choice if you don't have APIs or the automation interfaces locked in, both for couponing or following the consumer between their buying behavior, both at the forecourt and in the store, and just for payment.
So the functionality of the Passport system is required to work both with GVR embedded hardware and with our competitor. So it's essential that you've got to have both, and they've got to both be upgraded to work between the two. Now in terms of timing off between hardware purchases to software, I would say that those are still, in some cases, independent because the customer may have a different point of sale system that they want to integrate our hardware into. But more and more, you have customers like a terrible Herbst that's looking for a complete site upgrade. So they're looking to simplify their system, provide one hardware software solution, almost one point to choke, so to speak, and have that integrated across their network.
So I wouldn't say it's essential today, but if there's a trajectory we're going on, more customers are moving to one supplier for an integrated automation system.
So let's talk about another offering, Insight three sixty. It's a SaaS offering for multisite gas retailers. Can you just talk about the product development? Was this primarily internally developed? And did you also make some tuck in acquisitions as well?
Sure. So for the audience, Insight three sixty that, Andrew, you're familiar with is our brand, as you said, of connected offerings. It's SaaS based and provides really our connection point between hardware and software to improve operational efficiency by and large for our customer. So it really started back in 2015. That's when we created the brand.
And it was a merger of work we had already been doing internally inside of GVR, paired with an acquisition called FuelQuest that we did in 2014. So we brought those two together to get more scale. And that was part of the strategic rationale for the acquisition of FuelQuest. And we rebranded the offering Insight three sixty. And it started really with a focus on monitoring the fuel levels of tanks and providing updates to the retailer on their tank level to help optimize their logistics and their supply chain on fueling.
But really, over the last five years, what we've done and this has been part of the core strategy back to the acquisition was expand that into the forecourt, where you do gas pump and dispensing, so that we now have an integration of our hardware with our software to do remote diagnostics, restarting of dispensers, preventative maintenance and alerts for the retailer. And then we've also moved that into the store so that it's integrated with our passport system. So we see this now as a platform, and it's one that's connecting all of the hardware at a site that we provide and some third party hardware to really help with the operational efficiency of the site management. So it's, again, kind of a combination of both. Going forward, we're putting a lot of our R and D and investment into this.
We think it's an important part of our future, so our customers are asking for. And we're also developing partnerships to kind of expand the ecosystem of what we offer.
Got you. Thank you. So how do you think about partnerships and a developer ecosystems? How easy is it for third party firms to tie into Passport data?
Well, I think our thoughts on this are evolving in that it's really essential. I think fundamentally at Tenet here is essential to have partners that can add to the functionality of the offering. And our customers are wanting that. So we do believe we have a core offering, call it a technology stack, we have to maintain that's cloud based, that has the right security measures in it, given we're dealing with payment data. That's got a regulatory requirement around that.
But with that said, we know there are new applications we've got to be able to access and add in. So Passport is one where, even recently, as an example, we've created a partnership with a company called Mosaic to integrate in car wash subscription services as an offering. So that our customer, the C store, can offer the consumer, at the time of checkout, a subscription to their car wash service. And that's a functionality that comes in from a partner, but it's enabled by the Passport system. Another example is with Insight three sixty that you just mentioned.
Here, we created a partnership with a company called Truthville that's a specialist in data analytics and algorithms around optimizing for fuel logistics. So we've taken their code base and know how and incorporated that into the Insight three sixty offering. So I expect a lot more of that as we go forward. We're very open to that as a company. And we know all of the advances of these systems are going to be created fully in house.
Got you. This is great. So the pending $1,000,000,000 DRB Systems acquisition adds another software payments and services for the car wash market. So DRB adds another $170,000,000 in revenue, 20% of which is software. So could you walk us through how software influenced the target selection and due diligence processes?
Sure. Maybe I'll just give you a little context on how we got to DRB. So as you know, and maybe some of the folks on the call know, we just closed DRB last week. So we're happy to get that over the finish line and have the team and the management group a part of volunteer and expand the family. So that's a major milestone for us next week, or last week, and our first major acquisition as volunteer.
So with that said though, let me answer your question about how we think of software. But I wouldn't say we lead with thinking about software. The way we've always thought about M and A is starting first with the core market and where we're positioned from. So we've been looking at the carwash market for a number of years. And we found that and believe that to be a very attractive market.
Obviously adjacent to the GVR business, as many of us know, there's carwashes at a lot of convenience stores, and that's a very profitable part of the convenience store operators' EBITDA. But there's also a lot of growth outside of the convenience store in tunnel car washes. And we see more growth in that market as people can't or don't wash their car at home as much due to maybe water restrictions, as well as it's completely powertrain agnostic. So car wash has nothing to do with internal combustion engines. It has to do as much with that as it does with EVs.
So we see it as a very robust set of solutions for mobility that's going be needed in the future. So we start there and say we like the market. And then we say, hey, within that market, what do we like as the most profitable part of that market that we think we can play? And for DRB, they were positioned and our position is the leader in the point of sale software as well as the ancillary equipment that is very analogous to our GVR business. So we see a lot of fit there in terms of what they do and how they position themselves in that market to what GVR does in fueling and convenience retail.
So when we look at DRV, then we say we have the number one market leader. We think they have a very robust software offering and are just launching a new cloud based offering, and one that provides add on opportunities for recurring revenue in the future. So maybe coming around to are we software led, would say it's not really about being software led. It's about finding a market we like, that we think we have a right to play in, finding the most profitable part of it and the leading brand. And we know that the dynamics of software inside of that are attractive and provide the recurring revenue profile that we like.
And so I think that's why we're particularly excited about DRV and how it diversifies Frontier broadly.
And to those listening, I'm definitely getting a whole bunch of incoming questions about EV strategy. So I promise that we will get to that. So I just want to reassure folks that I'm not ignoring your questions. So let me ask you a question about VBS and software and then the next series of questions will be about your EV strategy. So how does the VBS volunteer business system work within software?
What's the same in terms of R and D, product development, voice of customer, etcetera? And what's different?
Okay. So VDS, going back to the origins of DBS in Danaher, it's a toolkit that encompasses really how we run the company, operational cadences all the way through how we try to manage our improvement continuous improvement programs and new product development. So that applies to every part of our business. There's not a part that escapes that rigor. As it relates to software in particular, I think a lot of the tools are the same in terms of new product development.
There's probably a few very significant differences. Maybe to take that to an example, how we do VOC with our customer, particularly what we're looking for with the software products, is very different. So we're indexing a lot more on the consumer or the clerk interface, the UX, how the workflow actually occurs to simplify it. That's a very different set of criteria than how you would design hardware. And with that also brings our BBS focus on agile product development, which has a much faster pace and cycle time on version release.
We obviously can't do that with hardware. Know that type of agile development is quite common in a lot of software focused companies. And I think more so, Andrew, what's really become a part of the toolkit is security. So where we play, where we have an intersection of software that's either on prem or it's cloud hosted with payments intersecting our workflows. The security rigor that we have to apply into software is growing significantly every year, and it's something, obviously, we have to take very seriously for our customer.
It's really part of the core VBS software development tool kit. Maybe just another point I'd make is, Volunteer, when you zoom out on the portfolio, we're really a series of software companies and hardware companies. And we've got sister companies to DVR, IntelliTrack, AdMan, and GTT, which focuses on smart city flow, traffic flow, GVR, and even parts of our diagnostic business that use software and the automation of workflows at its core. So there's quite a bit of sharing of best practices across those companies. That's the core of BBS as well.
And certainly, we'll bring DRB into that here. We already are starting since the close last week.
So now let's talk about EVs. Sure. So and there are multiple questions. So I'll start with big and then maybe go about sort of specific investment opportunities. So the first question is electric vehicles growing trend for the marketplace.
So how do you see Vontier as participating in EV charging broadly? And then we can talk about drives and all that other stuff.
Sure. Well, our thinking on this has evolved over the last few years as this market continues, I think, to evolve from a pretty nascent state to where we see it today. And the core of it is we wanted to follow what the customer is asking for and start with our core business of GVR. And what I can tell you from building this over the last few years is the questions coming from the customer that at one point in time were about a charger or the specifics around hardware have become much more advanced to how you run a charging network and maintain the ownership of the customer, which is incredibly important to a convenience retailer. So our focus has been how we understand and learn with our customer and maintain optionality into how we deploy capital so that as we get more conviction of what our customer wants, we're able to create an offering that addresses their needs.
So think this evolution has occurred pretty quickly in a few years from, in the world of C stores, not thinking about EV charging to wanting to just understand and procure a piece of hardware to understanding that's actually not the hard part of running and setting up an EV charging network. It's actually the back end operation and the ongoing service and maintenance and the tie in of the charging network into their point of sale system. That's where a lot of this complexity is starting to become very obvious. So that's the approach we're taking. And as it relates to volunteer broadly, we're really focused on that is inside of GVR.
And we've just recently launched a suite of solutions we call eVerse as our go to market brand that we launched in Europe about six months ago. And have just recently announced this week the launch of it here in The United States that's focused on a turnkey solution for customers trying to simply build out the start of their EV network that's holistic to the linchpin and really the backbone, which is the network management software, but adds on to that choices around hardware so that they have a range of options that they want to use, whether that's L2 or DC fast charging, as well as providing them Level one, Level two support and remote and field service. So I think that's our change here as we see we have to play and offer a solution and software that manages the network is really the backbone and kind of the linchpin of the offering.
Got you. Really, really appreciate it. So the next question is from the audience, and then we're going go sort of talk a little bit more about EV business. But just sort of passing on Tritium, how do you see alternative opportunities and why not Tridium in the context of ICE3V transition?
Yes. Well, certainly, as we've announced, we're very supportive of the merger of Tridium with Decolonization II and the destocking process that they're going through as a minority shareholder of Tridium. I'm going to go back to the comments I just made. When we zoom out on the market, we know hardware providers are going to continue to evolve and need to evolve their solution, whether that's lower charge capacity systems like L2 chargers or high speed DCFC. And there's a multitude of innovations that kind of recur there.
And we see that accelerating. Our customer in GVR is coming back very much with an opinion they want to be hardware agnostic as the hardware keeps evolving. And so what they're wanting to look at is what is the best set of hardware for their application today that also gives them optionality for the future. And it's a very real concern for a lot of folks building out their EV network. We also have regulatory differences between The US with CE or with UL and CE approvals and the like around the world.
So we think this hardware space is still dynamic. It's certainly going to grow. But for us, we think providing a strategy that gives us the optionality to be hardware agnostic while using software and our service capabilities to tie in a full solution offering is a better approach for us right now.
So the next question is, you do have minority investment that drives a microBB charging network software. I believe you have a purchase option in 2022. Is this potentially an area where having software makes sense? And you sort of said your clients want you to be hardware agnostic. So does it make sense to have software here even if you aren't the hardware provider?
Yes. So let me take the last part of that again, similar to one of your questions before, Andrew, is how much coupling is there between hardware and software? And certainly, we see the market evolving now where part of the market wants to buy software and hardware together. A large part doesn't. And we think that's going to continue because it comes back to decisions of how they want to own the customer.
So you take a very developed C store, they don't want to release the ownership of the customer and the buying behavior and kind of the brand experience to a third party charger company. So we kind of hold that as a tenet of the strategy, and we see that playing out every day around the world. So when we think then about software, again, it's kind of our backbone. I think we're very excited about what Drives is doing. They continue to grow their customer base worldwide and bring on new ports under management every month as more and more clients electrify.
And what's really an advantage for us with Drives, too, is, of course, it spans multiple industries. So it's actually beyond the seastore market in its entirety. As it relates to our investments, as you said, we've made in a minority investment a few years ago in drives. We've only thought, again, based on the market work. They're the leading provider of the technology in terms of network management and now energy management software.
We made a small investment in them again this year, as was announced. And then beyond that, on the specifics of the terms of our agreement, I'm really not at liberty to comment on those details. But again, think we're pretty optimistic on where they're positioned.
Got you. And maybe and I have more questions, but we're also getting some questions about sort of the end markets. So maybe two sets of questions. One, maybe we can talk about what are you seeing in your end markets this quarter? And how are you how bad are supply chain challenges?
Sort of a pretty good, I would say, industry structure between you and your competitor. So how is price evolving? So maybe just give us a snapshot. What is PVR seeing in that? Yes.
Sure, Andrew. I'm sure that's a pretty top of mind question daily for a lot of us dealing with it. In terms of end market demand, I'll talk about that globally. We still see it as very strong. Nothing fundamentally changing.
Certainly, through COVID, there are stops and starts to projects and certifications of new sites. But nothing, once you get beyond that, that's a change in what we see in terms of just infrastructure build out, technology upgrades, regulatory drivers taking effect. So fundamentally, no change there. Certainly, the day to day management of the supply chain is a concern. It continues to be a concern.
And I don't think we're under any viewpoint that it's not going to be top of mind to us for many, many months, if not quarters ahead, well out of Q3 and Q4. So the way we've been approaching it over the last year is as best we can to get out ahead in terms of stock. It's where BBS comes into play for us in managing our inventory and thinking through where we want our turns to be and where we need to have also alternative options for our raw materials. And largely, that's a lot of the electronics that go into some of our hardware. So we've spent a lot of time in these last six to eight months qualifying alternative suppliers.
And it's really, I think, kudos to our team that's put us in the position that we're in where we feel we've got a lot of different options, albeit the risk is certainly still there, as you're probably seeing across the board. As you said about the market, prices in raw materials have gone up. We've done a number of prices increases this year. We feel that we've been able to maintain the cost pressures that we've seen inside of GVR with our price actions. And we're going to continue to do that, whether that's specific to freight or that's generally due to the hardware cost increases.
That's just part of the announcements we've made and are actually making here recently to increase prices as we've taken on cost.
Now we've got separation between better management teams and sort of mediocre management teams in this environment. We view you guys as clearly as a better management team. So another question. Look, you're a yourself. So how do you approach CapEx in this product, particularly and I've been some of your factories, so it's just I appreciate the nature of the business.
But have you increased CapEx for automation projects? And as you spend money on CapEx, how does GVR think about like the key areas of spending?
Yes. Well, the short answer is we're very deliberately focused on transitioning our spend into more automation software related development. That's a journey we've been on for a while. I think it's accelerated I know it's accelerated here personally in the last few years because I think it points to the future that our customers are asking for. So this is very much around the transition of the focused in hardware R and D to a transition into doing both.
Now we're indexing much more into the software side. So certainly, we're going to continue, and we do every day, to make CapEx investments in our core hardware business. We need to. There's still regulations that we're developing products for. There's the build out in HGMs.
And I point to investments we've made in even manufacturing in our hardware business more recently in India in the last year, where we've opened a new expansion to our facility there. But our focus continues to be deploying intelligently deploying the investment more incrementally every year into software and automation projects. And that's what led us to the launch of a new Passport cloud based offering called PassportX that we're deploying now in Latin America and in parts of Europe as well as the deployment of new functionality in Site 360.
Got you. And another question I actually did get sort of China related. There was a cycle in China to some regulations. Anything that impacts your business, given this common prosperity theme? Are you impacted as environment more of a focus all of a sudden, but anything, any updates out of China for your business?
Yes. So I think what you're referring to, Andrew, correct me, is what we would call the tank upgrade cycle that occurred two years ago that played through the industry a regulatory cycle just unique to China that's now since passed. So we're through that. What we do see is another cycle occurring around regulation for vapor recovery. So this is actually sequestering the vapor out of the gas nozzle and the dispenser so it doesn't go into the air.
We think that's a technology that is going to benefit us as we deploy our solution into China. But with that said, there's certainly still stress in the China market as investment in the five year plan goes to more non internal combustion type technology. We see that. I think our competitors see that. But we think that our focus here is around deploying more environmentally friendly technologies to help those C stores and gas stations upgrade.
So that's our focus in China. We also see opportunities in automation in where we don't play as much today in China than we do elsewhere in the world is in the point of sale and back office software systems. So we see some opportunities there as well for the portfolio.
I think with that, we are out of time. Aaron, this was fantastic. Really appreciate your finding the time to present to us. Look, we think volunteer is one of the more misunderstood stories in the market. And clearly, the event attendance, I think, is a testament to the fact that people are doing their homework.
So thank you very much. Hopefully, it was time well spent for you and it was a time well spent for the audience. And hope to speak to you soon. Thank you.
Thank you, Andrew. Great to see you again. Have a great day.
Thank you.