Gates Industrial Corporation plc (GTES) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

February 21, 2023

New York Stock Exchange US Industrials Machinery conference_presentation 40 min

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

Andrew Kaplowitz

analyst
#1

All right. We're going to get started again. We appreciate everyone's time. Last, but certainly not least today for me is Gates Corporation. We're very excited to have Ivo Jurek with us today, CEO of Gates since May 2015.

Andrew Kaplowitz

analyst
#2

And so Ivo, maybe just to start off, like I think most of the audience knows Gates now, but maybe you can talk about -- like you've highlighted in the past that you're #1 or top 3 really across your segments. So could you elaborate on what's driving that competitive age? And then obviously, it's been a very difficult supply chain environment for everyone. How you've navigated that? Have you gained share or lost share in your opinion over the last few years?

Ivo Jurek

executive
#3

Yes. Thanks, Andy. It's a really great question. Look, Gates has been around for over 111 years. We've built a presence in terrific end markets through our focus predominantly into replacement side of the business. We have developed a terrific portfolio of products that gives us a great differentiation. We have developed a franchise that is very well presented in all regions across the industrial economy over the decades and predominantly maybe going back the last 5 years. We have driven tremendous amount of new vitality into the business. We have fully revitalized our Fluid Power business, as an example. We have built 3 new factories in the 2018 time frame that has given us a great deal of opportunity to drive growth within the regional structure so we don't have to reexport products from one region to another. That product line vitality has given us tremendous competitive positioning. And frankly, we have benefited from that even in a very difficult year like last year where our Fluid Power business has been running almost at a peak performance that we have seen historically. Now on the Power Transmission side, we have a great business. That business is predominantly focused on growing in a growth initiative that we call, chain-to-belt. We have a great set of trajectory, not only on the industrial side of that franchise, but also in personal mobility. We have spoken about person mobility quite significantly over the last 2 to 3 years. The business has been firing in all cylinders, certainly over the last several years and continues to grow very, very nicely, giving us the opportunity to continue to drive growth forward. Last year, our business was predominantly impacted by constrained supply chain with highly engineered resins. And so what did we learn from that? So when you take a look at our Fluid Power business, one of the things that we have learned is that when you engineer new products and you have a very specific focus on reducing the complexity in a supply chain, you can benefit from that. And so we are now in process of doing the same thing in Power Transmission. We believe that we're in much better shape from vis-a-vis supply of these resins, and we anticipate that over the next couple of quarters, we see a great deal of stability simply with the supply of those resins, but also continue to engineer around them. And that also gives you yet next level of advantages that you can continue to drive your business forward and take more market share.

Andrew Kaplowitz

analyst
#4

Great. Thanks for that, Ivo. So I'm getting maybe a little bit more in the supply chain later. And you just reported good results, and we'll talk about that a little bit. But maybe just -- the last thing you did was you put out an 8-K just a few days ago on sort of a malware incident you had. So maybe just any sort of update you can give us on that? How is it affecting the business? Anything that you can talk about there?

Ivo Jurek

executive
#5

Yes. I think it's a fair question. Look, as a follow-up to the 8-K that we have issued last week regarding the malware attack on our business and consistent with our expectation, our restorative measures to critical systems are basically largely complete and normal operating activities have substantially resumed. As we have outlined in the 8-K, from February 14, we are presently making progress as anticipated with the vast majority of our facilities receiving materials, making products and shipping products to our customers globally. Importantly, at this time, we also have no evidence that the attacker attempted to penetrate our customers' or our suppliers' information technology systems. So that's really positive at this point in time. We believe that the investments we have made in our information technology and our systems and our organization over the past few years, as well as our incident response preparedness enabled us to react very quickly and very decisively. So we continue to assess the full financial impacts and other impacts from the incident and the assessment is going to take some time yet, but we are quite pleased with where we sit presently.

Andrew Kaplowitz

analyst
#6

Ivo, so you just mentioned the investments you made has sort of protected you somewhat. Like is there anything now that you've gone through this that you could sort of do better or more to make sure that this doesn't happen again?

Ivo Jurek

executive
#7

Well, look, I think that you hope that you never have to deal with this, but we are living in a situation where this is, I think, very prevalent. And I think it's going to become more frequent potentially for the future. We continue to harden our systems. We continue to make these investments, but even the most hardened investments that you make and the education that you have -- with your reorganization doesn't necessarily prevent you from this ever occurring. So while I wish that I could say that it will never happen again, I just don't know that, that's in our power to be honest.

Andrew Kaplowitz

analyst
#8

And you said you still -- one more just question on this. You said you're still assessing the impacts, like you do have guidance out there for [indiscernible] up 100 to 150 basis was in margin. Is this big enough were we need to think about that an impact to that? Or is it kind of like a week and then it's done and you probably don't?

Ivo Jurek

executive
#9

Look, I mean, it was a temporary incident, let's start with that. We really haven't quantified what the impact is going to be. I will remind everybody that we are very early in the year. So we don't feel that we have the visibility to be adjusting any guidance at this point in time. And as more information becomes available, we'll share it with our investors and with the investment community at large.

Andrew Kaplowitz

analyst
#10

Totally fair. So then let's just talk about the 1% to 5%. The organic growth that you expect. It's pretty wide range when you think about it. So what end markets really should drive that growth versus what end markets are you still sort of worried about when you think about that growth for the year?

Ivo Jurek

executive
#11

Let me start with -- there's still lots of headwinds out there, right? First of all, we've talked about China COVID impact in Q1. We've taken that into account. And then the Russia war impact, but we've exited from Russia in kind of May time frame of last year. So we have 5 more months of kind of dealing with negative comps, right? So that will drive a negative volume growth from the estimate perspective. But look, from the end markets, most of our end markets actually look reasonably well. We have quantified how we think about the global end markets in our Q4 presentation update and as part of our guidance and framing that. So most of our end markets are reasonably healthy. And we do have some opportunities with some of the more niche markets where we believe that the growth can still come in pretty good chunks, energy as an example, personal mobility, industrial chain-to-belt. We believe that those applications and end markets still have a good opportunity to deliver growth. On the other side, you're going to have some of those headwinds that we have discussed.

Andrew Kaplowitz

analyst
#12

And you mentioned China, like, China, any sort of update as Chinese New Year ended here, you're seeing more activity there. And is there anything in terms of self-help that you can do to offset the lumpiness in the business because it's been a pretty tough business for Gates?

Ivo Jurek

executive
#13

Yes. It has been particularly over the last 18 months. And the biggest driver for the lumpiness, if you would, has been the zero COVID policy in China. I think that we are all on the other side of that -- of that equation. Look, January was kind of as we anticipated. February activities came in also as anticipated. So I don't have anything that would presently tell me that there is something unusual that's happening in China. We believe that we will see the recovery as we anticipate it. And again, we'll continue to update folks.

Andrew Kaplowitz

analyst
#14

So let me keep with the regions and ask you about sort of North America and EMEA, like 4Q and also for 2022, I mean you generally saw pretty good growth, but you also talked about these growth enablers, eco-innovation, digital tools, commercial excellence. Can you comment on how much these initiatives are helping you to sort of catch up to customer demand and provide growth? And how these initiatives help you if, for instance, the macro environment were to deteriorate further?

Ivo Jurek

executive
#15

Yes. So look, let me start with, we delivered about 8% core growth in 2022. And that's taking into in account that we were quite substantially impacted from the supply chain issues, particularly in Q3. So I think that we have delivered terrific growth in 2022. So we've positioned the business around verticals that can deliver premium growth rate. We are very optimistic and we continue to be very constructive on personal mobility. I have stated on my call that about a year ago, we had about $250 million of pipeline of opportunities. The pipeline of opportunities nearly doubled in 12 months. So we have nearly $0.5 billion of opportunities that we are working on. So that gives us some degree of confidence that, yes, there may be some lumpiness in getting that growth translated into revenue, but we believe that, that's a great opportunity to continue to deliver. Look, our automotive replacement business was performing quite well in 2022, and we believe that the dynamics are very strong for 2023 to offer another year of stability. Now that being said, in our guidance, we have also stated that, look, as the supply chains improve and taking into account what some of the dynamics are driven by the higher interest rates that we are all dealing with, at some point in time, we should start seeing potentially customers starting to shorten and rely on the shorter supply times and perhaps start taking some destocking activities in the second half of the year. We don't see any of that happening today. We believe that inventories are in reasonably good shape. But should the end market demand decay and we kind of said, probably second half of the year, it's going to be less constructive than the first half of the year. It would be logical to presume that you will see some falloff in volumes. So that is kind of the framework behind how we are thinking about what happens in '23. But we also feel that we have a good opportunity across the portfolio to deliver more growth and deliver greater stability, greater resilience and continue to return to the level of profitability that we expect.

Andrew Kaplowitz

analyst
#16

So Ivo, can we follow up on the last statement you made about potential destock right in the second half? Like, first of all, point-of-sale right now is volume positive, too? Like I think you said it's positive from a revenue standpoint, it's volume positive, too. And then, ultimately, one of the debates that we all have, right, a customer is going to return to sort of just in time versus just in case. Like is it possible that inventory stays higher in the channel because of enclosed just in case?

Ivo Jurek

executive
#17

Look, I don't believe that we will necessarily see the level of inventory levels that we have seen pre-COVID. I believe that with the disruptions that all of us have dealt with in the industrial complex, you will -- that will probably result in a natural elevation of the inventory levels that people carry. So as long as the end market demand stays positive, and for us, look, we delivered 16-some-odd percent growth in Q4 and we stated that our volume was up mid-single digits, right? So presently, we also stated that our book-to-bill remain above 1. So the POS data is very healthy. When I take a look at the inventory levels that our channel partners, it isn't something that gives me a pause or concern, but that is at the present level of sell-out, right? So what happens if the economy decelerates? And we're just being cautious about the second half.

Andrew Kaplowitz

analyst
#18

Yes. And any particular regions or end markets that you're more worried about destock just out of curiosity?

Ivo Jurek

executive
#19

I think that it's similar in the western world. So Europe and North America probably would be an area that you need to be very carefully watching what's happening, and that's where we have the best level of visibility, to be quite frank.

Andrew Kaplowitz

analyst
#20

Yes. Got it. Okay. And then on your earnings call, you also mentioned the availability of highly engineered polymers did improve. Maybe could you expand on that? Do you think supply chain is stable enough not to give you that material availability will not be a significant headwind in '23? And then are there any other challenges that concern you, like, for instance, labor availability, how would you sort of define that for '23?

Ivo Jurek

executive
#21

So look, over the last 24 months, we've dealt with all of these challenges. We have dealt with labor, we have dealt with supply chain disruptions, logistics disruptions, all of these issues. And frankly, I'm quite proud of how our team has responded. We exited Q4, to your point, with much greater supply of these highly engineered resins. And presently, we believe that we have a good line of sight on being able to secure what we need for 2023. And on the top of that, we are making a great deal of progress of engineering our own solutions to develop our own resins that we believe give us more flexibility through more channels that resin is available. So I think that, that's proceeding quite well. The biggest issue for us in terms of supply chain -- the raw material supply is getting stability of logistics because we consume incredible amount of these resins. We consume railroad cars full of that resin on kind of weekly, monthly basis. So we can't use air logistics to move that resin around. So we believe that it will take maybe 1 to 2 more quarters before we see that stability where we can rely on the logistics. And kind of middle of the year, we feel that this is going to be completely behind us.

Andrew Kaplowitz

analyst
#22

And just on the pricing side, Ivo, I know you've kind of said you want to cover cost with price. Like do you feel like even if these supply chain headwinds continue to recede, and I know steel has started to come up again as an example, but like do you feel confident that you'll be able to sort of -- the price will be sticky in '23 and beyond?

Ivo Jurek

executive
#23

So we exited Q4 of last year price material economics margin neutral. We're just -- quite an accomplishment. And for us, it doesn't just include raw materials, it includes raw materials, logistics and energy. So the biggest drivers of inflation that we have all experienced over the last probably 18 months. We have guided that we believe that we will be able to maintain price material economics margin neutrality in '23. So I would say that we feel reasonably well that we will be able to defend our pricing.

Andrew Kaplowitz

analyst
#24

Okay. And I wanted to ask you -- I asked a little bit about the end markets, maybe just digging down a little bit more because you had forecast -- as part of your 1% to 5% growth, you'd forecast industrial off-highway, on-highway, diversified industrial that will be down low single digits in '23, which means you're forecasting volume maybe even a little worse than that. So how much of that is what we just talked about? Some sort of implied destock in there? Maybe it's weak China to start the year? Like just trying to understand sort of getting your head a little bit as to -- because some of these markets have been pretty strong, as you know in '22?

Ivo Jurek

executive
#25

Yes. Absolutely. First of all, what we try to ensure that our folks understand is that this is our global view on end markets. So when you take a look at On-Highway an example, On-Highway we have been terrific in North America, and it was. But On-Highway was not great in China, as an example. So when you kind of take a look at global purview of these end markets, while it may sound somewhat counterintuitive because we are looking at it through the North America lens, we need to really look at it from a global lens, right? And so the blended average for us is kind of flattish volume when we take a look at our presence, the contribution of our revenue from these markets in these various regions, that is probably as constructive overview as we can have. So I'll give you an example. Automotive OEMs, there's lots of enthusiasm that auto production is going to be up. And it may be, but we have taken much more conservative view because some of the agencies that forecast, the car productions have been a little bit too hot over the last couple of years. And we think that our view is maybe a little more pragmatic.

Andrew Kaplowitz

analyst
#26

So maybe just sticking with auto OE for a second. Like maybe just update us, Ivo, on sort of what's going on with you and EV, right? Like when we took you public, like it seemed like content per vehicle was 1 number and then it's kind of up over time. You've done a good job of sort of really increasing penetration. So where is penetration per vehicle now EV versus ICE as you go through that? I see that that's net positive for you guys now, but maybe talk about sort of where you are?

Ivo Jurek

executive
#27

Yes. This is a really great point. So look, as this opportunity starts to solidify, if you would. Over the last several years, we've made great deal of investment in some new technologies. Electric water pumps as an example, multi-branch -- what we call, multi-branch engine cooling, they both technology that is being used in ICE applications as well as in electric applications, except that in electric applications, the cooling of batteries is across the entire platform. So it becomes much larger in scale, and that's what's driving that content growth. We have kind of quantified that we are settling on the opportunity for Gates Corporation is about $400 per platform, where we also lose about $100 of what we used to have on ICE. So kind of net-net, we are $300 up on each vehicle. And in line with our overall long-term strategy, we are practicing selective participation in the OEM space. And we are primary focused on aftermarket, so automotive replacement market. With that focus, we also believe that we need to continue to building -- to build out our portfolio, and we have the best portfolio globally today. And so we are very enthusiastic about this opportunity as the aged car parc scales up. So we've got to see more electric vehicles being part of the car parc, and then we need to get it to be 7 to 12 years old, and I think then...

Andrew Kaplowitz

analyst
#28

That will help accelerate growth.

Ivo Jurek

executive
#29

Yes. But that's more of a 2025 beyond opportunity.

Andrew Kaplowitz

analyst
#30

Might be 2030 at this pace where...

Ivo Jurek

executive
#31

It could be that, absolutely. I mean, the sooner the better for us.

Andrew Kaplowitz

analyst
#32

Yes. So let me ask you about all the replacement then a little bit more in the near term, right? You're guiding to low single-digit growth this year, but we just talked about it, right? Global car parc continues to get older. I think U.S. miles driven like definitely, our people are out this year. So why is low single digit the right number? I know you told me it's globally. So like maybe that's kind of China just being slow. But like how do you feel about auto replacement by region?

Ivo Jurek

executive
#33

Yes. We actually feel really good about it. I think that this is probably one area where we are being somewhat conservative about potential destock in the second half of the year, right? Again, being more cautious about our forecasting for the second half, everything that you see today, to your point, Andy, points out to a very solid demand profile, right? I mean, miles driven are very strong. And I'll tell you that even in China, if you take a look at miles driven, miles driven have rebounded very, very solidly. I mean, China was really impacted over the last 2 years with miles driven. And today, you see the same dynamics in China that we have seen right post-COVID in the Western world. People are using less public transportation and they are using more personal vehicles for the first time in a long time.

Andrew Kaplowitz

analyst
#34

Got it. So in just a few minutes, I'll open it up to the audience, but let me ask you a few more questions. Like personal mobility, you mentioned it, right? Q4, 40% growth, but you've been targeting 30% annual growth. And so I think on your call, you highlighted that the pipeline of personal mobility grew 50% in '22. So it seems like you have a good visibility for that 30% growth. But I'm still -- like I know you've invested a lot in this business, and you have the premier technology. But still growth has been accelerating even as it seems like the global consumers had a little bit more pressure on him or her. So like maybe address why the business has been so strong, and the longevity that you think about when you sort of forecast that 30% annual growth? It's a lot, I know it's a relatively small business, but it's not that small for you guys anymore.

Ivo Jurek

executive
#35

It's not that small anymore, right? I mean, it was small in 2019.

Andrew Kaplowitz

analyst
#36

[indiscernible] to your business?

Ivo Jurek

executive
#37

That's right. And it's 5% of our total revenue contribution. So look, we are very excited about it, and we are very cautious about the consumer. However, you have to think about this as a -- this is a penetration game. We are really competing against nontraditional competitor called industrial chain. And so, for us, even if the end units produced stay flat, we can take market share every year as we are converting from chain-to-belt. And that's really what's fueling that growth. So we are a little bit less void. I can't say that we are not worried at all about the consumer dynamics. But for us, this is a penetration game. We are today at 1% penetration. There is an opportunity for us to get to 10% penetration and I believe 1% penetration make kind of $180 million. This is a huge opportunity for the company. And we are demonstrating that we can continue to maintain a high rate of growth, particularly as we are starting to get the next-generation products into the marketplace and as we are starting to unclog some of our capacity issues. We have sold out all of our capacity in 2022. 2022 could have been a lot better year on personal mobility side if we had more capacity. So we're working through those issues as well.

Andrew Kaplowitz

analyst
#38

Interesting. And so just I'll ask you while we're on it because we're talking about chain-to-belt. Industrial chain-to-belt like another big initiative for Gates if I go back a few years ago. Like maybe just update us on where we are because you don't talk about it quite as much as you talk about personal mobility?

Ivo Jurek

executive
#39

Yes, absolutely. I think that we have just unclogged the personal mobility opportunities. On the industrial side, we continue to develop new technologies, and we are continuing to round up with our technology associated around the metal components and the design software to be able to drive more continued growth. But to be honest with you, if you're growing at 10% or 15% versus 40%, the 40% always overshadows the 10% or 15%. But we are as committed on the industrial chain. And we believe that, frankly, that's even a bigger opportunity over the long term for Gates Corporation and personal mobility because the market is much bigger, it's much more complex. And the value drivers there are very strong with everybody being interested in improving their overall reliability and uptime of their equipment, reducing maintenance time, having less maintenance technicians, and more importantly, eliminating corrosive materials from your factories. Those are all big drivers for us. They're going to bode well for the next 30 years, 50 years for Gates Corporation.

Andrew Kaplowitz

analyst
#40

Ivo, not that it's not growing fast, but is there something to the effect of industrial competitors are slower to want to convert versus these personal mobility customers like or...

Ivo Jurek

executive
#41

I think the way that you need to think about personal mobility versus industrial is personal mobility is more of an OEM design cycle. So we convert an OEM and the OEM says that, "Hey, look, I'm putting an electric machine on my apparatus," we have a great opportunity to convert that. On the industrial space, we're going after existing installed base, and we are driving conversions of industrial chains into our belts. That's predominantly how I will describe that.

Andrew Kaplowitz

analyst
#42

Yes. Great. And then what's going on in our Energy & Resources business because, again, it's another reasonably small business, but you did M&A somewhat recently, maybe a couple of years ago. And so is that helping accelerate growth now because it's been a pretty strong business for you guys now?

Ivo Jurek

executive
#43

Yes. About 2017, we did a small acquisition. It was more around technology...

Andrew Kaplowitz

analyst
#44

2017 -- go on.

Ivo Jurek

executive
#45

Yes, it's a long time ago, isn't it? So it's -- it was around bringing additional technology for us. That has, frankly, accelerated our opportunity to drive more innovative products into the energy markets. And as these markets started to recover, we had a great penetration. One of the things that I haven't spoken a lot about is that most recently, we have worked with a very well-known player in fracking spreads field. And we have been able to convert a steel pipe into Gates produced flexibles, very unique design of flexibles that is eliminating some incremental leakage that they have in the frac fields and driving, again, kind of that theme of being more environmentally sound, more environmentally friendly, maintenance-free, more maintenance friendly, and that's also been incrementally driving penetration and delivering a very, very nice premium growth in the space.

Andrew Kaplowitz

analyst
#46

Got it. So when I back up, right, I think it was maybe 2 years ago, something like that, where you told us that your target kind of was to grow mid-single digits above where your markets were through all of your innovation and you're branching out in your various markets. Are you -- do you think you're doing that? I mean, obviously, you grew pretty strongly in '22, like do you think you're doing that? Or is there something you still need to do to do that?

Ivo Jurek

executive
#47

So look, when I take a look and compare the growth, the organic growth that we have delivered over the last 5 years, 3 years and certainly last year, we are at or above the premium industrial peer set that we compete for shareholders with. So I think that we are demonstrating that we are growing faster organically than that peer set. We are very confident that we can continue to deliver good, strong growth. Yes, we still want to do incremental things. We still need to get further beyond the level of innovation that we have driven into our Power Transmission business. We are in very early stages, and we have a ton of opportunities to be able to do that. And we believe that those opportunities, as we are evolving our product portfolio and we get product vitality up, we are able to deliver more premium growth. And I'd point out, again, our Fluid Power, product vitality in Q4 was over 25%. We've delivered very strong growth.

Andrew Kaplowitz

analyst
#48

And maybe just talking about your execution now. You talked about improving it through complexity reduction, Gates production system. So can you update us on the progress that you've made on these initiatives? You mentioned in the last earnings call that productivity is expected to contribute to earnings in '23. What should that benefit be? What are those actions that you're taking?

Ivo Jurek

executive
#49

Yes. Look, when you look back, the way that we frame it is kind of if you just eliminate the inefficiencies that crept in, in kind of 2022 through premium sourcing, premium freight, and the disruptions that you had to deal with from the raw material supply, we kind of think that, that's kind of 200 to 250 basis points, right? And frankly, not a lot needs to go right to be able to reclaim that, right? It just -- we just want to make sure that not more things go badly. The other 250 basis points of growth is -- you should think about it as 80-20, more complexity reduction above the skin and under the skin baseline productivity getting back after what we have demonstrated year in year out that we can deliver and some restructuring, that's kind of another 250 basis points of improvement. And kind of 50 basis points of improvements you get through volume growth. So the initiatives that we discussed should give us another kind of 50 basis points. So if you go back to where we finished 2022, and you take a look at the 250 basis points of less headwinds from supply chain, 250 basis points of productivity improvements and then some volume growth, kind of in the midterm, you get to that 24% plus, right? And we feel good about our ability to do that.

Andrew Kaplowitz

analyst
#50

Can we do that math, Ivo, on '23 in the sense that you talked about 100 basis points of margin expansion. So maybe give us a little color on the operating conditions that dictate that? Of those numbers, like how much of the supply chain headwind is still holding you back? You already talked about price versus cost. We know you expect -- how do you think about the 100 basis points?

Ivo Jurek

executive
#51

Right. So as I said, we still think that the first half of the year, we're still going to be facing some headwinds associated with getting the logistics sorted out of the raw material supply. So we no longer think that we're going to have impediments from the raw material supply on our factories, but we're still consuming some premium freight. So that eats up into a little bit of the stability number. We feel actually quite positively about delivering that 100 basis points of margin improvement in the present environment. Things don't really need to dramatically improve. We're not counting on any significant improvement. And frankly, we still have a number of headwinds in China, with Russia, volume dropping off, those things are -- they are in -- still some impairments that you have to deal with. So 100 basis points is a reasonable level of comfort. And as the year progresses, I think we should start seeing a very good performance in the gross margin. In second half, we got a little bit of a creep on executive and nonexecutive comp, but variable comp that's going to come in. That's going to be an offset to some of the improvements that we're going to see in the second half. But 100 basis points, I think, is a pretty good number to baseline '23 on.

Andrew Kaplowitz

analyst
#52

Helpful. This from the audience. Any questions from the audience? Anyone, Anyone? All right. I will continue. On free cash flow side, right? So that's been a bit more challenged in '22, but it did jump pretty nicely in Q4. You're guiding 100% conversion this year. So I know you've talked about inventory normalizing and benefiting you. But what else needs to go right for you to hit that 100% guidance number?

Ivo Jurek

executive
#53

Look, first of all, I'll say that we were not really an outlier in 2022. We were right in -- kind of in a smack in the middle of the industrial complex with our cash conversion. And I would say that if there was a differentiation, it was in Q4, where we have had a terrific conversion. But one of the things that we have highlighted there that I think maybe didn't get lots of notice is that we started to eat into our inventory levels. And so we believe that we have a huge opportunity to continue to reduce our inventory levels of the raw materials that we carry to support our customers as we start getting some stability in the supply chain, which we are starting to see. So we believe that getting after the working capital that we carry on our books is a huge opportunity for us. Now remember, over the last couple of years, we were dealing with quite a significant amount of growth. And so our receivables were climbing, impacting the conversion to adjusted net income. We think that as the volume growth starts to stabilize and our receivables start to stabilize, taking out that inventory, you get pretty quickly to that 100% cash flow version that we've provided guidance on.

Andrew Kaplowitz

analyst
#54

Got it. So just talking about leverage for a second. You're at 2.8x, like you've been slowly taking down, which is good like -- but you do have a midterm target of 1.5x. So it seems like you are prioritizing deleveraging. But does this stop you from doing M&A? You've been kind of quiet on that front. And maybe the last bigger one was that energy one in 2017, I think you tell me. But give us an update on sort of your pipeline because it seems like you've been talking about having a pipeline of opportunities?

Ivo Jurek

executive
#55

Yes. I mean, there's plenty of opportunities, right? I think that we also want to make sure that we pay a fair price for these assets. And as you know, Andy, that has not been the case over the last 12, 24 months. The multiples were quite elevated. Look, we returned over $200 million last year to our shareholders through a stock buyback. So we've purchased about $200 million of own stock. We do believe that we want to take our gross debt down. And as we continue to accelerate our free cash flow conversion, we will have opportunities to not only pay down debt, but there will be plenty of cash left over to think what's the best for shareholders. So do we buy more stock back? Do we do some bolt-on M&A? What type of deals we take a look at, and we're going to be very pragmatic about it. But Step 1, continue to deliver 100% cash conversion.

Andrew Kaplowitz

analyst
#56

Yes. That's definitely Step 1. Okay. So -- and then let me ask you a question that I've been asking all the companies. So what are the top 2 or 3 innovations, megatrends or structural changes affecting your company or have affected your company? And what is going to affect your company over the next 5 years? And are there any emerging industry trends that are perhaps being overlooked in the current environment?

Ivo Jurek

executive
#57

I don't know that they are overlooked because we -- I certainly -- I try to speak about them continuously. I mean, for us, there's a massive megatrend in replacing industrial chain with Gates belts. And that goes across the entire industrial complex from robotics to logistics, warehouse, logistics and distribution and certainly personal mobility. So that's a massive megatrend for us. And we believe that, that's a multibillion-dollar opportunity over the next 5 to 10 years that we are very laser-focused in executing on and converting from an opportunity into revenue, profits and cash flows.

Andrew Kaplowitz

analyst
#58

Got it. And do you -- like you mentioned sort of digitization, all that kind of stuff. Like where are you in that part of the journey like in terms of front-facing digitize all that kind of stuff, like where are you in that part of the journey?

Ivo Jurek

executive
#59

Look, I think that one of the big beneficiaries of driving design tools forward, so the digital design tools is demonstrating itself in personal mobility where we are helping people. People have been designing drives with chains for 100 years plus, right? And we are doing something very different, and we couldn't really do it effectively without developing digital design tools. And those design tools are now giving -- opening even more opportunities for us to make it much easier for the OEMs and very soon for the industrial customer base to be able to design drives with our belts. So I think that, that's a huge driver for us. And the second driver is really digitizing our back office. We're very -- we continue to be, what I say, opportunity rich, early stage you do -- kind of think about it where did you want to. But we continue to make those investments in shared service centers. We continue to digitize back-office processes. By the way, when we talk about 80-20, we also talk about 80-20 on our processes and digital is playing a big role of leaning out your overhead structure so that you can refocus those dollars spend either as profit or you can also wisely invest it in R&D suggesting big dividends.

Andrew Kaplowitz

analyst
#60

Great. Ivo, I think we're out of time. We very much appreciate you being here with us. Thank you.

Ivo Jurek

executive
#61

Thank you, Andy.

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