Chart Industries, Inc. (GTLS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. Welcome to everybody joining us live here at the New York Stock Exchange and those that are joining us on the webcast. My name is John Walsh. I am Chart's Vice President of Investor Relations. A few comments before we start. You may access today's presentation and press release by visiting our website www.chartindustries.com. A replay of today's event will be made available on our website following the conclusion of the event. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that statements made during this event that are not historical, in fact, are forward-looking statements. Please refer to the information regarding forward-looking statements and risk factors included in our press release and latest filings with the SEC. The company undertakes no obligation to update publicly or revise any forward-looking statements. I would also like to remind everybody that we will be speaking to continuing operations unless otherwise noted. So here is today's agenda. As you can see, the morning is split up into several sections with brakes in order to interact with our live pop-up trade show in the back of Freedom Hall. For those of you not attending, we are providing some information of key takeaways from the solutions we'll be showcasing. You can also go to our website for additional information on these particular projects. And with that, I would like to turn it over to Eric Vemer, President of Africa and Middle East in order to go through our safety moment.

So my pleasure to share a safety moment with the audience today. I think -- firstly, it goes without saying that in terms of our Chart values, safety comes first. Zero harm is our goal and we do have certain examples of companies within the Chart's table that consistently achieve a Zero harm year in and year out. So a Safety Moment for today that I want to share is around working at heights. So just to give context, David Beard, who was the Head of Safety at Howden, is now looking after safety of the combined group and in our business of continuous improvement, we could keep improving our safety systems, and we have recently introduced an additional 12 key safety rules. And one of those is working at heights. And that really is around the risk of falling from heights. Working at heights doesn't just relate to climbing to the highest platform at a scaffold at one of our customer facilities. It's anywhere where you have the risk of falling from heights, here is a great example of a stair with the handheld of a safe working platform that you can safely access. So it's something that another key part of how we run our business is we start -- every meeting, we start every shift, whether it's in the factory at a customer service site with a Safety Moment. And this is exactly what we like to do and make it relevant to the audience. So I think in terms of potentially unsafe conditions, an example to use there, you see the office individual, trying to climb up on a chair. It maybe you're in the office trying to get hold of a file on top of a filing cabinet, you don't really do what's fundamental in safety is eyes and mind on task and apply your mind first and consider the risks of what you do. And you just quickly grab a chair, because that's going to be your easiest access to get up on that file. And that's, of course, a risky situation. The chair can move, you can injure yourself. You can also not only injure yourself, but potentially your colleague. Somebody walking fast, you lose control of that file and it falls on them. So always be aware the core thing in safety is eyes and mind on task and think about what you're doing before you commence that task. Turn that unsafe situation to safe. First consider is it actually necessary to even enter that unsafe condition and work at height? Is there another way you could deal with this? Is there a permanent structure with a permanent data with handhold that you could potentially use? And ultimately, if you determine that working at height is required, make sure you're wearing the right personal protective equipment. If you're wearing a safety vest that the harness is correctly attached. So don't only have the right equipment, but make sure you use it correctly. So stay safe. Looking forward to the day together and for all the fellow speakers when you come up, please hold the hand rails. Thank you. [Presentation]

Well, good morning, everybody. We're very excited to be here today to share what you just heard, our molecule agnostic, full solution strategy. We're also going to talk about our midterm financial targets today, which are driven by continued ongoing strong broad-based demand for our end markets and applications. In terms of midterm financial outlook, we are looking at a mid-teens CAGR with year-over-year sequential growth across the coming 3 years, as well as a path to approximately 35% gross margin. In conjunction with that, we'll talk through the steps that we have to continue to generate robust free cash flow. And more than anything today, I personally am really excited for you to meet our very talented executive staff, amongst other team members of Chart, both in the formal presentation as well as in the pop-up trade show. Before I get into any further details regarding 2024, we're not seeing any different trends or anything different in the market than what we talked about 4 weeks ago. So we won't specifically talk to each year, but I wanted to make sure that we clarified that upfront. So there's a lot of things that you're going to hear today, but what I would say about the Chart business is we're extremely unique, very differentiated, and we're able to provide an independent, molecule-agnostic technology, equipment, full solution, all the way through the value chain. And when we say independent, what that means is that we do not produce or own molecule and that's very different than some other folks that are in liquefaction, and it's a very, again, unique skill set. So you're going to hear me refer to unique and differentiated throughout, and we're going to try to link back to the key themes that you see up on the page right here. The multiple solutions across the Nexus of Clean. So we refer to Nexus of Clean, clean power, clean water, clean food and clean industrials. What we're seeing more and more of is customers buying more solutions from us, not just 1 thing. So a good example is one of our brewery customers that started as a CO2 tank purchaser has now purchased an SDOX water treatment system as well as an Earthly Labs, small-scale carbon capture solution. So that idea of full solution and multiple end market purchasing with repeat customers and getting sticky early with our customers is something that is, again, another differentiator to us. The business is now far less cyclical than it ever was before with the combination of Chart and Howden together. And we're going to deep dive today with Fred on aftermarket service repair and talk about how that being over 30% of our revenue base now really contributes to strong opportunities for consistent growth across the cycle as well as numerous synergy opportunities in the aftermarket ahead of us. Lastly, and I think very important for us to point out and talk through today is the quality of our backlog, the quality of our commercial pipeline as well as the broad-based aspect of both of those. And that really drives towards the fact that we are able to provide equipment and solutions without changing our manufacturing lines in-house to a massive number of end markets, and that gives us great flexibility in terms of taking advantage of our flexible manufacturing strategy and the various different demand drivers that you see. And we'll talk through a few examples of that in the coming pages. The other thing on the backlog and the sales channel and the demand, we have consistently said and continue to today say that we have not seen a slowdown in the demand across our end markets and that remains true, and I'll repeat that again today. There's probably a few things that are a little bit different around the interest rate sensitivity question as well as the way that we sell. So let me start with the second. OneChart Commercial Team. So all of our salespeople report to our Chief Commercial Officer, Joe Belling, who you're going to hear from in a moment and they sell across the portfolio. So they're not just selling a compressor or a tank or a heat exchanger, but rather they're selling across the complete set of solutions and end markets and that is much more of a direct sale than it is through a distribution channel. And so we aren't seeing a destocking in channel checks. The aspect of kind of interest rate sensitivity, we do have a lot of processes in place regarding ensuring that the orders that we book are at the point where they are bookable. They are going to be deliverable. They're in engineering and manufacturing phases and obviously, we're very conscious of ensuring a proper payment terms. But we're not seeing interest rate sensitivity in that demand profile. So we're going to update a few things today with respect to the commercial pipeline, including that in the last 4 weeks, our commercial pipeline went from $20.3 billion of opportunities in the next 3 years to $21 billion of opportunity in the next 3 years. In that, we're not including things like the potential benefit to the order book from the U.S. 7 Hydrogen Hub activity that's underway. So there is more potential tailwinds ahead, but we do see those types of activities as a little bit further out given the steps that are required between now and the actual awards into the hubs themselves -- just as a few examples. So by way of background, I see a lot of familiar faces. So I'm going to touch briefly on what Chart is and kind of what we are now. You heard in the video, 11,700 team members around the world. We are actually more non-North American from both a revenue standpoint and a headcount standpoint today. We're able to serve our broad-based customer base and a metric that we frequently refer to is new customers and first of the kinds. We'll come back on first of the kinds. But with respect to new customers, the way that we're able to penetrate the new customer base is via our footprint and our OneChart global commercial team. Our footprint is across multiple continents. We have 64 manufacturing facilities in over 50 service centers. What I think is really unique as well and differentiated about our portfolio, is the people and the culture. We have over 25% of those 11,700 people have an engineering background. And that's important when you're talking about the sales channel, the type of technical sale, helping our customers early in the FEED and the pre-FEED status. We also have over 85% of the portfolio with intellectual property associated with it. And again, that goes to customers as they're looking for a piece of equipment or a full solution that they want a supplier that has an installed base that has 157 years of experience in handling the molecule. So when we talk about the business, and I talked about our OneChart culture, we -- cash is very important. Obviously, we've been talking about deleveraging. And it's important for us to convey not only the financial metric associated with our target net leverage ratio of 2% to 2.5% but also how are we getting there? How is cash embedded in the OneChart culture? And you can see some of that up on the screen here. I'm not going to walk through each one. But I would point out that this is not a subset of team members that are doing this. This is across the functions and across the world. And you can ask any of the 20 Chart people that are here today. We talk about this every day. We talk about it across the commercial team, the ops team, the finance team and how we drive that cash culture. We're also very cognizant and we'll continue to be as board around ensuring that cash deleveraging debt paydown is directly associated with the compensation from a short-term incentive program, and that's the case for the 2023 year, inclusive of a higher percent of our STI program being associated with free cash flow. And we'd point out as well that there are no adjustments to free cash flow unless the Board determines that there needs to be. So through that cash culture, we're going to continue to talk about how we invest in organic productivity and also how we continue to stay differentiated through what we refer to as our menu of the Nexus of Clean. And what I'd point out here is it's a very different view of the company than where we were 5 years ago. This is a portfolio that our customers can choose that full solution with the technology in the middle as well as all of the mission-critical pieces of equipment that pair with the technology to make it work being owned and produced in our locations, and that flexible manufacturing strategy is crucial to this where we can make -- our goal is 100% of our products, and we're pretty darn close. We're in the high 90s in more than one location around the world. So not only does that give you proximity to customers, it gives you the opportunity to make more margin, and it allows you to bid on projects that you otherwise would not have. Now alternatively, our customers can treat this as in equipment portfolio. It doesn't have to be I have to buy the full solution. And the way that, that works is just like we're molecule agnostic, we are technology agnostic as well. So while we love when somebody buys the full solution inclusive of Chart's technology, we also have many instances where our air cooled heat exchangers, our compressors, our fans work with another technology. So molecule agnostic and technology agnostic plays into the ability for our customers to make their own choices of what works for them. Now you combine that as an example with the aftermarket service repair and then the digital offering that Howden brought into the portfolio, and we really do offer that full value chain. Another way in industry that the value chain is referred to from a molecule perspective is in 3 categories: the first being the production of the molecule, the second being storage and transport and the third being end use. We play a part in each of those 3 categories. And again, we don't produce or own the molecule. So in some cases, we are the only independent provider of liquefaction technologies where the liquefier provider doesn't actually own and sell the molecule. And that gives us that unique differentiated position. So I'm going to move on here and talk a little bit about, again, referring to this uniqueness of the Chart business. Not only are we focused on delivering our own sustainability targets that we've put out there, and you'll see throughout the materials, but we also are able to help our customers address their sustainability targets. And these targets are not going away. You hear a lot about it in the Internet. You hear a lot about it in the news. But again, people are focused on it. How they get there is very different, and we're able to help them regardless of how they want to get there, whether it's I'm going to go right from where I am today to the end game or I'm going to stair step my way. Obvious ones, water treatment and carbon capture, you name it. But it's some less obvious our doser technology. So our doser technology doses molecule into packaging or into food and beverages. You'd be -- the Starbucks Nitro coffee in a can uses Chart's dosing technology. But with respect to sustainability, the doser cuts down on an enormous amount of PET or plastic in packaging, in particular, of water bottles as 1 example. And then the other one I'd point out is the Ventsim design. So Ventsim being newer to our portfolio. This is the -- Ventsim is the digital offering with respect to monitoring in mining, in particular. And you can see up on the screen here on Slide 16 that we have a mining customer telling us that they've had a 56% reduction in ventilation electricity costs just from the utilization of Ventsim. So those are examples that are maybe a little less obvious than water treatment. So this idea that we serve a breadth of end markets without having to change our manufacturing lines, capacity, et cetera, is a really important differentiator to us. And I'm going to show here the energy aspect. And you've heard us talk about brazed aluminum heat exchangers, where we are 1 of 5 brazed aluminum heat exchanger manufacturers in the world, the only 1 in North America. Brazed aluminum heat exchanger started in the Chart legacy portfolio as really targeted to the oil and gas end market, and that's what we did for a long time. It was definitely cyclical and then what we realized was the brazed aluminum heat exchanger is also used in handling, producing a variety of different molecules. So now our brazing lines -- same lines that produce BAHX for the oil and gas end market, produce them for hydrogen liquefaction, helium liquefaction. In some cases, carbon capture, just to name a few. And there's a litany of end markets that we could go through on the brazed as an example. The same applies to Howden's piston and diaphragm compressors, traditionally used in refining, traditionally used in pet chem applications. And these are specialty compression that is utilized in the same types of end markets that I just described for the brazed and they fit together really well because both of them are needed and are considered mission-critical pieces of making the molecule. So I'll stop there. I could go on and on with lots of examples, whether it's air coolers or fans or so on. But the point being that if we don't need one of these end markets to win. If we have driver in the current state that tilt this toward oil and gas, we're able to support those customers. If we have a driver toward hydrogen, we are able to support those customers without changing our manufacturing capabilities. And that goes to the flexible manufacturing strategy that Earl is going to speak to in a moment here. I'll just give you an example like in real life of how that works. This is on our bulk tanks and our micro bulk tanks. Back in the beginning of COVID, we saw a decrease in demand for those types of tanks for what were the traditional industrial gas applications. So CO2 for Argon for laser cutting and factories that were now shut down because of COVID. And we were able to essentially use the same manufacturing lines to produce more oxygen tanks for hospitals and for medical field activities. And then when that tide turned and industrial gas applications started to recover, we didn't have to make a change to our manufacturing capabilities. All right. Chart C, inside of Chart, we love this slide. So it's one of these that we want to put in because we think it really shows kind of the density of our offering in a visual example and also, it's one of those things where Chart is not a household brand. You don't go around and you say to your kids, "Hey, what is Chart," my kid knows. But outside of that, it's what is Chart do, and they wouldn't be able to list this to the list of the Chart City. But I think it's a really good visual it says the breadth and depth of our product offering in a visual format. So we'll move on off of that. We do -- we would have spent more time, but John told me not to. Let's talk about orders and backlog. So we're going to talk about the composition as well of orders and the backlog and the commercial pipeline because one of the things that it really shows is that these are tangible projects that are available to us, tangible projects that have been booked and across a variety of end markets, not heavily reliant on any one particular project or any one particular end market. I'd like to just point out the left-hand side to orders. If you looked at Chart legacy, so 2016 to 2021 a 5-year period of time, our average quarterly orders were $251 million, 7-year period of 2016 to 2022, it was $306 million, it was our average quarterly. And then you can see the 2 bars for Q2 and Q3 2023 in the combined business. And that's really a function not only of having Howden and Chart together, but also the synergy -- commercial synergy achievement that we've seen to date and the growing demand profile in many of our end markets. So the commercial pipeline evolution, I think -- I guess I had clipped the slide here. There you go. So the commercial pipeline, so just to level set you on the slide here. On the left hand, that $8.5 billion of commercial pipe was in June of 2022. So that's Chart stand-alone, okay? That's a Legacy Chart. And now as of yesterday, we're at $21 billion of commercial pipeline. And the way that we measure is that we don't go all the way out, right? There's opportunities we know that are going to be in years 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8, but they're not included in that number. These are opportunities in our sales force system that are available to us to be booked in the next 3 years. And you can see the composition of the breakdown of it. We do expect that there's going to be an increase in the marine end market and commercial pipeline opportunity, which the reason we expect that is because of our addition in Theodore, Alabama to be able to produce the jumbo cryogenic tanks, which are the size that the marine customers are really looking for, in particular on the bunkering application. And the other thing I'd point out here is that you don't see as much in aftermarket service and repair and in the Industrial segment -- Industrial Gas segment because those are a little more book and ship. And in the case of Industrial Gas majors that they are on long-term agreements with us. So that doesn't show up necessarily in the pipeline here. So our competitive advantage, I really -- again, I'm going to hammer the point home on the unique and differentiated nature of the portfolio. I like this slide, Slide 23, because it shows the competitive advantage that we have all in one place. I'm not going to drag you through all 8 of them, but I will point out a couple, which you'll hear on a more detailed basis throughout today's prepared remarks. So I did comment on the engineering with backgrounds of over 25% of our team members around the world have engineering backgrounds with 1,500 that are in the engineering group. The way that we have the organization structured for engineering is OneChart project management and engineering team that reports to Jennifer, and you're going to hear from her in a moment, very similar to the OneChart global commercial team because they work together and they deliver projects that are across multiple sites being contributed to from our in-house manufacturing. I would also like to point out that if you include in that metric, our welders and our welders are really one of our top-notch elements of our talent -- in our talent program that you're going to hear about today. We'd be about 34% plus of our global team members that are engineering backgrounds and/or welders. We do make every product -- almost every product, but a high 90s in more than 1 location, and that's really important. So I'm not going to belabor that point because I've said it 3 or 4 times, but I do think that having the capability to bid on projects closer to the customers, which is in part what Howden brought us in places like the Middle East and South Africa, in places like Chile, in places like Vietnam, where we're seeing more and more project work, but you have to have a physical presence. And that's giving us already big wins in the commercial synergy pipeline as well as opportunities that we otherwise wouldn't have had. And I can't stress enough the certifications element of this. Eric spoke to safety being our #1 priority. And in conjunction with safety, we're a safety leader in our industries and handling of molecules in safety and ensuring that the certifications and those competitors that are playing in these end markets are certified and are doing so safely is critical to the future of the economies that we're talking about today. And so we probably reflect and share with you guys on a regular basis the certifications that we have and we continue to be a leader in including being the only -- first and only with the Korean gas standard certification for our liquid hydrogen trailers, which we just received about 4 weeks ago. And then the other 4 of our 8 competitive advantages, I'm not going to talk through 3 of these 4 because they are ones that others are going to touch on. But I'd point out this solution set. We've gone really from being a component producer and shipper to offering the full solution, which brings us more opportunity for margin and also more opportunity for the solution set that links to other pieces and parts, so more content with any one given customer. And through the capital allocation that we've done over the last 5 years, inclusive of Howden in about a year plus ago, we have reduced the cyclicality of the portfolio as well as broaden the end market exposure. And perhaps most or top tier underappreciated is the nature and the breadth of the aftermarket service repair being part of the portfolio and the fact that year-to-date 2023, aftermarket service repair RSL segment has grown in orders and sales each above 15% year-to-date. And we expect that, that trend will continue as we're able to leverage a lot of the capabilities that Howden brought into the portfolio into the Chart Legacy installed base. So Chart and Howden together, I think many of you are familiar with the strategy. I'm going to -- I steal Curtis's thunder, Curtis who's in charge of our integration and our Chart business excellence is going to speak to the steps that we've taken on integration, but we updated our commercial synergies, and we've achieved $400 million of commercial synergies as of yesterday. And that's against a year 1 target of $150 million. And we're at $152 million and change on the cost synergy target against the year 1 target of $175 million. So I've referred to the commercial pipeline, the expansion thereof. And I think it's important that we're talking to the next few years, next 4 years, total addressable market, which has expanded, driven by the secular macro tailwinds that we have as well as driven by the additional capabilities into our portfolio with respect to gaseous hydrogen, not just liquid hydrogen, to name a few examples. The takeaways on the right-hand side. So we didn't call out every single end market here. But what we're seeing is relatively smaller TAM in the near term on the carbon capture side really driven by the large-scale uptake on carbon capture being a little bit further out. And then you can see the steep ramp as you get into years 4 through 8 on the hydrogen uptake. And so when we're looking at the $29 billion of total addressable market, that's in the next 4 years, and that doesn't account for those out years that certain end markets are expected to ramp in a steeper way. And we do a lot of the achievement of what we're talking about and a lot of the penetration into other end markets as well as other geographies through partnerships. And you can see the stats on the page here. These partnerships to clarify are not financial partnerships. So they're not partnerships that we're making investments in. These are partners that we see a complementary nature either in the end markets or the products or the technologies and we want to bring together a fuller solution to the market. And since a month ago since earnings call, we have been able to execute a couple of other agreements that you can see here on the page. And I'd specifically point out the Wood Group, which is a master service agreement across multiple end markets, water, hydrogen and CCUS. You can see some wins here, and I'm going to end my section on the slide, so that you can hear directly from Joe and what he and his commercial team are seeing around the world in these end markets. But I think these are great examples of the variety of different wins that we have had, ranging from water with Veolia to the Fermi Dune nuclear fusion. This is a FEED, pre-FEED work to hydrogen refueling solutions, which we pre-Howden had specific liquid refueling station answer, but now we're able to serve both gaseous and liquid. And so a variety of different end markets in these examples. And now I'm going to turn it over to Joe. Joe Belling, he's our Chief Commercial Officer. And Joe is going to talk about more of the markets and the activities that he and his team around the world are seeing for not only the rest of 2023, but also this 3-year period.

Eric, I'm grabbing the handrail. I just want to point that out. Well, good morning, everybody, and thank you again for joining us today. One of the key themes that you obviously heard Jill talk about is about how Chart is molecule agnostic. And that's an important factor that comes into play because our equipment can be used across almost every molecule that our customers have a demand for. Very little changes required to it. So it's very adaptable. And we were able to leverage our global footprint in order to be able to serve a lot of those customers. We're very bullish on the markets that we serve. We continue to be. So we talk a lot about the Nexus of Clean and a lot of people when they think of Clean, they think of the newer technologies and the newer energies. We also see LNG as being a key component in the Nexus of Clean and we also see the LNG market continuing to grow and continuing to expand and evolve. And I say evolve because that's an important factor that goes into it. If we look back several years, we see LNG plants being single train, kind of older technology that's all stick built on site. What we've seen with Chart becoming more involved in the LNG market itself is an evolution towards multi-train, mid-scale that's factory built, that's modular, that encompasses the breadth and depth of all of Chart's equipment. You'll hear us talk about big LNG and how it's changing. And even today, when we talk about multi-train, mid-scale, those mid-scale opportunities can turn -- can be part of a big LNG plant. So you might have 10 mid-scale trains at 1 million tons per each that go over time into a single facility. That becomes a big LNG plant. So when we talk about big LNG opportunities, there's very much a place for Chart solution offering in that set. We're seeing a much bigger part of the pie because of that. And we're also seeing that on an international basis. So a lot of times, we think about big LNG or LNG just being U.S. Gulf Coast based. Well, that's not the case anymore. We actually have many, many opportunities in our pipeline that are outside of the borders of North America. So a lot of participating in that very early on and getting sticky with our customers. So when we talk about that, again, it's a full value solution from the time that the molecule comes out of the ground to the time that it goes into a ship, when it's exported and then when it's reimported, we have a touch point all across all of those opportunities. So hydrogen is obviously another big opportunity continue to hear us talk about all the time. So not only are we molecule agnostic, we're also color agnostic when it comes to hydrogen. So we hear about every color in the rainbow being applied to hydrogen, that's -- we're impartial to that because once that molecule is produced, we're able to manipulate it into whatever form and whatever state that a customer might want for its end-use application. Now obviously, with the addition of Howden, that exposes us to a whole another segment of this market. So gaseous hydrogen and the processes that go along with that are now very much within Chart's portfolio and within our reach. We've been doing hydrogen applications for 157 years now. So we used to talk about over 50 years with the acquisition of Howden that we added another 100 years of experience on it. So as you know, nobody really cared about talking about it until about 3 years ago. So it's important to point out that we've always been in this market. We understand the technology. We understand the customers, and we understand what brings value to them. So having that gaseous addition as well is going to also help us add to the pie, so to speak, when it comes to hydrogen. So how does that fit within our strategy? It's very similar in the hydrogen strategy as it is to many of the other markets. We have our own capacity and we have our own supply chain. Well, what does that mean? It means that we have full control over the entire manufacturing process, including the technology that goes into it. So from a customer standpoint, where we bring them value is the dependability knowing that we can -- we have all delivery within our control, knowing that we have the performance guarantees within our control and knowing that we're going to be there in the long run to be able to maintain it from an aftermarket standpoint going forward. We have leading standards and safety certifications. As Jill mentioned, we're the first to market with a liquid hydrogen trailer offering for South Korea that meets a very stringent KGS standard. Also, we help ensure our customers that their ecosystem is self-sustaining. As we talked about that, one of the things that we can bring to customers, especially in some of these more emerging markets like hydrogen, is the fact that we have a number of people who are hydrogen suppliers or they want to be hydrogen suppliers, come to us saying, "Hey, we need some help connecting with somebody in the end market, somebody that will buy our product." Vice versa we have people that want hydrogen that don't know where to get it. So we spend a lot of time connecting those 2 people, so the producers and the end users. And that's another place where we can bring a lot of value to our customers. So this slide is simply a nice overview of the 7 hydrogen hubs that recently were greenlighted through the U.S. IRA funding. We are a partner in one of these, the high-velocity one, which is the third one down that you see there. So Chart is very involved in that. But we also will have content we expect in all 7 of these when they go forward. So while it may appear that we're only involved in one, we've been involved in nearly every proposal that went forward for these hydrogen hubs. So as they come to fruition, we do expect to have significant content in all. And I'll also point out that we have not had any backlog added yet as a result of these. So that's all still in front of us. So Jill touched on carbon capture a little bit as well. Carbon capture has been -- it's something that we're looking at and a long-term view. So we are seeing increased activity through -- across the market with carbon capture. We've been very successful with small scale to this point. So we mentioned the Earthly Labs solution where we have a producer who also is a consumer of CO2, and we have a great solution for those small scales. We've also seen a ton of traction coming forward with the large scales where our sustainable energy solutions technology might be applied. Again, these are technologies that utilize Chart equipment across the entire value chain from the time that the molecule is captured or produce to the time that it hits its end use distribution. We're also very involved in direct air carbon capture projects now with our Howden fans opportunities and also some other development work that we're doing with some pretty major players out there. So carbon capture opportunities abound for us across the entire segment. So this is a diagram that really shows where we can play in the carbon capture solution market. And this is -- this can be applied to almost any scale of carbon capture, whether it's from a brewery that emits CO2 from its fermentation process to a power plant that emits CO2 through its flu gas stack. What's important here is, as Jill had mentioned, the global footprint that we have. We're able to work with customers anywhere in the world and provide local supply of equipment and local supply of technology backers to help them come up with our solutions here. This has all got Chart IP in it for the most point. So their sustainable energy solutions is Chart-owned IP that applies different products that we have across the spectrum. Another big growth area for us is the Water segment. So clean water is not just about drinking water. That's obviously a very important facet of it, but it's also about water cleanup before it gets released back into the environment, and it's also about water reuse. Water is a scarce source in many regions of the world. So it's important that if it's used in some sort of an industrial process or a municipal process that there's an opportunity to reuse it. So this is a big tailwind for us right now. We're seeing a lot of governments that are starting to run through legislation that has requirements for their people to have access to clean drinking water and to wastewater disposal. So we have solutions across the board for that. We're just beginning to see the benefit of having these solutions available. We've always participated but more as an equipment or a component supplier. Now we're moving into that same offering of being that full solution set provider. The other thing I would note, too, is that the majority of our customers that we see in this segment are not onetime customers. They're repeat customers, and they're also buying multiple pieces of equipment. So it's something where we're becoming very sticky early on in becoming a regular supplier to them. So here, you can see a number of the different water treatment solutions that we have. As I mentioned, we're not just looking at clean drinking water. That's an important one, obviously, but it's also the different contaminants that can be in that drinking water and how we can remove that. Now once the water is consumed, whether it's for an industrial or for municipality, it's equally important that we clean it up before it's returned back into the environment or before it's reused. And so we have applications across the board for that. Again, this is not limited to one region of the world. This is a challenge that we face globally. So this is -- this next slide really highlights a few of the combined water opportunities that we have. So when we talk about combined water opportunities, it's how the Howden products and technologies play with the existing Chart technologies and how they complement one another. So when we talk about wastewater treatment, Howden blowers have been historically in 10% of the wastewater treatment plants globally. There are certain limitations to how they are applied. When we apply the Chart SDOX technology towards them, we can increase the capacity of an existing wastewater treatment plant with minimal investment on the user's part. So there's different ways that we can apply that, whether it's pH control, whether it's oxygenation, no matter what it is. Those are all available to us in the end markets. So -- how do we link all these together? Jill used an example earlier of a brewery that uses different components from the chart portfolio of technologies. This is another example where perhaps we have a customer who's producing hydrogen from an electrolysis process. Well, in order to produce hydrogen through electrolysis, you need very specific pure water. We can provide that pure water system through our AdEdge technology. So you have an ultra-pure water system goes into an electrolyzer. The 2 products that come out of the electrolyzer are obviously hydrogen and oxygen -- pure oxygen. So as an offtaker for the oxygen, we can use that to put that into a wastewater treatment plant and all the systems that go along with moving that oxygen, storing that oxygen and getting it into the wastewater stream. And then the cleanup that goes along with it. Now also at the hydrogen side, there's a value stream there that we've outlined a number of times and you can see highlighted here. So it's not a one-trick pony for us. It's really across the entire value chain for the whole project. We see a similar point here with carbon capture. So many different opportunities for Chart to participate up and down the entire project portfolio, whether it's from the capture of the CO2, whether it's in the process stream or whether it's in the air. The processing of it, the storage of it moving it and then the endpoint use. So again, it's really about us having many touch points, many different offerings within a single value concept for them. So with that, I will turn it over to Curtis, who is our Senior Vice President of Operational Excellence and Integration.

Great. Thanks, Joe, and thanks to all of you for your time today. Really appreciate your participation here today. And I have the pleasure, as Joe said, of updating you all on the progress of the integration efforts following the acquisition of Howden. Okay. All right. So there's 3 things here that I'd like to leave you with today. First of all, is that the Chart Commercial Team, led by Joe continues to exceed the year 1 commercial synergy target of $150 million. And as Jill mentioned earlier, our wins attributed to the combination of Chart and Howden organizations now total $400 million. Secondly, the OneChart team is also on track to meet or exceed our year 1 cost synergy target of $175 million with current savings at about $152 million. In addition, we're using our Chart business excellence, continuous improvement tool set to drive improvements in our operations for long-term profitability. So let's dive a little bit more into the integration results. So on the commercial synergies, you can see here that not only have we gained more new business than we expected in year 1, which ends in March of 2024, we have now exceeded our year 3 target of $350 million. So -- and then on the right, you can see for our cost synergy target for year 1, we're now about 87% of the way toward our goal for year 1 after just 8 months following the acquisition. And we have plans in place to meet or exceed our year 1 target of $175 million, but also we have plans to meet or exceed our target -- year 3 goal of $250 million. And then in addition, our progress to date gives us confidence to say that we anticipate to achieve an incremental $130 million of cost synergy benefits in 2024 relative to 2023. So now I'd like to also dig in just a little bit deeper in one of the areas of our cost synergies that we've been pursuing. So in our procurement and sourcing efforts, we look at this in 3 different areas: rapid negotiation, strategic sourcing and insourcing. So in rapid negotiation, we leverage the momentum of the acquisition to negotiate savings from our suppliers. This has been completed over the last several months and has resulted in about $17 million in annualized savings. Following those initial efforts to leverage the buying power of the new organization, we are following a defined process for strategic sourcing to obtain additional sustained savings. So far, this has resulted in about $20 million of annualized savings and we're really just getting started in this area. The third area of sourcing savings is from utilizing internal options for equipment supply instead of third-party options, which we call insourcing. The most common area we see this is the use of Howden compression equipment in Chart -- Legacy Chart processes such as hydrogen liquefaction. This enables an increase in overall project margins for Chart. And so far, we've achieved about $13 million in savings in this area. So in summary, we expect to achieve about $70 million of synergy savings in these 3 sourcing areas in year 1. So going back to our success on achieving commercial synergies, we're well ahead of schedule, as we mentioned. One of the keys to our success is that we've continued to identify more ways to take advantage of the strengths of our combined organization. To fully exploit this, we commissioned 14 different market synergy groups to identify specific focus areas to target additional commercial synergies. We expect this effort to result in additional orders in the months and years ahead. This slide also gives some examples of the orders that we've won because of our combined strengths. So we include these to help you see some of the types and benefits of the integrated organization. And then also as part of our integration efforts, we're utilizing the continuous improvement, people, processes and tools of the combined organization. We've organized these under what we call Chart Business Excellence or CBE. Our approach here includes leveraging our combined resources for lean manufacturing and Six Sigma. In addition, we're implementing some of the best practice core processes that we saw in Howden that are listed on this slide. So through Chart Business Excellence, we're establishing a continuous improvement culture to enable future improved results. I'll turn it back to Jill.

Okay. I'm going to test the other microphone. Okay. So I am -- just about to leave you guys for a 10- to 15-minute break. But what I thought I'd do is recap after we have a few speakers, we'll just recap some of the takeaways that we talked about here. So in that section, we continue to see strong demand, broad-based demand. We've seen no changes in business conditions over the last 4 weeks from what we talked about on our Q3 earnings call, and we're continuing to hit and/or exceed cost and commercial synergies, inclusive of what Curtis just said, and I want to reinforce which is we now have confidence in sharing that we see an incremental $130 million of cost synergies in 2024 compared to 2023. We remain bullish, as we've stated throughout 2023, on big LNG as well as all aspects of kind of all the 4 categories of LNG that we talk about and are excited about the fact that the team -- the commercial team has opened up this international pie to us on addressable market for IPSMR. We are institutionalizing further the idea of Six Sigma, continuous improvement, through Chart Business Excellence, led by Curtis and his team. And then finally, and I think very important for us to revisit this concept of what does -- what is -- we know what backlog looks like today? What does demand look like a year from now? And what gives us confidence that, that demand continues on? So you've heard a few things from us, and I want to just kind of put them together. The first being that we have numerous opportunities for more big LNG orders ahead of us. Our view on that and when they come into the backlog is unchanged from what we've said previously, and inclusive of the international oil company award that has not yet been booked, but we expect to come into backlog late '24 or early 2025. So that gives us good visibility on the LNG side ahead of us. The opportunities that you've heard from Joe on the hydrogen hubs that, again, we don't expect that to come in, in the next 3, 6, 9 months, but we do expect to have a meaningful portion of opportunity on the 7 hubs that you've seen within those hubs and the projects within and so we would anticipate that those start to hit backlog late '24 and into 2025. And then you have the broad-based nature of the rest of the demand that we've talked about that, again, gives us confidence that the demand is going to continue to do what we've seen it do and we share the commercial pipeline of $21 billion, up from $20.3 billion in just a month and that's with booking over $1 billion the last 2 quarters. So we're excited about what lies ahead demand-wise as well as our internal process improvement that Curtis has shared with you. So with that, we're going to take a 10- to 15-minute break, the pop-up trade show, the customer examples. You've got some other members of the Chart team that will be stationed by those to talk through the customer examples and the technology as well as some coffee and biscuits. We'll be back in 15. [Break]

[Presentation] All right. Welcome back. My name is Earl Lawson. I'm President of the Americas, and I'm particularly pleased to be here today with you. And also really pleased to be back with Chart Industries. I spent 28 years in and around the gas business. I'm kind of a gas and equipment guy. I spent some time with BOC, then Linde and in 2016 through '18, I was with Chart. Chart sold off some of its businesses, and I went with that, but very, very happy to be back. I really love this industry. I love all the different applications. And if you're even remotely curious, every day, you can learn something new about the products that we make and the customers and the markets that we serve. Today, I have an opportunity to touch on 3 of the operating strategies we're using to serve customers and drive operating margins. I'm going to talk about flexibility in our manufacturing. As our customers -- customer base continues to evolve and the complexity of our supply chains continue to become more and more challenging, we're working hard to drive flexibility in how we approach our manufacturing. I'm also going to touch on some of the investments we're making and our high return on investment applications to help drive our operating margins. And then finally, I'm going to talk about some of the best practices and how we're approaching that. Let's first talk about flexible manufacturing. When we think about flexible manufacturing, we think about diversifying not only where we're producing but also our supply chains. We are aggressively moving towards being able to produce all of our products at more than 1 location and be able to do it in the heart of where our customers and the markets exist. We have 64 manufacturing facilities around the globe. We're using these facilities to expand our critical products to be able to produce it in more than 1 location under the same roof if at all possible, but if we need to, we'll produce -- we'll build a new facility. A couple of examples of that. So for our brazed aluminum heat exchanger lines, we are the only manufacturer that's doing that in North America, a very critical product for us. We use an existing facility in our Tulsa, Oklahoma facility. We added a new brazed aluminum heat exchanger line there and able to expand our capacity by 70%. For our cryogenic tanks, another really critical product for us, particularly the super large tanks. In this case, we built a new facility, we're in the process of building a new facility in Theodore, Alabama. We're able to significantly improve and increase the amount of production that we have for that line as well. And then for our compressors. We're doing a lot of things to expand our compressor capability. We're localizing production in China. We're localizing production in India. We're being able -- we're localizing production in North America. All those efforts are to expand our ability to produce, and we've done an expansion roughly about 50% at this point. In addition to expanding where we're producing, we're also working hard to localize the supply of critical components for that. Again, whether we're talking about compressors, localizing those key components to be able to produce in China, whether we're talking about blowers, whether we're talking about cryogenic tanks. A lot of effort is going into localizing the supply of those key components to help drive flexibility to reduce cost and to improve lead times. We touched on a little bit another dimension of flexibility is our ability to produce these products that serve multiple end markets, multiple industries in the same factory. And so not only are we adding capacity to be able to do some multiple locations, but we're using these same locations to serve multiple end markets and using common technologies to do that. I want to touch on just a little bit more in depth, a couple of key examples where we've added flexibility and where we're investing in high return on investment projects. The 2 that I'm going to highlight are our brazed aluminum heat exchanger line. As I noted, a really key product for us. We're one of a global leader in this area. We have a record backlog. And so we have added key capacity in our Tulsa, Oklahoma facility. We've added a new brazed line, and we're in the process of doubling the capability of that particular line. We also are investing in a new facility in Theodore, Alabama. This is really being driven by the space industry and also the ability to produce railcars and really larger systems. That facility is well underway. And even before the door is open, we have a backlog of over $115 million. So really both great projects for us and good examples of how we're expanding our capability. I want to touch on a little bit of what we're doing to drive improvement through investments in automation and productivity. Chart and Howden have a very rich history of manufacturing globally. We've been doing it for many, many years. And if you walk through our plants, you'll see a lot of common applications, a lot of common process, a lot of material handling, a lot of cutting, a lot of welding, a lot of high-precision tooling. And so any time we can invest in automation to improve throughput, improve quality and reduce labor can have a big impact. Welding is a great example of that. We have over 1,100 welders globally. And on any given year, we will lay welding down to the tune of roughly 380,000 miles, which would allow us to go back and forth to circumvent the Earth roughly 15x. So any little improvement in welding has a really big impact for us. Just a couple of examples of this. If you walk through one of our plants and you see us build one of our cryogenic tanks, there's an inner vessel and outer vessel. And as we form that tank, there's a seam well that has to be done. We've been able to install seam welders -- automated seam welders really across the globe in North America and Europe and in China, where we're manufacturing these tanks and been able to automate that process and drive significant improvement in the process. Secondly, for our brazed aluminum heat exchanger, a very complex process, we've been able to improve the welding process for that by installing a friction stir welder, which is a quite unique machine but really has driven significant improvement in quality and throughput. And then finally, we're using in multiple locations around the globe, robots, welding robots to help improve the process. So all really good examples. And if you look at some of the numbers there, all of them drove significant improvement in quality. All of them drove significant improvement in throughput with strong returns. And then finally, I want to touch on some of the efforts we're putting in to driving best practices. As I noted, if you think about all of the history and experience that we in Howden and all the history and experience we have in Chart, we have some great practices and we do a lot of things well, but there's always opportunities to improve that. The focus we're putting on our Chart Business Excellence efforts, we're putting a much more structured approach in how to tackle that. So a good example of that is our La Crosse, Wisconsin facility and our drive to continue to improve our throughput in that factory. So as we think about the approach to this, we think about the people, we think about the process and the tools and the systems. For in this particular case, from a people standpoint, we have Lean Six Sigma experts that we brought in, and we did a train the trainer type of activity, kind of a force multiplier where they trained all of our leads on some of the basic practices around lean. And then we walked the factory, picked a couple of key areas. So we made sure that we were using the tools that we had at our disposal. We did Kaizen events. We did Gemba Walks. We used those basic tools to help improve the process. Fundamentally, this is all about improving the business, and these are business tools that help people to think critically about where there's opportunities for improvement and how do you drive and capture those improvements. In this case, we have very significant results. One of the areas we focused on is changing of the dyes for our presses. We're able to improve that process, reduce the time to do that by 70%. We reduced the amount of labor required to do that, and we significantly improve the throughput. So another good example of where we were able to take the best practices, put some more structure and form around that, leverage our business excellence teams to really drive improvements in the process. So I appreciate the opportunity to address these topics this morning, and I'm going to turn it over to Jennifer Adams.

All right. Thanks, Earl. Appreciate it. Very pleased to be here today and really appreciate everybody showing up. I want to share with you a lot of the work that we're doing on the project execution side of our business. So a few key highlights that I want to talk to you about. We've talked quite a bit about our extensive portfolio, but that really impacts how we engage our customers and when we engage our customers at -- on the various projects. We bring in our project management team, along with our sales team and our engineering team very early into the project. And it really impacts our footprint within our projects. I also want to talk to you about what we're doing on the research and development side of our business. We're really looking at innovating new technologies within our markets, growing our business, growing our portfolio. And as a result of that, we want to ultimately commercialize that research and development. So I want to give you some examples of some of our first-of-a-kind technologies that are in manufacturing now that are actually out there working as well as some of our process technologies that we're doing in this area. And then finally, I want to talk to you about how we're building full solutions in the markets that we support and how that's going to help us grow our business, increase our footprint and increase our partnerships with our customers. So here talking about how the process of a project works. Typically, an OEM will engage very late in the project because a lot of the engineering is done in the pre-FEED or the FEED stage of the project. By being a solutions provider, it allows us to engage very early in the customers. We're working side-by-side with our customers in the pre-FEED and the FEED stage. We bring in our engineering, our manufacturing and our sales team to support our customers, our EPC and end users. And what the result of that is, is that we have a better understanding of what our customers are looking for, what are their key drivers in their projects, what are the KPIs to make them successful. Also understanding what are their goals. They'll come to us. They're looking to monetize gas. And in that, we understand what is your feed gas composition. Not only are we making LNG for you, but perhaps we can make helium as another product for you and add another revenue stream, and we happen to have technology within the helium industry. Also allows us to understand what is your feed gas composition look like? If you have high nitrogen, we also have nitrogen technology to help you remove that nitrogen, make your LNG even more valuable. So that early engagement really helps cement that relationship. It helps us increase our footprint within what we bring in, in terms of our manufacturing capabilities and our products and also helps us with not only that relationship but future relationships and future opportunities. They see us as leaders in the market, so they continue to come back to us and ask for our engineering support as well as our project management. Very similar to what Joe is doing in the project -- in the selling side of our business, we're bringing that to our project management side of the business as well, which means that when you come to Chart for a solution, for a package of equipment, we provide you 1 project manager. It's a single-point contact with the customer that manages all of our manufacturing capabilities. So they're engaged early with the customer. They're setting an execution strategy of how do we manufacture to best meet your needs in the projects, and we maintain that continuity throughout the entire project life cycle. So we talk about research and development. We are innovators by nature. Our company is -- we have 1,500 engineers on staff at all time, constantly looking for ways to improve our current products and also looking for new ways to approach our markets. We currently hold 1,000 trademarks patents within the industry, and that's a growing number even as we speak. We've got over 250,000 hours of time on an annual basis that we're focused on developing new technologies and making our products better for all of the markets that you see that we support in the Nexus of Clean. This is true for both our Howden company as well as our Chart company. But what's very powerful as we bring these 2 companies together with that mindset is we're already starting to see a pipeline of research and development and product opportunities that leverages both companies' expertise. And we talk about hours and number of engineering, but really, we measure our success in our research and development in terms of how many projects are we able to actually bring to commercialization. So I want to share with you a few of the technologies that we've brought all the way through commercialization. And the first thing that comes to mind is our IPSMR technology around LNG liquefaction. So this is a technology. There's other manufacturers out there making brazed aluminum exchangers. We're the only company that brings our own technology with that. And the result of that is we're a one-stop shop for LNG. Our customers can come to us, we can provide a full solution around LNG. We incorporate multiple of our manufacturing equipments within that 1 solution. We bring our brazed aluminum exchange capabilities, our cold box, our core-in-kettle heat exchangers, our air-cooled, and we package it all in a nice neat module. And this has been extremely welcomed within the industry. So we have several orders already. We're working with fast LNG. They have first gas already going through our IPSMR solution as well as this was selected for our Cheniere project along the Gulf Coast. We've booked multiple projects in 2023, both in the mid-scale, small scale and floating LNG applications. An exciting thing that happened for us in 2023 is we were selected -- our technology -- our IPSMR technology was selected by a major IOC for an international projects. So we're starting to move it off the Gulf Coast into the international market as well, very exciting. And it's no surprise that they're selecting our technology, IPSMR, it's just simply better. I won't go through all of these points. But by combining our engineering, our manufacturing capabilities and our process engineers, what they've ended up doing is producing a solution that's more efficient, smaller footprint and a lot more cost effective for our customers. So we expect to see this continue to grow in the future. Another first-of-a-kind technology that we're working on with our partners Kathairos Solutions. If you look at some of these remote well sites, there's a lot of methane that's being used for the pneumatic instrumentation. And what happens with that because they're in a remote location, that's what's available, methane. So they utilize the methane in their pneumatic valves and other instrumentation and that methane goes to the atmosphere. So this really aligns with our Nexus of Clean, that partnership that we formed and what they've done with their technology is they've replaced methane with nitrogen. And in that solution, they utilize the Chart micro bulk tanks at the site. They're able to bring in liquid nitrogen and no longer use that methane that's going to the atmosphere. It's much safer, it's cleaner. And it allows the end user to preserve their methane as a product rather than sending it to the atmosphere. This partnership was good, and we have our micro bulk tanks there. But as I mentioned, they're at remote sites and locations. So getting the liquid nitrogen to the site was extremely challenging. So they are bringing in small containers to fill up these micro storages. So they came back to Chart and they were looking for a solution for getting the nitrogen to the site and there, we quickly developed and commercialized our Orca trailers. So it's a smaller delivery system of nitrogen that we can bring to these remote sites where it's difficult and challenging to get to. The roads aren't well developed, and we're able to easily fill these nitrogen micro storage tank. So again, a good success. We're just engaging with the customer, understanding what their needs were, allowed us to grow the business with them. So with that, I will turn it over to Fred Hearle. Here, he's going to talk to you about our aftermarket strategies. Thank you.

Thank you, Jennifer. Good morning, everyone. My name is Fred Hearle. Maybe able to tell from an accent that I'm not from around these parts. So I've joined Chart through the Howden acquisition, have been with the company for 10 years, running various parts of the Howden organization. I'm extremely proud and pleased to be part of Joe's team and run the combined Chart organizations in Europe. So I've got the great opportunity this morning to talk to you about the combined aftermarket. A couple of items to put in your head just as we launch into this part of the presentation. As a combined business, we have over 400,000 assets installed around the world on our customer sites, and we're adding almost 6,000 every year. So with that size of installed base, aftermarket is one of the largest opportunities for synergies and growth for the combined company, and I hope to share with you this morning some insights as to how we're going to leverage that. So Howden comes with a proven track record in expanding our aftermarket. The size of our installed base, our global reach, that we have of service centers and resources around the world, coupled with the strategic programs that we've been running, resulted in consecutive years of growth in aftermarket services for Howden. And we're now using that as a platform for the combined business. So 3 takeaway areas that I'd like to land with you today. How we utilize that service network around the world close to our customer operations for the combined Howden and Chart product portfolios. How we'll utilize the installed base data that we have to drive commercial and service programs through every region of the world so we can share best practice in sales and in execution to deliver great value to our customers but also grow our aftermarket services. And the third part is something we've been working on extensively is increasing the -- what we call the recurring revenues, entering into long-term partnerships with our customers that help them improve their operations, improve the value of the Chart equipment that they own and use that to build our own aftermarket revenue and success. And a lot of that linked to our Uptime and digital solutions. So maybe just touch on the digital solutions part to start off. Howden has a market-leading application we call Uptime. This is based on a digital twin concept where we can take real-time data from operating equipment, compare it against the engineered digital twin and then provide predictive analytics back to our customers in the form of dashboards or however they want to have that information formatted and presented to them. Access then to remote technical support from our product specialists and equipment specialists like vibration, metallurgists, stress analysis as well as the reliability engineers. We've been implementing this in Howden for a number of years. Each of our products become digitally enabled. We can sell this as part of the new equipment or we can retrofit it to an existing installation. We're also developing these applications into the Chart products, that started initially with an LNG fueling station where we've quickly been able to adapt that to Chart's designs and provide active dashboards for our customers to utilize and use in their operations. We can develop this further with the use of augmented reality and artificial intelligence. To be honest, we're really at the start of that journey, and that has a great range of opportunities that can improve the safety, improve customer access to the information that they need to carry out maintenance safely and reliably, but also improve the efficiency and the response and the way in which we support our customers. So the opportunity here for our customers is to improve the reliability of the equipment, increase the uptime, generate more production from their assets. And the opportunity for Howden is to be more involved with our customers in real time. And what we have seen is that by about year 3 of an asset activation, the doubling of our aftermarket revenues. So it has a real business impact to us as well as that long-term connection to our customers. So we are going to talk a little bit about our global footprint. This is something that we will really leverage as a foundation of our strategy going forward. We very quickly were able to integrate both the Chart and Howden organizations around the world, and we now have a fully integrated aftermarket teams in every region. To put some size to that, we have over 620 field service engineers and over 50 service locations. All of that supported by our product and technology specialists so that we're able to give our customers fast response, close to their operations and back with the product and technology expertise that we feel makes us different as Chart. So what does our aftermarket look like? We've got some data here to put some scale to that. Aftermarket is now about 1/3 of all Chart revenues globally. We have over 400,000 installed assets, as I mentioned earlier. We're adding around 6,000 assets per year. Through our long-term service agreements, we have long-term service agreements connected to around over 2,000 of those with 400 Uptime connections year-to-date. One of the important data points on this slide is that we estimate our customer attachment. So that's customers that we have had an order from within the last 3 to 6 months. We estimate that at less than 50%. So that then demonstrates a huge runway of opportunity we have for that currently underserved installed base that were in the world. So what do we do -- do for that? Well, we provide the full range of aftermarket services from its first installation right the way through the maintenance and OpEx period, right through to rejuvenation and possibly even replacement as customers' operations become more mature or they want to upgrade or improve the performance of the plant. Increasingly, we've been adding long-term service agreements and commercially innovative service agreements and frameworks to become more partners with our customers and build up those recurring revenues year-over-year. And that allows us to not obviously service that equipment, but also expand our services with those customers. So more and more, we've added non-Chart or Howden equipment to that portfolio of work that we do. So we could be on a refinery, on the Howden compressor but then we've moved across and to address around or into our competitors piece of equipment, that's been supported by a number of the non-OEM acquisitions that we made a few years ago in Howden with the likes of CPI and maintenance partners. So we have our own installed base. We also have our competitors installed base as an opportunity. So we see significant synergistic growth potential. I've listed the examples here is expanding our sales coverage, expanding our service coverage, implementing the commercial and the digital solutions around the world, combining our maintenance solutions with our new product offerings and implementing new commercial strategies, particularly around parts and pricing. So how do we take all of that and make it happen around the world? So we really got 4 key programs that we're using to move things forward. And these are derived from the strategies that Howden has been implementing for a number of years and really drove that year-over-year growth that we enjoyed and we've now combined with Chart. So deploying revenue operations, this is really about utilizing our data, creating processes, implementing best practice region by region, customer by customer. So that enables our sales teams and our service teams to serve more of the market and offer more aftermarket solutions to our customers. We're going to continue to enhance, develop and expand our service network. There are parts of the world where we have emerging installed base. We have a decision to put service locations there. We're going to expand the multi-product capability within our existing service centers and obviously training our field service resources so we can increasingly take expertise that may be in 1 region or 1 product company and replicate that through the service network close to our customers. Lifecycle Solutions is an area that we're going to continue to push. We're seeing great strides with long-term partnerships with the customers and the value that it generates. So we're going to continue to move that forward, connected with our Uptime platform. And the fourth theme is around continuing to invest in the digital capabilities. Pretty much all of the Howden equipment products are what we call Uptime enabled. The customer has an option whether to activate or connect that asset at first commissioning or can do it later, but we have our products enabled and we're increasingly moving that to the Chart product portfolio. The developments that we can make with AR and AI, as I say, we're really at the beginning of that, but we see opportunities there to really support our customers in safe operations, but also improve efficiency and response to customers for ourselves. And this is my last slide. I wanted to share some customer wins. Some of these examples have maybe mentioned through the earlier presentations, I picked these 3 examples because they have common theme, which is scalability, that each one of these is a solution that we have taken to a customer. There are multiple examples of that need either in the region where we did it or around the world. The first example is LNG fueling stations, a well-developed product for Chart. In Europe, they really lacked the service prints and that combination of the 2 organizations has allowed us to retrain our Howden service engineers, and that's resulted in new installations, reciting and long-term service agreements that we've signed in Europe. There's over 150 installations of Chart manufacturer to go up. We have our competitors' installed base and this capability is transferable to compressed natural gas and ultimately to liquid hydrogen fueling stations when they come in time. So bigger runway in the future. The middle example is an air-cooled heat exchanger, a project executed here in the U.S., a requirement to upgrade. The project kind of needed access to workshop and additional resources. Again, bringing the 2 teams together, we're able to provide that in an accelerated schedule for the customer. There are over 10,000 installations in the U.S. alone of air cooled heat exchanges for us to push that towards. And then a third example is a Howden legacy example, but it really emphasizes the value of Uptime on the very early stage that we're at than where we think this can go in the future. We typically see within 3 years of an asset activation, a doubling of revenue from that customer. And that comes because the information that we've got, we can then see whether they are operating the equipment the best performance. If the process has changed, how we can map that through that. So that then generates new parts. It generates engineering studies. It generates rejuvenation and so the cycle goes on. So each of these show great potential because they are scalable in each of the regions in which we operate. So with that, I'll hand it back to Jill.

All right. So my takeaways from the section, I tried to get them all on my post note here, but there are so many. First of all, I would just love the interaction between engineering, operations and the aftermarket, and you could also get the sense of how that links up to the front end in Joe Belling's team as well. The other thing I really loved about this section was the people, the talent. So you have Jennifer who joined us a few years ago from actually one of our customers. and Jennifer has done such a great job in the organization that she now runs all of project management and engineering for Chart. Then you have Fred, who joined us via the Howden acquisition. And as you can tell, has an exceptional handle, not only on the aftermarket, but what you didn't hear about was his region in Europe and the opportunity for growth there as well. And then Earl, who was a Chart person before, and went with one of the divestitures 5 years ago and then has returned to the business. So the combination of talent, you'll hear in the next section a little bit more from Gerry, but I think that -- those 3 really exemplify what we see across the business of bringing those 3 perspectives together. We'll have the first-of-a-kind, turning into commercialization, the R&D pipeline turning into commercialization. The Kathairos example is one where we're in the tens of millions of dollars of sales right now with respect to that particular end market for that customer. We'll continue to share the productivity, the high ROI CapEx that we're investing in so that we can deliver the backlog and then last but certainly not least, the exceptional and enormous opportunity of aftermarket service repair that this combined business has is just at the beginning, just at the tip of the iceberg here. And I think there's -- you got a sense from some of the stats that Fred shared. The opportunities on LTSA is the opportunities on not only the Chart installed base that had no digital association previously or even in much of the world, no coverage on service and repair, but also the further penetration of opportunity we have on the Howden legacy assets as well. So we look forward to continuing to grow that aftermarket service repair in the double digits plus. And as many of you are well aware of, that is our highest gross margin as a percent of sales segment out of our 4 segments. So that should contribute well to the growing margin profile that we've shared with you today. So we are going to take a 10-minute break and then come back in and conclude our prepared remarks with finance and HR and culture. Thank you. [Break]

[Presentation] Good morning, everybody. So you've heard today from the team, Chart's business strategies to highlight, and I'm going to talk about turning those business strategies and delivering profitable growth. So when we talk about profitable growth, #1 focus is delivering our record backlog, turning that into revenue. We ended Q3 with the $4.1 billion of backlog. Our entire organization from our investments in human resources, whether it's more engineering and more welding, talent to our CapEx investments that Earl highlighted earlier, Teddy 2, Tulsa brazed expansion. This is all about accelerating our backlog, turning that into revenue quicker. We're driving profitable growth -- in addition to that, we're driving profitable growth through our transition from a component supplier to a solution supplier. An example of that is traditionally, we may have provided a storage tank or a compressor into an application. Now you put those 2 pieces together, you've got additional revenue content, you've got additional -- or higher margin. So the pivot from component to solutions provider, generating more revenue at a higher margin. In addition to that, the aftermarket focus. Fred highlighted our installed base of over 400,000 assets. Our ability to get sticky with these customers, using our Uptime technology that just continues to generate more and more revenue and margin as that installed base increases. Driving a cash culture. We've taken the best practices from both our Howden team members and our Chart team members to drive cash accountability throughout our organization, whether it's better payment terms through our commercial team negotiation to working capital management through operations and inventory reductions to better collection approaches on our receivables. The entire organization is focused on cash. And I want to talk also about resiliency. So one of the things that we really like about our aftermarket business is the resiliency. It doesn't matter what the business cycle is, rotating equipment needs, aftermarket support, it needs maintenance. We've seen this through the COVID cycle, through all cycles. Aftermarket is a very anti-cyclical or noncyclical aspect of our business. Constantly growing through our additional installed base driving additional revenue. And then that coupled with our broad product offering covering all the markets that we're in leads to resiliency. It's a very resilient business. So let's talk about our cash culture. Like I mentioned earlier, our entire organization is focused on converting cash. We've shown this slide earlier, but it's so important that we wanted to show it again here. And 2 things I want to highlight here are the capital expenditure. Targets of 2% to 2.5% of revenue. We will continue to invest in CapEx where necessary where that leads, like I mentioned in the last slide, to accelerating revenue conversion and backlog conversion, and we will continue to invest in that. But nominally that you can expect that to be in the 2% to 2.5% of revenue. And then also -- also balance sheet optimization. One thing to highlight here, we closed the Howden acquisition in March -- March 17, St. Patrick's Day. And we, at that time, said we were going to divest $500 million of assets, and we accomplished that in only 7 months. So how are we going to deliver on our record backlog? It's a very important slide here. Number one, I want to highlight is our global sourcing team. We've created a new global sourcing team led by Howden's Chief Procurement Officer, Colin Hanna and rolled out category management across the globe. And if you think about our backlog, we've got projects that go for months to even more than a year, very high material content. And so accelerating the material in the door leads to accelerated POC revenue recognition, which is critical for us, holding the suppliers accountable, whether it's expediting material or if they're late, imposing LDs on them to improve profitability. Supply chain is a key aspect to our ability to deliver this record backlog. The high ROI capacity investments mentioned earlier. I want to specifically highlight that we have greater than $115 million of backlog for our Teddy 2 expansion. These are blue chip customers, 3 private space companies, industrial gas -- industrial gas majors. These are well capitalized, all funded projects and we have greater than $150 million backlog. That facility comes online in Q1 and immediately starts generating POC revenue for us. Customer-driven new product development. What I'd like to highlight here, like I mentioned before, in the past, we'd have maybe a tank and compressor leading and now we have a solution. Well, these solutions come in the form of new product development where customers have asked us to develop new products for them and so -- whereas traditionally, you might develop a new product and then try to sell it. We actually have multiple hydrogen fuel stations in backlog as one example where we are executing new product development against orders in backlog. So we're basically getting that new product development funded that we can then use moving forward. And then I want to highlight on the under operational excellence there, our flexible manufacturing strategy. So Jill highlighted earlier, 90% or more of our products are manufactured in multiple locations. How that ties to revenue is the more places that we can -- we build our products, the quicker we can accelerate that backlog into revenue. And we're seeing that across the board here as we accelerate our record backlog into revenue. So financial targets. Organic revenue, mid-teens CAGR. What I want to specifically highlight here is that these are -- these are conservative numbers. They do not include any of the big LNG projects that we have line of sight to, but are not currently in our backlog. It does not include any of the hydrogen hub opportunities that Joe Belling highlighted earlier, where we have line of sight to opportunity there. But if it's not in our backlog, it is not in this number. This is a conservative number. And then reported gross margins in the mid-30s, free cash flow conversion at 95% plus. So let's talk about the margin drivers. On the left-hand part of the slide here, Chart stand-alone business 2020 through 2022, mid-25% margin, roughly. Look at the first 6 months of Howden ownership, we're at over 30%. And where we're headed is the mid-30s. Well, how are we getting there? With additional business comes volume leverage, and we're taking advantage of that. We've got -- next year will be our first full year of the Howden acquisition cost synergies that Curtis highlighted. Those are all improving margins right away and additional productivity benefits. And then again, our pivot from components to solution providers being -- from a component to a solution provider adds more margin. And all this margin drops directly to operating income or operating margin improvement. And in addition to that, we've got SG&A cost reductions in flight as well that will further improve the operating margin. So net leverage reduction. This is just a recap there of where we ended Q3 with and where we're headed. Specific to note on this slide, just to reiterate our financial policy that we're focused on debt pay down. There will be no material cash acquisitions using that cash, and there'll be no share repurchases. And then once we do achieve our capital allocation -- once we achieve our net leverage targets of the 2% to 2.5%, we will consider making some inorganic investments if they're strategic for us, if they bring us technology or access to new geographies, and we will continue to invest in high ROI investments that generate productivity improvements and improved margin or accelerate backlog conversion and accelerate revenue. Now I'll turn it over to Gerry.

Good morning, everyone. Today, I'm going to talk to you about talent and culture at Chart. I'll start with a few key takeaways in this area. First, the organization really has strong alignment on its values and it's OneChart culture. This is driven by active participation of the combined leadership team and in our global functional groups and our regions. Our culture and values are really underpinned by our 4 key themes that we -- that all of our team members share: The importance of safety. You've heard a lot about these today. The importance of safety, stakeholder orientation, which is a passion for serving our customers. Strong work ethic, and a desire to give back to the communities in which we operate. The second takeaway is that we have strong talent depth across our business. The Howden acquisition really has strengthened our pool of talent and the combined organization structure has created a lot of opportunities for many team members, both on the chart side and the Howden side to move into larger roles. And we have been selectively adding talent from outside of the organization. The last takeaway is that we have a lot of really robust development programs in place. This is another part of our culture is providing people and our team members the opportunities to grow and to take on more responsibilities. These programs are a really great way to attract and retain talent and also to address some of the needs of the business. We see so many examples every day of our OneChart culture in action. Here are just a few. In the upper left, we talk about our Weld Council, which is a great example of leveraging combined strengths across the organization. As you heard today, welding is a really important part of our business. And this Weld Council is a group of welding engineers and welding specialists that come together and collaborate on best practices on industry standards, quality and technical training. When we acquired Howden, we saw immediate interest and involvement from the Howden weld specialists. In fact, 13 Howden team members have now joined the Weld Council, so it's been a really great success for us. In the lower left, we love to hear examples of our team saying yes to our customers. In this particular example, Howden and Chart sites came together to share crane capacity and enable us to meet a customer need. And finally, I'd call out one here where we do so many things for -- to support our local communities. And it's super important to us. In this example, we recognized and supported World Down Syndrome Day. This was a very important cause for several of our team members. And it's a great example of coming together to give back to the community. In terms of talent depth, we have a balance of Chart and Howden people in key leadership roles. You can see this in the combined executive team as well as in the functional groups and the regional teams. The Howden and the Chart teams have people that have -- I would say they have very complementary skills. And they also are complementary from a geographic perspective. A couple of good examples of that are the commercial organization and the global engineering and project management team. I'd also mention the aftermarket service and repair business, which is led by Howden team members. It's a very experienced team and doing an impactful job across our regions. And finally, I'd like to talk about our development programs. They're intended to build and upskill our talent pipeline. As you can see here, the programs span across all stages of a person's career, from internships to new engineering graduates who would join our rotational engineering program. We also have an emerging leaders program, which is available to people at basically all levels of their career. We also have technical expertise programs like our fellows and key experts. This program taps into some of the most skilled and longest tenured technical experts and engineers that we have in the organization. And it's a great way to transfer knowledge from those individuals to earlier career engineers. So we are building for the future. I would emphasize that these programs are highly attractive to our team members as well as to external talent. It really resonate well when we're recruiting on campuses as well as when we're talking or trying to recruit a more seasoned experienced technical experts. So it really helps us on the recruiting and retention front. I mentioned retention, they're also very good for retention. Example I would give you is an emerging leaders program. It has a retention rate of 95% for people that come out of that program and they remain with Chart. Also, a majority of our interns either come back for second summer of internships or they move into full-time roles with Chart. So we've had really good success with that. And it's not on this page, but I'll mention the Founder's Innovation Team or as we internally refer to it as the Ocean's 11 team. We continue -- as many of my colleagues said, continue to foster a culture of innovation. The group that I spoke of here is comprised of former founders and technical leaders from acquired businesses. They regularly meet and collaborate on ideas for product innovation and development and commercial applications of those products. And so it's been a really great way to keep the entrepreneurial spirit alive with those companies. So just to summarize, the 3 takeaways I have are that we're aligned on values and culture, that we have really strong talent depth across the organization and that we have many robust development plans -- programs to provide our team members with opportunities for future growth. Jill?

Okay. And to conclude our prepared remarks before we open it up for Q&A. I think you got a good sense for Gerry, who, by the way, is extremely instrumental in implementing the programs that you just heard about over the course of the last 6 years. The sense of the way we pull together external and internal talent, attempt to promote from within and also generate our own skill sets, talent programs for hard to recruit jobs such as welders. I'd also reiterate a few things that you heard today, including in Brinkman's section here around the 3-year outlook being conservative. What's not included in there being any big LNG opportunity that has not yet been booked. So not -- so anything that's not in backlog. Anything hydrogen hub related as well as any additional M&A that we might pursue following achieving our target net leverage ratio range. We're very excited about the margin opportunity that resides ahead of us. And as you heard a few times during the presentation, hyper focused on debt paydown, hitting the net leverage target that we've laid out, and I will reinforce again the financial policy that you saw in the finance section. And to conclude, hopefully, you got a sense today of the uniqueness and the differentiation that we have in this company, not only through the portfolio, the solutions, the aftermarket but also the people. And so with that, we're going to open up for Q&A. I'd invite the presenters to come up on the stage with me. And then also the other Chart team members, we may have asked you guys some questions, too.

All right. So we do have 2 microphones that are here in the room. For those on the webcast, if everyone can -- when you raise your hand and you get the microphone, just say your name, where you're from or your affiliation, and then we can pose the question to the team. So there we go. I guess maybe I'll go first. We'll start with Marty over there.

I'm Marty Malloy, Johnson Rice. The commercial pipeline that has grown, I think, it was $6.5 billion, mid-'22 and $21 billion now. Could you talk about, historically, what the range is that has actually been converted into orders when you look out over a 3-year period and what your expectations are?

So it was $8.5 billion in June of 2022, and now we're at $21 billion. And we -- I don't think we said this, but it was in the deck. Of that $21 billion, $1.6 billion is related to commercial synergy opportunities as well. So a nice contributor to the number. Historically, we've converted on what we call high-probability backlog in that mix, which is about 50% of that at a 35% to 40% rate. Joe Belling, do you want to add anything to that and what you see now?

Yes. I think that's an accurate assessment, Jill, to be about a 40% conversion rate. And we are seeing an increase in the synergies as well, which we expect to convert at similar rates.

Just keep hand in the [indiscernible] behind you.

Marc Bianchi with TD Cowen. I can't help myself but ask about kind of near term, particularly because it seems like you're here endorsing 2024, but TheStreet isn't even modeling that. They're quite a bit below. And the step-up from 3Q to 4Q is also quite a big step. So can you kind of give us some more color around what gives confidence in fourth quarter? We've got another 4 weeks under our belt since you last updated us. And then maybe talk about some of the components for '24. Perhaps how much of the backlog is sort of supporting the guidance? And then any other color?

Sure. So specifically, what I would say is we don't -- our company practices that we don't speak to updating guidance during the quarter. But I will refer back to my opening comment of we haven't seen any business condition changes over the last 4 weeks. So that will give you a sense of no demand changes or other business changes. When you look at the stairstep from '23 to '24, I think in the appendix, John, if you want to move there, there's a 2024 driver slide that lays out, essentially bridging if you went through A through J here of the various different contributors to how we look at the incremental '23 to '24. And then the question about the backlog, we definitely have higher visibility and had it even a month ago when we reported earnings to backlog coverage for 2024 compared to what we normally would have had historically. And that's a comment about the combined business. And so we have over 60% of our backlog available for revenue recognition in '24.

If I work that out, so the 65% of the $4.1 billion works out to about 50% of your guidance -- of guided revenue. What is that historically on a pro forma basis? Would you say that, that number is more like 30% or something like that?

That's about right, yes. Thanks, Marc.

Right behind you.

I was hoping to get a little bit more color around order mix, i.e. in one of the slides, I think in '21 and '22 versus '23, it looked like orders were -- had doubled. And as I think about that, what kind of drove that? Was that larger project opportunities, being able to sell more? Kind of any color around what drove that step-up? And I guess we're talking about the next 3 to 5 years. As you look out over the next 3 years, how are you thinking about how that order growth rate might evolve?

Well, I'll hand it to the guy who's responsible for the commercial team, Joe B.

Thanks, Jill. No, it's a great question. You heard us talk a lot about going from being a component or a product-focused supplier to a system supplier. So when we focus on selling an individual product, we're not looking at what's happening in the system before that product and what's happening afterwards. As we move to a OneChart global commercial organization, where everybody that is a part of the team I lead is responsible for selling anything that has a Chart logo on it. It doesn't matter if it's a compressor or a heat exchanger or a tank. If it says Chart on it, it's theirs. And so what we found is that a lot of people started asking a lot more questions around, hey, we've got this product, but what are you doing with the molecule before that? And where is it going afterwards? It really opened up quite a bit of growth for us from an order standpoint. So I would say the change in focus from product-specific to systems was a major driver in our progress in that area.

And then I did want to talk a little bit about aftermarket. Clearly, you guys are excited about it, SMI. It's -- right now, it's 30% of the business. As we look out in the medium term -- as we think about, obviously, we're going to have a lot more installed equipment out in the market over the next 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 years. Should we be expecting aftermarket to continue to kind of melt higher over that period? Or are there legacy contracts that are going to kind of roll off over that period, which maybe slows the pace at which aftermarket continues to grow?

Well, I'll tee it up with, we expect to continue to see above double-digit growth in the aftermarket. But I think Fred is probably best equipped to specifically address the why behind that.

Yes. I mean, I think we look at the scale of the installed base that we have and the -- all right.

Here you go. I got you now.

Yes. So if you look at the size of the installed base and the underserved component within that, then there's a huge runway to go after. Things like long-term service agreements will have -- they are time-bound. So we have processes in place to get after those renewals in advance of them occurring. So I think a combination of the installed base opportunity that we have, the bigger footprint and coverage that we've got in the region of the customer and the processes that we run through our commercial teams to be able to renew, rejuvenate and expand, I think that these are the mechanisms we'll use to drive that growth.

Maybe I would just add a statistic there that year-to-date through the end of September, the LTSAs and framework agreements, which were super majority Howden-related, were up 9.2% compared to the prior year. And so we're not only not seeing expirations not renewing, but we're seeing new ones come in. And that doesn't even, in my opinion, hit the starting point of what is Chart legacy opportunity.

If you want to just pass the mic down, then we'll go to the other side.

Craig Shere with Tuohy Brothers. This kind of dovetails on the last question a little bit but you're -- and prior. So you're guiding to above TheStreet next year at about $5.1 billion revenue. But at about a 15% CAGR to '26, that's, give or take, $5.25 billion-ish-plus. So that's not a huge amount of growth. But the point was made that this is very conservative and only off the current order book and nothing new. So I had a couple of questions around that. First, can you speak to the quality in terms of repeatability and a base off which you could anticipate future growth of 2026 versus 2024? Obviously, Big LNG is down, you've already mentioned. But the percent of RSL in the '26 outlook versus '24, not necessarily exact numbers here, but talking about quality, percent of growing specialty, which obviously is an outsized growth driver versus -- '26 versus '24. And as far as the Big LNG, it sounds like even things that you've been -- you've announced that you've been selected for, like this international IPSMR full suite order that I'm imagining might be $200 million or $300 million-plus of revenue by itself. So am I smoking anything by saying if you had 3 or 4 Big LNG orders that are not in the current book that the reality is 2026 could be closer to $6 billion, not $5.25 billion? And then my final question, and I'm sorry for all this, is Big LNG is one of your largest margin businesses, especially if you use your IP engineering and everything. So to the degree that's rolling off, and let's say it's arguably, whatever, $300 million lower in 2026 than 2024, how are you filling in with these mid-30%, high sustained margins above the -- which you've guided to, but above what we've experienced? How are you maintaining and filling in on that when that rolls off?

Okay. I can't answer whether you're smoking something, but I can pick apart your answer in the pieces, and then let me know if we've covered it. You guys chime in if I miss something as we go here. So the short answer, Craig, is, yes, your math works if we get the Big LNG projects that you're talking about. We specifically didn't include anything that wasn't in backlog to be consistent with what we've done historically. And we had spent a lot of years getting away from trying to time when Big LNG was going to come into the backlog. And so that's why we've made the decision not to include it there. You are correct on the international order that would utilize IPSMR. That's not in backlog, would be in the hundreds of millions, so at the higher end of anything that we've booked historically. And so therefore, you would have that consistency of Big LNG more similar to what you will have in 2024. And that would drive to the answer you're describing, especially because we do anticipate RSL or aftermarket to be in the double-digit-plus growth range. And we're seeing the secular market drivers on the specialty side, ex the hydrogen hubs that we've specifically said we're calling out separately or excluding separately. How you get and you maintain, to your point, IPSMR for those, just by way of background for those who are less familiar, when we've talked about Big LNG historically, we talk about projects that we are awarded that are LNG equipment for Big LNG only and then the ones that also have the IPSMR process technology. When the technology is in the order itself to us, those are traditionally and typically higher margin than just equipment on its own. And so to fill the gap of, let's just say we didn't get the Big LNG coming in, and we still have confidence to get to that mid-30% gross margin, that comes from a lot of what you heard today from Curtis and Earl on the productivity activities that we have underway, more of the mix on the positive margin mix coming from the specialty side of the house that is in -- is starting to come into backlog as we see that and then the aftermarket service repair continuing to grow and be a strong contributor to that margin profile. The one thing that we don't talk regularly about and -- for the obvious reasons is around price/cost. So we're holding on to price/cost the way that we've described it over the last year and the multiple 2 years before that, where we had to take so much price just to catch up on the supply chain challenges. There are pricing strategies as well in both newbuild and aftermarket that are in our strategic plan, which would also help drive that margin. Did I answer it? Okay.

Maybe let's just go to the other side for now, and then we'll come back.

Barry Haimes, Sage Asset Management. I had 2 quick ones. One, related to the project. I think you said that was on track. But my question relates more to when you get to the point of start-up, is there anything new or different that could affect the start-up? Or is it pretty plain vanilla similar to your -- the rest of your capacity and the odds of a glips there are lower? So just some sort of a feel for the start-up process. And then the other question was just trying to understand the aftermarket service business. What is the Howden penetration of pieces of equipment in the field that it would be applicable for versus the legacy Chart penetration? And you referred to being able to go after a competitor's equipment too. Does Howden do much of that? And -- or is that a relatively new initiative? And just some feel for that.

Okay. Brinkman, do you want to answer -- address the Teddy 2?

Yes. I'll address the Teddy 2. So specific to the type of equipment we're building there and the manufacturing technology, it's the exact same processes that we're using in our new rig location, actually building very similar equipment for similar customers and New Prague we've built, launchpad tanks for space customers there but just smaller. New Prague is not located where we can ship via water. The capabilities are not there to build the size tanks that the space customers were demanding. And so instead of building a 175,000-gallon liquid hydrogen storage tank for a launchpad, we can build a 450,000-gallon version at Teddy 2. So exact same processes, same manufacturing technology, just bigger, larger scope, located where we can ship easily via water, via rail or via road in Teddy 2. So -- and then just to mention further, we also build large tanks in China. We built large tanks in the Czech Republic as well. But again, not to the size of Teddy 2. So we're well experienced in building the equipment that's going into Teddy 2 coming online in Q1.

Okay. Second part of Barry's question. I'm going to -- Eric V, if you can come up also, so you give your two cents. And Fred, do you want to start off?

Yes. So I think the first part of the question was about the penetration of what we call customer attachment. So we can -- this is something we've worked on quite extensively in Howden over a couple of years. And we measure that based on a customer's asset that we've had an order from in the last 36 months. In Howden, we estimated that around 45%, so below the 50%. Chart didn't have a process from measuring that. So therefore, when you blend the 2 together, it will be significantly lower than that 45%. But that journey that Howden went on, it requires connectivity between your customer asset base, ERPs that are receiving customer orders. So there's a bit of a data process to be able to quantify, and that's one of our projects for next year with this merged organization. The team that's driving this and working with each of the product companies and the aftermarket organizations are the people who came from Howden. So again, that idea of we're taking proven processes as a platform and applying it to the Chart products. So I think through the course of next year, we'll get more finite data on that. And then what gets monitored gets managed, and that's how we'll drive up that attachment rate. So that's why I say below 50%, but the absolute number is something we could quantify. But I think it is quite well below that 50% mark. So therefore, a big opportunity.

You probably have to use that microphone.

Yes. I think the overall number is exactly, as Fred has said in terms of the penetration we see in the Middle East and Africa region. I think particularly for us, Chart was not very present within the region, so starting at a very low base in terms of Chart's current installed equipment. And also if we look at the pipeline of newbuild opportunity to really leverage up the process that we have in our region, we have a significant aftermarket share in the mix of our business. So bringing that aftermarket philosophy to the Chart program of the great opportunity for the newbuild projects and making sure that early participation with customers that you embed the opportunity for aftermarket coming with that. So we've got a very strong process that we have in our region to make sure that conversion from newbuild to aftermarket, and we get a strong penetration with those customers.

I think the second part of your question was about the non-OEM aftermarket. It's been a long-standing capability for Howden, in particular. We typically -- our customers will have other manufacturers' equipment on their site. The tools and techniques that we look at, how equipment is performing, quite often process plants change over their lifetime and they move off of their base efficiency or the operating conditions change. So therefore, we have an opportunity to bring our engineering to similar-type equipment and then upgrade that or change it and put out in parts within it. We also, within Howden, acquired a couple of companies. CPI reset compressors, we make a range of wear parts for all manufactured types of -- so effectively OEM-agnostic. And because of wear parts, then it's a regular contact with that customer user base. So we have all those types of opportunities to connect with other OEM products and customer sites.

And behind you?

Arun Jayaram, JPMorgan. I want to get some more thoughts on your expectations around free cash flow conversion next year. And maybe some thoughts on the $130 million of incremental cost synergies. Are those going to be in CFO or the P&L impacting EBITDA? But maybe a little bit of a breakdown of the $130 million of incremental synergies that you talked about today.

Tom, do you want to just answer that?

Yes. So on the $130 million of incremental synergies, that is what we expect to drop through incremental on a year-over-year basis, right? And then on -- so that's part of your EBITDA bridge, right? Then when you think about the free cash flow conversion, what we're talking about is targeting a 95% to 100%. Right now, when you think about the way free cash flow is going to look particularly next year, there is going to be an interest. Interest is obviously elevated. So as we deleverage, that will naturally accrete us towards that number. So that's the way I would think about it.

And then maybe -- I think there was a piece of the question that was what are -- what's the composition of the incremental synergies. So maybe, Curtis, you could just talk about the types of opportunities that are in our pipeline on cost synergies.

Okay. For additional ones?

Yes.

Okay. Yes. So I mean we're going to see a lot -- continued progress in some of the same areas we've been having. We talked a lot on my section about the procurement benefits there and category management and strategic sourcing, what that's going to lead to. And then additionally, we're working to take additional SG&A costs out through integration of systems, whether that be computer systems for human resources or plant planning and resource planning and execution. So as we integrate more of those systems within the company, we'll be seeing more of those SG&A benefits as well as we have a few projects where we're looking at combining of different manufacturing or service centers to further reduce our cost base there.

And then actually, if I can add just 2 more points to that answer from earlier. One, as we talked about on the third quarter call, there is some -- the timing of our semiannual interest payment for our senior notes, hits in January and in July, just so that people understand the phasing of that throughout the year. And then the only other thing, again, something we brought up on the third quarter call is that next year, we're using -- we've removed the word adjusted from our definition of free cash flow.

Just one quick follow-up. On the third quarter call, you mentioned there's about $100 million of revenue, which was deferred. Can you give us an update -- any updated thoughts on timing of revenue recognition?

Nothing different than we said at the call.

Can we go up here in the front?

Rob Brown, Lake Street. I just wanted to follow up again on the commercial synergies. You've exceeded kind of your 3-year target already. Now that you've gotten into Howden, what's sort of your view on the potential of the commercial synergies? And how much further can you take that?

Joe B, I'm marking this down.

How much further can we take that? That's a constant question I'm getting asked every day. I think there's a lot more that we're seeing as we are working to further integrate the businesses and learning more about the products and technologies that are being offered. The team as they're going out and meeting with customers are identifying new opportunities almost every day. So I do see that continuing on for quite some time. Also as we work in our product development arena that Jennifer had talked about, there's going to be those continued opportunities to find those adjacencies that we can capitalize on. So I don't see it -- I see it continuing for some time.

And I would add maybe a few specifics that internally we talk about, one, being a stronger -- we've done some work on bringing the compression to North America. I think there's more and more opportunity for us to do that through our -- the Chart legacy customer base. So we see that as an accelerant versus where we sit today. The pipeline, the $1.6 billion of commercial synergy pipeline opportunity, has fairly limited aftermarket included in that number primarily because of how the pipeline of aftermarket unfolds. And then there's this -- the Asia Pac, India region, which Camille, raise your hand, stand up. Camille was President of APAC in India, also a Howden legacy individual. And in her region, I would say you're seeing a lot of commercial synergy opportunities that are maybe a little earlier than what we're seeing in Europe and in Middle East and in the U.S. Camille, do you have -- do you want to add anything to that? You want to -- I think it's an important enough point for you guys to hear kind of what I would say is still a fairly early days region for us that has a ton of 2025-2026 opportunity, '27?

Yes. I think what we're seeing historically is Chart legacy had limited presence or -- in Asia Pacific, where we have 100 people in Australia. We have very established workshops in Singapore and Korea and Taiwan. And that gives us a very different access to customers because we had a lot of depth from really running assets in the regions since we've been almost 40 years in India. We've been 25 years in Taiwan. So the depth of customer relationship that we had leveraged towards the new product technology is really opening up a lot, a lot of potential, particularly around energy transition, water technology. So more to come on that.

Eric Stine, Craig-Hallum. I would argue that water treatment is probably the most underappreciated of your newer segments. You did it for hydrogen, you did it for carbon capture. What the pipeline looks like today, what it will look like 4 to 5 years from now. So if you could maybe do the same thing or just talk about how you see water treatment playing out over the next couple of years.

John is really passionate about water. So we'll -- feel free to chime in. I think you're right. I think it was Roger who said to me earlier, aftermarket seems to be an afterthought for some people. I think aftermarket and water are probably the 2 pieces of the portfolio that are less appreciated than what they should be in terms of contributing. We have not seen a ton yet into backlog on PFAS in particular. We've seen a ton of interest on it. We're starting to book orders for -- in particular in the United States. I'd say handfuls of types of orders on PFAS, but that has an enormous kind of I would have said mid-decade, but later decade from where we sit today at the end of '23 opportunity ahead. There's an immense amount of opportunity in India, in other non-U.S. locations. Belling, you're really close to the non-U.S. opportunities in water. You want to talk to those?

Yes. So there's a lot of opportunities that have to do with getting access to clean drinking water and getting access to wastewater treatment. I outlined a little bit earlier. But -- so that's really where we specialize in, and that's where we're making those inroads. A lot of -- circling back to the last question on synergies, getting access to those -- some of those regions where we didn't previously have access with the combined organization is helping it grow as well. So we continue to see those opportunities growing.

And I guess, Eric, we didn't answer your question directly, which is what does that look like? What could that be? Off the cuff, I'm not going to give a number. But suffice it to say that the growth rate, if you were looking at the slide we had the TAM on that had the 2 little breakouts for hydrogen and for carbon capture, we would envision the water kind of look similar from the next 4 year to the years 4 through 8 in terms of the ramp.

And then over on the left. And then while Lannett's walking, maybe one thing we did just put -- we published a deck about Chart water, probably a couple of weeks ago, on our investor website. So I would also use that as a resource for a more detailed deep dive.

Walt Liptak with Seaport Research. I wanted to ask about 2 things. First, the quarterly run rate for orders, the $450 million. Obviously, some of your orders are lumpy. But should we kind of expect that $450 million range into the future and then periodic pickups? Or how do you see the pipeline?

Okay. So Joe Belling can comment. But what we kind of said here is a book-to-bill of 1 or more is what we need. We expect that given the growing commercial pipeline that, that would continue to be certainly a metric we can hit and exceed. In terms of what the average has been in Q2 and Q3, which would be in the combined business, we were at over $1 billion for each of those 2 quarters in the combined business. So -- and if you said kind of historical Chart stand-alone, that $450 million number would have been -- the answer would have been yes to that on a Chart stand-alone basis, $450 million to $500 million.

Okay. Great. And then thinking about the gross margin, you guys talked about where the gross margin improvement is going to come from. And I wonder, how should we think of it linearly for the next 3 years? Is it a step-up from the cost-out in 2024 and then improvement? Or where do we -- how should we think about modeling that out?

You can answer that.

Yes. I guess without getting into specifics, earlier in our presentation, we did say that in our medium-term outlook, we were going to grow revenue year-over-year through that outlook. And I think one of the largest drivers was volume as well as our mix towards solutions. So I think that's a fair way to think about it.

Then we have a question in the back.

This is Ati Modak from Goldman Sachs. Jill, you spoke about interest rate sensitivities earlier. Maybe help us understand what portion of your backlog might be made up of customers that have that sensitivity. What end markets that might that be in? And then you spoke about the customer evaluation process also. So maybe help us understand that a little bit.

Yes. So we have an immaterial amount of our backlog that we would view as having interest rate sensitivity. We've tried to give some examples of the quality of backlog and the breadth of the types of end markets. When we talk about quality, we talked about Teddy 2, where we've got 3 strong space customers. And EPC and industrial gas major comprises that 100 -- greater than $115 million and kind of spreads across that backlog in -- I think there's a pie chart of what it looks like across those end markets. If you said, okay, challenge that presumption that nobody has any interest rate sensitivity in any of their spend in their projects and backlog, our view would be that it would be not a cancellation but a shift in timing of their spend, which again, we would view as -- in single-digit percent of our backlog, if that were the case. And that's kind of a typical where we do see things shift between quarters, which typically aren't from funding reasons but rather from schedule reasons or desire of the customer to have equipment show up at a different place or a different point in time. And then the second part of your question on the processes and the elements of consideration when we take an order with the customer, I think all of the standard fare that everyone would be familiar with of ensuring that the customer has the capability to pay the bills. We do also risk-assess customers that if they're less tenured in terms of their balance sheet that we would require more upfront payment and structure the agreement in a way that also has a more meaningful cancellation fee at milestones along the way so that if there is a cancellation, we're not left with no recourse to get paid. And maybe one final comment. You've heard me say this a thousand times, but I have to take the opportunity to say it again. Our historical cancellation rate in both the individual businesses and the combined business has been less than 1%. And since the acquisition, I think it was 0.19% of backlog.

Let's go to that gentleman and then to that.

Yves Siegel, Siegel Asset Management. Can you just discuss how you came to the leverage target of 2.5 to 2.9x? That's number one. Number two, is there any aspiration to be investment-grade? And then number three, is there a competitive advantage of being investment-grade in terms of when you look at trying to get new business?

Okay. So starting with the bank covenant calculation of the net leverage ratio, so that's out in the public domain. And our target of -- target range of 2 to 2.5 -- we -- just only because we have the 2.5 to 2.9. And by the way, thank you for your patience in raising your hand a lot of times. The target being the 2 to 2.5, and that's something that -- I think we've had a lot of various viewpoints and perspective of people should you be running at a 1% net leverage ratio range? Or what's comfortable, right? And for us, we're comfortable the 2 to 2.5. I think it allows us to deploy capital in a way that we have historically both from an organic and an inorganic perspective. So that's the rationale behind that. We -- in Brinkman's slide, there was a third bullet that was intently generic to say that if there's other uses of capital at the point that we execute and achieve our target, then that would be determined by the Board to leave the optionality beyond just organic and inorganic investment. But we think that profitable growth is really what we want to see ahead of us in our capital allocation once we -- and that's why we're at that 2 to 2.5 as that appropriate range for us. Anybody -- Brinkman, do you want to add anything to that?

No. Over to well, Joe.

Okay. What was the third part of your question?

[indiscernible].

Yes, yes. So it's not a very specifically called-out item. But what we're -- what we continue to do is drive that debt down and hit the target ratio ranges and work with the ratings agencies. And so would it be a competitive advantage to us to be investment-grade? We haven't seen a loss of business because we're not investment-grade. But yes, certainly, I think that's always something to -- in my opinion, to aspire to over time.

Let's go. Here in the front row and then right behind, just pass the mic afterwards.

Ben Nolan from Stifel. I have 2. It should be a pretty easy, at least I think so. The first is just on the LNG market and LNG development. Is there still, do you think, a chance of winning one Big LNG project or equipment project by the end of the year? And just any update on whether it's Big LNG or fueling stations or just LNG at all? Has there -- have you seen any incremental development one way or the other as it relates to that part of your business? And then the second question, I think you had said that you were expecting 2% to 2.5% CapEx -- revenue CapEx as a percentage of revenue. Does that feel like a sustainable run rate? Or is that artificially a little bit low just because you're focused on deleveraging?

So Belling, do you want to make your commitment?

I'm wearing these socks for a reason today, Jill. No, the question around do we expect a Big LNG order around the end of the year, no change from what she announced 4 weeks ago. And the answer is yes, we do expect that.

And then with respect to, I would say, LNG infrastructure, the fueling stations, the onboard tanks, we haven't really seen anything materially different on onboard tanks. Fueling stations, I would say, Europe and China, we've seen a little bit improvement because that's primarily where that equipment goes, but nothing that's dramatically different so far than what we've been seeing in the last 9 months. And then the 2% to 2.5%, I think at the higher end of the 2.5% is it captures what were -- what the investments we've talked about, so the capacity expansions. And Joe Brinkman, you said we're going to be at the higher end. I don't know if you said this, we're going to be at the higher end in '24 of that 2% to 2.5%?

Yes, on the higher end. And I don't think I mentioned it, but yes, I expect it to be on the higher end of that for 2024. And is that a good guideline for subsequent years? I will just comment that wherever we see backlog growing through Joe Bellings pipeline conversion here, and we have an opportunity to accelerate revenue, we're going to continue to invest in CapEx to speed up the revenue conversion. And then if there's good productivity with good payback on a CapEx project, we're going to move forward, especially as the leverage ratio comes down. But in the short term, it's all about getting more backlog conversion. But I think it's a good guideline.

And then -- yes?

I have 2 somewhat unrelated questions. One is, so your reporting segments are like the legacy cryo tank heat exchanger type of segments. Could you help me understand, like what are the P&Ls that people are running? Is there like a P&L for EMEA or Europe. And who is responsible for hitting these financial targets that you are trying to put out? And the second question I had was the 45%-plus gross margins in the aftermarket business. My impression is that the legacy chart doesn't have as much moving components to it. So is that just -- is that reasonable to assume that you can get the same kind of penetration and margins in the Chart side of the business compared to Howden?

So the 5 regional presidents here all have a responsibility to deliver the financial metrics. So that would be Fred, Camille, Cherry, Earl and Eric. Then the second part of the question is that there's an enormous amount of spare parts, aftermarket, field service and repair on the Chart legacy equipment that occurs, again, in the field that we don't even -- we have historically not even touched or had access to do. And so it's less about the rotating equipment piece than it is about, in the case of the heat exchanger, the core or in the case of a fan, a blade, just to name a few examples, or a brazed aluminum heat exchanger, the weld. So what you have to remember on a lot of the equipment across the combined portfolio is that while it might be on the newbuild side, 5% to 10% of the cost of a facility to run that if it doesn't work, then that facility doesn't work that day and it costs the operator millions and millions of dollars. And so it becomes mission-critical to them to have the field service capabilities and the availability of spares. You want to add anything to that?

The other thing I would maybe add is that I think about rotating equipment versus static equipment has a frequency rather than a value price. So rotating equipment wears out more frequently, so there's more demand for it. But the price you get for it based on your IP and how well you're serving the customer, that's what drives the price more than whether it's a welded part or an impeller.

Drew Hutchinson with Hint Capital. I was wondering if you could discuss just the progress you're seeing with Earthly Labs. It's a very small percent of sales. I think it's like mid-$20 million. I think I'm trying to think through. It's a really good example of CCUS in action that people can really relate to. I see what you're doing with the breweries and so forth. Is this viewed internally as just a call option that's in the business? Or is this something that can get to $50 million or $100 million over time and kind of land and expand with these customers? And then also on the sales force side of Earthly Labs, is it a one-off installation booking? Or is there a service component too?

Okay. So I'd like Jennifer and Curtis to give their views on Earthly and the progress against it, and then I'll address your specific question on is it a call option, is it -- does it have multiple replacement and follow-on activity.

Yes, I'll start. Yes, I absolutely agree. There's a lot of growth opportunities around our carbon capture technology in that. We're also investing in our new product development so that we continue to grow that market. And what we're seeing is, as a result of the work that we're doing, the project sizes are starting to increase. So the revenue streams are starting to go up per project, and we're getting more and more project pipeline as a result of that. So we continue to develop the new products as well as grow the business. So we see that that's something that has the potential to have a very large revenue stream in the future.

Yes. And I would just add, there's a lot of opportunity there. I think when we first acquired Earthly Labs, really the only commercial unit was the Oak for a small craft brewery, that kind of size. And now we've gotten into the larger sizes. And then also just the proliferation, I think, as we see tightness in CO2 markets and all, there's a lot more potential. And there's a lot of craft breweries out there. I've lost track of what the number is. Just in the U.S., I think it's 10,000 to 12,000 now. So there's a lot of opportunity there. And then also, there's adjacent applications, such as CO2 recovery from dry ice operations, where the Earthly Labs technology will also play.

And we've built upon, to Curtis' point, that initial Oak unit, the small unit. And now what we've seen is the Howden's biogas capability and relationships have been able to pull Earthly into larger scale for biogas applications. So the ag gas is a great example that we had up on the partnership side. And then we're hitting other geographies is a huge growth opportunity. U.K., Australia, New Zealand, whereas up until this past year, it was really focused on North America. And then you get into distilleries and wineries beyond breweries, and you can see that -- you can take it pretty far if you wanted to, right? You could take it into a residential type of application, which is not what we're doing in the current state. But there's a lot of other ways you can drive growth through the Earthly Labs application. What I'd point out, and we don't talk a lot about this, is just how Earthly and SES are larger-scale carbon capture technology, kind of are converging in the middle. And so there's a market that there's very few competitors in kind of larger than what Earthly does and smaller than what SES does. And we think that there's some future potential growth there. So no, we like the business. So I guess to -- my view of a call option is kind of it's testing the waters and seeing what we want to do with it. And our view is it's integral part of our business. We love that business. And we know there's plenty of other people that would want it, but we're going to keep it.

Over to Saurabh, fourth row in the middle.

This is Saurabh Pant of Bank of America. Just a couple of free cash flow-related questions in general. I think you've talked about taxes, optimizing your taxes going forward. Can you talk to that a little bit what's baked into your next 3-year outlook from a cash tax perspective? How do you optimize that going forward? And then related to the free cash flow discussion, just on working capital, I think legacy Howden used to run a leaner than legacy Chart. So maybe talk to how much you can do on the working capital front.

Yes. So John, maybe I'll leave the cash tax question because I don't know what we have out in the public domain, and you know better than I do on that. On the legacy Howden versus legacy Chart working capital, absolutely accurate that they ran leaner on working capital. So we're taking a lot of the processes across legacy Chart. And if you looked back, I think, on average, we were in the mid-20%, maybe even high 20%, working capital as a percent of sales in Chart legacy land for the 2018 to 2021-ish time period. And we have an internal target that's meaningfully lower than that for the combined business, and we're already starting to see that improvement. And it really is tactically from taking the best practices of what Howden is able to achieve, in particular in their compressor unit, which went from -- I'm going to be close on these numbers, mid- to high teens, 17-ish percent to 7% to 9% in a matter of a couple of years due to working capital management. So those are the -- that really is tactical and best practice taking and making it happen across these operations.

I guess on the tax rate, what I would say is we've talked about opportunities to take it lower over time, really driven by the integration activities that we're undergoing.

We haven't given a tax rate.

Maybe time for a few more. We're starting to up.

There's one right here, John.

All right. Let's go there and then there and there.

Marc Bianchi with TD Cowen again. On the leverage targets that you have, maybe the first starting point is, if I look at the TTM adjusted EBITDA, and I don't know exactly what it is, right, because we don't have full Howden results, but I can kind of come up with maybe there's an add-back for the bank covenant in the range of $350 million to the TTM. So that's the first question. Is that in the ballpark? And then the next question is, when you're getting to the 2.5 to 2.9, what does that add-back look like? And maybe what is it in the years beyond?

You'll have to answer with what we're allowed to say on that.

Yes. I mean, I would just refer you back to the bank covenant...

Unfortunately, you don't see that -- it's not enough information in there to come up with the number.

We do get a benefit for 24 months of synergies that haven't been realized yet. That's one of the moving parts and then the other ones are all identified in the baked covenant.

Can you talk about -- sorry, Katy Proctor, Hans Capital Management. Can you talk about the India opportunity across LNG, hydrogen, water, et cetera? And then maybe my second question would just be, could you talk about -- and I asked it out there, nuclear fusion and hydrogen, where they're not prime time yet, but they're early stage and what order growth would look like over time? And when does those opportunities sort of shift from more public sector to private sector?

And I'll tee up, Camille, you can answer this one. On the India side, so many folks who have been around the business for a while have known that I've been a believer that India is going to be a huge growth platform on not only LNG but also these other kind of new energies. And we're starting to see that happen. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that we're physically located in the region and have manufacturing operations. So from there, Camille, you want to go? Camille spends a lot of time in India.

Yes. I guess if you're looking at India, it's -- I mean everyone is starting to be bullish. A lot of people are saying, is this the new decade of India? But certainly, what we're seeing in terms of opportunities is a lot of the government support is moving forward, be it hydrogen, be in carbon capture and storage, be in water treatment. There's a lot of policies that are moving forward. Then the question really in India is always how do large companies, national companies but also foreign players are really materializing the government support. And we're seeing this really moving in the positive trends. There's a lot of new projects really coming to fruition, be it on the renewable hydrogen, so new renewable capacity coming online. We're really seeing a number of our key customers really taking final investment decisions on those projects, so really, really positive.

And I would say on the water side specifically, we, via AdEdge Water Technology India, so we had acquired a few years back, started to gain some traction through -- again, those are -- like Camille describes, government-decided. And what earlier this year was told to us was, hey, you've got to prove that you can do this. We want to see it. And then we did that. And now they're like, hey, we're going to -- here's the next one and the next opportunity. And so that was a meaningful -- the milestone of showing that it works is super important to the end users there, public or private.

And maybe just one additional point is the fact that we're now covering such a large range of products in India, be it from the power sector, from LNG, be it in water. It really gives us a very different presence with our customers but also different capabilities with field service engineering teams and manufacturing capacities all across end use, so really helpful.

All right. And then the final question?

Walt Liptak, Seaport. Again, wanted to -- so the transition happening from product sales to a more systems approach, maybe can you help us understand what stage -- it sounds like it's early days for that transition. And how important are the EPCs in doing that design work and selling so that they understand your capabilities?

Joe, do you want to take it? Or you want me to take it? Jennifer?

Yes, I'll start and then you guys can add on. It's an ongoing process, Walt. We went to the OneChart global commercial team with the legacy Chart 2.5 years ago, and that was really jump-started it. And since then, with the acquisition, we've got a group of new salespeople that came in that had been practicing the old focused on a specific product methodology of sales. So they've now been integrated into the OneChart team as well. So we're ongoing with that change, so to speak. The progress has been fantastic. We're seeing immediate traction and very positive results. So we're -- but in conjunction with that, it's very critical that we do the same thing with the engineering team, which Jennifer can talk about, because we do work very, very closely with them and they're equally as important with us selling these full-value solutions because they're very high-engineering content solutions.

Absolutely. And you hit on a key feature, which is our EPC partners, and that's what we consider our partners as we engage with the projects. So we work with them early in the project life cycle, and that gives us an opportunity to work closely, find the solution together and collaborate together, pull in as much of our products as we can through the life cycle of the project. So our engineers are essentially working side by side with our EPC engineers, understanding what the KPIs, what the key drivers are. They're bringing in our products, so they become our best salesman's working side by side with our EPCs. And in that partnership and that knowledge and understanding carries through for future projects as well. So now what we're seeing is our EPCs view us more as partners, and they call us for future projects. We're sitting in their office working with them. They come to us for that technical background and expertise that we have to offer, and it gives us the opportunity to further leverage that partnership on other projects and bring our expertise as well to them. So very much, we talk about our solutions. And we want to continue to grow our solutions. We can do that by packaging multiple equipment within a one order or do a full wrap on a solution in technology.

And to clarify, we are not an EPC. We'll never be an EPC. And we're seeing less and less EPC involvement in certain projects. So Jennifer's commentary is primarily related to the LNG side of the business, whereas on -- you don't see an EPC in water, as an example. You see an EPC periodically in hydrogen, just depending on the project. So it's a bit of a different profile when you get out of LNG.

Jill?

All right. Well, thank you all for your time and attendance and attention today. We look forward to engaging with you beyond just today. And I would like to thank the presenters, but I'd also like to make a very special thank you to John. Where is John? John, I think you all know the amount of heavy lifting that goes into preparation for a day like today, and it's just been a pleasure to work with John over the last year, and we're extremely privileged to have him on our team. So thank you. All right. You're free.