Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us for this next session. My name is Nathan Rich. I cover the dental space here at Goldman Sachs. Very happy to have Dentsply Sirona with us today. Quick introductions, and then we'll jump right into questions. To my right, Simon Campion, Chief Executive Officer, and then Glenn Coleman on the far right, Chief Financial Officer. We have Andrea Daley from Investor Relations here in the audience with us. I think maybe to start, Simon I think looking back at the history of Dentsply, it's a company that's gone through a period of challenges. Y ou've kind of come in and framed a turnaround strategy.
I guess, could you maybe take us through the key elements of that to start, and what you see as maybe the biggest opportunities, to kind of change the business going forward, and, kind of getting to a more consistent, kind of growth for the business?
Sure. Listen, I think we can put everything in a fairly simple context here. The work that we're embarking on is really overdue integration between Dentsply and Sirona. You know, that merger was consummated, what, it was 6 or so years ago. I think it's fair to say that there was never any integration work done, either in efficiencies, in central functions, or in processes. That's work that's all underway right now that we have that we've kicked off.
We've also, kicked off, or not kicked off, we've executed and we're running the company this way, a new operating model, which aligns Dentsply and Sirona. Previously, they were effectively operated as 2 separate companies, with 2 operating models. Now we have 1 operating model. We have stand-up meetings every Monday, 2-day management reviews every month. We run the business on KPIs that cover the usual things that you all are interested in, the financial pieces, but then other KPIs around quality, around operations, backorder, continuous improvement targets, turnover, value of the R&D funnel.
That is the transformation work that's underway, in addition to the bigger stuff, such as SKU rationalization, portfolio assessment, and as we announced, some time ago, ERP.
Now I would just say, the key elements of our plan really start with the restructuring program.
Yeah.
We announced at the beginning of this year, we expect to have $200 million of annualized savings when we fully implement that plan, which will be sometime in mid-2024. Not all of that's gonna flow through to the bottom line because we are reinvesting back into the business around our commercial organization, in particular, our US implants team, doing a lot more around clinical education, investing more in DSOs. A key for us as we look forward is driving, faster top line growth in that 3%-5% range consistently. We have more opportunities around the whole margin improvement story. In terms of the SKU rationalization that Simon had mentioned, we think there's opportunities to actually simplify our manufacturing footprint.
In fact, we've already announced 2 plant closures. I think there will be more opportunity for us as we go forward to optimize the network once we eliminate tens of thousands of SKUs, which have really been identified in our endo and Restorative businesses today. Lots of opportunity. We're also investing in the ERP system, going to one platform, and again, that gets back to Simon's point around not integrating the businesses. We are moving forward with SAP as our vendor of choice. It's gonna take us probably 3-4 years to get to one platform, but there's gonna be huge benefits on the back end and efficiencies that will even drive more margin improvement over time.
I guess if I look at the history, Dentsply Sirona has been at about $4 billion of revenue since 2017 and really hasn't grown dollars since then. I guess from your standpoint, what will it take to get to that 3%-5% growth level more consistently from either, product port standpoint or market standpoint?
A couple of things. You know, Glenn touched on some of them already. There are areas of our commercial teams globally that we're underinvested in, implants being one. There are other areas, the dental community is, it turns out it's very much a, like a family type environment, right? They enjoy being educated together and working together. We backed away from clinical education, quite frankly, which is really important to the dental community. We've begun to reinvest in that space. Just in the past couple of weeks, we had 150 endodontic KOLs at a meeting in Europe, and we also had almost 500 implant dentists at a meeting in Greece.
We are doubling down on getting back, investing in the commercial team, changing the commission plan, investing in clinical education, and trying to create our own demand. I think with the increased diligence about the way we run the company, that will bode well for us to begin to reignite the sales growth, the revenue growth of this organization. The portfolio work, we mentioned it recently. We're doing an external assessment on our portfolio. You know, we need to stop asking ourselves, "Is our portfolio good enough?" Talk to customers. We have just embarked on, an external assessment of our portfolio, so that we can determine, do we have gaps in that?
We will be able to make an informed decision about should we invest in remediating those gaps, either internally, or through external acquisition at some point in the future.
Got it.
For us to grow in this 3%-5% range, we need to win in aligners and implants.
Yeah.
That's where we're really focusing a lot of our effort, along with the whole digital platforms. If you look at what we're doing in the aligner space, we've made really good progress. We've been growing double digits. Under-penetrated market. We think we're capturing more market share as we're going forward here. We feel really good about the momentum we have in the aligners business. Implants, we've been lacking, so we've been losing market share for the reasons we talked about earlier. I think we've done a lot of things now to move it in the right direction, and you should see some sequential improvement going forward here in the implants business, and then getting to year-over-year growth, and then hopefully year-over-year market growth.
I think if we do that, these are markets that are growing above the 3%-5% range. Then take the digital platform and the whole scanning space and what we could do there, and you say, "Well, why can't you even be growing faster than 3%-5%, right?" Our view is, let's get there first, and hopefully, we can get to the higher end of that range. You know, we'll see what happens with the rest of the portfolio, with the consumables or other areas that are growing in that 1%-2% range on an annual basis. We feel really good about our plans here, and hopefully, you'll start to see more progress even later this year.
Importantly, this organizational restructuring and transformation that's underway, we're bringing Dentsply and Sirona truly together for the first time, that's enabling us to look at the investment we make in R&D. If there's a space that's where our portfolio is pretty robust and it's growing at 2%, then we don't need any doubles or triples, right? We can pare back on investment in R&D to invest in spaces that are more evident, that we either have a gap or there's an opportunity with greater growth, greater margin, greater access. That's the work that.
Mm-hmm
We've completed a lot of that work, now internally with the assessment of the funnel. Now we have to truly assess how our, how our portfolio stacks up against competition and against what our customers want.
Great. I wanna get into that, but maybe.
Yeah
The last one on the long-term target. Glenn, the $3, I think if you just run rate, the restructuring savings into next year, you get something in the mid-$2s . Can you talk about, like, after you realize that kind of first round of restructuring, how much of the incremental delta between kind of the mid-$2s and that $3 range is additional cost savings actions versus growth in the business and leveraging that?
Yeah, no. We're gonna lay this out in much more detail at our November Investor Day. November 9, we have an Investor Day. We're gonna lay out the specifics and the roadmap to the $3 by 2026. I think the restructuring, I'd be a bit careful to say, well, if you kind of take the additional savings and say that's gets you to the mid $2 range, we are gonna have to continue to invest some of this back into the business, to make sure that we do get the top line growth that we're expecting, to make sure we have the right compliance programs in the organization, make sure we have the right systems and so forth.
Yes, a big way towards the $3 will be the restructuring benefits and getting the full year captured by the time we finish this in 2024. Most of the work is behind us. You know, the U.S., most of the international markets are done. Europe is the one big area that, we have to go through the workers' council process. It's a co-determination process, and it's a lot of work. I mean, it's 20 workers' councils in 13 countries, it's not just one body that you're dealing with. We think we'll get through that. We'll see a big leap forward on the savings coming from the restructuring. I think a big part of it's gonna be leverage. As we get faster top line growth, we'll get leverage.
The SKU work is going to play into our overall savings, not just in terms of simplifying the portfolio and getting out of lower margin products, but also simplifying the facilities and manufacturing footprint piece. There's a big opportunity for us around distribution as well. We have close to 60 distribution centers. We think that's too many, and we have a better way to go to market relative to serving our customers and serving our distributors. There's lots of opportunity. We'll lay out the specific building blocks in November.
Okay.
We have a detailed plan that we think is gonna get us to where we have targeted by 2026.
Great, that's helpful. Maybe moving to the end market and just kind of what you're seeing more real time, I think you've highlighted pretty stable patient traffic that's continued into 2Q.
Yeah.
Can you talk about, we've gotten, I guess, a lot of questions on, how consumers might prioritize their spending in this environment, and what impact that would have on traffic to the dental practice. Also, you kind of have the unique exposure with the Byte business, where you do have a D2C business. C ould you also talk about what you're seeing from an elective procedure standpoint?
Firstly, our Q2 numbers reflected our belief that there would be slight improvement in sequential improvement in revenue and EPS.
Yeah.
That's where our Q2 was at we mentioned before that, rather than rely on third-party information about, end market performance and customer sentiment, that we would do our own work, which isn't that novel a thought for myself and Glenn. We started that work in February, and then we did it again in April. We had almost 1,600 global respondents to the April survey. What we did see was a slight improvement in sentiment around patient traffic and consumable utilization in dental practices, and that was around the world. The main areas were U.S., big countries in Europe and Australia and New Zealand.
There continued to be conservatism and reticence around capital investments. In the U.S., it was 1 in 4 dentists were concerned about investing significant money in capital. In Australia, for example, it was 1 in 3. That hadn't got any worse between February and April. We do know that, somewhere in the $20,000 range, anything $20,000 or less, dentists generally fund purchases themselves. Anything above that, they go and they get a loan for it. You know, Australia, for example, saw 10 monthly increases in the interest rate, and so their conservatism is perhaps not a surprise.
You know, with respect to our Byte business, we, as Glenn mentioned earlier on, with, extremely strong performance in Q1 in both SureSmile and Byte. Thus far in Q2, demand has been steady for our direct-to-consumer business. So far, I wouldn't, raise the flag of victory at any point in time here, but it seems to be holding pretty robustly right now.
Based on the survey, the results you just communicated, so pretty similar trends across, like, the major geographies, US, Europe, and Australia?
Yeah, probably, a bit, a bit heightened around the capital, as we said in Australia. I think in Europe, it's probably similarly heightened, but not one in three.
Got it.
Yeah, we have some large markets, obviously, in Europe, Germany.
Yeah
The second largest country by revenue outside the U.S. You know, we look at some of these markets, we are seeing, some pressure on the equipment side and customers deferring decisions on the larger ticket items. You know, we factored a lot of that conservatism into our, forward guidance. So, I think nothing is really different from what we anticipated. It's still a challenging market, though, when you think about equipment, but patient traffic remains steady, which is a very good sign.
Great. I wanted to ask on China as well, just given a lot of moving pieces in that market. I think, as the country's kind of stayed open, the, dental traffic has been relatively stable. I was curious if that's sort of the general sense that you've gotten. Can you maybe talk about your business? 'Cause, you saw a very significant decline in China last year. You're dealing with the impact of the VBP program this year. I think you still, despite that, guided for modest growth. Maybe just kind of how that plays out over the course of the year.
Yeah. I'll try to paint the picture of China and what we're seeing. In 2021, our China business was over $200 million in sales, and to your point, we were down close to 50% in 2022 due to a number of factors. Obviously, the COVID lockdowns, VBP, where it wasn't implemented, but obviously, a lot of the dealers stopped buying product, knowing there was price reductions coming, and our own internal issues relative to the investigation. We saw a sharp falloff in 2022, and 25% of that business is implants, which is affected by VBP. Q1, we were down about 30%, and this was our last really tough comp quarter, and we really didn't see much of a pickup in most of the first quarter, although we saw some positive signs as we exited in March.
As you mentioned on the earnings call, in April, we saw some very positive trends. The volume really picking up on the implant side. We saw some favorable mix in terms of more value implants versus premium implants, and we did not discount as much on the value side. From a pricing perspective, that was good. Some of the headwinds that we were anticipating there may be less than we kinda had indicated and modeled. As we've gone forward for the rest of Q2, I'm not gonna say too much, but things are pointing in the right direction, I'll say, and we feel very good about what we're seeing.
The equipment market in China is no different than other parts of the world, though, so the equipment market in China is still a challenge, so we need to factor that into the overall expectations for China. As we look at the year now, I would say we expect to see Q2, a nice sequential improvement over Q1, return to growth, most likely in Q2, and for the full year, expecting to be slightly higher than 2022, which is actually a pretty big step up when you think about being down 30% in Q1, right? We have to make that up. I think all things are pointing in the right direction.
Unless there's some unforeseen thing that happens there, we feel really good about what we're seeing there, and we expect China to be a nice growth market for us beyond 2023.
Got it. Okay. Maybe wanted to talk about the implant business and the work you've done there. I think, it seems like one of the bigger opportunities for the company, given that it has underperformed for, a period of years. I guess you recently, I think, completed a salesforce expansion. I guess, how do you think about getting this business back to more sustainable growth?
Well, I think, yes, some of my earlier answers are. I'll probably repeat them.
Yeah
A little bit here, right? It's, salesforce expansion, to make sure there are more feet on the street. Adjustment of commission plans so that sales teams are getting paid to grow, not getting paid to show up. You know, investment in education, I would say. Education, both internal education of our sales teams, to make sure that they can go and have a competent clinical discussion with their customers. And then finally, the clinical education piece, which is critical in this space. You know, implants is the most clinically significant, shall we say, part of the dental industry.
When a new face shows up at an implant clinic, they have to convince that implantologist to try or use our products and then influence the referral network as well. It's not a light switch that we go in and turn on. There's a process that takes a number of months as they build credibility with customers and with their referral base. You know, so far, we had all our team in again recently for further training in the implant space.
We're doing the external assessment on our portfolio, so back to my R&D comments earlier , if we have a gap in implants, we will now have, we expect to have funds freed up to be able to invest disproportionately in our implant space. That's the decision we want to make. I think the SKU work that Glenn already alluded to. When we eliminate SKUs, you eliminate the requirement to do maintenance on those SKUs. That frees up more money to invest disproportionately in areas that are faster growing, more profitable, and implants is definitely one of those. To my comment on the very first question, implants is a key performance indicator that we measure every month, and we have some interesting discussions about that particular KPI.
I guess, you know, you kind of touched on it, but just would be curious to get your thoughts on the breadth of the portfolio you have in implants right now, if you feel like it's where it needs to be from both a premium and value?
You know, I am not the best person to answer that question, right? That's why we have these external people coming on board to speak to customers around the world, who are going to answer that exact question. Because I don't want to answer and go, "Yes, we have a great portfolio." It's not in my eyes. That, I can't answer that question and be confident. It needs to be the customers to understand, to communicate to us the gaps. I'll tell you, we do have a robust premium and a robust, value-based portfolio. Our value-based co- portfolio is growing very nicely. The pressure that we experience is in our premium segment. Glenn mentioned the performance in China, particularly on the value space.
We have a robust portfolio. Is it robust enough to compete with the Straumann of the world? We don't know yet. I expect to have the answer over the summer, and then we can begin to invest actually in those gaps when and where they exist.
Great. One other thing, CAD/CAM, because that's another category that's gone through a lot of change. Dentsply Sirona had kind of been the leader in that space, but we've seen a lot of competition come in. I'd be curious just to get your view on how you're looking at that category long term from a growth standpoint, and then also how you're planning to position your business relative, to the competitive set that's out there now.
Yeah, sure. We have, again, a robust portfolio, I think, in CAD/CAM from, two, 3D X-ray, to the scanners, to the mills, and to the printers. We certainly do invest heavily on the R&D side around that, and, more recently, particularly around software and the offering that we have with DS Core, which we think is going to help us be transformative in the CAD/CAM space, particularly as we see the continued importance and heightened importance of DSOs, particularly in the U.S. market. We think DS Core can help them achieve their goal, their efficiency goals and their treatment goals.
on our scanners in particular, we want to be victorious in our scanner business. You know, typically or historically, we have been priced at the high end of the market, and in this environment, as we spoke to earlier, that causes a bit of undue pressure. We did release a more value-based Primescan in September of last year. You know, across our business, we don't make decisions without testing them, so we have tested, do we need to adjust the price point on Primescan Connect in Europe? We saw a robust response in terms of volume to that slight price adjustment. We're likely to adjust our prices on that to drive volume in.
We are also, something that we haven't been good at in the past, is we are in a unique position. We can bundle. We should be able to bundle stuff with our capital, right? Bundle aligners, bundle implants, bundle consumables, where we have a luxurious position in that regard, we're doing a lot of work right now on how can we bundle more to get more scanners and more CAD/CAM into the marketplace. Finally, there's a lot of debate right now about milling and Printing. We think they're complementary and synergistic. You know, if you want a permanent crown, then you need to mill it.
I think this Printing is a great technology that has its place, but the material science is not there yet to be able to 3D print a permanent crown for a patient. And I think the very fact that the labs that produce permanent crowns, they don't 3D print, they mill them. So milling, Printing has a space. In time, it may overtake milling, but today, the capability of the materials is not there yet. But we've had really robust feedback on our Primeprint, and we think it's complementary to the entire portfolio of CAD/CAM products that we have
Great. I just maybe wanted to follow up on bundling. I think it's, something that manufacturers in this space have tried to bundle capital equipment and consumables. I'd say probably with mixed success at best. I guess, you know, coming from outside the industry, is there maybe a more unique perspective that you can bring on, maybe a different way to go about that might resonate more?
Yeah, we think we have, we have some levers to pull. We, done it in the past. We have some people on our team who have done it in the past, so. Again, we're gonna pilot these things.
Yeah
in certain geographies. You know, on the SKU rationalization, we're piloting SKU rationalization in 3 different geographies right now, both direct and indirect. We don't wanna make a seat-of-the-pants decisions about our business, so we're piloting, we're testing. If and when it works, we suspect it will work, then we will roll it out. We piloted the pricing program, and that's worked, so we're gonna roll it out. We will pilot bundling, and if it works, we will roll that out, too. We're being very diligent with the, with how we run our company.
Got it. Just maybe 3D Printing, just given the focus on that product and the potential there. Obviously, maybe a ways to go from a technical perspective to kind of get to where it would need to be. You have a 3D printer, maybe how are you going to market with that now? What, maybe what do you see the future of that product potentially being?
Well, listen, we're aligning it with where we've been successful in the chairside business. There are, those customers are our primary focus right now. We're also investing on behind R&D on our 3D printer around the material science piece of it. We are not waiting for someone else to come up with a solution here. Finally, it is wrapped up in DS Core too. W e are not launching any new products that don't have the capability to be interoperable with the rest of our CAD/CAM solutions and with DS Core.
Great. Maybe going into ClearAligner next. You know, SureSmile's done really well, as you mentioned, Glenn, earlier.
Mm-hmm.
I guess maybe is there a part of the market or, what's maybe resonating the most that has allowed you to kind of continue to post double-digit growth in that business? Where do you feel like sort of the long-term potential is for SureSmile?
Yeah, no, we feel like we got really good momentum with SureSmile. We've been growing double digits pretty consistently over the last couple of quarters. It's still relatively small when you think about how big it is to our overall business. I t's around $150 million.
Yeah
in sales, but we are expanding geographically. We're using a lot of clinical evidence to support why SureSmile is a better product than others on the market. There's clinical data that suggests that our product requires fewer refinements, fewer revisions, and obviously, this is a good thing from a customer and a patient perspective. We're really pushing hard on this clinical data that we have, and I think it's making a difference in most markets around the globe.
It's a business and an area that we're going after hard, and, right now, we're focused really on the GP side. We are also investing in this space, so every one of our ortho reps in the U.S. will have a scanner going forward, which was not the case in the past. When we talk about commercial investments, it's people, it's education.
It's also giving them the tools, like demo equipment, that they can go in, show the scanner, and we think that's gonna drive more demand for our products as we go forward. We're really excited about SureSmile and equally excited about Byte-.
Yeah
Our direct-to-consumer business, which has done exceptionally well. You know, what we're seeing here is a situation where we're doing a better job of funnel management, really looking at the quality of customers in the funnel, targeting a smaller customer base, and converting them at a higher rate. Because a key part of this business is making sure your conversion rates and the cost of customer acquisition are a big focus, right? Because if cost of customer acquisition goes way up, the profitability goes way down. We've seen these conversion rates really tick up, bringing the cost down, and it's not only helping the top line, but also helping the bottom line and the profitability of this business.
We've been open about saying, overall, ortho is dilutive to our EBITDA margins, but we are seeing a path forward that could get that hopefully in line with the corporate average if we continue to have really strong demand on the top line, get leverage through the P&L, take advantage of some of the manufacturing efficiencies, where both of these product lines are produced in Mexicali. Lots of opportunities for us, including bringing down our financing costs, which has been an issue for the Byte business, given the profile of the customer there, which is lower income, more risk around not getting paid. We've done things around that as well to bring that cost down.
All things heading in the right direction. We are being cautious, though, just given a potential recession coming, a slowdown. The Byte customer base is one where we probably see it first in our business if there's a slowdown coming. Yeah, we haven't seen it yet. We're being cautious as we think forward about what to expect for this business for the rest of this year.
Makes sense. I mean, Clear Aligners is when you take SureSmile and Byte together, are on pace to be close to 10% of your business in the not-too-distant future, I guess.
Mm-hmm.
Just building on your comments on margins, are those when you look at those businesses together, are they profitable today, and then the goal is to get to margins north of the corporate average?
Yeah, both businesses are profitable.
Okay.
Overall, obviously, we're profitable if they're both profitable. We are doing things to get it more in line with the corporate average, but it is dilutive today. I think, part of our plan about getting into $3 of EPS will include a step forward and a step up on profitability with our ortho business. That would be part of the building blocks also of how we get to a more profitable business going forward. I would just tell you, we've made really good progress over the last six months, and as we look forward, I think more progress is gonna be made.
Got it. I guess, you know, how are you evaluating, both the potential to maybe expand into new product categories that you're not in? Like, I can't think of a major one that you're not in, but, when you look at where it might make sense to kind of supplement what you have currently...
Yeah
How do you kind of go about that process? From a SKU rationalization standpoint, what are you kind of looking at to determine whether you wanna, maybe pare back what you're currently bringing to market?
I'll take the SKU bit.
Yeah.
On the SKU bit, we've done all the heavy lifting on endo and Restorative up to this point. We know what SKUs, what families are profitable, are growing, or this, that, and the other. As I noted, we are now testing, can we eliminate those SKUs? F irst we would want to migrate a SKU from, or a customer from SKU A to SKU B or family A to family B. We are testing that. There will be some SKUs, some families, where growth is lower and profitability is lower. We're also gonna test, can we increase those prices in those spaces?
You know, where there is no alternative, can we increase those prices? If it turns out that that's sticky, then we will keep those SKUs, and we will just increase the prices. We're doing all that work right now, and we'll hopefully have answers in the next couple of months. I think the benefit, and Glenn alluded to this earlier on, the benefit is as we roll through into 2024. We have no benefit from SKU rationalization in any number for this year. We likely won't have any benefit until the back end of next year. At least that's our current thinking.
Subsequent to that, we believe it will afford us an opportunity to unlock more efficiency in our network, either through consolidation of our network or, for example, through efficiencies in our plant. T here's one, there are a couple of product lines in particular, that takes between 4 and 6 hours to move the line from manufacturing family A to family B. If I can move family A to family B, then I don't need any 4- to 6-hour plant turnaround time or line turnaround time. That unlocks tremendous efficiency. All of that work, all of that work is underway.
As Glenn mentioned in our Investor Day, in November, we will lay out, buckets of where we feel that we can contribute to the $3 EPS in 2026 through things like SKU rationalization, network optimization, distribution center optimization, et cetera.
Yeah, I think more broadly speaking, the first thing that Simon and the new leadership team did when we came in was really look at the portfolio and what changes need to be made. I think the SKU rationalization piece was a big part of it. We don't see any real gaps in our portfolio. There are certain things that we can kind of fill in, I would say, and do some tuck-in deals over time, but I don't think there's anything that we're missing overall when you look at a pure dental play company. Having said that, there is an asset, Wellspect, that doesn't fit a pure dental play company, and I think we're looking at how to maximize shareholder value around this Wellspect business.
The good news for us is there is no bad scenario for us with this business, because as we look at the alternatives, one could be we sell the business and we've got a lot of interest from multiple buyers relative to this asset, but we would only sell it if we got the right price for it, and we want to make sure we maximize shareholder value in that means. Second is, we can keep the business. It's a very good, profitable business. It's growing very nicely. It's got some new products that are going to be rolled out, and there's opportunity to restructure this business. They have not been part of the overall corporate restructuring to date, because we knew we were going to evaluate what to do with this.
I think if we did keep it, there's even more opportunity to drive further profitability in this business. That's an option that could maximize shareholder value, is just we keep it, we make it more profitable and grow it. Then there's other options outside of that as well, that we're exploring. There's different avenues we can go down, but that is the one asset that doesn't kind of fit if you look at a pure dental company. We like the business, and we'll figure out how to maximize shareholder value.
Would an attractive divestiture be neutral or accretive to EPS?
There's so many factors that would go into it, because where's the share price at? T he question is going to be, what are you going to do with the proceeds?
Right.
We've been very clear, we're not going to do a big M&A deal right now. We just have to finish the integration that wasn't done previously. We'd likely pay down some higher debt. We'd likely do a large share buyback and questions, where's the share price going to be? What does that look like? W e would not do the deal, if we felt like it was a negative from a shareholder perspective. I t just depends on a lot of factors.
I guess maybe just in the minute we have to wrap up on capital deployment. When you think about the deployment of free cash flow between debt paydown and share repurchases, it doesn't feel like, you're over-levered by any means. C ould you maybe just give us your perspective there in terms of where you want the business to operate long term? Should we think about the rest of capital kind of being returned to shareholders through share repurchases, since it doesn't sound like M&A is going to be a big?
Yeah, no, it's a good question, and one of the good things I walked into in this job was a strong balance sheet and a very healthy cash flow business. I think we still have opportunity to focus on how to drive more cash flow as a starting point. Improving profitability, moving past these one-time cash outlays we have around the restructuring, as an example, the ERP system costs. I think on the working capital front, there's things we can do around inventory in particular, to drive better working capital. The starting point is, let's make sure we can drive at least 100% free cash flow conversion going forward.
What we do with that cash is really a function of first investing back into the business, making sure we're driving the top line, driving our R&D programs, and funding it to a level that it needs to be funded at. We've committed to delivering at least 50% of free cash flow back to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases. This year alone, we just increased our dividend in the first quarter by 12%. We announced a $150 million ASR program. We'll continue to drive returns to shareholders through those means as we go forward, with at least 50% going back to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases.
It is a very good, healthy cash flow business, but I actually think there's more opportunity for us to even improve upon that as we go forward.
Great. Well, we're over time. Simon and Glenn, thanks so much. We really appreciate it.
Thank you.
Thank you.