H.B. Fuller Company (FUL) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to H.B. Fuller's 2022 Investor Day, and thank you for joining us today. I'm excited to see how many of our investors have joined us virtually today. And I'm really happy to see all the people that are here in person. You're all familiar with the nature of forward-looking statements and the Reg G state requirements highlighted in this slide, and all of today's comments should be taken with a view of this as background. A copy can be found on our investment documents and also on our website. Over the next few hours, we will explain why H.B. Fuller is a great investment opportunity right now. We have a consistent track record of which we're very proud. But the real story here is the growth and performance that our investors will see in the quarters and years ahead. We will demonstrate the reasons we continue winning in the adhesive market, a market that's critically important in our world as it's evolving today. And we'll provide an update on our financial objectives and our capital allocation plans. During my opening presentation, I'll discuss the adhesive industry and talk a bit about the competitive landscape and the markets we serve. I'll update you on H.B. Fuller's growth, describe what differentiates our company, and I'll provide perspective on the future and the reasons H.B. Fuller is poised for continued success in the years ahead. After that, I'll provide an update on our ESG strategy, a strategy that's well integrated into everything we do internally and with customers. We'll then have our first Q&A session before I turn things over to the team to discuss H.B. Fuller's business segments and our strategies in more detail. You will hear from key members of our leadership team: John Corkrean, our CFO; Celeste Mastin, our COO; Traci Jensen, who leads H.B. Fuller's Global Business Process Improvements; and each of our global business unit leaders, Jim East, Boz Malik and Zhiwei Cai. I think you'll be very impressed with this team. In addition to the Q&A, after my opening presentation, we'll have an extended Q&A with all of today's speakers after the following presentation from -- after the final presentation from John. For those of you participating online, this event will end at 11:30 Central Time. And for those of you here in Minnesota, we'll take an in-depth tour of our centers of customer excellence here in Minnesota, and that will conclude at 1:30 p.m. Now let's jump in. H.B. Fuller is the largest dedicated pure-play adhesive company in the world. Our operations are truly global with 38 technology centers around the world, and those are directed by over 500 technical experts who drive our culture of innovation. We have 69 manufacturing factories strategically located around the world, which produce thousands of different adhesives. Our 3 global business units sell in more than 125 different countries to customers in 30 end markets. It's these 30 market segments, their P&Ls and our strategy in each one of those market segments, that drive our success and drive our differentiation. Throughout today's presentations, we will demonstrate the strategic actions we have taken that have transformed H.B. Fuller into a stronger company. From our leadership team to the floor of our manufacturing facilities, we've created a company driven by innovation, with a culture of collaboration, tremendous agility and proven resilience. Strategic M&A has played a key part in our transformation. We've made 19 acquisitions over the last 10 years and have used M&A to strengthen our portfolio by enhancing our technological capabilities, diversifying the markets we're in, expanding the business into new geographies and accelerating our portfolio mix transformation. With the acquisition of Tonsan and Cyberbond, we meaningfully strengthened our position in the fast-growing engineering adhesives market. When we acquired Royal in 2017, we diversified our customer base around the world, expanded our technical capabilities and established a strong foundation for profitable growth in the attractive engineering, durable assembly and construction adhesive markets. This year, we expanded the geographic footprint of our construction business with our acquisition of Fourny, a leading Belgian construction adhesive provider with significant technological expertise; at Apollo, the United Kingdom's largest independent manufacturer of liquid adhesives, coatings and primers; and we also divested a noncore surfactants business, supporting our portfolio shift to more highly specialized solutions. These are great examples of the extremely valuable strategic deals we've executed, which have increased our manufacturing capabilities and strengthened our portfolio with new technologies, for new energy, insulating glass, engineered products and construction businesses. And they've helped to fuel our growth in high-margin market segments. Complementing this portfolio shift is this transfer -- is the transformation in 2019 where we realigned our businesses from 5 operating segments to 3 global business units: Engineering Adhesives; Hygiene, Health and Consumable Adhesives; and Construction Adhesives. We made this change to accelerate growth, eliminate the cost and complexity associated with our legacy regional structure and empower those closest to our end markets to make faster decisions on a daily basis, and it's been an extremely effective transformation. As a result of these collective actions, we have delivered strong financial performance over the past 10 years with a solid mix of organic and inorganic growth. Over that time period, we have taken revenue from $1.4 billion to $3.3 billion, representing a compounded annual growth rate of 8%. We've tripled EBITDA and expanded EBITDA margins by over 300 basis points. And we have improved the predictability of our business. As the world became less predictable over the last 2-plus years, H.B. Fuller got more predictable. And as our portfolio has expanded, we have strategically moved toward more highly specified, higher-margin adhesive applications. We have increased our mix of highly specified adhesives to 54% of our total revenues compared to 34% in 2010. Highly and moderately specified solutions now make up 89% of our portfolio. Investing in highly specified solutions is accelerating our organic revenue growth and driving higher margins, all while increasing H.B. Fuller's differentiation with our customers. At the same time, we've built a highly diversified business in terms of both end markets and inputs. As I mentioned earlier, we serve more than 30 different end markets, providing natural hedges across our portfolio to weather any macroeconomic environment. This -- the result of this is revenue that's not overly tied to conditions in any one end market or any one geography or any one technology. This is one of the reasons our company delivers resilient results in recessionary environments. Our raw material inputs are equally diverse. As a formulator, we buy hundreds of different specialty chemicals. And in fact, our top 25 individually sourced materials make up less than 20% of annual purchases. It's also important to understand that we buy specialty chemicals that are not as volatile as commodity raw materials. And because our core competency is formulating adhesives using a variety of different materials, our teams are able to adapt and create products using the materials we have available on hand. This has proven to be a significant differentiator for H.B. Fuller in today's high-demand, supply-constrained environment, enabling us to drive strong and more predictable business results compared with coatings and materials companies who are more dependent on one industry or a limited set of commodity materials. We're very proud of the resilience of our business as demonstrated against this backdrop as a result of our strong, consistent execution, our balanced portfolio and our pricing power. Our highly diversified business has allowed us to pivot quickly in down markets and seize opportunities even more quickly as markets recover. We outperformed peers throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, both in terms of revenue performance and EBITDA margin. We acted decisively to secure raw materials when supply chain disruption and inflation increased in early '21. Since then, we've implemented more than $600 million of annualized pricing adjustments. And the proof is in the results. When the pandemic disrupted virtually every end market, our organic revenues declined by only 1.6%. And in 2021, organic revenues and EBITDA were both up by 15% compared with 2020. Our business results in '21 have also already -- have also exceeded 2019 levels. And this year, we are generating an additional 20-plus top and bottom line growth versus 2021. Over the past decade, we have proven repeatedly that H.B. Fuller is a company that understands how the world is changing, how adhesives can make a difference and how to be first and fastest in the industry to make things happen. This success is accelerating. The 10-year history is an important perspective for investors as you analyze how we will perform in the years ahead. And that brings us to the primary reason we're having this event. Why should you invest in H.B. Fuller today? The adhesive market is a highly attractive, specialized market with growth tailwinds, many opportunities for specialization and favorable competitive dynamics. H.B. Fuller is the largest pure-play adhesive manufacturer, and we are gaining market share in this attractive market. We're delivering faster organic growth than any of our major competitors because we're commercializing innovations and executing our price-to-value strategy in this inflationary environment. We'll talk a lot about organic growth today. Our EBITDA margins have grown over the years, and we will continue to deliver margin expansion as our specialized higher-margin portfolio continues to grow. The efficiencies we've built into our operations have provided production flexibility, which has enabled us to grow in this difficult supply chain environment. We expect those investments to enable savings and margin expansion as and when the supply chains normalize. This company has generated strong cash flow across business cycles, including through the pandemic and during the 2008 recession. Our capital-light business model has been a source of significant cash flow for our investors across many cycles, and we expect this to grow in the years ahead. And finally, we have a proven ability to identify, close and integrate strategic acquisitions. These acquisitions have been and will continue to be a source of innovative technology and market entry that our company uses to accelerate organic growth and expand margins. With these 5 points in mind, we believe there is tremendous valuation upside for our investors. We've built a great company in an attractive market. As the company we've built continues to execute on the clear financial objectives that we're outlining today, we expect to deliver meaningful value for our shareholders. I'd like to now spend a bit of time expanding on these points beginning with an overview of the overall adhesive market. Adhesives are part of just about every product made in the world that's important to you and to your future. Investors have often heard me use the phrase connecting what matters because that's exactly what adhesives do. Adhesives are at the center of sustainability, a more digital world and a rise in e-commerce. Our adhesives are in everything from the food packaging to medical equipment to your electronic devices to the cars and planes you came to this meeting in today. When disposable diapers were invented, adhesives helped to make it happen. When you renovated your kitchen, adhesives made it happen. And when mobile phones were invented, adhesives made that happen. The world is constantly evolving and adhesives play a vital role facilitating breakthrough inventions. Solar panels and wind turbines are changing how we all access the energy that powers our lives and adhesives are there helping make that happen. Electric power is fundamentally transforming the automotive and other transportation industries, and adhesives are there making that happen. During the pandemic, e-commerce exploded in popularity and adhesives are playing a key role in ensuring consumers receive the product experience they're looking for. Because adhesives are an important part of all of these global mega trends, the market continues to grow, especially in high-value end markets. The adhesive market has more than quadrupled over the last 40 years to nearly $60 billion in 2021. And this growth is expected to continue with the market estimated to reach $80 billion by 2030. Higher growth is being driven by new adhesives needed for electronics, health and medical uses, construction and transportation end markets. These are high-value, high-margin end markets in which H.B. Fuller is investing, and we're seeing results from these investments. When we look at the top 3 competitors in our markets, H.B. Fuller has gained nearly 1 point of market share over the past 5 years, while our top peers' market shares have either declined or remain the same. H.B. Fuller understands how to take advantage of the positive dynamics which exist in the industry. First, we focus on specialized applications where a small amount of adhesive creates a great deal of value for our customers. We spent decades honing our formulation expertise, and that's enabled us to devote our attention to the highest value uses for each of our products. In terms of competitive dynamics, our large global players in this industry lack our market segment focus and H.B. Fuller's level of global collaboration. Our small competitors, on the other hand, lack the global scale and technical resources that we have here at H.B. Fuller. That puts us in a real sweet spot in terms of innovation and customer service. We leverage this scale and speed to be first and fastest to solve the needs of major customer problems from Cincinnati to Tokyo, Northern California to Shenzhen, from Munich to Melbourne. And in our industry, we continue to see opportunities for consolidation given that our main competitors only hold about 35% market share, and we can enhance the capability of small players when we acquire their business. Finally, it's worth emphasizing that adhesives represent a disproportionately small share of the cost of goods relative to the value it provides them. This has enabled us to execute our price-to-value strategies around the world. Within this attractive industry, we're leveraging 4 competitive advantages to stand out. First, our global footprint. Simply put, we are wherever our customers need to be. That enables us to leverage our expertise on a local level and move quickly to partner with car manufacturers in Korea that are developing the latest EV technology or producers in Kenya or Indonesia that are introducing high-performance food safe packaging, for example. We consistently approach customer service and innovation with the benefits of global resources and local touch. We have tremendous relationships with suppliers around the world, which has allowed us to keep our supply chains moving and continue getting products in the hands of customers throughout the past 2 years when so many in our industry have not been able to do that. Second, we're truly application experts. We have more than 500 colleagues in our 38 technical centers around the world who are some of the world's foremost experts in adhesion science. And those of you in this room will see some of them later today. This year, we launched the H.B. Fuller Academy, a new way for customers to access our adhesive experts anytime, anywhere to help solve technical issues or to train operators and gain an advanced understanding of what's possible in their industry. This application expertise powers our industry-leading innovation engine. It enables us to stay on top of market trends, meet our customers' most exacting specifications and grow closer to our customers by unleashing the power of collaboration. You will hear more about innovation shortly from Celeste and each of our global business unit leaders because it's such an important part of our growth strategy moving forward. Last, but certainly not least, speed and agility. We have organized our GBUs to make decisions, adapt to circumstances and deliver highly specialized solutions faster than anyone else in our industry. For example, our teams on the ground quickly identified the significance of the supply chain challenges very early in 2021. And they created a mantra that the team with the most raw materials is going to win. We set up morning meetings 3 days a week with our commercial, sourcing, technical and operations teams across the globe to ensure total line of sight to our sourcing needs, our capabilities, our formulating flexibility. And in doing so, we've helped each other solve problems. Each and every day, we've maximized productivity, and we've minimized business disruption for our customers. A culture of speed and agility is a significant competitive advantage in our industry. Given our conviction in the continued growth in the industry and our differentiated capabilities, we're stepping up our financial targets. We have 4 clear financial targets moving forward: 3% to 5% average annual volume growth, price increases that will exceed inflationary impacts from raw materials and other costs, double-digit annual organic EBITDA growth and finally, greater than 100% free cash flow conversion. Our track record, our low capital intensity, our high incremental margin business model and our competitive capability makes us confident in our ability to deliver. John will cover these financial objectives in more detail later. In certain years, like 2022, we'll grow faster as evidenced by our overall 15% growth in the top and bottom line in 2021. And we're on track for similar or better performance this year. However, our business has shown excellent bottom line resilience in recessionary periods like the pandemic and the recession of 2008 and excellent cash flow performance throughout the cycle. These targets outlined are typical of what we've achieved and what we expect to achieve in the years ahead. We've put in place a number of strategic actions that underpin our confidence in these financial objectives. First, leveraging our global business units to drive profitable organic growth with closely aligned technologies and applications, deep market expertise and a go-to-market approach that allows our 30 market segments to reach and serve customers faster than ever before. Second, enhancing our operational efficiency and deepening our enterprise core competencies, including strategic sourcing, pricing excellence, process automation and digital, specifically e-marketing, e-sales and e-service. Third, using H.B. Fuller's unparalleled expertise in application science, formulation and our singular focus on adhesives to drive innovation that solves customer problems first, fastest and best. And fourth, targeting bolt-on M&A opportunities that provide access to new technologies or markets to drive growth beyond our organic targets. Because we know this industry intimately and have a proven approach to integrating and growing acquired businesses, we're viewed as an attractive buyer. This allows us to be able to choose the most valuable assets often through proprietary transactions, avoiding auction-based sales processes with inflated valuations. ESG is also a key focus and source of competitive advantage that's increasingly embedded in everything we do as a company. At H.B. Fuller, we're focused on 5 key aspects of ESG. And these guiding principles drive us to do better in our business and our innovation processes. They're critical to continuing to win for customers, shareholders and communities. Our efforts have not gone unnoticed. We've consistently received third-party recognition for our ESG strategy. This recognition is important to our customers. It offers a benchmark and provides authenticity to what we're working to achieve. In terms of sustainability, H.B. Fuller is focused on 2 environmental priorities: Enabling our customers' sustainability goals and reducing the environmental impact of our facilities. H.B. Fuller is making strong strides in how we manage our internal operations to meet our sustainability targets. In 2014, we set 4 key sustainability goals covering energy, greenhouse gas, waste and water intensity. We've already reduced water withdrawal and waste intensity below our goals. And in energy and greenhouse gas emissions, we're on track to achieve our goal of reducing intensity by 20% by 2025. And we'll continue to be transparent about our progress. Here are just a few examples of the actions we've taken across our facilities to ensure we're responsible manufacturers. This campus, our global headquarters, where we're meeting today, sits on a 300-acre nature preserve in Minnesota, which we care for and maintain. To provide energy and cost savings, we installed solar panels at this site. And we also offer EV charging stations for our employees. This type of work to reduce our carbon footprint and reduce our costs is happening at all of our facilities around the world. Across North America, we've converted forklifts into electric, generating 453,000 pounds of CO2 savings thus far. In Germany, we installed a new air leakage detection system that enhances the efficiency of our air systems. In the Philippines, we deployed a new 30-horsepower steam boiler that's reduced consumption and carbon emissions by 50%. And in Nanjing, we reduced adhesive waste by 42% and waste cleaner usage by 28%. I also want to highlight 3 projects, which I'm particularly proud of. Our facility in Rionegro was built with skylights throughout the building to replace electric lighting, a significant savings, and it captures rainwater to be reused in production and in irrigation. At our Luneburg Adhesive Academy in Germany, 50% of the materials were regionally sourced and 24% of the materials came from recycled sources, earning us LEED gold certification for that building. And our factory in Indonesia was the first LEED gold certified facility in that country. More critical than our internal sustainability efforts is how we've targeted our focus on customers' product performance requirements. It drives how we partner with them, meet demands for greener, safer, cleaner products. Nearly every manufacturer in the world is working to make their products more sustainable, and we've targeted 5 ways in which we can help them achieve their sustainability goals. Our innovations enable customers to reduce their adhesive consumption, their energy uses or reduce the usage of other materials in their products. We help customers redesign their product to be more sustainable. We develop products with renewable raw materials, and we're helping our customers to create products that can regenerate through compostability or recyclability. Adhesives are a crucial enabler for many of our customers' sustainability initiatives. We're strategically partnering with our suppliers and customers to develop solutions that help tackle everyday sustainability issues and support our customers' sustainability goals. You'll hear a lot more about our approach to enabling our customers' sustainability goals through innovation from Celeste and the 3 GBU leaders. The adhesives we make for solar panels, better insulated buildings and electronic vehicles provide obvious environmental benefits, but there are examples in nearly every product line where sustainability is the driving force behind the innovation. We are differentially focusing our resources on these types of opportunities. Today, over 50% of our new product introductions focus on projects primarily dedicated to helping customers achieve their sustainability objectives. That represents more than $1 billion of revenue in our sustainability pipeline and more than 650 sustainability development initiatives. This could include collaborating with customers to alter the sealable layer of the packaging to make sure it's recyclable or tailor-making an adhesive solution for an electric vehicle. Customers recognize our unique innovation capabilities and our ability to create collaborative partnerships across the value chain. And that's often making us the first choice for these kind of projects. We expect the share of NPI devoted to sustainability initiatives to expand over the near term. On the social and human capital side, we have employees in every corner of the world from every walk of life, all with unique backgrounds. This diversity fosters innovation and problem-solving by driving each of us to look at things from different perspectives. We've created programs to support our diverse employees. In 2018, we started reimbursing medical plan premiums for employees in the U.S. earning less than $60,000 per year, shielding them from health care cost inflation. In 2020, we awarded stock to our factory workers here and around the world in recognition of their tremendous contributions, because we believe all employees should have the ability to participate in our collective success. More recently, we have launched employee networking groups to help build communities, support skill development and provide members with career development opportunities. In 2021, we donated $1.3 million and nearly 1,600 of our employees volunteered in company supported efforts in their communities, logging over 6,000 hours and supporting 325 different organizations around the world. And finally, I want to touch on our approach to corporate governance, where best -- where we use best practices to ensure a best-in-class governance framework, including around disclosure and transparency, board independence, diversity and refreshment. We benefit from the diverse skills and experiences of our Board. Our newest director, Dr. Sri Zaheer is 1 of 3 women on our 9-member Board and brings a wealth of experience as the Dean of the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management, where she holds the Elmer Andersen Chair in Global Corporate Responsibility. So to summarize my comments before I open the floor to your questions, you have seen the incredible transformation of our company over the last 10 years as we've built the best adhesive company in the world. We've constructed a high-growth, high-value portfolio, designed an organizational structure that enables us to be first and fastest to identify market trends and to create adhesive solutions. We've developed the best team in the industry and built a culture centered on innovation. This has allowed us to grow faster and serve our customers better than our competitors and deliver pricing power. We've got a great year, 10 year -- we've got a great 10-year track record, demonstrating the benefits of the transformative steps we've undertaken. Quarter after quarter, during the last 3 years of turbulent times, we have delivered. Moving forward, we have outlined clear long-term financial objectives, which John will take us through in more detail. We're making tremendous strides advancing our sustainability agenda. And most importantly, we are not resting on our laurels. We continue to take actions to strengthen our organization, win in the market and create value for our shareholders. We still see significant opportunities for shareholders and tremendous valuation upside as the success we've had in transforming our business creates a strong foundation for future growth. We're also working hard to ensure that this strong investment opportunity is better understood by the market of potential investors. We strongly believe that investors will be rewarded with outstanding returns as we continue to deliver results and our market valuation better reflects the value that H.B. Fuller is delivering. Now Barbara, let's take some questions from our in-person group and our virtual audience.

Dave Begleiter, Deutsche Bank. Jim, on your organic growth volume expectations, how do you think about what you should be growing annually above the market above your peers? Is it 1%? Is it 1.5%? How should we think about that over the next 5 to 10 years?

Yes. I would say the best indication is the last few years where it's a lot more than 1% or 2%. So relative to what we've seen in the market the last couple of years -- I'd have to get John to get us to the number, but it's like 3% or 4% if you take what our publicly reported peers are doing. So -- it's a combination of volume and pricing. Right now, we have exceptional organic growth, right? It's 20% here in the first quarter. A lot of that driven by price. But we had 6% volume growth this quarter. And it's this -- the story you'll hear today and the things you'll hear from the team, it's the innovation and winning on the new opportunities, right? We did that really well in engineering adhesives for a number of years. We've transformed our other businesses to be able to do that as well. So certainly, at a minimum 1% or 2%. We have official goals of 3% to 5% volume growth, you build price on that. It depends on how they perform. But what we really have from a competitive dynamic is we have these big players that we think and I think our customers see -- we oftentimes can move faster than in terms of our global collaboration. But most of our competitors are small players. And our ability to bring answers faster and better than them is really what drives our growth. So -- but certainly, at least the recent track record is more than a couple of points. So thanks for that.

Vincent Anderson at Stifel. So how do you think or what do you think is the sweet spot for a global market share?

Sweet spot for our global market share? I think we have a long, long way to go. I think we've got -- it's a big market. And I love to point out to people that we're #2 in a huge market and #1 and 2 have just a small share. So it's a long way to go. I think this H.B. Fuller story, if we continue to deliver the way we're doing has not a decade left in it, but decades left in it as we gain share, and the world evolves. And who would have predicted cell phones or solar panels 10 or 20 years ago? And I can't tell you where the innovations are going to be, but I can tell you for the last 100 years, the world comes up with new ideas and adhesives are really important for them.

If I could drill into that a little bit, just given everything we've seen over the last 2 years, where do you think your optimal regional mix should go? And has that changed in light of what we've seen recently?

Yes. So as a U.S.-based company, we have the biggest share of our business in the U.S., but we've done a great job of building a franchise around the world and John will show some numbers on that. 12% of our revenue is in China. Clearly, today, China has got some issues. But long term, you got 1.3 billion people, you got 300 million of them that are middle class. And there's going to be a continued investment there. Our opportunities will change in Africa as Africa evolves. So I think today, our mix is pretty good. We're mostly U.S. dominated. A lot of manufacturing is coming to the U.S. -- that's playing really well to us. But we've got a great European franchise. We have a great Asian franchise. And for us, it's always about having the skills to bring them where they're needed, right? We built a great business in China when we needed the resources there. There's technology we're bringing from Europe and China that are helping us grow here. So it's that ability to adapt to what the world is bringing us, that's really important. But from a mix standpoint, I like our global mix. It's -- we've purposefully did not invest in Russia for a number of years. I got asked that question a lot. So we see -- we looked at the BRICS very different. We made an important investment in Brazil. I think in the long term, Brazil is a good investment. India is a huge, great opportunity. So I think we have a good dynamic global mix with clearly, obviously, right now, manufacturing in the U.S. is a strong base where we're strong.

Sure. And just one more quick one on that point. I think a little while ago, we talked about you were happy to take market share from struggling competitors both during the pandemic and during the supply chain shortages. Given your expected volume growth, how much runway do you think you have before you have to confront that build versus buy question?

From a capacity standpoint and a capital standpoint, we're so capital light. So it's mostly the investment in people. There is some capital we'll invest. Now given the growth here in the U.S., we're preparing for a sizable capital investment here, which would be the first sizable investment we've had here. Since I've been CEO, we've invested in Indonesia, in India, China, but we're looking at that. But I think within the windows of what we've normally seen in terms of capital, which is in that 2% to 3% of revenue, should be able to support the growth because it's mostly -- it's not a high capital intense sort of operation. So good. We've got 1 over the phone, Barbara?

Yes. We have a couple of questions. [Operator Instructions] So we do have one from Ghansham Panjabi. It says, in your opening comments, you pointed towards improved predictability for H.B. Fuller. What specific changes would you point to that have led to better prediction power at the company versus perhaps the uniqueness of the operating environment, such as better access to raw materials, et cetera, versus competition?

Yes. So thanks for the question. Yes. So for the last 9 quarters, we've met or exceeded expectations. John Corkrean came here from Ecolab and was -- well, I'll let him speak for himself. But generally, he was pretty impressed but he wanted to see us become more predictable. And we put a lot of tools in place. It's not a business that should be hard to predict. It's an annuity business. We know where it's going. You'll hear about our invention wins. So it was about -- but because it's so fragmented, it's hard work. John's led that hard work. So we have a very good forward view of where the business is headed. And we would have been very predictable in this environment if it wasn't so complicated. But the fact that we've done it in this very complicated environment is impressive. We have a raw material outlook that tells us exactly by every single raw material what's going to happen. By each one of our segments, we have projections. So we've built processes. And we've also built a company that's forward-looking, right? So this company understands where we've come from, but really where it's going. And I think you'll hear that from the GBU leaders and Celeste. And we have a good understanding of where we're headed, and that includes what we're going to deliver this month, this quarter or the rest of this year. And when you do that, when you can see how the rest of the year is going to come out, you can look to next year and the following year in a more strategic dynamic. So it's a really good thing. But I give John most of the credit, but also a culture of forward-looking. So thanks for the question. Others over the phone?

Yes, there is one more. Sorry. So you talked a lot about sustainability. Is this something that's new for H.B. Fuller?

Yes. No. Sustainability is not new. I don't actually talk about sustainability because I always worry about companies that are overly trying to talk about their best things. Greenwashing, they call it. I mean, we built this headquarters on a nature preserve over 30 years ago. Corporate social responsibility is something that I preached about inside our company every day since the day I got here. The opportunities on sustainable markets is something we talked about in our innovation agenda years ago and the trends that were happening there. So I get a lot of questions about investors. We put some numbers around it so that we could share them in terms of the percentage of the pipeline -- but it's not new. I mean, our view is we need to understand where the market is headed and make certain that we deliver the things that our shareholders need, our customers need in line with what the communities want. And that's always been our approach. So it's definitely nothing new. What's new is maybe some of the sharing of it. Although our corporate social responsibility report, which I know some of you have given me feedback is outstanding and gives you a real flavor of the company, and you get a real sense of who we are from that standpoint. So did I see another question in here?

Matt Krueger with Robert W. Baird. We heard quite a bit about the realignment towards 3 global business units providing a lot of benefits last night. I know you outlined what the EBITDA benefit could be kind of going in. I was just wondering if you could talk a bit about what commercial synergies or opportunities that realignment has unlocked and maybe give us a bit of a post-op on what the opportunity has been as far as generating new business or EBITDA, et cetera?

Yes. Yes. So I think what we talked about, and you can go back to all the stories, but is -- we were going to, first and foremost, simplify our business. We were building global strategies, but we were executing a lot of our businesses regionally. And it didn't give us that long-term look and alignment of execution and strategy. So it's done 2 big things: We saved money, and Traci is going to talk a little bit more about where we're going to save some more money as a result of the fact that we simplified our business, 3 segments versus 5, not having some global, some regional. So some of those are obvious, but they happened across finance, across sourcing, across our commercial teams. So a lot of the SG&A savings came early, and those were about $20 million to $30 million in benefit that we got out of that. And then -- but the bigger savings and the bigger benefit is how this whole fast -- first and fastest thing we talk about, because this alignment between the strategy and execution now along the 3 GBUs and mostly along those 30 segments, doesn't have people having to go through a regional decision-makers to make that happen. So we run the business, of course, regionally, and we got guys in Asia and guys in Europe and guys here that are executing it. But every one of those 30 businesses is very aligned. So opportunities get tackled faster, problems get solved. The fundamentals of how we solve supply chain problems, all driven by the fact that we're aligned with good global understanding. So good. One more, and then I'll -- we'll go on to other presenters. We will have another Q&A at the very end of the session after John.

Eric Petrie in for Citi. On your financial targets, what's your embedded assumption for GDP and raw material outlook, oil price? Or do you see risk to growth in either U.S. or Europe?

Yes. So we tried to establish a set of goals that you could look at in varying economic conditions because clearly, the world is changing and evolving all the time. So -- but we think under the current economic situations and numerous other variations, this 3% to 5% volume growth, double-digit EBITDA growth and 100% free cash flow are all deliverable. This year, we'll do better on each one of those metrics. Last year, we did better than each one of those metrics. So I think the -- the resilience of our business is something I tried to touch on. If there's a recessionary environment, we get a lot of benefits from raw material cost reductions, a lot of margin expansion. We generate a lot of cash flow. So those kinds of environments are ones that this company showed tremendous resilience. Inflationary environments, we're showing a great ability to raise prices ahead of our raw material costs. And growth environments, we're winning share. So each year, we'll set out our specific objectives as we always have, but I think our investors should see these kinds of results, at least these kinds of results year after year over the long term. Maybe not every year. This year, we'll do better. Maybe some year, it will be a little tougher. But generally, I think this is at least what you should expect out of us, Eric.

Jim, we have time for a couple more questions.

Okay. So any other questions here in the room? Okay.

Wayne Pinsent with Gabelli Funds. Jim, we just discussed the switch to the 3 GBUs and the transformation you've made over the past several years. What further do you think looking out 5 years you need to do with the business to improve?

Well, our biggest growth opportunities continue to be in the engineering adhesives space, and you'll hear a lot about that because that's new market segment areas that we have positions that we can continue to grow. Certainly, our Construction Adhesive business, you saw the investment in Europe and the opportunity for that business to grow by being targeted either geographically or by application is also another very attractive area. And then for HHC, the real winning opportunity where we have a small share is in medical. So hygiene, sustainable packaging. Those are all -- if we get on the front end of those, those are all market share growth opportunities, but not new markets. We're going to be the winner in those spaces, but this area of medical, we talked about Fourny and Apollo. We actually made 3 acquisitions recently. The third one was in that medical space. So in HHC, it's medical. Construction, it's expanding into new utility and infrastructures as well as geographic. And then Engineering Adhesives is on the front end of what we see as innovation in EVs and electronics. So...

Okay. We've got one from the virtual stream. What percentage of sales and EBITDA are from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine? And what are your plans for this exposure?

Yes. We have less than 1% of our revenue from those regions. And as I indicated, our major competitors have invested there for the last 30 years. And we didn't see it as an attractive -- because of the business climate and how business operates there, the growth potential. So we don't have any assets on the ground. We have 7 employees. And our plans are expecting that to decline or disappear. So we have no -- we're not building that into our thinking that, that's going to come back. Okay. We've got another one here.

Jim, you mentioned that at the onset as it relates to innovation that your pipeline has somewhere in the neighborhood of $1 billion tied to sustainability-related products for your customers. Can you touch on how that's evolved over, call it, the past 5 years? What do you think the opportunity is there? And how has that kind of pipeline been developing?

Yes. Well, it's a measurement we've just put in place specifically to define each product around sustainability over about the last 18 months because we did it with events like this in mind to be public. So while strategically, we focused on this for a while, trying to -- designating each product as whether it has -- I mean we actually have 2 designations: does it have any sustainability impact and is it the primary reason. So the ones we reported here was it's the primary. Just about all of our projects have some sustainability benefit. Somebody wants to make a product thinner or lighter, they always want that as an add-on. But these are ones where it's the primary driver. And so in terms of how it's evolved, it's certainly grown a lot over the last few years. And I think our thinking around strategically what are the most important projects has also evolved, right? Well, we look at something like paper straws. I love bringing that one up, right? It's not a huge market, but winning in that market has good sustainable advantages. I don't mean from a -- just sustainable, but we win in the paper straw market and somebody invents a really good paper straw, we'll be in that business forever, right? And we'll be the leader. So getting out in front, working with the innovators in that space. It might only be $10 million or $20 million in business, but that's how you win in the adhesive space is identify those trends and go after them. So each one of our teams looks at it. It's definitely growing, and we see it continuing to grow here over the coming years. And the next time I get in front of you and we talk about it, it will be a bigger number than the one that's there, very, very likely. Okay, good.

I think that's about it.

Now going to move on. So thanks for all the questions. Now I'm going to move on and turn the podium over to Celeste Mastin, our Chief Operating Officer. Celeste brings a strong track record of guiding companies' growth through innovation, through service improvement, global expansion and acquisition. She is an exceptional leader and an exceptional team builder. Again and again, she's created winning strategies to accelerate results. I'm confident that Celeste is a great leader who will help accelerate H.B. Fuller's growth transformation in the years ahead. Innovation is key to H.B. Fuller's success. Celeste will discuss this further after a short video that highlights our team's efforts around the world. Thanks. [Presentation]

Good morning. I'm Celeste Mastin, H.B. Fuller's Chief Operating Officer. I'm excited to be with you today to talk about global innovation at H.B. Fuller, a core driver of our growth here in everything we do. Throughout my presentation, I'll take you through 3 key elements of H.B. Fuller's innovation approach that have enabled us to develop critical adhesives fundamental to driving progress in our world from electric vehicles to solar panels to smaller, more efficient buildings. The 3 key elements of our approach are, one, our segment-driven business; two, our drive to be first and fastest. And third and most importantly, our talented and passionate people. And you just saw the video, right? These are some great, great people. As Jim discussed earlier, our segment focused organizational structure enables us to take decisive actions to put us ahead in the market. Within this structure, we operate closely with customers to understand their current and future needs as well as specific developments and trends in their markets. We also align our technical experts with our end markets to enable them to go deep and learn everything they can about the market and applicable technologies to solve even the most complex challenge. We then work quickly with suppliers and equipment providers to create these next-generation adhesives. Our experts seek not what's just around the bend, but think about those game-changing ideas that will drive product development and adhesive technology in the future. Today, we're introducing more than 100 new products a year and currently have more than 700 granted and pending patents. Innovation at H.B. Fuller is about understanding market and product trends because every change in a product or manufacturing process is a chance to make it better with adhesives. Several megatrends in particular are driving the need for new product functions or designs. H.B. Fuller's adhesive solutions have enabled customer innovation to meet each of those trends. To highlight one example, in construction, we're seeing a greater demand for energy-efficient buildings, and we've responded by developing highly durable, easy to apply, insulating adhesives and tapes. Another example for aging populations, we've developed flexible adhesives with best-in-class creep and sheer strength performance that reduce leakage and improve comfort of adult incontinence products. By staying ahead of trends, we're able to thoughtfully invest in the innovation of sustainable high-performance solutions that improve our customers' products and processes, enabling them to better achieve their sustainability goals. Our goal is to be a part of transformative changes in our customers' products. In short, we're committed to moving first and fastest to identify trends, to enter a new market, to help a customer develop a new product and to enable process improvement on a manufacturing line. The last piece of our innovation approach is our talent, the caliber of the people and the spirit of collaboration at H.B. Fuller enables this culture of innovation. We attract some of the most capable and experienced people in the industry, passionate innovators, with unparalleled engineering and product application expertise. The work our team is doing is critical for our customers, especially as the scarcity of materials in the world today make our capabilities as a formulator even more important. I have been floored by this team's ability to reformulate quickly and seamlessly, and that is a true competitive advantage. To drive our innovation, we have global technology centers of excellence which are key to connecting our adhesive technology and market experts to our customers' product design and their R&D experts. Let me highlight a few in different regions. First, our largest global technology center is right here at our St. Paul headquarters. Those of you attending the trial -- attending in person today will be able to take a technology tour following this meeting. We're very excited to show you just a few of our labs here so you can see our innovation in action. Inside this global technology center is our insulating glass technical center of excellence where we enable customers to test processing conditions without taking up time on their own production lines, and you will get to see that on the tour. In Brazil, our state-of-the-art facility allows us to expand our presence in Latin American markets by featuring a showroom for customers to experience our innovations in person. Our automotive competence center in Germany formulates and tests water-based, hot melt and lamination adhesives for automotive interior trim and related applications. And our Chinese technology center serves the photovoltaic silicone sealant market and helps customers optimize their technology and product performance to support growth in the clean energy sector. Our commitment to meeting demand for greener, cleaner, safer products underpins much of our innovation framework. We are constantly thinking about how our company can help make the world a better place today and for generations to come. Adhesives, coatings and adhesive coated tapes make thousands of everyday products possible. And in many cases, they allow for more cost-effective and responsible production. This enables manufacturers to work with more sustainable substrates, improve manufacturing efficiencies, reduce material usage and, of course, reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. That's why 53% of our new product development focuses on sustainable solutions, lightweighting vehicles, recyclable and compostable adhesives and bonding and sealing solutions that support energy efficiency in building construction are just some of the many areas driving this R&D work. Our lightweighting solutions not only enhance the driving experience by providing greater comfort and safety, but they also address the sustainability issues of better fuel efficiency and reduction of carbon dioxide emissions. An excellent illustration of how H.B. Fuller's adhesive solutions address the practical challenges of lightweighting is in the production of electric buses. Because the battery pack is so heavy, the viability of the vehicle depends on weight reduction elsewhere. And our adhesives allow bus manufacturers to replace steel with aluminum in the chassis to do just that. Consumers are increasingly expecting recyclable and compostable materials to be used in everyday consumable goods packaging. And our adhesives play a critical role enabling these properties. For example, we collaborated closely with a customer to develop a unique adhesive for a rigid recyclable paperboard fastener that replaces plastic rings, tops and shrink wrap on aluminum can multipacks. You are going to see that on the tour too. We also recently introduced 2 compostable adhesives that decompose with no toxic residue or microplastics or other pollutants to support end of life cycle issues in the flexible packaging industry. Low VOC content is another area that's growing in importance and we developed a self-contained environmentally friendly, portable canister system that allows users to safely apply low VOC spray adhesives with reduced worker setup time and maintenance. Now let me zoom in on another sustainable solution. In light of the exponential growth in e-commerce, we've been focused on innovations that enable tamper-proof, easy-to-use sustainable packaging. Our key solutions allow online retailers to minimize their environmental footprint and differentiate themselves in the market. In addition, it's clear there is a strong move towards electric vehicles, and manufacturers are looking to design EVs that are lighter, safer and more attractive. That's where we come in with our bumper-to-bumper EV solutions. We've developed thermally conductive encapsulant structural adhesives, silicone sealants, cure in place gaskets and epoxies that are formulated to enable lightweight designs that increase efficiency, safety and sustainability, enabling EVs to comply with or exceed the most current regulations. Importantly, our team of chemists has formulated a flame retardant low-density polyurethane foam to provide thermal insulation to EV battery cells and stabilize the temperature inside the battery pack. Our high-performing applications go into everything from vehicle assembly to interior and exterior lighting to interior trim. We are proud to help advance quieter, faster and more eco-friendly modes of transportation. What can I say, but I am thrilled to be here at H.B. Fuller, where innovation is a key value driver. Our segment-driven business has unlocked the entrepreneurial culture of innovation across H.B. Fuller. Our drive to be first and fastest has set us apart in our industry. and our talent brings us an unwavering commitment to using scientific discovery to improve lives. Last, I'd like to highlight that today, an outsized percentage of our new product innovation is focused on global mega trends, including more environmentally sustainable solutions fueling multiyear organic growth opportunities. Innovation underpins everything we do, and we view innovation as the #1 tool we're leveraging for continued growth now and into the future. We will continue to advance our innovation strategy, deepen our partnerships with customers and use adhesion science to change the world. Now I'd like to show you a video depicting these sustainability concepts in our Hygiene, Health and Consumable Adhesives business and introduce you to Jim East, who leads this business globally. [Presentation]

Hi, everyone. It's great to be with all of you here today. I'm Jim East, Senior Vice President of Hygiene, Health and Consumable Adhesives. This is a very exciting time for our HHC business, and we've never been more confident in the value we are delivering to our customers. We're innovating faster than just about anybody in our industry. We help customers become more efficient in their operations, and we get the materials we need to support our customers because of our longstanding relationships with our suppliers. Because of all that, we're able to capture pricing and continue delivering strong financial results. During this section, I will expand on the HHC business and how we're innovating with new environmentally friendly adhesives for rigid packaging, flexible materials and personal care products. To start, here's an overview of the HHC business. While HHC was formed through the realignment of our company to 3 global business units in 2019, we have a long history of serving leadership and customers in these spaces. We have 31 facilities dedicated to HHC in 22 countries. And as a testament to our commitment to innovation, we have over 300 patents and patents pending for HHC product innovation. HHC is H.B. Fuller's largest business segment, contributed 45% of the company's revenues and 42% of the company's EBITDA. We have 14 end market-focused businesses. We run the business this way to ensure that we continue to win quickly with customers by identifying trends in sustainable packaging, beauty care, medical care and disposable hygiene, all of which require advanced adhesive technology and systems. In 2021, HHC delivered strong growth and margin performance, meeting peak levels of customer demand and gaining market share under extremely challenging supply constraints. So where do we stand in the broader market? Simply, we have a promising runway ahead of us. In 2021, the markets we participate in represented a total addressable market of about $30 billion. By 2030, we expect the market to reach $39 billion. As the broader market has gone through immense change over the past 2 years, consumer spending around health, hygiene and consumable adhesives have remained constant. The low cyclicality of the business means we have continued to deliver strong performance across macroeconomic cycles. At the same time, multiple trends are driving continued growth and technology innovation in these markets. The #1 trend that we've observed is an emphasis on more sustainable products. Adoption of e-commerce increases the demand for lighter-weight and efficient packaging. There is a rise in disposable hygiene products used in emerging markets and an aging population is driving increased demand for medical products. The emergence from COVID and its reduced mask-wearing is positively impacting demand for beauty products. Personal hygiene consumers are showing growing acceptance of quality private-label solutions over branded products. And manufacturers continue to demand adhesive products that are more efficient and cost-effective to apply. We are well-positioned to capitalize on these trends in several ways. Our track record as a reliable and trusted innovation partner often puts us first in line to help customers advance their sustainability goals. We can leverage our comprehensive line of flexible bonding solutions and specialty adhesive formulations to respond quickly to these market trends and changing customer requirements. Our broad range of products certified for use in medical applications, including our skin-bonding adhesives, give us a portfolio to meet the broad customer demands. HHC has remained agile in order to succeed in the extremely challenging external environment over the past 2 years. And our performance has been remarkable. Throughout 2021, our team managed demand spikes during supply chain delays and raw material shortages and implemented multiple price increases to overcome steadily increasing raw material costs and capture the value our adhesives deliver. As a result, we grew revenue from $1.3 billion in 2019 to $1.5 billion in 2021, representing a 5.3% CAGR. EBITDA grew 9% compounded between 2019 and 2021. And we started 2022 even stronger with 21% organic growth. We also drove EBITDA margin expansion from 2019 to 2021. And based on our top line growth opportunities and operational efficiencies, we expect to continue to improve margins going forward. Our financial performance reflects strong customer demand trends, favorable pricing and the resilience of our HHC business profitability. The resilience stems from a few key competitive advantages. As Jim and Celeste discussed earlier, innovation is core to our business and drives our success. HHC's innovation pipeline is focused on high-value, high-specified solutions. As you'll hear throughout today, our robust global sourcing network means we can reliably be a supplier to our customers. As Jim mentioned earlier, where the world has gotten less predictable in recent times, H.B. Fuller has become more predictable. Our strong connection with suppliers, combined with our innovation and formulation capabilities means we can provide a high level of supply assurance. We're also often first to market with new materials. These are especially critical for our large multinational customers in HHC. Our global footprint means that we are able to develop products locally and collaborate with other regions to bring them to different markets around the world. We also pride ourselves on our technical service. We bring more than just adhesive solutions to our customers. One example of this is our full-vision data analytics consulting service. Big data is a challenge for many manufacturers. They often find there's not enough time or resources to evaluate large quantities of data. Our proprietary software analyzes data from our customer production equipment. It provides real-time view with at-a-glance reports to help them track against industry benchmarks and lowers operating costs, improves productivity and quality. We also provide hundreds of trainings on markets and applications through the online HBF Academy. Customers can access in-depth content and virtually tour our technical centers of excellence around the world. We are using these unique advantages to pursue 4 key growth strategies. First, we are focused on introducing new technology to enable customer sustainability and manufacturing goals. Second, we will explore additional growth opportunities through alternative channels and omnichannel marketing. Third, we're focused on growing our strategic accounts and expanding in new regions. And finally, we see opportunities to enhance our HHC portfolio through opportunistic M&A focused on higher growth and more profitable segments. In terms of innovation, sustainability is so integrated in new consumer product design that the vast majority of projects in our $500 million innovation pipeline have some sustainable element in their design or use, and more than 40% of the pipeline is fully dedicated to sustainable solutions. Our key priorities are developing innovations for rigid packaging alternatives to lead the circular economy, for flexible materials designing compostability in the United States and mechanical recycling in Europe and moving away from chemicals of concern in personal care products. We are investing in products that -- and processes that work towards these priorities. For example, we're developing water-based coatings to support the plastic-to-paper packaging movement. In addition, we are setting up sustainability labs globally and building life cycle analysis expertise to better support our customers' initiatives. We have invested in testing equipment to ensure our next-generation compostable products meet the exacting standards of compostability. And we're actively developing bio-based materials. Going further, this next slide outlines some specific innovative, sustainable solutions that enable our reduce, recycle, redesign approach in HHC. To call out a few, our Full-Care 6222 positioning adhesive reduces adhesive use by 20%. This reduces energy uses and handily for our customers and cuts down on our [ transportated ] related footprint. Our Advantra product line of packaging adhesives is designed to release paper fibers, facilitating recycling of fiber-based packaging. And our KHS Nature Multipack adhesive holds cans and PET containers with just a few drops of adhesive as opposed to plastic rings or shrink wrap. In addition to the sustainability-themed innovations, we have numerous other innovations, such as microsphere technology, which facilitates the easy removal of wallpaper, decals or other peel-and-stick pieces without causing damage or excessive residue. We're constantly getting ahead of new food safety regulations around the world for our adhesives subject to food contact requirements. As you can tell, I can talk about adhesives all day. I'm deeply proud of the role our HHC innovations play in advancing a circular economy and a more enjoyable, safe and efficient world. And I'm excited about all of our collaborations with our customers aimed at helping to ensure the sustainability of our planet. I know I've covered a lot of material today. I hope to leave you with 4 key takeaways about the HHC segment. First, we have a longstanding, proven leadership, providing innovation and customer care, ensuring us #2 market share in this attractive market with further room to grow and drive margin improvement. Second, we're experts in adhesive formulation, drawing from our deep relationships and collaborations with material suppliers across the globe and our own best-in-class technical talent. Third, we're able to supply critical HHC products even in challenging markets as a result of our globally connected sourcing and supply chain organizations. We did it in 2020 as the pandemic hit, and we continue to do it today -- in today's high-demand supply-constrained environment. Lastly, looking ahead, we're well-positioned to capitalize on the growing trend for sustainable products. We view this as the #1 opportunity for growth within the business, and we have all the right materials, tools and people to capitalize on this opportunity. I appreciate getting to speak to you today. Now let me turn it over to Boz Malik, who leads our Construction Adhesives GBU, after a short video. Thank you. [Presentation]

Good morning, everyone. I'm Boz Malik, Senior Vice President of Construction Adhesives. Today, I'd like to give you some of the key differentiators of our business as well as share with you some of the exciting innovations we're developing to meet the challenging needs and changing needs of our customers. At H.B. Fuller, most of the adhesives we sell are used as inputs for our customers' manufacturing processes for products they in turn sell to end users and their end buyers. What's unique about Construction Adhesives is that our products are applied by skilled tradesmen, craftsmen and professional contractors directly on the job site. The high customer value of our solutions shows up in strong volume and pricing growth in the CA segment. Our innovative products are specifically designed to speed up application installation time and improve quality, which addresses the #1 challenge facing the construction industry today, skilled labor shortages. Our customers use H.B. Fuller solutions to help them complete more projects with a limited workforce, and our pricing reflects these customer benefits. That is why I'm excited to talk with you today. My goal is that you'll come away with an understanding of how we're innovating to develop solutions that directly make a difference, enabling our users to install their flooring, complete their code-compliant roofing systems on commercial buildings and to install their infrastructure projects efficiently. To start with, we serve the roofing, flooring, and utility and infrastructure segments in the Construction Adhesives business. We have the #1 market position in roofing adhesives. We are a leader in flooring adhesives, and we have significant developing opportunities in utilities and infrastructure. In 2021, our revenue was $334 million (sic) [ $434 million ], representing a 17% year-over-year sales performance growth. Our strong performance was due to successful new product introduction, extensive improvements to our operations and supply chain, and our team's ability to meet very high customer demand in a very challenging supply chain environment. And 2022 has started off with even stronger performance, with 38% organic growth in the first quarter. From our 12 facilities and 6 technology centers, we've developed 69 patents, and we have a robust R&D pipeline, which we will discuss in more detail shortly. We believe there's considerable market opportunity in Construction Adhesives, and we are uniquely positioned to capitalize on this. To put that in numbers, in 2021, the market globally for Construction Adhesives was $11 billion, and we believe that will grow to over $15 billion by 2030. A number of key trends gives us confidence in this opportunity. For example, we continue to see solid pickup in both commercial and residential activity, and we expect that to continue at least through the first half of this year. In particular, we are seeing increasing demand for commercial roofing adhesives and utility and infrastructure segments. As you know, recent supply chain and labor shortages have impacted businesses across many industries, and we're not immune from these pressures, as supply availability and inflation have driven longer construction lead times and the need for material substitutions has increased over the past several months. However, this environment also creates a unique opportunity for H.B. Fuller to create value for our customers. Contractor labor shortages are driving innovations to enable faster and easier installation. And finally, like many of our presenters have discussed about today, there's an increasing demand for sustainable solutions. Given the large global challenges related to COVID-19, supply chain disruption and inflation over the past 2 years, H.B. Fuller's ability to creatively and boldly supply products to the construction market has been a key differentiator. Our efforts resulted in revenue growing from $397 million in 2019 to $434 million in 2021, representing a 5% CAGR over this period. Adjusted EBITDA also grew during this period, and we carried that momentum from last year into 2022. Our first quarter organic revenues increased by 38%, and EBITDA was up 2.5x compared with 2021. Looking ahead, we expect continued strong momentum within Construction Adhesives, and we're targeting revenue growth in the mid- to high single digits and EBITDA margins in the high teens. So you can see we have significant margin expansion opportunity in this business, and we're already delivering on that now. Now I'll turn to how we are winning in the market and how we're thinking about growth going forward. One of our key differentiators which sets us apart from others in our industry is our purchasing power. Due to our scale, we're able to compete for the supply of materials and transportation much more competitively compared to smaller niche competitors we compete with, and this enables our success in a more challenging macroeconomic environment. Our strong innovation pipeline across market segments is a key differentiator that enables us to target easier and faster installation for our customers while achieving high performance and greater sustainability. And lastly, we have a roofing business with a substantial footprint in North America and Europe, which combined with our high share of OEM system-specified roofing systems, puts us in a very strong position to capitalize on this market segment. Now, how are we translating all of this into growth? We're focused on 6 key growth strategies: Innovating our new products and services, continuing to grow our North American core, expanding globally, building out our heavy infrastructure and building envelope solutions, leveraging our supply chain and operations excellence, and focusing on customer experience and digital solutions. As you've heard throughout the Investor Day, innovation is the key driver of growth at H.B. Fuller. Just within Construction Adhesives, we have a $104 million innovation pipeline over the next 5 years with 64% of that pipeline being made up of what we call sustainable solutions. Specifically, we're focused on 3 innovation priorities: developing flexible products for easier installation and higher sustainability, formulating high-performance applications with faster install time, and expanding our heavy infrastructure and building envelope solutions. On the bottom half of this slide, you'll see some of the investments and innovations in our R&D pipeline that address these priorities. Here are 3 specific innovations I'd like to share with you that I'm particularly proud of. First, our award-winning Fast 2K product, which you will see during the tour today. It provides a convenient alternative to using concrete when setting fences, poles, rails, decks and more in the ground. It is a lightweight product that allows users to start their construction work within minutes or hours as opposed to waiting 1 or 2 days for concrete to set. This solution has important sustainability benefits as well. Just 1 pallet of Fast 2K replaces an entire truckload of concrete. And that alone reduces the CO2 carbon footprint by 90% in that comparison. Second, our sprayable bonding adhesive in roofing is a time-saving application versus the traditional method of roll applying the product. This allows much faster install speed with up to 60% less labor usage, and it's approved for use in all VOC-regulated markets. This adhesive is in very high demand. And although we only launched the solution in 2020, it grew 100% in 2021. We expect to double -- in 2x in 2022. Finally, our tile-setting and floor-prep solutions improved the installation process for surface preparation for tile, stone, carpet, wood and resilient floor coverings. Our solutions include the 2K pressure-sensitive adhesive for peel-and-stick floors and blacksplash walls, which will be introduced to OEMs later this year. We also have ready-to-use grouts and mortars for faster and easier installation that come straight out of the pail and applied to the surface without any premixing that's normally required. These are just a few examples. But from these, I hope you can see that we are sharply focused on developing innovative solutions that enable more reliable and efficient construction for our customers. We have a lot to be excited about in Construction Adhesives. We expect the business to grow in the mid- to high single digits with significant margin expansion through North American core growth, global expansion, agile capacity and supply chain and new product innovation. We have a strong R&D pipeline to support our growth. In particular, our pipeline focuses on installation speed to reduce labor and complexity, increasing sustainability, high performance in specified applications, solutions that address the megatrends and global expansion building on our recent acquisition of Apollo and Fourny. Finally, we're continuing to build and evolve a stronger and more agile supply chain to support growth and improve the customer experience. I hope this review provided you better insight into the success that we have been demonstrating in Construction Adhesives and our confidence in continued strong results in 2022 and the years ahead. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak with you. And now let me introduce our next speaker, Zhiwei Cai, Executive Vice President of Engineered Adhesives. Thank you.

Thank you, Bob. Good morning, everyone. My name is Zhiwei Cai, and I'm Executive Vice President of H.B. Fuller's Engineered Adhesives segment. Today, I'm going to update you on our EA business and the ways we innovate to solve our customers' most complex bonding challenges. This has driven our strong track record in fast-growing business segment for H.B. Fuller with a [ full 15% ] compound growth rate since 2010. Engineered Adhesives was formed in 2016, and we doubled the size of the segment in 2019 when we realigned company into 3 global business units and merged our durable assembling business into EA. Highly specialized adhesives accretive to the performance of the product in an engineering adhesive end market, including everything from cell phone to solar panels to automobiles. Today, we are the fastest-growing global player in the industry and hold the #1 or #2 position in several key markets, including solar, insulated glass and electronics. We continue to gain share by working closely with our customers, engineers and technical experts to solve problems and design adhesives to meet demanding specifications. With 17 technology platforms, we can create almost any type of adhesive to meet our customers' unique requirements. Our competitors do not have this kind of technology base. When we solve one challenge for the customer, we find other way our adhesive can improve future designs, growing our share of the business with the customer. In 2021, Engineering Adhesives made $1.4 billion in revenue or about 40% of the total company. Our organic revenue grew 22% versus 2020 with double-digit growth across all the market segment and in all the 3 regions. We won business and market share by staying close to market trends and developing innovative products to keep ahead of those trends. Today, we have 2,500 employees across 24 facilities in EA. We serve more than 10,000 customers with nearly 15,000 solutions sold across end market. The engineer adhesive market is highly attractive with great potential. We estimate the global market to be $19 billion in 2021. This market is expected to grow to $26 billion by 2030. There are several macro trends driving changing and growth in our markets. First, there's a clear shift to more sustainable products, including electronic vehicles, energy-efficient insulated glass, automotive electronics and solar panels. We also see pent-up consumer demand for electronics, vehicles and durable goods. And the convergence of technology across products in the market segment continues. An example of this is electronics, which is growing faster than market average. Electronic components began in computers, then mobile devices, wearables, automobiles and appliance. This convergence is driving tremendous growth. Our business strategy targets the [ specialist ] market and -- where we can generate high margins based on the value of our solutions and where we have a unique technology we know can win. For example, our [ broad entry ] in electronic solutions meet next-generation bonding requirement in consumer electronics. Our highly engineering adhesives improved performance, durability, lightweight, and [ accessibility ] across wide range of consumer electronics applications. Other examples, including new energy, where we are focused to technology to simplify the assembling of solar panels and increased reliability and longevity of the PV components in the panels. And glass, where we offer the most advanced window glass sealing solutions to provide long-lasting energy efficiency benefits for a wide range of applications and designs. Across all of the market you see on this slide, we are developing innovative solutions that solve the most challenging bonding applications and make our customers' manufacture process more efficient. Our [ invest ] efforts and innovative thinking helps us to develop customer formulations to meet our customer-specific needs and help us gain market share. I'm extremely proud of our team's accomplishment over the past 2 years. We have faced down headwind from COVID pandemic, a significant downturn in global production, shortage of materials and supply chain disruption. Our efficient and well-managed global sourcing and regional supply chain enable our team to deal with those challenges. We focus on getting our customers adhesives they needed to keep their factory running, and we have been successful. Engineered Adhesives revenue has begun to rebound with a 9% CAGR between 2019 and 2021. Adjusted EBITDA increased from $198 million in 2019 to $207 million in 2021. We are carrying that movement into 2022 with organic growth of 17% in the first quarter. Based on the price action we have taken both last year and so far this year, we are positioned to significant margin expansion when raw material costs stabilize. We expect engineered adhesive to continue to deliver outstanding opportunity for the revenue growth. We are targeting growth of high single digit to low double digit, and we expect to deliver EBITDA margin in the high teens with long-term view towards margin high above 20%. So how we are winning in the market to drive this continued strong performance? Our diversity of solutions and ability to serve many markets are strong competitive advantages for H.B. Fuller. And our primary goal is to understand and solve our customers' problem faster than the competition. One important need that we see in the market is the design of more sustainable products. We have innovative products for many of these markets. For example, as you heard from Celeste, we are working closely with EV producers to help them develop and in the manufacturing of electronic vehicles that are light and safer. We expect the demand of those solutions to continue to grow in response to consumer trends. We're also expanding the reach of our high-performing adhesive solutions with new channels. Our market approach reached across channels, including specialty distributed, equipment and manufacturers, brand owners and allied suppliers. Our comprehensive technology and engineering know-how allows us to create a high-performance adhesive solutions for the most challenging bonding applications as industrial expert with a huge toolbox of chemistry and equipment across our technical centers around the globe. We can develop a solution faster than our peers. This competitive advantage drive our 3 key growth strategy. First, we delivered new and differentiated product to key account in targeted market, including -- which including electronics, solar and insulated glass. So we are investing additional manufacturing capacity and efficiency improvement in North America and Asia-Pacific to meet plan goals. And finally, we remain committed -- commitment to enhance our portfolio through M&A that provide access to new technologies or market, especially in emerging markets. A common statement you will hear from each speaker today is that innovation is driving H.B. Fuller's growth in Engineered Adhesives. We have innovation pipeline over $1 billion over the next 5 years. We have 4 key innovation priority: sustainability, performance, efficiency and convergency. In sustainability, priority including developing the next generation of photovoltaics modules and building integrated PVs, and we are expanding silicon technology into North America. With performance, we are leveraging our technology to expand into more applications, electronic [ welder ], displays, sensors and soft goods. Efficiency means leverage our broad technology platform to develop more high-value and high-performance applications, such as silicon and UV-curing, and we are in a strong position to take advantage of the ongoing technology convergency. We are investing in our people and our facility to have world-class application engineering labs that simulate our customer environments and help customers solve their toughest problem fast and first. Here are a few examples of our innovative solutions and how we bring them into the market. GorillaPro is a great example of an exciting premium product that combine H.B. Fuller's technology and packaging know-how with GorillaPro's well-known brand. This is a unique product in the MRO market with user-friendly packaging and dispensing. It is a next-generation solution for using such as industrial maintenance, repair and equipment installation. This is an area where we are expanding our channels. We are working with internet influencer and new partners to drive this growth of this product. So EV Protect 4006 is a patented innovation for EV battery module protection. It is an example of how we are partnering with EV manufacturers to develop solutions that break boundaries and advance product design. This ultralightweight material is 2 components flame retardant low-density polyurethane foam. With that product, battery design can increase their power density of their modules while enhancing safety and protection from thermal propagation. And then finally, H.B. Fuller is a collaborative partner of choice of all things solar. We have the most complete set of materials for solar manufacturers and installers. Our solution delivers reliable and excellent performance with customized packaging and enable fast installations, reduce labor hours and lower cost. You will learn more about these innovations on the tour later today. So I'm excited about everything we are doing in Engineering Adhesives and where we are going with our business. We're growing our business and innovation, staying ahead of the changing market demand. We are leveraging our technology and speed to the market with new products to further differentiate ourselves from competitors and increase our value to customer. As we did in 2021, we will continually leverage our global operations to deal with significant disruption in the supply chain and keep service our customers. We create a powerful force in engineering. Now before we go to a break, I will share a short video about one of our exciting initiatives in Engineering Adhesives. Thank you. [Presentation]

All right. Thanks, everybody for your attention this morning. I think you've gotten a really good feel of the company. We're going to take a short break, so we'll finish at about -- we'll start back up exactly at 5 after the hour, so 5 after 11 for those on the East Coast. And we'll start with Traci Jensen, who'll talk about our business process improvements and then finish with John for our finale to talk about some of the details on the financials. So thanks. We'll see everybody about 5 after okay. Thanks. [Break]

So welcome back to our virtual audience. Everyone here in the room has had a bit of a buzz and discussion, and they're coming back to their seats. Very excited to introduce Traci Jensen, who's our Vice President of Global -- who's our Vice President of Global Business Process Improvement. Traci.

Good morning. As Jim mentioned, I'm the Vice President of Global Business Process Improvement. As we've been -- as Jim mentioned earlier, we've been executing a strategy that has reshaped our business and delivered continued growth over the last decade. The fundamental driver of that growth is innovation, which Celeste, Jim, Zhiwei and Boz touched on earlier. Delivering products to our customers in a low-cost efficient business process is my responsibility, and I'll talk about that a little more today. In 2020, we worked with a well-known consultant to strengthen our processes and streamline our business just after we had organized into our 3 global business unit structure. Over the last several years, as we have simplified our business, we have also made many improvements in our commercial processes, such as improved pricing, improved customer intimacy through digital tools. We've leveraged intelligent automation to improve HR, finance and SG&A. You can see the benefit from these improvements leveraged in our SG&A cost as a percent of revenue and in our outstanding pricing execution. We have also invested in our global operations, where the benefits are showing up a little differently. So this morning, I'm going to focus on our manufacturing operations. In 2020, we launched a comprehensive strategy review of our operations through an initiative that we call the H.B. Fuller Way. The result was a systematic approach to driving efficiency that will deliver over 100 basis points of EBITDA in the next couple of years and drive down our inventory levels. In the near term, this initiative is paying off by strengthening our ability to serve customers in this very unpredictable period by unlocking manufacturing capacity to support the significant demand for our products in this post-COVID world. Our operations and supply chain have been put through the test with COVID-related shutdowns, supply chain disruptions, inflation and labor shortages. The added visibility, speed and agility we have built into our operations have enabled us to deliver thousands of different adhesives across our global business and over $6 billion of revenue over the last 2 years. We were first and fastest at responding to customer needs, resulting in us outperforming our peers. Through it all, our operations and supply chain have remained a key competitive advantage. Our commitment to being better, faster and stronger applies in everything we do. This is the foundation of the H.B. Fuller Way, which drives excellence across our sites. The purpose of this initiative is to systematically deliver better performance through improved process and culture at all of our sites. It aligns our 3,700 manufacturing employees and assets across 69 facilities around the globe to be able to efficiently meet our manufacturing requirements for 30 different end markets. It means establishing a continuous improvement mindset across our facilities, supply chain and operations teams, and it facilitates knowledge-sharing across the enterprise to find more efficient ways of working and reduce redundancy. Standardized KPIs are measured consistently across our facilities and around the world and is an important part of this initiative. We are rigorously measuring performance in 5 key areas: safety, quality, delivery, cost and people. Within those 5 areas, we have 35 management-level metrics as well as 22 shop-floor and warehouse metrics. So let me give you some examples of how we are using standardized metrics to quickly improve our business process improvement. One metric we vigorously measure for factory performance is our overall equipment efficiency score. An OEE is assigned to each asset in every facility and rolled up to an overall site metric. Every site manager and team leader understands their OEE, so this gives us a common language about plant efficiency. The higher the OEE percentage, the more consistently a line is producing high-quality product that can be shipped to our customers, and this is one of our most critical metrics because increasing OEE actually frees up capacity to support our growing markets. And this has been critical given the high demand of our products today. So as an example, a plant that supports our roofing, automotive, and utilities and infrastructure business improved their OEE by 25% over the last 12 months. This improvement has helped free up capacity, particularly for our commercial roofing business. And the benefit of this efficiency is evident in our improved Construction Adhesives financial results. Another example is how we're taking a more standardized approach to measuring service levels to our customers. A factory that supports our RV, roofing and general industry markets was struggling with the complexity of disparate product lines that they support, resulting in employee turnover and shortages in labor. By focusing on their shift on-time and in-full metric, over the last 12 months they've improved their service levels by 25%. They also reduced employee turnover by 50% and increased the daily amount of product shipped by 35%, improving their right first-time production metric by 13%. So in the end, H.B. Fuller Way is driving excellence across our facilities, supply chain and operations teams. The key performance indicators that we use to measure our performance, ensure that we are taking a holistic approach to measuring and improving our operations. The H.B. Fuller Way goes hand-in-hand with our investment in our global enterprise resource planning system. We will have implemented SAP across our entire business by the end of 2024 with a significant portion of our business, approximately 75%, by the end of this year. This is a very thoughtful multiyear rollout with a standard global process discipline that allows us to operate on a single platform, which improves our visibility across the company, allows us to standardize metrics so we can quickly uncover areas of inefficiencies, use of a common language and process to uncover the gaps and therefore set targets for improvements. This drives better service levels to our customers and sustainable cost savings for the future. The combination of SAP and the H.B. Fuller Way also create a repeatable template that is especially helpful with acquisitions. They are both part of our approach that speeds the process of integrating acquisitions and realizing planned synergies, which, as you can imagine, are an important element of our M&A strategy. Given the current environment, supply chain management is a top-of-mind topic for our team as well as for our investors. By aligning our plants to our GBUs in those 30 market segments, our supply chain and procurement teams work very closely with business leaders, and that allowed us to act quickly when we had constraints of raw materials, logistics and labor shortages. We kept customers supplied better than any other competitor during these crucial times over the last 2 years. And as we have seen recently, the flexibility of our supply chain management has been a key competitive advantage for H.B. Fuller. Due to our simplified GBU structure, the diversity of specialty chemical inputs and our global supply chain network, we are able to effectively leverage the materials across our geographies and markets, so we can continue delivering to customers even during these resource-constrained times. At H.B. Fuller, we're creating value across our global operations through efficiencies from process automation, digitization, our H.B. Fuller Way, and our ERP initiatives. As the last 2 years have proven, our simplified GBU structure and global supply network are competitive advantages for H.B. Fuller. Even as the external environment changes, our operational strategy is the constant that allows us to continue delivering quality products to our customers when and where we need them. It enables us to align our assets and capabilities to better support customer needs across the market segments under these 3 GBUs. We have seen quantifiable benefits from these initiatives, primarily in unlocking the capacity that we need in this high-demand environment. And we are confident that through this consistent foundation of the H.B. Fuller Way, our implementation of SAP, and our integration of acquisitions, we will continue to drive 100 basis points of savings in our manufacturing costs as well as optimizing working capital. Now let me turn the meeting over to our Chief Financial Officer, John Corkrean, who will pull all this together in his financial review.

Thanks, Traci. Good morning. I'm John Corkrean, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. And my goal for this section is going to be to wrap up all the information you've just heard into some clear, quantifiable financial targets, provide a demonstration on how we're going to deliver on those targets and what that means from a shareholder value creation standpoint. So here's a short outline of the topics I'll cover in the next 20 minutes or so. I'll start with a brief review of our longer-term financial results as well as our recent financial performance. Next, I'll discuss our key financial targets and our capital deployment philosophy, and I'll finish with a brief comparison of our financial performance and valuation to some peer companies. I wanted to start with a longer-term view of financial results. This slide shows revenue and EBITDA all the way back to 1989, so 33 years ago. And you can see that the company's growth trajectory, both top line and profit changed significantly in about 2010, with the last 10 years or so reflecting a significantly higher rate of growth. Turning to the next slide, here are some numbers that support that step change in the company's financial profile since 2010. We've more than doubled the revenue of the company, more than tripled EBITDA, and we've steadily improved our margins, which are now almost 300 basis points higher. There are a few good reasons underpinning this change in our financial profile, all of which you've heard from others today, namely our reorganization into 3 global business units and our multiyear portfolio transformation, which I'll spend the next few slides taking a deeper look at. We've significantly expanded our presence in new higher-growth markets. On the left-hand side of this slide, we show revenue for 2010 and 2021 for Engineering Adhesives. 2010 revenue for Engineering Adhesives was just under $300 million or about 20% of total company revenue. Today, Engineering Adhesives revenue totals over $1.3 billion or about 40% of the company's revenue, a compound annual growth rate over that period of about 15%. Engineering Adhesives is our fastest-growing business. And while some of that growth has come through acquisitions, every part of this business continues to drive strong organic growth, which is, in part, a byproduct of the synergies associated with bringing businesses that we acquired together. And we've also expanded our presence in emerging markets. On the chart on the right, we show revenue from emerging markets for 2010 and 2021, growing from $185 million in 2010 to over $850 million in 2021, a compound annual growth rate of more than 15%, mostly organic. In addition, we've established state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities in India, Indonesia and Egypt, and we expect to drive additional organic growth opportunities in these markets over time. While we expanded our portfolio, we've also enhanced our focus on highly specified adhesive applications in fast-growing markets. As the pie charts on this slide demonstrate, such highly specified solutions comprise more than half of our portfolio mix today, which is up from just over 30% in 2010. The applications that are more highly specified, specifically, Engineering Adhesives, Construction Adhesives and Health and Beauty have higher pricing power and therefore, higher margins and lower elasticity to pricing adjustments. Moderately specified applications would include markets like Hygiene and Packaging, while the less specified applications would be in markets like Paper Converting, Towel and Tissue, Graphic Arts and Envelope. While all of these businesses are growing, the less specified applications are now just a little more than 10% of total mix and we expect this portion of the portfolio to continue to shrink as a percentage of the total over time. Next, I wanted to spend a minute on our recent financial performance. On this slide, we show a snapshot of our full year 2021 financial results. Full year organic revenue grew 15% versus fiscal 2020. Adjusted EBITDA also increased by 15% year-on-year and adjusted EPS was up 22%. And organic revenue growth was strong in all 3 GBUs with double-digit organic growth in Engineering and Construction Adhesives, and 9% organic revenue growth in HHC, on top of what was a very strong 2020. And these results were also strong when compared to a non-COVID impact in 2019, with organic revenue up 13%, EBITDA up 8% and EPS up 17%, with strong organic revenue growth in all 3 GBUs. For the year, cash flow from operations continued to be strong, while absorbing higher working capital requirements to support the significant sales growth and higher raw material costs throughout 2021. And most importantly, our momentum accelerated in the fourth quarter and margins expanded. And that momentum that we gained in 2021 was reflected in our financial results for the first quarter of this year. The significant revenue and earnings growth in the first quarter of this year was driven by outstanding execution, strong volume growth and pricing gains, which more than offset significantly higher raw material costs. Revenue increased 18% versus last year with organic revenue up 21% year-on-year and double-digit organic revenue growth in all 3 GBUs. Strong volume growth and pricing gains as well as cost efficiencies resulted in adjusted EBITDA of $113 million, up 12% year-on-year and adjusted EPS up 21% year-over-year. We also closed the Apollo and Fourny acquisitions, which significantly expanded our Construction Adhesives footprint in Europe and will be accretive to earnings in 2022. Based on closing these acquisitions, our strong performance in Q1 and our volume and pricing momentum, we increased our full year guidance for organic revenue growth, EBITDA and EPS, with the midpoint of our EBITDA and EPS guidance ranges now representing growth of 16% and over 21%, respectively, versus fiscal 2021. We expect our strong performance to continue throughout fiscal 2022, which reflects our continued ability to successfully execute and achieve strong results, despite persistent macroeconomic uncertainties as we demonstrated throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Now I'd like to pivot from the discussion of historical financial results, and spend a minute on our key financial targets going forward, which are shown here. Specifically, first, we target organic volume growth of 3% to 5%, which is supported by the industry growth trends, our focus on the higher growth parts of the market, and innovation-driven market share gains. Second, we plan to continue to achieve pricing that more than offsets raw material, wage and other inflation. We've achieved this target over the last 15 months in what has been one of the most challenging inflationary environments in recent memory, and we believe we can do it going forward. Third, we target leveraging that volume growth and pricing power into double-digit annual EBITDA growth. And finally, we target greater than 100% free cash flow conversion. You've already heard a lot of the facts that support the first 2 targets, the volume growth opportunity and our pricing power. I'd like to provide a little more info on how we plan to achieve our EBITDA growth and cash flow targets. As I said, our business generates strong operating leverage. That means volume growth and pricing should consistently translate into double-digit earnings growth. This is due in large part to our cost structure. Overall, about 2/3 of our expenses would be considered variable. More specifically, about 75% of our cost of sales are raw material and delivery, which is 100% variable. Of the remaining 25% of cost of sales, about 10% would be considered variable, including some labor-related costs as well as some utilities and maintenance costs. The remainder would be fixed, the costs that wouldn't be impacted by volume growth. Our other non sales, cost of sales related net expense, of that, about 10% would be considered variable in terms of some customer-facing roles as well as some variable compensation. This slide illustrates how that fixed variable cost structure leverages top line growth into higher bottom line growth. In the waterfall chart, you can see that 4% volume growth translates into double-digit EBITDA growth and that's before the impact of favorable mix associated with new product introductions in our faster-growing, higher-margin segments. And it's before any pricing in excess of inflation, and it's before the impact of operational efficiency initiatives and any automation and standardization savings. All of those things, which you've heard about today and are key focus areas for us, would be additive to that growth opportunity. And regarding our fourth key financial objective, our business model and discipline around capital deployment make H.B. Fuller a great cash generation machine. This slide shows how the components of our operating cash flow and our free cash flow conversion over the last 3 years, with an average free cash flow conversion of over 130%. And there are several elements of our business model that contribute to that strong cash flow profile. First, we have an annuity commercial business model with consistent repeat revenue generation. Secondly, there's a low capital intensity to our business with capital expenditures consistently between 2% and 3% of revenue, including 2.7% over the 3 years shown here. And finally, we have a strong working capital management mentality with net working capital averaging just over 15% of revenue. It's these elements of our business model that produce best-in-class cash flow generation and free cash flow conversion that's consistently greater than 100%. Turning to our capital allocation philosophy. This slide shows a summary of our capital allocation philosophy. Starting with our strategic investments, we're looking at both organic and inorganic opportunities. First, we are committed to reinvesting in our business and have targeted internal capital expenditures of between 2% and 3% of revenue. After that, we focus on strategic M&A opportunities that drive shareholder value accretion. Returning capital to shareholders is also an important part of our capital allocation philosophy. We pay an annual dividend of between 20% and 25% of average trailing 3-year net income, and we've raised that dividend every year. We also use share repurchase strategically when we think it's the best way to return cash to our shareholders, taking into considerations our leverage, other investment opportunities and our valuation. We do these 4 things with a target of maintaining a net debt-to-EBITDA of between 2 and 3x. Now a little more in each -- detail on each one of these. Our top priority to drive continued organic growth is to reinvest in the business. As I mentioned earlier, we have a very capital-light business model with predictable, modest annual capital requirements of between 2% and 3% of revenue, which helps drive the greater than 100% free cash flow conversion. This chart shows that we have consistently been within that target range. The majority of this CapEx each year relates to maintenance capital, and that includes expenditures related to our ongoing SAP implementation. As Jim discussed earlier, M&A has been an important part of our growth story. We have -- we have a targeted and disciplined approach to M&A. This slide provides a summary of our key acquisition criteria from both a strategic and a financial standpoint. From a strategic standpoint, we focus on a few key things. We look for deals that give us access to proprietary, differentiated technology that would be difficult to develop on our own. Specifically, we look for technologies that can improve application performance or address a specific customer need and that we can leverage across multiple end markets and geographies. Second, we look for deals that fill current geographic gaps in our portfolio or that will allow us to get to scale more quickly in a geography where we have a smaller footprint. The Fourny and Apollo deals are great examples of that. These 2 deals allowed us to more than double the size of our Construction Adhesives business in Europe and both provide manufacturing capabilities that we can leverage across the broader portfolio. In all cases, we target acquisitions of highly specified and sustainable solutions, allowing us to further expand the percentage of our portfolio that is directed at more highly specified applications. And we've tended to focus on smaller proprietary bolt-on acquisitions, with Royal being 1 of the few exceptions to that. Since the Royal acquisition, the last 7 deals that we have done have had an average purchase price of less than $50 million. From a financial criteria standpoint, we focus on deals that are highly synergistic in terms of both cost and revenue synergies. As I mentioned earlier, we have a very disciplined approach to M&A, and our average post-synergy acquisition multiple has been 3 turns lower than H.B. Fuller's trading multiple. We look for deals that have an IRR of more than 15% and that will be EPS accretive in the first or second year after acquisition. Only after a potential transaction passes these screens would we likely pursue it. Turning to our dividend. As I mentioned, we consistently return cash to shareholders by targeting a dividend equal to 20% to 25% of the prior year -- prior 3-year average net income. It's worth noting we have a very strong track record on dividend payments, demonstrated by the fact that we've increased our dividend every year for the last 53 years, including this year when we increased our dividend by 13%. And we have a highly cash-generative business model, in part because of our capital-light profile, but also because we've made working capital efficiency a key part of our financial strategy. Here, we show the trends for our net working capital as a percentage of revenue as well as our cash conversion cycle, which is days sales outstanding plus days inventory on hand, minus days payable outstanding. We show these metrics over the last 5 years. You can see that we've driven net working capital as a percentage of revenue from about 20% of revenue at the end of 2017 to below 16% at the end of last year, and we reduced our days of working capital conversion from about 86 days at the end of 2017 to less than 60 days at the end of last year. And this superior cash flow profile, driven in part by our strong working capital management as well as our prudent capital deployment strategy, has allowed us to significantly deleverage the balance sheet since the acquisition of the Royal Adhesives business in late 2017. This chart shows the trends for both net debt and net-debt-to-EBITDA and the consistent improvement that we've made in our balance sheet over the last 5 years, positioning us to make value-added organic and inorganic investments going forward. Now I want to spend a few minutes on how our financial performance and capital allocation profile as well as our valuation compare to peers. I want to preface that discussion by reinforcing the fact that the changes that we've made to our portfolio as well as to our org structure have generated significant positive outcomes over the last several years. The move to 3 global business units allowed us to streamline our cost structure, but even more importantly, it allowed us to create a more nimble and effective business model across the entire company. It also helped improve visibility into key business drivers. That improved visibility, combined with clear communication around anticipated results has allowed us to consistently deliver on expectations and honor commitments. And we've clearly distanced ourselves from the competition. Through innovation and strong execution, we've consistently outperformed our direct competitors over the last few years. And that's translated into differentiated financial performance. Unfortunately, there's no other public, stand-alone, pure-play adhesive companies like H.B. Fuller to compare ourselves to, but here, we show 3 specialty chemical companies that we believe have similar business models and operating fundamentals. As we outlined today, H.B. Fuller has meaningfully transformed its financial profile over the last 10 years. We now have a similar margin profile to these 3 companies, and you can see that we have, on average, outperformed these companies in terms of revenue growth, profit growth and cash flow delivery. Despite this, our valuation multiple is not fully reflective of our improved consistency and financial performance. This underscores the shareholder value creation opportunity from an investment in H.B. Fuller. So in summary, it's clear that we've made significant enhancements to our business model over the last 10 years that have allowed us to accelerate sales growth, improve margins and generate outstanding cash flow. And I would put our performance over the last 2 years plus in what has been a very challenging operating environment up against anyone's. Our financial targets are clear and achievable. Our capital deployment philosophy is focused and disciplined and is supported by our capital-light business, our strong cash flow profile, allowing us to make prudent value-added investments, both internally and externally. And achieving these financial targets and executing our capital deployment plans positions us for significant growth and shareholder value creation for the foreseeable future. Now I'll turn it back over to Jim for some closing comments.

Thanks, John. Okay. So thanks, John. So before I invite my colleagues to join me for another Q&A, I want to reiterate our strategy. We are the best adhesive company in the world, and we are positioned for continued success and shareholder value creation in the years ahead. At H.B. Fuller, our way of operating is unique. We have the best team of globally connected adhesive experts, which enables us to identify market trends and create better solutions, faster across our portfolio. And we're attracting the best customers, the best suppliers and the best people who want to work for our company. We have a capital-light business model and a strategic focus on working capital management. H.B. Fuller is a cash generation machine in almost any operating environment. Our capital deployment philosophy is clear and sound. We have modest internal capital investment requirements that are extremely consistent. Our approach to M&A is disciplined and focused, and ensures that all acquisitions are shareholder value accretive. And we consistently returned cash to shareholders, increasing our dividend every year, including this year. We also continue to distance ourselves from the competition. H.B. Fuller's financial results have been consistently ahead of our direct competitors period after period. We're confident in the strong foundation that we've established through the transformative actions we've taken over the last 10 years, and we're confident that we'll continue to create significant value for shareholders, as we deliver on the revenues, EBITDA and cash flow targets that we laid out today. Now let's get our microphone set up and start some Q&A for all the participants. So, thanks.

You'll take them over the phone, right, Barbara? Okay. Great. So first here, David, do we have a -- you got microphones there. Okay, great. So, I didn't mean to make you walk, Max.

David Begleiter, Deutsche Bank. Jim, we discussed pricing in the past and how sticky it is for Fuller, no pun intended.

We like glue jokes. Don't worry.

Can you highlight again in this cycle if and when raws do roll over, how much of this pricing you've achieved will be sustainable in a lower growth or even a recessionary environment?

Yes, as you point out, we see very sticky pricing on when raw materials come down. And we don't expect this situation to be any different. I think the nature of our business is products get qualified into applications and customers don't change out those products because of price. What happens when raw material prices come down is there's more competitive activity. So there will be an alternative that somebody will want to bring into some markets, especially the lower, more moderately specified situations. But we'll introduce new products in that environment as well. So we'll be able to use our reformulation. We'll go to suppliers and we'll get lower cost raw materials. So we manage that decline by introducing new and lower cost to our customers, but we don't lower the prices of our existing products. And we've got a good history of showing that, and we don't see that being any different in this environment. When, right, I won't say if, but when raw materials come down. We're also prepared for raw materials to continue to stay elevated. But for -- we all know that at some point, this thing will come down. And I think that's actually from a margin expansion standpoint, a really positive environment for H.B. Fuller. So that's a day we're looking forward to. So good. Question back here.

Mike Sison, Wells Fargo. I guess in terms of your multiple, I had sort of 2 comments, number -- or 2 questions. Number one, when you think about PPG, RPM, they've done a really good job of sort of attracting that consumer type investor. 40% of their business is architecturals. Is there an easy way for you to sort of summarize how you touch the consumer and kind of give us that consumer-facing part of the business? And then as a follow-up, M&A multiples have been pretty big. I mean I think Ashland sold their business for a much higher multiple than yours, where you're trading at today. So I guess, for Jim, how do you think about multiples these days? Interest rates are going up a lot, so it's much more difficult, obviously, to do high multiple deals. But maybe you can attack that -- your multiple in those 2 areas?

Yes. So I think our exposure to the consumer is maybe less direct, but we're very different than just about every other specialty chemical company out there, because we don't sell to any chemical companies, right? We don't sell chemicals. We sell adhesives that are used by manufacturers. And all those products are used by all of us every day, whether it's our consumable goods, feminine products or adult products, packaged products or the cell phones that we use or the automobiles, the new EV that somebody is thinking about, all of those are consumer-driven. So I'm not sure sometimes the -- in terms of the multiple, that's understood, but the resiliency of our business and the annuity-based nature of our business is probably not as understood as it could be, Mike, but I think our exposure to the demand and the needs out there in the outside world is universally strong. And our global strong position really helps us across a lot of different markets. In terms of multiples, I think we're very thoughtful about the return on any deal. We see a real opportunity to create synergies in various deals. As you point out, that the price that was paid for that Ashland business -- was a good business, but it was a very, very, very high price. And John pointed out how disciplined we are. So you see the multiples we paid for Apollo, we paid for Fourny. They were really good multiples in this market. But we really do look at these deals post synergies. So there's the headline multiple, but what are we able to bring to it. So -- and in those cases, John did the work, our post-synergy multiple was 3x below our multiple -- our trading multiple, whatever we bought those companies, on average, which is a pretty sizable number. John, do you want to talk any more about multiples and prices of deals?

Yes. No, I think you summed it up really well. I mean I think it is really key. What are -- the multiples will differ by market we look at, right? So some will be lower, but may offer lower synergy opportunities. Some may be higher, not saying they would be up in the range that Ashland went for, but they may be higher, but they may deliver more synergies. And so it's -- I think it's important for us to focus on the post-synergy multiple.

Yes. And the other point that John made in the presentation, I think I commented on is, we source a lot of proprietary deals. Most of our deals have been proprietary. So auction prices get people all frothed up and sometimes prices get too high in those situations. So, Mike.

Mike Harrison with Seaport Research Partners. I wanted to come back to the Engineering Adhesives business and the target of getting EBITDA margin above 20%. You're at about 15% now. John, when you were talking about overall company margin, you mentioned the operating leverage and that opportunity alone should drive some margin improvement. But when you think specifically about Engineering Adhesives, how much of it is operating leverage? How much of it is price cost recovery? How much of it is mix or other efficiency improvements?

For us, the portfolio mix is a huge driver of that business. So I think both in terms of reducing the complexity of some of the more mature businesses, but also the businesses where we're growing have significantly higher margins. So it's -- more than anything, it's a mix play, but the work that Traci talked about is an really important part across our company, but certainly in EA. We're a company that's been built on being very customer focused and doing what we need to. And we took this step back to say, how do we build metrics, processes, systems to allow us to systematically attack opportunities where we're making dots of adhesive in small containers and we also have other plants that are making bulk tank trucks of adhesives. So by having a consistent way of thinking and attacking those opportunities, there's definitely operational efficiencies. So I'd say in EA, it's mostly portfolio shift. There's definitely growth leverage. It's not like we don't have the capacity. And then there's a bit of the operational efficiencies. But John, do you want to add some color?

Yes, those are all the key things. The -- and I think Zhiwei mentioned this in the short term, this raw material price dynamic. His team has done a great job of going out and getting pricing to offset raw materials. And I think he mentioned that as raw materials start to ease, we'll see some significant margin expansion.

Yes. And it's probably to the question earlier, it's the area where pricing is the stickiest, right? So I think in terms of what will happen when raws come down, that's where you'll probably see the biggest margin expansion in Zhiwei's thing. Anything you want to add, Zhiwei?

You're absolutely right. I think which we're talking about portfolio improvement, right, in terms of from a business side and the technology and operations. That will play a big role to improve our profitability.

Yes. Vince Anderson with Stifel. I have a question for the other, Jim. So medical has been discussed a little bit here and there over the last couple of years. It's obviously a very different animal from the rest of HHC. Could you maybe just talk little bit about the taxonomy of medical adhesives and where you think kind of the earliest wins could be for you as you look to grow that further?

I'll let Jim come up here in the center. I would say that Fuller has been in various medical applications in the world. If you think about our filter business, we had a small thing sourced around dialysis filters. When we bought Cyberbond, they had a small position in skin bonding, right? So what we've been doing over the last couple of years is strategically understanding where there's new opportunities. It's a long, long cycle, qualification process, identifying what those trends are and then buying some small companies or investing organically, a lot like what we did in electronics. Now electronics move faster. But in electronics, it's mostly an organic story, where we identified where the market was going to go over the next 10 years. And then Zhiwei put the money behind it, so that we could build that franchise. And now it's a big revenue and profit generator. So -- but maybe you can give a little more color, Jim.

Yes. And you're right, Jim. Through the acquisition of Cyberbond, there was a small medical component of that. And we saw that growing pretty fast. And so looking at that market and looking at the margins we're able to achieve, we started looking at other companies where we could achieve margins like that. So we purchased the company, Tissue Seal, which gets us another platform higher because they have FDA approval, okay? So as we look at moving through that, we'll platform this Tissue Seal to another level, take it on a more international scope and move it through the system a little bit better with the power of H.B. Fuller.

But to your point, Vincent -- thanks, Jim. To your point, Vincent, it's about building confidence in the space, right? And it's a different kind of manufacturing competence, FDA approval confidence that's going to drive us to the front end where we can make a difference. But it is a market where there's not a defined adhesive expert. There's a lot of people that do work there and provide products. We think there's a great long-term opportunity to be the adhesive player there, but it's a longer-term opportunity. Do you want to go next, Barbara?

Yes, let me. This is from Ghansham Panjabi from R.W. Baird. A couple of weeks ago, H.B. Fuller announced a $300 million share buyback authorization. I understand that the buyback replaces the previous authorization, but does it indicate a more diversified return of capital approach to shareholders apart from dividends? And if not, given where the valuation of your stock is at current, especially given you have an attractive earnings algorithm for double-digit core EBITDA growth, would you -- would -- in this environment, would you consider increasing the buyback?

Yes. So yes, we did re-up the buyback opportunity. I think we've said consistently since the Royal acquisition that we're not going to do share buybacks until we're between 2 and 3, and we're bumping up against that. So I think the opportunity then is to determine whether allocating capital to acquisitions or allocating capital towards share buyback is the decision. So when we're in that range, that will be a decision. I think if we're below 2, it might be an obvious thing to do. So in that range, I think it's a trade-off based on the valuation and the opportunities in the market and how expensive they are, and below 2. And then above 3, I think we'll stay away from share buybacks as a way to keep our balance sheet in order. Do you want to add a little more, John?

That was perfect.

There we go. Here we go. John coached me on all these -- when I say it's right, I answered it the way he wanted me to. So -- so thanks.

Great. Yes, tough to follow that one. So I was hoping, Jim, that you and your team could give us a little bit of a real-time kind of demand insight, just as to how the demand variability is trending in China given the latest round of lockdowns. Can you remind us what your exposure is within various segments, whether it's on a percentage basis or end markets? And any details there would be helpful.

Yes. So our revenue in China is about 12% of our revenue globally. It's pretty equally split -- I don't think we actually share details -- but between HHC and EA with very little in Construction. So it's mostly HHC and EA. What we're seeing, and again, I think I can say whatever I want here, right, because we're open to all investors here. But we're continuing to see -- I think we announced at Q1 that China was our lowest performing area in Q1. And who would have expected 20% growth with limited growth in China? We're continuing to see trends continue. I mean it's not -- it's not like China is diving. If you read the press today, you'd think that there is nobody doing anything. As I said to a couple of people, it's 25 million people out of 1.3 billion that are locked down. So around the rest of the country, there's still activity going on. Our business continues. When we look at numbers for last month and the first couple of weeks of this month continues on a pace that we would have expected given what's happened in Shanghai. We don't have a plant that's in Shanghai. Our plants are outside. So I think if a company has their main facility in Shanghai, they are feeling that here in the short term or if most of your customers are in that Shanghai area. I think -- so that's a little like real-time look at what we're seeing in China, but not a dramatic downturn here as a result of the lockdowns. Now what will continue and how much lockdown will continue is an open question. But I think that's the China question. And then real time in Europe, again, surprisingly, at least from our perspective, not some significant downturn in Europe. I think the -- certainly, if you're impacted directly with what's going on in Ukraine and Russia or have a big proportion of your business, you'll see that. But for us, Europe includes India, Middle East and Africa. The biggest impact of what's happening is just supply chain shortages for our suppliers and inflation, right? So that's the issues. There are some truck driver shortages, because there are a lot of Ukrainian and Russian truck drivers in Europe. But our biggest impact is inflation, which we would have said Q2 was going to be a tick down. Now Q2, of course, as I said in the call a couple of weeks ago, is going to be up. It will probably be our highest inflation quarter a result of the fact that there's just tightness of everything. So thanks. Okay. Barb, do you have any on the phone there?

Eric Petrie with Citi. When you look at your mix 5 years from now in Engineering Adhesives, how much would durable assembly represent versus electronics, new energy, autos, et cetera?

Durable assembly is still a sizable business. Depends on what you mean by durable assembly, but we make a lot of durable goods, and we're really strong in those businesses, but it will be a smaller share. Certainly, electronics is growing a lot. Our position in EVs, and you'll see some of it on the tour, you heard a lot of it today, is very attractive. So that position there is growing. Our aerospace business is growing nicely. Solars, which we have a great franchise in. So I would say durable assembly will still be a solid business, but all of these other businesses are growing a little faster, which will drive that proportionality.

Is insulated glass a lower margin or corporate average or segment average rather?

Well, the beauty of us having these 30 segments is that within any one of those segments, there's very high and very low or moderate materials. IG is a great example of that. You saw on the video a little bit about this technology, 4SG. It's patented. It replaces not only the sealant but the spacer that's in there. It enables our customers to do things they could never do before. It's a very high-margin opportunity for us, and it's very fast growing. So I would say, overall, it's -- today, it's more in the middle of Zhiwei's margin portfolio. If you look at his 13 different businesses, but certainly moving up going forward.

And then lastly, could you talk about build versus buy in terms of technology for those alternative energy, auto, if you [ can ] in the structural end markets or solar? What technology you might be missing or lacking in terms of addressing those end markets?

Yes, build versus buy in terms of just pure chemistry or market entry?

Both.

Both. It's very different segment by segment. So it's -- I would say, what Zhiwei did -- there's a small acquisition we did called STR. We did it a year or so ago. It gave us entry into the encapsulant layer inside a solar panel. It's a great acquisition. They didn't have much revenue, but they had really good technology that allowed us to leverage our solar franchise to grow in an important area. So that's a niche within solar that he found an opportunity, we closed the deal, and we made some sizable investments and it's taken off for us. So it's really a micro decision by business. I think broadly, Zhiwei talked about 17 different platforms. We've got good technology in just about all the core areas where we need, but there are oftentimes somebody who has something out there that we don't have, either from a technology or more likely from a market entry with a specialized product in that market entry. So I don't know if you want to add to that at all, John? Yes.

Okay. This is a question for Celeste. I realize this might not be very fair since you just joined. But can you give us an idea of what you found, what surprised you -- what might have surprised you at H.B. Fuller on the positive side or the negative side?

Thanks, Barbara. To tell you what's really surprised me on the positive side, 2 big things. So first of all, H.B. Fuller has -- I started my career in adhesives, and so I was in adhesives for about 10 years. I've come back into the industry. And in that period of time, what I have seen H.B. Fuller do has been an amazing acquisition and development of technology. So when I left the industry, H.B. Fuller did not have nearly the breadth and depth of technology that it does today. And so that has been really a favorable surprise. That also just -- the depth of talent we have here, and you're going to see some of those people on the tour today. Just amazing depths of talent and people doing terrific things here, very engaged, pervasive culture, very international culture. People around the world are excited to be part of this company, and so am I. Thank you.

Are there questions in the room?

Yes, Vincent at Stifel again. So if I -- I'll try to avoid buzzwords like AI and machine learning, but if you think about some of the advancements in, call it, computational chemistry and you're coming up against maybe some issues in STEM hiring availability, and you talk about the speed of customer responses on formulation. Are you seeing any opportunities on the back of maybe the ERP rollout and whatnot to develop tools that allow you to formulate even faster using techniques like that?

Yes. We definitely have built a better competency in terms of design of experiment and automated intelligence. We worked with some customers -- with some suppliers to help them develop polymers that are customized for us. So yes, that computational chemistry piece is an important part. But I would also say just systematic analysis of the work we do has really been as helpful. So there's a bit of that, AI, computational, chemistry work, but also more systemization of formulation and formulation versatility. So creating 3-dimensional models that tell us exactly where the sweet spot is to deliver performance. More broadly on AI, we're using it to help drive business processes. So Traci does a lot of that work within our business processes to try and understand where Big Data can help us drive performance in all of our back office and other functions. So she has a person who works for her. This guy loves this stuff, and he's driving a lot of our business process thinking. And then Jim used a great example where we're leveraging computational thinking in terms of looking at our customers and providing real valued data. So those are a few of the areas where we working on. And yes, it's a big changer. But I think understanding where to invest, you can spend a lot of time and money on all kinds of ideas. And I think Traci does a really great job of focusing on real business problems that we can take these tools and skills in solving them and not turning it into somebody's science project. So, yes.

And then if I could just dig in a little bit on your electric vehicle battery pack technology. That looks pretty interesting, maybe some higher switching costs for an OEM, and it's going into a market that's evolving very rapidly. Is there any detail you can share on that process? Is there any risk that a Tier 1 is going to require some exclusivity to be an early adopter, like what are we looking at there?

Yes. Well, we're not going to get into all the commercial details, Vincent, but I wouldn't say -- Zhiwei, you can step up and comment too, if you want. But yes, we're very excited about a lot of things on electric vehicles. These vehicles, if especially if you're a new manufacturer, every product is getting respecified. But even if you're a big manufacturer, there's multiple situations where the adhesive needs to change. So Zhiwei dedicated an entire team focused on EV within our auto space. I remember my first visit to a battery manufacturer was in China 5 or 6 years ago, where our team was studying where all these small manufacturers and the big one over there were going. So we built a great understanding. And our view is not to be locked on in 1 player, but to be a deliverer across the industry. This patented product that we developed was really forward thinking by our team. The product that was in the early batteries had problems that it was too heavy. This enables us to lightweight it and improve safety. It's patented. No, it's not confined to 1 customer. You're going to see -- again, it sounds like you're going to see a lot of things on this tour, but that's one of the things you'll see on the tour. But Zhiwei, do you want to comment more on EV and the battery in particular?

Yes, sure. So as we mentioned, right, innovation is so important. The technology, what you're seeing, which we are doing for the EV is only one-off technology, not all. And this technology actually, we have to back to almost 7 years ago. [ This has not ] happened today that what we call innovation pipeline. It's so important for us. The first time we -- I think back to Hanover, in the trade show. We showed the first time, the innovation, what we did, but nobody really take it, right? We have been trying for a long time, but we believe that is so great technology. And looking at back to days of battery industrial, there's no mature technology. There's no mature design. That is the opportunity. That is why we say we focus on the changing market and changing technology. This technology, I said 7 years ago, we developed. When we first show in the market, many people impressed, but we do see a lot of competing technology too, right? It takes a long time. We started with this very small vehicle, not a vehicle, even [ bicycle, ] right? People say, we don't like it, then they don't come to us. Up to recently, because many technology, we're really showing the performance of these materials, because that really come into lightweight. Because they do have solutions, same like us, fire retardant. But to the end, they choose our technology, we really showing because the more important for the electronic vehicle, get lightweight to increase your efficiency and [ low miles. ] This is the reason we win.

Okay. Thanks, Zhiwei. You hold on to that. But yes, you tapped on one of our really exciting innovations. We -- it's commercial, it's very successful right now and has a big upside. But it's one of the interesting things about our business, right? There's all these little applications and some of them can be very large, some of them are $1 million, but being on the front end of an innovation just builds on itself as the world evolves. So hopefully, that story came out today. So, great.

This question is for Boz. So Construction Adhesives is, let's say, kind of a segment over the years that maybe hasn't done as well as the other 2 segments, but that seems to have turned around over the past, call it 1.5 years, 2 years. And Boz, maybe since taking over, what are some of the things that you've seen or you've done that's kind of changed the trajectory of that segment?

Yes. And I think you're right. Boz has done a great job here of driving success in that business. And one of the things we did when we hired Boz was hire a guy who came from the construction business. So -- and he had a lot of experience at other companies and understood how that decision-making process was maybe a little different in terms of speccing in with architects, material suppliers and the distribution channels were different. So his insight took what was a very good business, and I think is driving great results. So maybe you can give a little perspective and your vision -- not all your vision, because it's very grand. I don't want investors to be promised by everything he wants [ to do ].

Yes. Thanks for the question, [ Krem ]. So this is my third year with the company. So it hasn't been a long time. But when I play the take back even what happened before me, I think the Royal acquisition was a real tipping point because that gave us more specialized applications than we had before the construction space in H.B. Fuller world. So I think that was a tipping point. And what we've done is really capitalized on that. And innovated with some great products very, very quickly. For example, I mentioned the sprayable bonding adhesives. That one just started in 2020, and it's just doubling almost every year as an example. And so I think the portfolio to very much like Zhiwei's story of specialized applications is where we're -- what we're doing and where we're headed. And then the other opportunity is just expanding globally and getting people to think about this business not as a North American business, but a global business that has huge scalability. Then I would just say it's about putting the right people and the right business processes in place and doing some of the work that we've done in the other segments and with Traci and just establishing really good business processes and focus. I think it's been a combination of those 3 things. So we're pretty excited about where we're headed now, but I think the specialization story and the ability to expand that, similar to how Engineering Adhesives did that over the last decade is kind of how I would answer that, is where we're headed. Does that answer your question, [ Krem ]?

Barbara, you clear over there? Or you've got some more?

We've got 1 more. You're trading at a premium to Henkel right now. What separates you from Henkel given it's probably your closest peer?

Yes. So well, of course, Henkel, half of their business is in consumer goods businesses, and they're competing with P&G and others around the world. So it's really -- it's always been tough to measure us versus Henkel, because of the nature of their business versus ours. So I really can't comment on their trading multiple. You can see they've struggled. They published their adhesive results a couple of quarters during the pandemic. We mentioned earlier, they're a little more exposed right now to Russia and Ukraine on both sides of their business. So I won't comment too much on them. But those kind of things are working against them. I will say, in our industry, Henkel is a good competitor, right? We like having Henkel as a competitor. And I guess I said it during the -- I think we're better than Henkel. I think we've built the company that's better. I think -- so they're a good competitor in some areas, they are not as great as some of our team is. And I think that's a good place to be in a market, right, with good responsible competitors at the top of an industry that allows you to compete on innovation, on value. And we do that with them. And I think I'm really proud of our performance relative to them in the market. And from a trading multiple, I'd like to see their multiple go up because that will probably help us. So -- other questions here in the room.

So as we think about some sources of upside in the coming years, can you touch on your progression in automation and what kind of margin improvements or cost savings you can derive nearer term? And then relatedly, can you expand a bit on some of the commercialization synergies across segments and the longer-term opportunities on that front?

Okay. You said that fast. I'll have to make sure I got them right. So the first is around production automation, specifically. Yes. So a big part of the capital investment we make in our facilities is around production automation. A big part of what we did in the Royal plants was invest in production automation. I look at what we do for some of the businesses, the Cyberbond business and some of the small packaging business, putting those on automated production lines was important. A lot of what we did when we built the Egypt plant that we just invested in or Indonesia plant was take our best automation ideas and implement those. So it's mostly automation on the back end of those lines. We make lots and lots of different adhesives, but the manual part of our facilities is on packaging. So that's what we're trying to do is build an automated packaging environment there. Anything else you'd add on that on the automation side, Traci?

No. I think it's trying to make sure we're systematically and very focused on where we invest and what we're going to get on that return on investment from it.

And then the second question was about commercial synergies on our acquisitions. Yes. So it's a big number a lot of times when we do our deals. So we automatically -- when we buy companies, we normally see some procurement savings, because there's duplication of raw materials that are bought. One of the companies is buying those. There's some manufacturing and SG&A savings. And those oftentimes pay for the deal, they can pay down the multiple because we can bring those right in, especially on these small companies. But the real opportunity is the commercial synergies. And Zhiwei and Boz both mentioned it. Technology that was sitting in a small company that Royal bought or sitting in a great company like Kömmerling that was bought or Cyberbond technology and then leveraging that across markets and across the world is really underpinning a lot of our growth. So after a couple of years, it doesn't get on the tracker of the synergies on the deal, but all of us know where the technology came from and how it's moving. So that's a multiplier that keeps on giving. So that's a big part of our strategy is leveraging know-how across the company and especially when we buy new companies. The CEO of Apollo was here last week, right? So I was over there -- Celeste and I were over there 2 or 3 weeks ago with Boz. He was here last week, and a lot of the discussion was around commercial synergies. That's what people in this industry love and that's what we do. We take those ideas and one of the synergies, we had no idea it was going to happen, was there's a piece of technology that he has that we think we can drive into our Roofing business here. Our roofing guys thought they had it all figured out, and now they got a new idea they're going to be running with. So that's good.

Sorry, I've got 1 more for you. So there were a lot of slides that we saw today that compared 2010 to 2020 or '21. I think one of the things that's changed really dramatically over that time has been your pricing approach. Not sure that in 2010 we would have considered you to be a pricing leader, the way you've been behaving over the past several quarters is clearly you're a price leader. So maybe talk a little bit -- and this may fit into some of the better visibility or improving processes and forecasting that you have. But what has really helped to enable you to go from being someone who was a price follower to a price leader?

Yes. Yes, I would say that in the years prior to the last 10 years, the company raised prices, but it was much less strategic and it was much less value driven. So -- and as a result, I'm not sure they always made the right decisions. By going into these 30 market segments, we're not making blanket decisions. Each one of these market leaders is deciding how they're going to capture the price in the market, where their value exists and make certain they price appropriately. Or if the value isn't there, how I'm going to introduce a new product. So it's that decision-making down the organization that's getting us to be a much more strategic pricer, right? I mean I report out to The Street $600 million in pricing. That's a lot of decisions, product by product, business by business, that these guys and their teams are doing to understand where our value is, because you can't just blanket change prices out there. But we also build a lot of really important tools. So we have raw material outlook that Rob and the sourcing team put together that goes through every single material and projects the next 4 quarters and how that price is going to change, up or down. And then we've blown all that back into details by the products, by the segments. So everybody knows within their business what our changes are. And then on the pricing side, we built -- started out in like 2011 or '12 a proprietary pricing tool internally where we capture the price of all of our products and measure how it's performing relative to the margin expectations, relative to other products in that same segment. And that tool has grown and developed, along with we now have pricing excellence people. I remember when I -- we first assigned our first pricing excellence guy. He still leads pricing for us now. He went through a training course on pricing. He said, "It was a bunch of our suppliers at this thing." So -- but we built expertise. We have an annual leadership forum. We do training on pricing. Traci and Graham just went through an in-depth training of our entire commercial team in EA on pricing to value. And so bringing that skill set into -- it was the tools and the processes and then bringing the skill set way down the organization, so people understood the value we deliver and then capture that. So it's always about people, but you need processes and tools. But I would say everybody in the company thinks of ourselves as -- pricing is a priority, but doing it right. That's a good question to end on Barbara, though, if you don't have any others. Do you have another one or no?

There is 1 more. So you talked a lot about sustainability as a driver of your growth. What about infrastructure spending as that starts to ramp up? Is that an opportunity -- is that a large opportunity for H.B. Fuller?

So the short answer is yes, absolutely. So sustainability is pervasive as you saw, right? As you start thinking about it, if everybody is making anything, sustainability is important to what they're doing. So it's not just EVs and paper straws. Anything you're making, you're trying to make it more sustainable. Yes, the infrastructure, Boz touched on it. It's the biggest opportunity he has. He's tried to rally all of our cool ideas. He's also trying to make a couple strategic acquisitions. We just had a presentation to the executive team from one of Boz's team that laid out the size and scope. So it's a big opportunity for us. It's a small part of our C&A business. It's the smallest of the 3. But Boz is really excited about it. Without ever promising, Boz, maybe you can share a little more specifics.

Jim always has to tell me not to overpromise. So the way we view the infrastructure bill, in the utility infrastructure space is about 3 things that allow us to take existing technology we have today and play in the space. But one of the requirements is it's made in the United States. So for that reason, we have to look at our products and our capacities that are made in the U.S. and say, how can we capitalize on this? So airports are clearly a big opportunity, bridges and roads are a big opportunity. And then wastewater is the third opportunity. So it's early days. We are seeing customers talk more and more about it. We're seeing orders come in. So really, it's about understanding it, how to get specified, who the players are, how do we build a great sales team, how do we build U.S. capacity, because it has to be made in the U.S. And we think it's a great opportunity to take advantage of while it's here. But it's early days, and I think it will be some exciting things to come.

Good. Thanks, Boz. We've got a very clear focus on being a construction adhesive company. So in the chemical space, a lot of people do construction materials. So if it's a sealant or an adhesive, that's our opportunity. So when they repave an airport, we're looking at all those little lights and the new sealant that they're going to need around there. And that's a lot of sealant, right? So we're targeting on areas where we have a specified high-value product and not trying to be all materials to everybody. And I think that's very different than other people in the specialty chemicals space. Good. Well, look, first, I'm going to go back over here. I want to thank everybody who stayed. I know these things are always challenging virtually, and I know some of you really wanted to be here, but we really appreciate your attention today and engagement here through the questions and through the time. Hopefully, you learned some valuable things about H.B. Fuller. We're committed to delivering value for our shareholders. We understand, I think, what it takes for us to win in this market. And we also understand what it takes to make certain that those that invest in our company get a great return on their investment. So thanks for your time today, and then we'll redirect our efforts to everybody in the room. So thank you.