Ingersoll Rand Inc. (IR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. I think we'll get started. I'm Joe O'Dea, I cover the multi-industry sector at Wells Fargo. And we are excited to have Ingersoll Rand here, and Vik Kini, who is CFO. Thank you so much for joining us.

Yes. Thanks for having us, Joe.

So to get started, maybe just kind of a lay of the land. What you're seeing out there, end markets, regions? And obviously, a lot of focus coming out of the first quarter. Just how things have been trending.

Yes. So I guess what I'll start by saying here is I don't think things are dramatically different than kind of how we described them coming out of our first quarter earnings call. So as we kind of indicated, coming into this year, we're seeing what I'd call relative stability in the grand scheme of things here. If you take it by region. The Americas has probably been our best-performing region, comparatively speaking. I think nothing has changed on that end. Europe has been kind of in the middle. Obviously pockets performing better than others. And then clearly, the biggest headwind that we faced coming into the year, which I think we were pretty explicit about both in the back half of last year and coming into the beginning of this year, due probably to the state of kind of the economy there is China, which obviously is a relatively large portion of our Asia Pacific exposure as well as some of the kind of large project comps that we spoke about pretty explicitly in Q1. Generally speaking, as we move through Q2, I would say things have trended remarkably similarly in that respect in terms of just how we're seeing the end markets play themselves out. I think comps in Q2 get a little bit easier. So comps do help a little bit and they moderate considerably as we move to the back half of the year. But I think in terms of, on the ground, has anything changed dramatically? Not dramatically. I will say MQLs, which is our marketing qualified leads, kind of our precursor to orders, continues to trend well. Which shows, I think, relative stability in kind of more of the short- or medium-cycle kind of parts of the business. And the project funnels continue to remain relatively healthy. I would say we're still seeing good amount of activity for some of those larger projects. I think the comps are still a little bit challenging here in second quarter. But good to see that the momentum is continuing, at least in terms of the funnel discussions and then translation of some of those into the order book.

And if we just stay on MQLs for a little bit because that was something that accelerated over the course of the first quarter. It sounds like what you saw as kind of sustained in terms of that kind of leads. But what do you attribute that acceleration to over the course of that quarter and now kind of sustaining that level?

Sure. So I think there's probably, at least in terms of the first quarter, I think maybe a couple of things here. One, there's probably some degree of seasonality that's involved there. Obviously coming into the new year, and then things ramping sequentially to the quarter. Not too dissimilar to what you'd historically see. I think we were encouraged by seeing March to April continue to show an upward trend. Again, one data point is just that, just one data point. But I think it's encouraging because I do attribute MQLs to be a little bit more akin the short- to medium-cycle, kind of not the larger project that typically go through more of a funnel quoting exercise. As far as what we continue to see here, I mean, the good news is we've been doing demand gen for the better part of a decade now. And so we're pretty mature in the processes, generating upwards of 6,000 MQLs in total in a given week, which tends to give you good visibility in terms of what kind of start -- the health of the end markets are. Now in terms of an MQL itself, typical lead times roughly 6 to 8 weeks is kind of the typical conversion rate if it's going to turn into an order. So I think that's the piece that still is continuing the blocking and tackling and continuing to try to convert. But I think for us, that's MQLs and the digital demand generation engine. That for us, we've always said we're not immune to what's going on in the end markets, but it's hopefully our competitive differentiator that can allow us to outpace whichever respective end market or region we're playing in.

And do these have the same relevance across ITS and PST in terms of the visibility that they're giving? Or is there any difference in kind of -- I think of ITS primarily with it, but maybe you're getting the same kind of visibility on PST side.

Yes. I think -- so the short answer is similar. There's really, in my opinion, no real dramatic difference in terms of how the engine is deployed, the visibility. I think there's probably some truth in the statement that ITS is a touch more mature in the context of some of the demand generation engine. It obviously got a start in the legacy Gardner Denver industrials business, which is kind of a big component of today's ITS segment, about 10 years ago. So without question, I think it has a little bit deep-seated -- more deep-seated roots in ITS. But I think the PST business is coming up the learning curve. Similar visibility. And I think it's actually really exciting now that, last week, we closed on our largest transaction to date with ILC Dover. And I would tell you, demand generation is probably one of the biggest sources of potential revenue synergies that we see with that business. So the ability to adapt it, whether it's ITS, whether it's life sciences business, it's kind of, I'd say, end market-agnostic.

And you touched on demand generation a little bit. But can you dig into it some more in terms of it's a decade old, but how it has evolved? How you're using it kind of day-to-day basis to drive outperformance really versus markets?

Yes, I'll try to keep it relatively simple here. But you could think of demand generation as digital marketing kind of in the sense that companies will try to go business to consumer. We're using it in a business-to-business kind of environment, which I think is quite unique in an industrial company setting. So think of digital marketing, think of things like search engine optimization, SEA. We're now 10 years old. We have 5 million contacts in our database. So the concept of being able to, we kind of say point the cannons, but essentially target certain end markets, target certain customers, and then in a digital manner, be able to cultivate that customer. So whether it be through white papers, campaigns, whatever that mechanism may be, e-commerce setting, and so forth and so on, be able to cultivate a lead to get it to what we consider to be a warm lead or a marketing qualified lead that can ultimately then to be turned over to our sales team to be able to convert. And if you think about this in terms of what the historic way of doing this would be. It would be the equivalent of someone like myself going to a trade show, exchanging over a business card, and then going from there. Well, that's extremely costly and very time-consuming, and frankly in today's day and age, quite inefficient. So the name of the game here is being able to do this in a touchless, automated, digitized manner. And then be able to, to use a bad baseball analogy, more at-bats for your sales team. And so as you said, we're now 10 years kind of into this journey. We -- our first demand generation employee was hired in late 2015. So I guess we're 9 years old now, I should say. But now with that maturity in that reps and now it's probably one of the few centralized teams we actually have at Ingersoll Rand. And we view that as a competitive differentiator because just get more scale. People waking up and doing search engine optimization every single day as opposed to doing it 1 day a week and doing something else the next day and something else the day after. So we've really got almost 200 people in our demand generation kind of enterprise. Globally partnered with the business but doing this in a scalable manner. Which is why, for example with ILC Dover, the transaction we just closed, we're really excited about the ability to kind of plug them in and start reaping benefits relatively quickly.

And how do you think about that progression through the funnel? And so from that initial hit, to then a warm lead, to then an order. What are those conversion rates at a high level?

This is kind of -- I'll use a thumb in the air here. But do you kind of think of it as something along the lines of, once an MQL is generated, 30% translate to what we all on SQL. And then 30% of that an actual order. With a translation time of somewhere in the 6- to 8-week time frame, assuming everything goes to plan. So it's not immediate, but it's -- we've now done it for long enough that it's got a pretty good, I'd say, correlation that we can track. And it will measure kind of through the funnel and ultimately to measure orders that are coming through from MQLs.

And then sticking on the demand side, but in terms of how agile you can be with it. And one of the things you talk about is sort of identifying where the demand is going to be and position yourselves around that. And I think then the construct is you can outperform maybe the general macro. But talk about that process a little bit in terms of, internally, how you're identifying where that growth is going to be, how far down the road you're thinking?

Sure. Yes. I think the important part to note here is we recognize that there is going to be different economic environments across different regions. China is a good example right now. That doesn't mean though that there aren't pockets of growth in those underlying regions as well. And I think our team, last year, China was a great example, a market that was probably pretty healthy. But the team recognized an opportunity in EV batteries, for example. And that was a huge part of the outperformance that you saw in some of the large projects. So I think the team does it kind of in a two-pronged approach here. One, obviously, we've got feet on the street, we've got demand generation exist in the business as well. So obviously, you've got local knowledge in terms of where I'd say their pockets of growth and where are areas that may be ebbing and flowing. And remember that air compression technology pumps, they're kind of ubiquitous. So the reality is the pump or compressor that's used for life sciences end market can be utilized for another. They're pretty interchangeable in that respect. The other thing that I think the team has started to do really well here is we actually have a couple of individuals at our corporate office who are focused on kind of 100 micro trends across the entire enterprise. So literally, every single day, they're kind of -- they do a market research type function, but they're focused on what we call micro trends across the entire enterprise. And so they're really examining those pockets of growth, whether they be in a region or globally, and then the applicability of our technology to said end markets and applications. And then you leverage demand generation to be able a target customers in that demographic with white papers, campaigns, whatever they may be, to kind of start instigating that demand and cultivating leads. So we do it through kind of a two-pronged approach. I think the teams are always reevaluating this on a yearly basis and probably multiple times per year. I've witnessed our Asia team doing this and pivoting frankly even multiple times this year in an environment that's kind of been somewhat depressed, for a lack of better way to say this. But I think they're continuing to find those small pockets of opportunities in terms of where they can drive outperformance, such that we can continue to say, no matter what that underlying rate of growth is in that market, we're still driving x percent outperformance.

And the micro trends group. This is sort of separate and distinct from other parts of the organization...

Yes. It get rolls up into our strategy group. So it's a team of a couple of individuals who sits at corporate. So they actually sit down the hall from me in Davidson. And this is all they do. They actually come from a market research background. So very accustomed to kind of doing this type of work. Know the, what I would say, air compression technology pump market very, very well. And they are doing exactly that. They are deep-diving 100 different micro trends at any given point in time and then translating that to what parts of the business can actually see benefit from that, and then plugging in with demand generation to be able to go instigate that demand. So it's a pretty unique concept. We've been at this for a couple of years now with the micro trends side of the equation. But we absolutely see that as driving growth. And we've had success in a number of different areas globally with this team that I think otherwise we wouldn't have probably gotten orders and/or demand.

And that was going to be my follow-up in terms of, anecdotally, just in terms of -- it's a couple of years, and I think about this type of organization as being probably best structured for a little bit more down the road. Maybe this is a multiyear. But anything that you've seen actually kind of coalesce around you're generating revenue...

Sure. I mean, I think there have been examples in areas around some of the clean energy spectrum. I think renewable natural gas is probably the telltale one that we see in the U.S., but there have been other pockets of clean energy. There have been pockets in the water spectrum and things of that area where, quite frankly, our technology is completely well adapted to. And those -- while they happen to be probably two of our largest end markets, you could peel the onion back considerably in terms of the number of layers that you can go to and find applicability for, quite frankly, for our technology. Even areas, like last year, like we talked about the EV battery side of the equation. I think that was a good, I'd say, partnership between both the micro trends, but one that was probably fairly well known. But our China team specifically being able to pivot very quickly. And I think we won our fair share, if not more, in that space last year.

And then I wanted to touch on digitalization and sort of where you're going with that. And so I think roughly 10% of products were IoT-ready. If you go back to 2020, you talked about getting to 25% in 2025. On pace to do that. How do you think about it over time? And sort of what is the ceiling, what percentage of the portfolio can go there?

Yes, sure. So I think, first of all, we're extremely pleased with kind of the momentum we've been seeing. We measure it as kind of our entire revenue base. So the reality is when you have roughly 40% your revenue that's aftermarket and a component of your revenue base on the OE side that isn't probably well adapted to be connected, are you ever going to get to 100%? No. That was -- that's never the intent. But the reality here is now every single, for example, compressor that goes outside of -- goes out of our plant over a certain horsepower range comes digitally enabled with the edge device already on it. And so then it's obviously just working with the customer to turn it on and then the data starts flowing. So I think the teams have really, I'd say, adapted the model very nicely there. To your point, are you getting to that 30%, 40%? That's -- in our opinion, there's no reason we can't get to those levels. Obviously, that's a little bit of a longer [indiscernible]. But I think the important thing and the exciting thing for us now is, at our last Investor Day back in November, so about 6 months ago, we kind of laid out this target to from for $200 million of recurring revenue to $1 billion. And recurring revenue is kind of the stickiest piece of the aftermarket. It's really things that are under long-term agreements or multiyear agreements whereby you're getting a revenue stream every single month. The CARE contracts kind of being the gold standard. It's connected -- connectivity, digitalization, IoT-ready products. Being able to have that connectivity, it's probably the -- one of the single-biggest enablers for CARE to be able to work well. So for us, we think of the IoT-ready kind of metric in that digitalization, not necessarily today as a new revenue stream or anything like that. It's more of an enabler to be able to catch more of our aftermarket, with recurring revenue probably being at the top of that spectrum.

And how is that working in the field? And so you think about a product that's not connected and then how you get that aftermarket revenue attached to it and the product [indiscernible] and how you're getting that. Just in terms of what the experience has been.

Yes. I mean, I think a couple of things here. We'll kind of correlate it all the way. I think you can probably expect that a nonconnected device just inherently is a little bit more difficult to interact with. Generally speaking, anything that goes out of our factory, we know where it goes through. Through distribution, it could be a little bit trickier to track. But the harder it is and less connected it is, generally speaking, the harder it's going to be for you to make sure you're winning your fair share of aftermarket or your after-market entitlement, whether it be just standard lubricants, parts, services, filters or even the break/fix component. Flip over to the other side here, a connected machine, you know exactly where it is. You're sending information back and forth. And then I think from a customer perspective, if you go to like a CARE contract or a CARE package, it's kind of the gold standard, but it's almost a win-win for the customer and the company. At our -- at the highest kind of level, the packaged CARE kind of CARE contract, it's a risk-sharing agreement and a risk-transfer agreement. And what that means is, this isn't a long-term service or long-term warranty. It's risk transfer, meaning you as the customer are transferring the risk of operating that compressor to us, Ingersoll Rand. And we, in turn, are guaranteeing x percent uptime, and we will take care of that compressor from that point forward. I think the beauty of the model in terms of both sides are, one, you don't have to worry about maintaining a service tech or a maintenance folks internally, a lot of which that demographic is aged out and it's very difficult to find that type of skilled labor. Two, generally speaking, we're guaranteeing a certain percentage of uptime, 95%, 96%, 97%. And with that should come the energy efficiency, which a compressor is up to 30% of the energy in your facility. So big energy efficiency savings. And then three, you look at any manufacturing setting around the globe, if the compressor in the compressor room comes down, your whole plant is coming to a screeching halt. So the opportunity cost that, that can -- if it's -- something goes wrong, it kind of takes that off the table. In return, we're getting this kind of recurring revenue stream. It generally operates at what I would call software-esque gross margins. And the one thing to kind of answer your question in terms of the ultimate pull for the customer, one, the first time -- first pass yield in terms of anything going wrong is extremely high in terms of being able to actually troubleshoot and fix anything that goes on with that compressor. And we measure Net Promoter Score across the board. And our CARE customers are about 20 points higher on NPS than non-CARE. Which I think, at the end of the day, put everything else aside, that is the -- that's probably the telltale. So for us, it's a win-win across the board. Like we said, this is a $200 million revenue base in 2023, largely in our North America spectrum. And the fact that we're now kind of translating that globally to legacy Gardner Denver portfolio and to parts of the PST portfolio, where it applies, we see a pretty big opportunity set ahead.

And just to expand on that, so that $1 billion in 2027, how do we think the path to get there? Is that more of kind of you're going to see that really sort of lift as you get to '27? Or do you think about it linearly?

Yes, I wouldn't call it a hockey stick per se, but it's not going to be linear. And the reason there is our most established base is on the legacy IR North America. So we are adapting the model now to Europe, Asia and other parts of the business like I spoke to. The good news here is the other parts of the world don't have to go through the learning curve that North America has gone through for several years, where it was when do you sell a CARE contract? Do you sell it at the original time? Do you sell it 1 year later? The answer they found is to sell it 1 year later when the warranty is kind of starting to kind of come due. Is it a -- do you sell it with the same team or a different team as to your original sales team? So we've gone through those trials and tribulations. So I think the adoption curve will definitely be a little bit shorter, but there's still going to be a ramp-up phase. So again, linear? I wouldn't point to linear. A touch more back-end weighted. But the good news here is we have the model to be able to adapt. And right now, we're not necessarily seeing any barriers. The other catalyst here is you've got to have the service techs and the field service network to be able to make this model work. And we have 2,000 field service techs globally, 500 in the U.S., 1,500 elsewhere. So that's the model. You can't -- if you don't have service techs, this model won't work.

And you now have testimonials, you now have the Net Promoter Score. For a customer, are they paying more over that period of time? Or do you find...

The way we try to look at it here is they are probably replacing, in some respects, another outflow that they were already spending. So one of the things here is the sell-to, we also found that in a lot of cases, selling a CARE contract, you almost want to sell to like a plant controller, not necessarily a purchasing individual. And the reason there here is this is now a, make it up here, an x thousand dollar OpEx outlay on an annual basis as opposed to some bigger CapEx outlay. And the way that we have seen this now is, if you're selling -- I'll give a hypothetical example. If you're selling a $100,000 compressor and it's an x thousand dollar CARE contract, the reality here is that spend compared to what you'd be paying for a maintenance individual in-house, what should be -- what you're probably saving from energy efficiency perspective, the payback is very compelling for the customer. In my opinion here, you're actually replacing spend they would be using elsewhere with a CARE contract and then turning that maintenance over to us. So I think there is a trade-off from a customer perspective, but one that I think economically makes a lot of sense.

So let's shift to M&A. And I mean, the question is what's been driving the success? And if we look at what's happened over the past few years, I think when you came out at the Investor Day in 2021, there was some skepticism as to whether or not you can get to 4%-plus kind of M&A growth. You're doing that or better than that, right? And it looks like, with Dover now, you're probably on pace to do 6%-plus this year. And our math would be there's carryover of like 2.5% already into next year. So as you think about having achieved those targets, exceeded those targets, what is it about the M&A model that's really driving the success?

Yes. I think, at its core here, and we talk about IRX, kind of the way we operate, I think it's no different on the M&A side. So from an M&A perspective, simply stated here, 90% of our deals are sole-sourced. We have a team, kind of much like you see the rest of the enterprise, it's pretty slim and trim from a corporate perspective. Our M&A leader and kind of one analyst or kind of support from a corporate perspective. But the M&A -- there's an M&A leader in each one of our businesses partnering with that kind of GM. And the reason there is who better to know who the right technology, who the right competitive suite, who the right kind of M&A candidates should be than those who are competing against them every single day in the market. And so our M&A cultivation happens, frankly, from the bottoms up. It happens in the business. Yes, we kind of have a, I'd say, overarching kind of strategy framework. Our M&A leader kind of helps kind of, what I would say, manage that across the board. But now kind of flash forward 4 years, this model, we're not waiting for -- nothing wrong. We love the banks. But we're not waiting for banks to come and bring us a book. Because quite frankly, when you look at the model, we've now done, inclusive of what we announced last week, close to 50 bolt-on transactions, with ILC Dover being probably a little bit larger than a bolt-on. And quite frankly, they're probably not on the radar of banks, to be very honest. And we've seen a ton of value opportunity and creation by being able to do a lot of bolt-ons. We are doing on average 10 to 12 per year. That's just kind of how the math has worked out thus far. But then be able to kind of put them through our integration process, IRX, or economic growth engine, and we're able to really compound value here. So for us, it's just the model we run here, cultivation of the business, execution. And then the other part here is we're not reliant on some kind of corporate SWAT team to go integrate. The same team that cultivates and ultimately buys a business in, whether it be our ITS Americas business or our Asia Pac business, they're the same team that does the integration. And so when you're doing that across Americas, Europe, Asia, PST and deeper into PST, you can do a multitude of acquisitions and integrations simultaneously. And that's exactly what we're doing right now. ILC Dover, probably a touch different just given the size and scale. So as you can imagine, whether it be Vicente or myself, we're probably a little bit more hands-on involved, maybe a little bit more like kind of like what we did with the IR-GD merger. But that's just kind of, frankly, just given the size and scale and scope, we were a little bit more hands on with that one. But we have great visibility across all of the acquisitions, how the integration are going. We review the progress every single week. And Vicente has a staff call which is really just an IDM which is kind of the core tool of IRX. So every Friday. And we get a snapshot of all the deals, how they're doing from an integration perspective. And it's pretty simple, red or green. And if they're red, why and what are we doing to get back on track? So the beauty of IRX and IDMs is you can't hide, the news travels fast. And that's great kind of in the environment with the speed which we run.

And in a bolt-on kind of size, how long does that integration process take? And I guess the beauty of it is that you're basically turning it into Ingersoll Rand operating model. So all those sort of 4 pillars are in there.

Yes. So every deal is a little bit different. If we can -- pre closing of the deal, if we can kind of get some degree of access to be able to start the integration process. We will do ahead of time. ILC Dover was a -- it's obviously not the biggest one, but that was a great example. This was an asset that was bought from private equity. But we were able to kind of work collaboratively with the team. And I'd say the areas that you can address, none of the commercial stuff, but probably every bit of 8 to 10 weeks in advance of the deal closing. So when we look at any integration, we have 24 key metrics, and they may sound somewhat pedestrian when you think about finance or HR, IT or legal. But it's things like in finance, having your financial system up and running for consolidation. It's how do you make sure that things like corporate cards and key cards -- because that's the worst thing you can do is take away those tools that the team has been using is just to run the day-to-day business. So we have 24 key metrics. We've now done this 50 times. We kind of know what makes sense. And we strive for those to be day 1 ready. And so we will try to do as much of that ahead of time. ILC Dover is a great example. And then we will collaboratively, we'll do it through an IDM integration process, and we'll actually do it collaboratively with the acquired team. So we've been doing this hand-in-hand with the ILC team now for probably the better part of 6 to 7 weeks. And day 1 happened last week. We're now running that integration IDM now post closure. And now they will start to take control of the IDM process. So they will help drive the integration themselves. And within the first 30, 60, 90 days, we have very key things, like demand generation and making sure their website is tied into our digital marketing engine and so forth and so on, that we start measuring thereafter. So again, it's a pretty tried and true process now. Like we've this almost 50 times. And I will tell you, we get asked this question a lot here. Have any of them -- have any of the integration has not gone as planned? And of course, there's always 1 or 2. And I would tell you, the 1 or 2 that we can probably tell you that did not go as planned is because we did not run the process. We did not run the IDM process, we did not do it via IRX. We did not do it -- we kind of left it onto its own. And guess what happens? The integration probably didn't go as smoothly as it could have. So thankfully, those have been multiple years ago and relatively small. But you learn your lesson once.

And then along with ILC closing, a couple of other bolt-ons. So just in terms of the funnel as you're making progress through that. I'm not sure how that's backfilling, but how the funnel looks today.

Yes. It's quite healthy. So I think at the time of our earnings call a few weeks ago or a couple of months now, we said we had nine deals under LOI that did not include ILC Dover. And those nine were all, I'd say, bolt-ons at their core. Flash forward to today, you saw ILC Dover close. You saw three others that were in the funnel also close. And you can kind of be rest assured that the funnel is continuing to be pretty active. So we haven't come out and said how many are in the funnel. I guess the point here is it's still quite healthy. There's still a healthy number of deals in the funnel. And even though we just closed ILC, that doesn't mean we're, "Okay, now we're done and on the sidelines." No. There's still plenty of bolt-on activity that we'd expect for the balance of the year.

And I wanted to shift to ITS. One headwind in a number of companies with sort of broader industrial end market exposure has seen over the last year-plus has been destock. We haven't really heard Ingersoll talk about destock as a headwind. So sort of talk about the business model, the channel. Maybe you saw it, but you just managed through it, in terms of inventory out there not appearing to be much of an issue.

Yes. I think the whole destock phenomenon, or otherwise said, distributor stocking compressors, it's really not a phenomenon in our space. And the reason is a couple-fold. One, when you think about our standard distributor. So on the Gardner Denver side, we tended to go largely through distribution, for example, in North America. They tend to be what I would characterize as more of your smaller kind of mom-and-pop kind of entrepreneur. They own a certain territory in the U.S., think of maybe $5 million, $10 million of revenue per year. So they're, one, not prone to probably be stocking considerable inventory just given their size. And then the second piece here is, when you think about a compressor, the vast majority of what you consider to be kind of variably configured, meaning there's a variable component to it. So if you were in -- if you even wanted the stock, you'd be doing it very speculatively based on what end market demand may or may not be. So that's just not something that you see realistically happening. And frankly, if it were even to happen, we can see inventory in the channel with our distributors, it's not something we will allow. Even in parts of our business like, for example, with our power tools business in ITS, which does tend to have more of a -- they're selling to the larger distributors. We track sell-in and sell-out on a monthly basis. So again, we're going to manage that and not allow stocking to happen at any exorbitant levels or anything of that nature. And I think the team has done a nice job managing through that in the context of the last few years.

And then just taking a step back and thinking about the cycle. I mean, the question is, how do you think about the overall demand environment right now? And you think about PMI being sub-50 for like 1.5 years, industrial production is at okay levels, not at robust levels. Clearly, Ingersoll has demonstrated good organic growth. But just your evaluation kind of where we are in the cycle, how demand is out there.

Yes. I mean, I think -- listen, I think the short answer here is, like I said, we're not immune to what's going out there. We've of course seen end market dynamics ebb and flow and change. I think from our perspective, where we are in the cycle, we can debate. I think the way we think about it and the way we run it with our teams is control what you can control. And so when you think about that demand generation, that right there is ultimately our most controllable engine, if you will, to be able to drive sustained growth or outperformance. The other piece, I think, of the story that's maybe a touch probably underappreciated because maybe we need to maybe spell it out a little bit more is, and you saw a number of these examples in our Investor Day, is that when you've done now roughly like 50 bolt-ons. But at any point in time, it's been 20, 30, 40, whatever you want to say across that last few years. What's inorganic for 12 months becomes organic at month 13, right? And so when you think about a lot of these deals, these are deals that are fantastic technology. They've probably grown to the kind of size they can get to within whatever geographic area they've played in. And now they're able to plug into a larger Ingersoll Rand and global access overnight. Well, it takes time for that kind of adoption to happen. But you can think 6, 12, 18 months in, we're thinking about how do you localize some of that production in Asia, for example. And you saw at our Investor Day, Arnold Li, our business leader in Asia, he gave probably 3 or 4 different business cases, all of which fit that exact mold. Taking blower and vacuum production to Asia, taking the MD-Kinney business, which we bought soon after the merger, taking that production to Asia. And so these are -- I won't point to any of them as grand slams. They're all singles and doubles, if you will. But they add up. So for us, that's the way that we're going to continue to drive this kind of outperformance. But to your point, where are we in the cycle? Listen, is it as robust in an environment today you saw over the last few years? No, I don't think anyone would characterize it that way. I think it's what can you do to differentiate and drive growth? If you're not doing that, you're just going to be riding ebbs and flows, and that's obviously not sustainable in our perspective.

And then related to that, I think if we look at sort of guidance, it seems to -- for ITS embed improving organic growth rates each quarter of the year. But how much of that is comps and seasonality versus some anticipation that, hey, we're going to see demand get better in these parts of the business?

Yes. I think, one, would we hope that things will get a little bit better, for example in China as we get to the back of the year? Perhaps. Is that really embedded in the guide? No. I think what you're seeing is exactly that. There is a degree of seasonality in the business. We typically talked about book-to-bill kind of being above 1 in the first half, below 1 in the second half. That's really just due in large part to seasonality, particularly with the larger projects, which tend to have more of a booking upfront and a shipment in the back half. In terms of comps, yes, I think there's -- I hate to keep pointing to the comps, but they are real. I think the comp set gets a little bit more eased, for lack of a better way to say that, in the back half of the year. So I think the combination of both of those will definitely kind of, I'd say, kind of lend itself to how our guidance has been put forth. I think the good news is we were pleased with kind of what we saw at a high level with 3% price in Q1. We do expect that to moderate back to the kind of 1% to 2% level as we move through the year. And that's by no means due to us taking prices down. It's just a the more outsized price increases you saw in '23 are comping themselves and you're getting back to that more normalized level in the back half of the year. So I think in the back half, you'll start to see that 1% to 2% price level, the balance being organic volume. And obviously, margins have been kind of the highlights, if you will, of ITS. I think we would expect to continue to see margins at these levels in the back half of the year. And if there's room to do a little better, I don't think you've seen us hesitate to show that.

And then on mega projects in ITS, there's a lot of enthusiasm about this sort of overarching mega project opportunity. But what are you seeing? How have you seen that change? We're all kind of waiting just to hear...

I think the short answer here is, yes, we anecdotally hear about stuff as well. Has anything of a meaningful variety or anything? No. I would say it's still something that we're sitting and watching. I mean, the good news is, whether it be in the hydrogen front or the carbon capture front or pick your favorite area there, we have technologies that are well suited there. Have we seen anything that would -- I could tell you sitting here, Joe, since I -- you're going to see something big? No. I wouldn't point to anything of that nature, at least at this point in time.

In a larger project, what would your lead time generally be? When is the customer coming to you to try to secure things?

Yes, it kind of depends upon the nature of the project and kind of what the scale and size is. But you can generally say that it's probably spec-ed in somewhat earlier, comparatively speaking, just given the mission-critical nature of what the air compression technology is to those respective projects. So that's kind of how we see it, even on the more normal-sized projects. But generally speaking, while the funnel quoting exercise might take a little bit of time, generally speaking for our large projects, typically 6 to 18 months between order and shipment, depending on the complexity.

Then shifting to PST and just talking about some of the headwinds that you've seen within that business. If you can elaborate on where you've seen some of that pressure and sort of where we are now in terms of seeing relief from that.

Yes, sure. So I think the -- probably the biggest piece that you've seen there has been the legacy Ingersoll Rand Life Sciences part of the business, where we've talked about being a provider of miniaturized compression and pump technology to things like oxygen concentration, some biopharma type exposure. And particularly on the oxygen concentration, clearly an area that saw a bit of an upswing during COVID. And then I'd say, as you kind of come on the back side of that as well as some, I'd say, specific customer dynamics, you obviously seen that kind of being the biggest headwind in the context of the business for probably a better part of the last 4 quarters or so. I think if there's good news to be had here. One, from Q4 of last year to Q1, we did see order rates increase kind of mid-teens. Now obviously, those were from pretty depressed levels, but we are finally starting to see things kind of turn in the other direction. We're not calling for necessarily a back half recovery, but we're encouraged at least by some of the momentum we're starting to see. And I think the good news here is, as we exit Q2, the kind of headwinds from a year-over-year perspective and those comp issues kind of dissipate. So the back half of the year will be a much more normalized environment that will kind of be behind us in terms of the meaningful headwinds on comps.

And then I think time for just one more, but with the 8-K filed last night. Just if you could expand on that and the development there. I think $10 million sort of cash commitment, so it doesn't come across as a big commitment, but just your thoughts on that.

Yes. Sure. For those of you who may not be as familiar, last night, we issued an 8-K that indicated that we, Ingersoll Rand, divested all of our legacy asbestos liabilities. I think this is a -- we're really pleased with, frankly, the transaction being completed. So to spell it out here a little bit. We have sold all of our legacy asbestos liabilities, as well as all of the kind of related assets with it, to a third-party firm called Delticus that is very experienced in running these kind of what I'll call long-tail corporate liabilities, experienced exactly in managing portfolios of this nature. And so we think they're going to be a fantastic steward of those liabilities over a longer-term perspective. From a shareholder perspective and a company perspective, we are permanently divesting those liabilities. So I think eliminating that risk profile from the company's balance sheet and ultimately allowing us to kind of just focus on our economic growth engine, like we've been talking about for the last few minutes, is a huge win. In terms of the economics, I think, shareholder-friendly for lack of a better way to say this. The entities that are being divested will be infused with capital of $188.5 million. $143.5 million comes from settlements on insurance settlement proceeds that were correlated with those liabilities, $35 million being infused from Delticus, and only $10 million from the company. So I think this has been done in a very prudent manner from a cash outflow perspective. And like we said here, it's going to good hands. We've done independent third-party solvency opinions that deemed the entities to be very well capitalized pre at the time and now post. Like we said, Delticus will be a good steward of these liabilities. And effectively now, all of our legacy asbestos liabilities and correlated assets will be eliminated from the balance sheet on a go-forward basis. So super excited about the transaction here. The teams did a hell of a good job here in the context of the work to get there. And we're pleased with kind of how it's kind of played itself out with very minimal cash outlay.

Vik, I think that brings us to end of our time. Thanks so much, really appreciate it.

Appreciate it. Thanks, Joe.