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Goldman Sachs Industrials and Materials Conference

Dec 4, 2024

Jerry Revich
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Good morning everyone. I'm Jerry Revich from Goldman Sachs. Really excited to have with us from Wabtec, John Olin, Chief Financial Officer, Kyra Yates, Head of Investor Relations. John, Kyra, thank you so much for joining us.

Kyra Yates
Head of Investor Relations, Wabtec

Thank you for having us.

John Olin
CFO, Wabtec

Thrilled to be here.

Jerry Revich
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

We're gonna run the conversation in a fireside chat format, and we'll open up for questions towards the end. You know, to start the conversation, John, your team has achieved your five-year targets two years early.

John Olin
CFO, Wabtec

Mm-hmm.

Jerry Revich
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

So, congratulations. Can you talk about what's played out ahead of expectations to enable that level of performance?

John Olin
CFO, Wabtec

I'd say, Jerry, that a lot of things have played out probably equally across that period of time, and I think to understand a little bit about the results that you've seen and us doing what we expect to do in five years and three years, it's really gaining a better understanding of how our company came together and in the way it came together, what opportunities it's left behind for us to mine, and I think that you're seeing the fruits of that, and what I mean by that is Wabtec is one of the oldest companies in America, 155 years old this year, and having said that, you'd think that a lot of the opportunity in an old industry and an old company would be mined, but the case is not so.

The way we came together is two multinationals coming together in a very short period of time, so the company in 2016 was about $2 billion. It doubled at an acquisition in late 2016, and then it doubled again in 2019 when we acquired GE's transportation business, so with that, I like to think of us as a 155-year-old, five-year startup, so kind of first things first. That's the way we've attacked the business. Not only in the second acquisition did we acquire 23,000 locomotive install bases around the world. We also acquired our CEO, Rafael Santana, who's got a view of how to integrate these companies. I think what you're seeing over the last several years is you know, first steps first as you think about a startup. I've kind of explained some of the performance that you're seeing.

But I think it's coming across the spectrum, all across our margin profile, whether it be from the pricing standpoint. Certainly, the cost standpoint has been the biggest driver of that. And as recent as this year, starting to look at how do we optimize that portfolio and shed ourselves of some businesses that aren't gonna take us to the future.

Jerry Revich
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Can we expand on that last comment in terms of what's the range of opportunity of those businesses? What's the margin profile, and what's the timing in terms of when you're gonna decide, you know, stay or go on those assets?

John Olin
CFO, Wabtec

Oh, on the things that we're looking at.

Jerry Revich
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Yeah.

John Olin
CFO, Wabtec

Yeah. So, again, in terms of first things first, we started to address some of the costs with Integration 2.0. And, just recently, earlier this year, we announced a portfolio optimization program. And, the first bite of that apple was $110 million of businesses that didn't fit in. Our company has come together. It has been a byproduct of many acquisitions. And, time gone by or something that just didn't keep up with the profile that we need and expect out of our assets. And so with that, we took that action and sold those businesses or exited them. And, they were very low profit margin, and therefore expanded our margins on some of that you're seeing in the results this year. And we think there's more of those opportunities to come.

Jerry Revich
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

And, John, on that last point, how much more? Another $110 million, that order of magnitude, or something more potentially?

John Olin
CFO, Wabtec

Going forward?

Jerry Revich
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Potentially, yeah.

John Olin
CFO, Wabtec

I'd say probably in the similar range.

Jerry Revich
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Similar range.

John Olin
CFO, Wabtec

To that.

Jerry Revich
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

And it's interesting to hear you folks talking about Integration 2.0, like you said, so.

John Olin
CFO, Wabtec

Mm-hmm.

Jerry Revich
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Many years after the acquisition, you know, and the company has had strong margin performance immediately.

John Olin
CFO, Wabtec

Mm-hmm.

Jerry Revich
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

When the acquisitions were made as well. Can you just expand on that? Because it's not often that you're finding cost reduction opportunities, you know, year five after an acquisition.

John Olin
CFO, Wabtec

It's fair enough. And that's true, Jerry. But again, think in terms of a 155-year-old, five-year startup, right? I've been with Wabtec three years now. And I came in and was seeing things that, you know, just didn't add up to me to be a 155-year-old company. And those things are largely an incredible amount of opportunity, not only on the cost side, but on bringing the company together, and continuing to drive some of the revenue synergies from the acquisition. And again, it's been an exercise in getting organized around what's first, what's most important, and how much can the organization handle. And I think that Integration 2.0 is a great example of that. So we promised $250 million of synergy coming out of the acquisition of GE Transportation. We got that a year and a half early.

We kinda looked and said, "Well, what's next?" And the opportunities were just very abundant. And we took as the first bite of that apple and said, "How much can we absorb?" Not how much opportunity that we had, but how much can we absorb with everything else that we're doing, all the innovation that we're bringing to market? And what can we do in terms of integration? Where was it gonna hit, what segments, and so on and so forth? And with that, Jerry, we ended up with a program of driving $75-$90 million. And we're ending that investment phase this month. And we're seeing a lot of that ramp coming in 2024. We'll expect more of it in 2025 until we get to our ongoing savings of the $75-$90 million.

All of that's coming in ahead of what we had anticipated when we put the program together. Right now, we're looking at, "Well, what's next?" I would say, you know, to your point, it's been five years. I would say that we have more opportunity today than we did when three years ago when we made the decision to do Integration 2.0. Why would that be? We've learned how to do it. A lot of it is looking at our assets around the world and some of them in tougher markets to adjust. I think we've gained a strong competency in how to become more efficient. Again, a tremendous number of assets to work on. We got 153 plants around the world, a fair amount of complexity.

And how do we reduce that complexity, tighten the system, and all in the name of driving margin without having to sell another locomotive or a transit system?

Jerry Revich
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Can you give us one or two examples that of the recent program just to help us get a feel for what's possible?

John Olin
CFO, Wabtec

Sure. Sure. We probably, out of the amount of savings, I would imagine that probably 50% of it is in our transit group. And another 25% of the revenue, about 50% of the savings. We had a facility in Germany. It wasn't doing what we needed it to do. Actually, it was a relatively new facility. The margin structure there wasn't there for us to be competitive. With that, we exited that facility, moved some of that product to India. We had other facilities in India and other into various areas in Europe. With that, we've driven a tremendous amount of profit improvement, larger than our brakes line in Europe.

Jerry Revich
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Very interesting. So, you know, initially, it sounds like a lot of the consolidation savings were in the GE Transportation part of the business. Now we're peeling back the onion and looking at legacy Wabtec.

John Olin
CFO, Wabtec

Yes. Oh, absolutely. Yep.

Jerry Revich
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Very interesting. And, John, you also mentioned that we feel like there's more opportunities today than three years ago, which is really interesting. So, can we count on $75-$90 million of annual cost improvement?

John Olin
CFO, Wabtec

You can be assured that we're looking at it real hard.

Jerry Revich
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Fascinating, and you know, as you look at the optimal level of doing business across the 153 plants.

John Olin
CFO, Wabtec

Mm-hmm.

Jerry Revich
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

You know, how many of them are in the, you know, Wabtec going forward first quarter?

John Olin
CFO, Wabtec

I think that again that goes with the fact that there's more opportunity today than three years ago. Maybe that's not the right way to say it. We can see that opportunity and see how we execute against that opportunity much better today than we did three years ago. We don't need that many facilities. We got excess capacity. In some of that, we don't need to be doing the products that we're doing because they're not delivering the mail, so to speak, in terms of the margins that we require. Again, it's just the next phase in how we continue to mature as a company we are today, not one of the three companies that we were, you know, five years ago.

Jerry Revich
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Very interesting. And, you know, in terms of the freight segment, world-class product, 26% margins, you know, attractive margins, other companies with your type of market position can have margins that are in the mid to high 30s. Is that feasible to get your freight business to, over time? Is that the blue sky scenario?

John Olin
CFO, Wabtec

We can't put a number on it. All we can say is that we got 30,000 people that wake up every morning wanting to make a better product and deliver a return on investment to our customers. I think that actually, Jerry, that might be a you know a place to spend a little bit of time is our business model. When you sell an asset that can last 20 to 30 years, you gotta figure out a way to get them to trade up earlier because 20 to 30 years is a hell of a long time to wait, right? Now we make a lot of money as that asset runs and all the service businesses that we're the services that we provide do it in digital and so on and so forth.

But the entire organization is geared and the engineering community is geared on how do we drive a return on investment for our customers. So most, most of the things that we sell have a strong return on investment. And what that means is let's take a locomotive, for example. If the market's not expanding, as we've not seen much expansion in the North American market, we still need to sell locomotives, right? And so to make that locomotive much better than we made it five years ago and certainly 20 years ago provides a strong return on investment for our customers. So that's not a straight replacement, a gratuitous act to buy a locomotive. It's a very strong return for them to do that. And we do that by becoming more efficient.

And when you're in the rail business, the areas of driving most efficiency is around fuel. And so our engines and our engine construct allows us to be able to drive more fuel efficiencies than our competition. And with that, today's engines are 5% more fuel efficient than the ones that they're replacing. That helps provide that return on investment to our customer as well as a fair profit to us.

Jerry Revich
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

And, you know, on that note, the locomotive upgrade program we should expand on. So you folks have done an outstanding job of adding value on locomotive rebuilds. So the mod solution you have for the older FDL locomotive, you've upgraded over 2,000 plus so far. How big is the installed base of FDL locomotives? And, you know, do you have a view on what proportion of that range? Who is likely to be upgraded over time?

John Olin
CFO, Wabtec

That fits in really well to the previous answer, right? We're always trying to make them better. What Jerry's talking about is you go back, what is it, Kyra? 2005, I believe, is we switch engines from what we call the FDL engine to the EVO engine. And in 2017, we developed a product called a modernization, which took advantage of a regulation that said as long as it's not 50% new, you can use the Tier 3 engine versus the new Tier 4 engines that came out about the same time. And with that, we came out with a product called FDL Advantage, which was a series of innovations that drove out 5% fuel efficiency.

Kyra Yates
Head of Investor Relations, Wabtec

With that, it helped that modernization program come together in which our customers make a strong, double-digit return on their investment, and we make a good profit on that. With that, there was about 8,000 of those FDL Advantage. I'm sorry, FDL engines out there. That was largely our Dash 8 and Dash 9s. Now, they're not all moddable, but the majority are. To your point, we've done in the couple thousand, a couple thousand range of them. So there's still thousands left. Now that was 2005. Next year in a month, it's gonna be 2025. Those are at the 20-year mark. Typically, when we look at modernization, we do overhauls. Overhauls happen around every eight years. Typically, on the third overhaul, an overhaul is very expensive.

It's a rebuild of the engine when it seems to be the sweet spot for doing a mod, right? So and that's in the 15- to 20-year range. So anyhow, we're driving a new technology. It's out in test. And where we had the FDL Advantage, we now have the EVO Advantage. And we believe we can save up to 7% fuel on those. And again, that gives us an opportunity to start to trade up those locomotives to modernize them or to swap them out for new because of the fuel savings. And it's not only the engine and the fuel that we're doing that on. It's all aspects of their business and how do we help out on labor. We do a lot of digital products for our customers. We got onboard electronics. We've got a collision avoidance system called PTC that we're the industry's provider for that, and then network optimization on how do they run their assets better in Movement Planner and dispatch systems and the like.

Jerry Revich
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

You know, it hasn't been 15 years yet since you've offered the mods. But what proportion of your customers do you think will opt to get them rebuilt again?

John Olin
CFO, Wabtec

Part of that, Jerry, is how many do they have? And every railroad's in a different situation in terms of the power they need and the power that they have in the park, right, and what's usable in the park. So some of our customers are very short on power. And if they don't have things that they can mod or the time to give them to us to mod them, it takes a while to do that, then they're more interested in buying new, right? Some customers prefer new over mods. But to answer your question, over the last five years, I would, I would, a rough guess is say about 80% have been mods. So it is an opportunity to, again, take an asset that they already own, punch it up to life and get the air emissions to what today's current standards are.

With that, there's more fuel efficiency, less fuel use. Our Tier 4 engines, which are the new ones that we sell today, are focused on eliminating pollution, NOx and SOx in particular, particulate matter. But in any event, each customer's a little bit different in what they're looking for, but the majority has been mods.

Jerry Revich
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

You know, you folks, I think started shipping maybe 2014, ramped up over the next couple of years on the mod side. Do you think, is it a foregone conclusion that every first mod's gonna come back to be a second mod, you know, when we hit 2030, 2031?

John Olin
CFO, Wabtec

Yeah. Again, that hasn't, you know, been seen yet because they're not that old.

Jerry Revich
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Yeah.

John Olin
CFO, Wabtec

But we'll have to take a look at that. but we've got a lot more others in the park to work on or in their fleets to work on before we're thinking about the second turn of a mod. and that's still probably seven, eight years away.

Jerry Revich
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Yeah. Okay. And you spoke about the Evolution Series. So really interesting, the 7% fuel economy improvement. The FDL mod program was really successful, and that was with 5% higher fuel economy. In terms of the fleet population that we're looking at that was produced for you folks between 2005 and 2017, or 2015, excuse me, how big is that compared to the 8,000 we spoke for?

John Olin
CFO, Wabtec

A little bit north of the 8,000.

Jerry Revich
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

And in terms of once that solution's available, so we're out with, you know, a good chunk of that installed base that's gonna be more than 15 years old, do you folks have the capability to massively ramp up mod deliveries once it becomes commercially available? It sounds like it could be. Could be a coiled spring if, based on the timing.

John Olin
CFO, Wabtec

Yeah. Well, we certainly have plenty of productivity on the local production side, in particular in North America.

Jerry Revich
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

And am I correct in thinking about it that, you know, initially, you're gonna have essentially five years' worth of demand?

John Olin
CFO, Wabtec

No. I don't know if that's necessarily the way to think about it. The way our customers think about it is if I get a good return on investment, I'm interested, right? And so having the EVO Advantage and that opportunity to put in 7% savings is the opportunity to put that formula together. I think that what they're gonna look at is are there returns there? And does that fit into their current needs? And with that, we'll see what volume comes out of it. But it is a very large pool of assets out there that are not nearly as efficient, sufficient as the ones today.

Jerry Revich
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Have you shared the pricing paradigm with customers yet?

John Olin
CFO, Wabtec

No. No. We're still in the form of railroads testing it for us. They test everything.

Jerry Revich
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Fair enough. In terms of, you had mentioned, you know, roughly 80% of deliveries have been mods in.

John Olin
CFO, Wabtec

Mm-hmm.

Jerry Revich
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

When you think of mods plus new, you folks have spoken about.

John Olin
CFO, Wabtec

In North America?

Jerry Revich
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Yes. Yep.

John Olin
CFO, Wabtec

Outside, mainly all new.

Jerry Revich
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Yeah. You spoke about, John, over the past couple of years, mod plus new deliveries have grown at double digit.

John Olin
CFO, Wabtec

Mm-hmm.

Jerry Revich
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

For the company? Can you talk to us about your backlog? How long is that double-digit growth?

John Olin
CFO, Wabtec

Yeah.

Jerry Revich
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Sustainable based on what you've seen?

John Olin
CFO, Wabtec

We've got a fair amount of locos in backlog. You know, internationally, they've always been sold on long-term contracts, largely sold on long-term contracts. I think it's a little bit relatively newer in North America. We do have a fair amount in backlog over the next two or three years to continue to drive our revenues higher. You know, and typically every quarter, every other quarter, we have a pretty big order. Most recently, we had a $600 million order for new, and then some international orders, one in Kazakhstan on a $2 billion MOU, about $400 million of that. One that we're very thrilled about is a mining project in Guinea, between Rio Tinto and the Chinese government, or the Chinese, where we've garnered a huge order out of that.

Jerry Revich
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

And in terms of the conversation we had about a month ago with you folks and Rafael, and Rafael characterized the environment for international demand as the strongest the company has seen.

John Olin
CFO, Wabtec

Mm-hmm.

Jerry Revich
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

In five years. So you've outlined some of the awards and MOUs that have come out. It sounds like there's a pipeline beyond that, given those comments.

John Olin
CFO, Wabtec

Yeah. When you look at our business, our largest market for locomotives is North America, our largest single market. International's a similar size, but across many, many geographies. I think when we think about North America, there's not been a lot of underlying growth, right? Carload growth has been pretty flat for the last 10 or 15 years, and with that, our business has grown strong. And again, that is the need to replace the locomotive, and with some of the purchasing patterns of the Class I over the last decade, they've been probably buying under the replacement rate. So that leaves a lot of opportunity for us to continue to grow in a market that might not be growing underlying. Now, when we look at international, it is completely different, Jerry. Those markets are growing at a very good clip.

Our market shares are growing, right? In the U.S., we've got the replacement, and our market shares have been strong as well, so internationally, that represents a tremendous opportunity for the company to grow. It's not only selling in at a higher rate, and the installed base of our international business is growing at almost a 5% CAGR, and that means everything that's running is growing at 5%. As these markets get more scale, they draw on exponentially more products from us. Once our service networks get much more defined, the monitoring equipment on the railroads and on the rail systems goes deeper. The digital products, onboard technologies and PTC networks, signaling networks, and so on and so forth, start to come into play with that scale, and that's what we're seeing in Australia and Brazil and certainly in Kazakhstan. So it's a much deeper penetration of all of our things, with those, with that growth of the installed base internationally.

Jerry Revich
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

And, you know, that's a good segue to talk about your service network because when you folks come into a new market, you provide the service levels that Wabtec is known for. So initially, your margin profile's lower in new countries. You mentioned Australia, Brazil, Kazakhstan.

John Olin
CFO, Wabtec

Mm-hmm.

Jerry Revich
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Also, India. Is it fair to think of those countries as having full benefit of absorption now that product's been out in the field?

John Olin
CFO, Wabtec

Yeah. Yeah.

Jerry Revich
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

For a couple of years?

John Olin
CFO, Wabtec

I think when you think of us and the freight side, and again, we've got a transit side we haven't talked about, but on the freight side, you think of vast lands and mining, you're gonna think of Wabtec, and not only for locomotives but also mining equipment that we sell. Same technologies that pull all that weight from a dead stop also help a mining truck the size of a two-story house get out of a hole, but in any event, those markets are more mature for us, the growth aspects are much more pronounced than they are in North America, but we do have those networks set up and getting a lot of full benefit, still growing, but major benefit.

To move into another market, sometimes yes, it requires an investment in that market to get to a point where you're putting the service elements in, and they're starting to get interested in the digital because they have the scale. But the markets I mentioned are much more well underway. Still great opportunity market share with regards to PTC and onboard products and digital products. But we've got the scale in those markets to make it work.

Jerry Revich
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

In those markets, John, how much of a tailwind is it that you folks are the industry leader in Tier 4? Because, at least on the on-highway side, a lot of those markets will be moving to Tier 4 equivalent for on-highway. Some of them don't have on the books yet Tier 4 for off-highway. But, is it an advantage for you folks, because the customers in those areas know.

John Olin
CFO, Wabtec

You're talking the mining equipment?

Jerry Revich
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Locomotives.

John Olin
CFO, Wabtec

Locomotives, we don't sell Tier 4 internationally. They're not regulated. That's only U.S., that has the Tier 4.

Jerry Revich
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Right. So the question is, does, if I'm a customer in Kazakhstan and I'm bidding you against, let's say, Electro-Motive Diesel, I would think I would be more likely to pick Wabtec because I'm only thinking about not only the current locomotive but the locomotive in 10 years that I'm gonna be buying. Is that a factor or not?

John Olin
CFO, Wabtec

I think that is absolutely a factor. I don't know if that's necessarily a Tier 4. I mean, I think the first consideration is the reliability and durability of our locomotives is better than what the alternatives are. And the fuel efficiency is significantly better. So with all of those aspects, I think is their first decision point. And then the service network comes into play, right? You know, when you're talking about these vast lands, if a locomotive goes down, it screws everything up for a while.

And so the reliability that we need to have and that service network to keep everything running and all the forward-looking things, all the monitors that we have, an engine sends off signals, millions of signals a year to our command centers in Europe and in the United States so that we know when to get it off the rail and get it fixed, to make sure that that thing is continuing to run. I think all of those are a little bit more. But when we talk about as we move into the future, and maybe, Jerry, it's better to talk about our strategy to move to a more carbon-free environment. And I think it's based on a two pr not I think. It's based on a two-pronged approach.

The first one is to take the existing assets, the 23,000 locomotives that we have out there, and move them from where they are today to near zero, right? Enable the existing technology, the existing equipment, the existing infrastructures that our customers have invested and get them to near zero. The second prong is how do we develop and lead in the decarbonization of rail through zero emissions? And that is the battery technology. We've just commercialized the first heavy haul locomotive in the world, great application in Australia, never needs to be charged, never needs to be fueled in any way. It's all self-generating, right? And it drives that return on investment for a customer even though they're paying, quite a bit more for that locomotive. And then the other is on fuel cells.

But let's go over here on this side when we talk about how do we get a customer to net zero. Again, part of our competitive advantage in a four-stroke engine is it allows it to take pure liquid hydrogen. It's capable of doing biofuels and renewable fuels. We've got trains running on natural gas or LNG around the world. So depending on which source you have and the quality of that source, our engines are capable of doing that. And there's no changeover and so on and so forth. And again, that allows them to continue to use the assets they've already invested in and maybe even more so. It doesn't require a big change to the wayside. Hydrogen, liquid hydrogen's a little bit different. But that would require some investment on their part.

And there's also this concept that the railroads very much like on that of reversibility. So if I don't have biofuels, or I'm traveling through in the future when there is liquid hydrogen available, I'm traveling through Denver and they don't have liquid hydrogen, I just fill it up with diesel and I continue on and complete my mission. But it is reversible and no changeovers. Once you start to talk about fuel cells, no hydrogen, no go, right? It just, it's just there. So trying to help the industry figure out how do we move in the most efficient way and get the most out of the assets that they've already bought from us.

Jerry Revich
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Let's talk about transit next. You folks have improved margins steadily in that line of business and, you know, from the beginning of our conversation as well as what we've spoken in the past. Sounds like there's really optimism in the organization about taking margins structurally higher. Can you talk about, John, what exactly is going on in terms of the way you folks are operating? So, we heard about restructuring. Can you talk about how you're approaching bids and other changes that you're making in the business and talk about. The margin opportunity?

John Olin
CFO, Wabtec

Yeah. Again, the footprint in our transit business is pretty widespread, more international, but a lot of plants and a lot of opportunity to continue to integrate those businesses. And I think that's evidenced by the fact that Integration 2.0, about half the savings, if not a little bit more, are. They're overshared in the savings opportunity. And I think looking forward, we'd have that as well. So from a cost standpoint, I think there's still opportunity, from integration standpoint. There's also opportunity on just some of the blocking and tackling from an operations standpoint on lean.

And an example of that, which includes the entire company, not only transit but more pronounced in transit, is that today, about 60% of our revenue is generated. Let's say 40% of our revenue is generated by plants that are not following lean in any concerted way, shape, or form. Now, three years ago, that was 60%. And again, it goes back to this concept of how can a 155-year-old company not have all the revenue, you know, manufactured by plants that are, you know, driving lean in those facilities? And that goes back to it's a five-year startup, right? We have a lot of opportunity. Some of that margin that you've seen growth in backward-looking is because of that. We still have that same opportunity forward-looking 'cause 40% still isn't there. And again, a fair amount of that in our transit business.

So those are the cost elements. We also, from a margin standpoint, have the opportunity to grow because of the volume growth and just leverage the fixed asset structure that we have. The second area is, in particular in transit, is to be more selective on the contracts that we do take. It's a project business. We're bidding on them. And, we're trying to move away from bidding on things for the sake of bidding and making sure that we've got a advantage to that and the technology that we bring, and working a little bit prior to that, process to make sure that our technologies, which we believe are better than, most out there, are specced into there so that we're driving higher margin, bids.

And we're seeing that on our backlog as we look at the profitability of our backlog, which is forward-looked, from here versus a year ago. We've got more margin built into those by some of the contracts that we're taking. And again, pricing for the value that we're delivering, in the technologies that we offer.

Jerry Revich
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

And John, what's been the organization's performance of delivering to contract in backlog? What have the variances been?

John Olin
CFO, Wabtec

In terms of what's in backlog and what gets executed?

Jerry Revich
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Yeah. So in other words, you know, so the sales team gets evaluated based on the anticipated margin. And then when things hit the factory, you.

John Olin
CFO, Wabtec

Yes.

Jerry Revich
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

We can have positive or negative variances.

John Olin
CFO, Wabtec

Yeah. So, you know, at times when we talk about productivity in a quarter, when we talk about how good execution was, there's a lot of products that we deliver around the world, a lot of complexity, and a lot of different business models. But as we execute those, we've got the orders in the backlog, and it's just a matter of getting at them. So we know when the schedules are due. And sometimes we do a better job, you know, than others. But over the last couple of years, our execution has been fantastic, which means that we're getting into the backlog when they're due and on time and delivering those products. We're a little bit maybe somewhat unique in the fact that we do have a large backlog.

60% of our revenue is backed up for a long-term contract or contracts that are over a year. That leaves 25 to about 30% of our business being flow businesses. With that, we have good visibility into the future. In any particular year, when we start a year, we have about 70% of our revenue set for that year. Then again, Jerry goes back to how do we execute against that? Can we execute against all of it? We've been doing very good and a very high percentage of that. The rest of the 30% comes in flow businesses, which are largely parts and some of our railcar business that is on a much more shorter cycle. But overall, the backlog is $23 billion, which represents, you know, two and a half years of overall sales. But we keep a strong eye on our 12-, 18-, and 24-month backlog to make sure that we're building that growth in. So right now, most of the company is working on how to fill the bucket of growth in 2026. And our focus is on executing what we've got in orders in 2025.

Jerry Revich
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

And in terms of the profile of the transit business, in margin backlog, how much higher are they compared to what you're doing?

John Olin
CFO, Wabtec

That I can't provide. I can't tell you they're higher.

Jerry Revich
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Yeah. Okay. And in terms of the types of contracts that you're bidding on, can you just spend a minute? Is it certain geographies that you're getting more business from or just.

John Olin
CFO, Wabtec

Yeah.

Jerry Revich
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

How do you get that higher quality backlog?

John Olin
CFO, Wabtec

So let's spend a second on what we're talking about in transit. We do not make locomotives or the power units in our transit business. What we make are component systems, and they are such as brake systems, door systems, HVAC, passenger information. We make the pantographs. The world's leader in pantographs, the electrical aspect of how to bring electricity from a catenary down into the train. So all of those elements come into when a car builder, which is an assembler of all these systems, and that is Siemens, Alstom, CAF, and Stadler, are our main customers from an OE standpoint. And we sell into them those components. And then the other 60% of our business is on the aftermarket, which we largely sell into the operators to drive that forward.

Jerry Revich
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

And the business that we're winning that's higher margin?

John Olin
CFO, Wabtec

Oh, I'm sorry. Yes, so what our focus is on, the businesses that are higher margin and that have a quicker turn from the OE product, which tends to be at a lower margin, to the aftermarket, so some of them are immediate, right? When you think in terms of brakes or pantographs, right? They have a consumable piece, those brake pads, and we make the friction aspects. And we just bought a company that makes the carbon strips for the pantographs. So we take all of that into consideration and then the technologies that we bring to bear. And other things that we're looking in bidding on that doesn't have that quicker turn into the higher margin service, or lower OE, and don't make sense for the capital that we're.

Operator

Your participation in this conference has been terminated by the host. Goodbye.

John Olin
CFO, Wabtec

Returns to our shareholders in the form of share repurchases. And, we're not looking to build cash on our balance sheet. If we don't have good M&A, we'll return it through repurchases, evidenced by the first three quarters of this year. We didn't have any M&A, and we returned $1 billion of cash in share repurchases.

Jerry Revich
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Super. That's all the time we have. John, Kyra, thank you so much for joining us.

John Olin
CFO, Wabtec

Thank you, Jerry. And thank you, everyone, for your interest and, some of your investment in, Wabtec. If you need any other information, please give Kyra a ring. She's the best in the business. And, we'll get you all the information you need to make a decision.

Jerry Revich
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Thanks.

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