ITT Inc. (ITT) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. I'm Matt Summerville, Senior Research Analyst with D.A. Davidson, here to host a fireside chat with leadership from ITT. With us here today, we have Luca Savi, CEO and President; and Emmanuel Caprais, CFO. With that brief introduction, I'm going to turn it over to Emmanuel for covering -- to cover the safe harbor, and then they're going to make a few opening remarks.

Thank you, Matt. So our presentation and comments may contain forward-looking statements, which are based on our best view of the world and our businesses as we see them today. These assumptions and expectations can change, and we ask you that you view them in that light. We encourage you to review the latest risks and uncertainties in our Form 10-K and other SEC filings available on our website. Thank you.

All right. So well, good morning. Just a few remarks before we go into Q&A. ITT had a Capital Markets Day in May. And so when you look at Q2, Q2 was a strong start in the new journey. We had very good orders growth, you see the numbers, both in terms of organic and total. And we started with a good also revenue organic and total growth and margin expansion, which was one of the key message of the Capital Markets Day. You saw a lot of value creation in the past with ITT, a lot was pure organic value creation, and we started Q2 in the same vein. And this is exactly what is going to happen in the next 5 years on top compounded with M&A. Another highlight of Q2 was actually the cash. We generated very good cash and a cash flow -- free cash flow margin of 14%. Now if you look at the strategy that we communicated at Capital Markets Day was really an evolution of the portfolio. If you look at several years back, you see the spread of the different markets and automotive was very heavy in the mix. And you think that more than 60% of the EBIT was actually coming from automotive. With the turnaround of the other businesses, the organic and inorganic growth of also the other businesses, that has shifted. And today, roughly 30% of the EBIT is coming from automotive. And what we shared is that look at 2030, the portfolio will keep on shifting with roughly 20%-or-so coming from automotive. This doesn't necessarily mean the automotive will shrink. It will grow, will continue to grow in the next 5 years, but the other businesses will grow more, both organically and inorganically. We also communicated the long-term targets, which was a 5% organic growth, 10% total, 23% in terms of operating margin or more than 25% in terms of EBITDA and a good improvement also on the cash flow margin, and EPS of roughly $11 or more and $12, if you consider the M&A. Now if you look at the messages when it comes to Q3. Q3 is aligned or a little bit better than what we were expecting and this is good. I think that when you look at the orders, we will have a total low single-digit growth. And this is because when you look at the orders of last year, there were very large orders that lap. And so -- but overall, in line or slightly better than what we are expecting and also with a very good cash performance, so which will enable us to continue to invest if it is R&D, if it is organic or M&A. So with that, let's get into Q&A.

Sounds good. I wanted to start out talking about ITT's differentiation, organic capital deployment. Talk about some of the more sizable organic investments ITT has been making across 3 segments. Things that come to mind include high-performance pads, geo pads, Smart Pad and MT, VIDAR and IP, C5 and CCT, how your team is driving kind of the go-forward cadence of innovation across the company?

Sure. I think that the investment in organic growth is key, and you've seen the results in the last 5 years, and this will continue in the next 5. So if we take the different businesses, one big investment when you look at the brake pads, our automotive business, has been the high performance. We've been growing our market share consistently in the last 7, 8 years. We outperformed the automotive market by roughly 700 points for the last 10 years, and we continue to do so. So our market share in Europe is incredibly healthy, our market share in China is around 31% last year and in the U.S., in North America, 27% last year. So you have a very good opportunity to increase market share in China and in North America. In Europe, it tends to be a little bit more tricky because we already have a very high market share. So you really need to be very [indiscernible] in order to understand where you can grow. So a couple of areas where our market share is not that high are actually light commercial vehicle, and we are focusing on that; and the other is the high-performance vehicles. You're talking about the top of the range of the Porsche or the Daimler or the BMW. Our market share 1.5 years, 2 years ago in this segment was double 0. So obviously, it's an opportunity. We never attacked that for specific reason, we decided to go after. And we invested roughly $50 million to open a new plant adjacent to an existing one with a very pushed automation manufacturing. So there are very few people in the plant, AGVs and robots moving the thing. And it has been a major investment that will allow us to keep on growing our market share also in Europe. Result 1.5 years after, we already won 5% market share of that market. Granted, we are not making 5% because when you win, you need to -- you win the award, it takes a little bit of time to develop the product and then the ramp up to regime. But already in terms of awards, 5% of market share in 1.5 years. So that has been a major investment. Another major investment has been actually VIDAR. We invested millions and millions of dollars in this motor. This motor, which is unique in the market, we are the only one to have it, we've got intellectual property to protect us, is really combining in the motor a variable speed drive. So today, the only way to have a variable speed drive motor is to buy a motor and buy also another electronic component that is the variable speed drive, but it's inconvenient because you need a clean room, you need space. And you think about the chemical plant, right, with hundreds and hundreds of pumps, think about it, hundreds of these variable speed drive, you don't have the space, is dirty, so it doesn't get applied many times. Combining it, I think that we solved the issue. This has been a major investment for the last few years. We launched it commercially in June-July. And I think that it's going to be a great success story for ITT. And then it's lean across all the different businesses to continuously improve the profitability.

Very good. As it pertains to inorganic capital deployment, can you talk about actionability and depth of ITT's current M&A funnel and how the company thinks about M&A versus repurchases is a venue to generate shareholder value?

Maybe I'll talk about the funnel and the priority, I leave it to you, Emmanuel. So if I look at the funnel, on the M&A front, what we are looking at the flow and the connector business. So we are looking at good growth and high-margin businesses. So we have been cultivating many of this company. We keep on cultivating, and we are progressing in that process. I think that for us to differentiate on the M&A front, we really need to be ahead of many of our competitors to establish a very strong relationship with the target. Emmanuel and I get involved early on, and this enable us to differentiate and to win some of these deals even before the process started. I think there are several targets today that are actionable, and therefore, we hope to be able to deploy some of the capital on the M&A this year or early next.

And if I can add, when you look at the funnel, the composition of the funnel, I think it's fair to say that most of the targets that we're looking at are in the flow and fewer of them are in the connector business. And so -- and in connector, we're really looking at a sliver of the connector business, which is more defense, right? From a capital allocation standpoint, the focus for us is to grow this company inorganically. And so this is where we're going to dedicate more of our cash if we can, right? Because it's not always a given. It takes 2 to tango and so M&A, you got to convince the seller that we're the right buyer. And we've been able to do that. When you look at Svanehøj and when you look at kSARIA, those were really interesting assets for a lot of people, and we were able to get them. If we're not able to execute on the M&A side, then we will continue to deploy the capital from a share repurchase standpoint. This year, we repurchased 500 million. We continue to have very acceptable levels of debt. And so we stand ready to continue to do that. When we repurchased the shares earlier this year, obviously, it was at a much lower price than the share price today, and so it was a good investment.

To that end, maybe recap kind of the level of activity and how you utilized kind of a disjointed market to take advantage of that, but also then focus on where your leverage is today and where you think kind of the optimal leverage profile of the company might look like?

Sure. So I think that Luca really pushed us to take advantage of that dislocation. And so in a typical ITT fashion, we tried to be faster than anybody else, and we saw that there was a window of opportunity. And so we really took advantage of that and tried to deploy that capital as soon as possible because we knew that our share price were bound to grow again. And so we thought it was going to be the same for ITT because we didn't see anything specific to ITT that would be a cause for concern. And we were also very confident in our ability to get compensation from customers in terms of the tariff incremental costs. So we acted decisively and really fast. And so we were able to really take advantage of that dislocation to the maximum of our abilities. From a debt standpoint, we're slightly below 1x today. And so I think that we can grow that to 2x, 2.5x, and -- but we need to have -- we need to make sure that we have the right opportunity to deploy that capital. So we're not in a hurry. We're really focused, as Luca said, on quality assets, and that's where we're going to deploy the cash. And if we're not able to, it's going to return to our shareholders.

Maybe let's start digging into the businesses a little bit, starting with MT Friction. You spoke at a high level kind of what you're thinking about from a regional standpoint and where you stand in terms of market share. Maybe provide a little bit more granularity on where you see OEM and aftermarket demand across Europe, North America, China? Realizing aftermarket is more of a European commentary, but maybe just a little bit more of the state of the union of MT.

Sure. So when you look at our -- when you look at MT, you got rail and friction and automotive. And when talking about the automotive, we tend to be more in OE than in aftermarket. I would say 75% or more of our business is OE and the rest is aftermarket. And aftermarket, as Matt was saying, is mainly in Europe, split equally between independent aftermarket and OES, first equipment. So talking about OE. If you look at the production, think about it, our volume sales on brake pads is directly linked to the production. You know that every time they produce a car, there's going to be either 6 or 4 or 8 brake pads per vehicle, depending if you got the drums in the back or not. So what you see in the market probably today is a market that is likely to be flat in terms of production year-over-year, but the story is different for different countries. So you've got China, which proved to be super resilient and that we will keep on growing in terms of production in 2025. And you have Europe and North America that will decline. So now in that market, we are outperforming the market. And this is what we have done year after year for the last 8, 10 years. Just to give you a piece of data is the highest the production has been was in 2017, and that was 95 million vehicles produced. Since then in 2017, the production of vehicles went from 95 to 90 will be this year. So a decline of roughly 5%, 6%. In the same amount of time, we grew by roughly 39%. So we outperformed the market. And I'm talking about volume, I'm not talking about revenue, I'm not talking about price. This is pure volume. So a strong outperformance. And the outperformance will continue for the next few years. And the reason why I'm saying that is not arrogance or something like that. But the way that it works, think about it, when they design the car, they give you the award today for an SOP that is going to be in 2 years' time. This was happening in the Western world, Europe and North America. They gave you the award today, you need to finalize industrialize the product in the next 2 years. So we have visibility because we know the awards that we won 2 years ago that we're launching now. We know the awards that we won last year, we're launching next year. And the award that we won this year that we're launching in 2 years' time. So we have visibility of what our market share roughly will be in the next couple of years. A little bit more tricky in China because China works at a faster speed. So really, the time between the award and the SOP is really 9 months, as an average. But there, we got a very good story because we are winning with the winners. 2014, when we opened the plant, the General Manager there, Davide, invested with the Chinese OEMs. It sounds obvious today. It wasn't in 2014. In 2014, the majority of the Western company were investing with Ford, with Volkswagen, with GMs. We invested a lot of time in developing the relationship with the Chinese OEMs. And today, more than 65% of what we produce are with the Chinese OEMs. And so if you think about Xiaomi, NIO, BYD, Chery, say, all of these Chinese OEMs are our customers. Xiaomi, they manufacture -- the phone manufacturer has come out with 3 platforms. All those platforms, as an example, 100% of the front, 100% of the rear axle are ITT. So this is how the market evolves, is evolving, probably it is going to pan out in 2025, and we will outperform that across the regions.

Very good. Maybe just sticking with Friction here for the next couple of minutes, delivered 90 platform wins through the first 6 months of this year across EV, HEV and ICE. Are you seeing an acceleration in your wins or win rate? And how does that kind of inform your legacy market share target of 37%?

Sure. I would say it's a good speed. We -- the team in -- particularly in China was a very dynamic market, definitely has won many of the platform in this year in China. Interesting enough, last night, I was at Vanderbilt here because we have a training with -- our people have been trained by the school for a couple of days, and we were celebrating [ Sallai ], who was the sales leader of Friction because of the exceptional performance. So there is a little bit of an acceleration, I would say. Now when it comes to the powertrain, I want just to highlight, we are completely agnostic of the powertrain. You want an internal combustion engine, we made the best brake pads for you. You want a hybrid, you want an EV, we do it. I think it's fair to say that when it comes of a new challenge, so where you need R&D to solve a problem that you haven't solved before, so EVs or Euro VII, this is where we have an advantage, and this is where the acceleration comes because you require more R&D to find the best solution for a new challenge, and this is really one of the differentiation that we do have. And therefore, in those kind of cases, we're able to find the solution faster than the competitors, and therefore, we tend to win more when those kind of challenges arise.

Over the years, what's defined ITT's ability to capture share in this business, including through periods of supply chain crisis, logistical challenges, COVID impacts? How some of the KPIs fared that really differentiate the business versus your competitors?

Yes. So maybe let me talk a little bit about what we call the MT playbook, the Motion Technologies playbook. So this is where it all started, where we really worked on driving fundamental operating performance, strong fundamental operating performance, and that started in Motion Technologies in the Friction business, where we really focused on what makes the difference for customers. So obviously, internally, for us, safety is the #1 priority because we want to operate a safe workplace, and we want our people to be motivated to come to work because it's a safe environment. But then what really matters to the customer is quality. So how can we deliver the best quality, deliver that quality on time and at the right price. And so really, this is why Friction and Motion Technologies overall has been so successful because we dominate from a quality standpoint. So if you compare to the rest of the industry, we are very much ahead of everybody else. We have every 1 million parts that we deliver, we have less than 1 and sometimes less than 0.5 that is defective. And so much so that when the team said, "What more do you want? We're less than 1. It's going to be very difficult." We decided to go to defective parts per billion. And then so all of a sudden, we are at 500, 300. And then so there's much more room to improve, right? So -- and that is an absolute differentiator compared to the competition. Delivery, we're able to deliver -- all our plants are able to deliver our products to the automakers more than 99% of the time on time, which is really a strong performance. And then obviously, because of our process, because everything is automated, we are able to deliver those brake pads at a fraction of the cost and so extremely competitive price, which guarantees a good margin to our customers. So when you look at that, the value proposition for the customer is outstanding. Then because we are -- we have this success, we're able to reinvest those extra profits into R&D, into innovation, which gave us the geopolymer project that we're going to hopefully go to market with in a couple of years. And so this is a self-reinforcing loop where really driving strong operating performance allows us to generate more profit that we are able to reinvest to make this business stronger and generate that outperformance from a growth standpoint.

Let me -- if I can build on what Emmanuel said, he was talking about our cost advantage. Let me give you a couple of snippets that you can actually touch it, right? The competition to make the same number of brake pads that we're making, they've got more than 12, 13 plants, we have 5. So you can imagine from a cost point of view, how you can be efficient running 5 plants at efficiency rather than having 15 plants that you need to keep it profitable. That's one thing. Then if you come to each of those 5 plants in Europe, in Silao, Guanajuato, Mexico; or in Wuxi, China, is the same technology, the same machines, the same level of automation, which means that it's -- I'm not saying is easy-peasy, but you make an improvement in one plant tomorrow, you're going to copy and paste exactly in the other plant. The competition have got different technology in different plants, which makes it also very unflexible. So all of this translate in efficiency and cost optimization that we're able to deliver.

Very good. Maybe we'll leave it there for now and Friction and come back if time remains. Let's wrap up the rest of the MT segment. Maybe talk a little bit about the rail side of the business in terms of what you're seeing demand-wise, what you're seeing from a regional standpoint? And similar to Friction, how has ITT been able to generate continued market outgrowth in that business?

Sure. Addressing the second question is -- immediately is very similar to what Friction did in terms of being able to deliver better than the competition, in terms of on-time delivery, in terms of quality and keep on innovating. So this has enabled us to win incredible market share in Europe and as well as in China, for example, where there's been a huge investment in rail. And we have a very healthy market share with all the high-speed train that they have in China. So when it comes to rail, we really like rail. I know is -- particularly here in the U.S., doesn't look like a very s*** business, but actually it's great. First of all, if you think about the macro trend, more and more wheel transportation will happen by rail, particularly when you think about also in Europe and you think about in China. So we like the macro trend. And in terms of the innovation that we pushed, we've been able to beat the competition over and over again across the board. Now on KONI, it's not just a question of rail, but KONI, which is one of our brands where we are making the shock-absorbers, is also playing in defense. So this is granted, is a small portion of the business today. But I can tell you that the orders for armed vehicles, et cetera, is growing at incredible speed. So when you look, for instance, in some of the vehicles in the U.S., but also all the investment that's happening in Europe, and you see the announcement of many of the countries investing in the Patria 6x6, that is one of our platform where all our shock-absorbers. So rail is a great opportunity for us in the long term, and we're getting some benefits from defense, too.

Very good. Maybe let's switch gears over to IP for a few minutes here. Can you provide an update on what you're seeing from an overall demand standpoint across key end markets such as chemical, oil and gas, mining, general industrial and importantly, applications tied to decarbonization?

So let me start by product type. So if you look at the short cycle, we continue to see moderate growth in there. So our spare parts, for instance, continues to grow. And it's fair to say that it was already at a high level in terms of demand. So we continue to grow, and we're happy to see that. Our baseline pumps are also probably growing in line with GDP in the U.S. And then the long-cycle business. So the long-cycle business, we have had a slew of orders in last year and also in the first half, right? And so what we saw is that the funnel is declining a little bit. And so what was the cause for that was that we got a lot of orders and the funnel had difficulty to replenish, right? So from a demand standpoint on the project, we see -- we continue to see strong demand. From a market standpoint, mining was strong. Chemical is pretty much flat. And I would say general industrial, we are mostly U.S., and so general industrial is mostly aligned with GDP.

If I can build on Emmanuel's comment on the funnel is when you look at the funnel today, as Emmanuel said, you look at year-over-year, and it has decreased because it was huge, but it's still a very healthy level. And what we have seen in the last few months and quarters is that a reverse of the trend. Now you have to be careful on that one to understand if those opportunities that are in the funnel are actually going to materialize or not depending on the certainty that you have in the market. So there is a lot of uncertainty, and therefore, you see some of our customers waiting to make a firm decision on the investment. So that is more something that you -- thinking that you have in the funnel more than what you have in the backlog. When you look at the project that you have in the backlog and the backlog is incredibly healthy, those project goes. Even if you think about during COVID, we never had one project that was canceled, that was started, right? So that huge backlog that we have will materialize in revenue growth in the next couple of years. But then when it comes to the funnel, we really need to see the decision that the customers are making on those investments.

So maybe just double-clicking on a couple of things you said there. Across the broader industrial space, some have talked about demand pushing to the right a little bit, maybe you're hinting that you've seen a little bit of that on either geopolitical noise, tariff noise. How might we expect this to play out in your order entry in the business, both with respect to short cycle and project side of things over the next couple of quarters?

So I think that -- as Luca was saying in the beginning, we expect from a project standpoint to show pretty flat to down type of activity in Q3. I think Q4 may be a little bit better. There are 2 components. First is what Luca was saying, the fact that the funnel has been declining quarter after quarter, even though we're seeing today that we're seeing a little bit of growth in the funnel. And then second is because we had a really strong Q3 and Q4 last year that is tough to lap.

In terms of orders, right?

In terms of orders, yes. So we think that from an order standpoint, we're going to continue to grow. Certainly, the full year is going to be very positive, and there's no real cost concern for 2026. Now the implication of all those orders that we got in '24 and also in the first half of '25 is that there's a lot of activity that needs to happen in our plant to be able to convert those orders into revenue. And really, that's the focus today, making sure that we're able to ramp that capacity and to be able to deliver to our customers on time.

So when you look at the healthy backlog that we have, what is our backlog at the end of Q2, was it roughly...

Total was in IP around $1.2 billion, $1.3 billion...

$1.2 billion. So a lot of that backlog that is a long -- most of its long-term backlog is going to be delivered in 2026, some in '25 and '26. So from a growth perspective, no concern at all. And then within that business, we have a business like Svanehøj, our recent acquisition, that business, they booked in the first 6 months the equivalent of the orders that they booked for the full year of last year. So there has been, for sure, a great story on the market, but a lot of market share gains there, and therefore, this will keep on fitting the growth of Svanehøj in '25 and '26 for sure.

Maybe just to wrap up with IP. Can you talk a little bit about your exposure to decarbonization and what you're seeing there from a trend standpoint and also talk about your relative price power in this business today versus maybe when you took over...

Sure. So when you look at decarbonization, that is something that is there to stay. So many of our customers need to decarbonize. So for instance, they need to stop flaring. So if they have investment, particularly outside of North America, they need to stop flaring not just from an environmental perspective, but if they flare, they get fined. So they need to stop flaring. We have the solution with our Bornemann pumps, twin screw pump, multiphase technology in order for them to find competitive solution that enable them to stop doing that. And then we are designing some solutions for some of the major oil producer for them to be able to push the carbon capture that they capture under the ground. So we had a major oil producer that standardized, and we're already at the third or fourth project with them for some of the major investment. So this is really a good solution that we're able to put in the market. Then when it comes to decarbonization, also, if you think Svanehøj, the company we acquired that is in the marine, if you look at the marine market, it's not growing that much. It's normal growth. But why is Svanehøj growing so much is because the market is growing normally, but then there is a proportionate amount of growth in switching from [indiscernible] fluids, the dirty fuels to LNG and to ammonia. And this is where we have our product, and we are the leaders in many of the applications. And this is where really you see the growth of Svanehøj and the market share gains. So marine decarbonization, carbon capture, stuff flaring, we have the technical solution and the companies and the brands that got a special solution for our customers. So it's good for us.

And then from a pricing standpoint, I would say IP, I would say, has a unique ability to push pricing. And the reason for this is because of our performance. So you remember, I talked about the Motion Technologies playbook, this is what we've been deploying in IP and also in CCT. And so we've been able to improve our service to the customers from a quality standpoint, from a delivery standpoint. There's still a lot of room to grow. We're nowhere near the 99% on time that we have in Friction, for instance, but we made decisive progress. And as a result, customers are coming back to us with new orders, but they're also coming back to us, for instance, in the projects and are willing to accept a premium because they know that with ITT, their project is in good hands and that we're going to deliver on time a product that fits their specifications. So in IP, we -- since probably 2020, 2021, we've been pushing price to really make sure that we capture as much value as we can for that business.

Very good. I think we have about 5 minutes left. So let's maybe go over to CCT. Maybe focus on the aerospace side of the business, talk about how you're positioned relative to the commercial aerospace cycle and the progress you've made with respect to customer contract negotiations and pricing terms.

Sure. So when you look at CCT, it's a bit unfortunate because it's always the smallest one, so we only get left the last 5 minutes, right? But we're really excited about CCT. Now this is where we have the connector business, the components business. So the Connectors has performed incredibly well in the last few years, even though there was problem in the short cycle, we were able to grow double-digit, win market share. Granted we are a small player, so it might be easier and it is easier to win some market share if you are performing well, but it's a great performance. On the component side, on aero, probably this is the only area in the portfolio of ITT, where if you look in the last few years, we underperformed the market. And the reason for that is because we tend to be more exposed to the widebodies than the narrowbodies and the aero recovery hit more the narrowbodies to start with. So now with the development more and more of also the travel and international travel, the widebodies will feed the growth of the components as well. So that is going to be good. Now going to the negotiation, we have -- as you can imagine, Boeing is a big customer of ours. And therefore, we had some fixed price contract with Boeing that were negotiated in 2014 and in 2015. So we are in the middle of negotiation with them. That is going to end at the end of this quarter or the end of October. We made very good progress with them. We are serving them well. We are performing them well. And therefore, we just demand a proper fair price. As you can imagine, the price was fixed in 2014 and 2015, but the cost of the material, the cost of the components were not. So you can imagine how much money we were not making on many of those products. So I'm sure that we will come to a good conclusion for Boeing and for us in these negotiations soon.

Very good. CCT Defense, maybe speak to ITT's core defense-related business and relative positioning here, growth outlook into '26 and talk to the strategic significance of the kSARIA acquisition and it's enabling technology, et cetera?

Sure. Defense is a very good market for us. And as we talk about KONI where before and it is a very small portion there, but growing. And defense is really where we are playing in CCT. Components, if you think the KC46 the valves that allow the fuel to go from the big plane to the small plane, all of those valves are designed, manufactured and delivered by ITT. So every single time there is a very harsh environment, a critical component, valves, switch, whatever that the defense will need, we are a very good partner for them, for our defense customers. And then also on the connector side. On the connector side, we are probably not the best, if you're talking about a standard connector. But if you have a special application, if you need a customization, this is where we play. So if, for instance, you have a drone and you want to move away from 3 standard 38 2.9 connectors and you want to just do everything with one very small connector, this is where we come in, so that you can push more data, you have more space on the drone, it's lighter and therefore, you can put and increase whatever you want on the drone or you can increase the flying time. This is where we differentiate. So this is a very good growth opportunities. And then kSARIA, our last acquisition, this is where we will see a very good growth in terms of both orders as well as revenue in our Defense segment in CCT and ITT.

Maybe just to wrap up, another question on kSARIA. Can you remind investors of the operational and commercial synergies you see and relative level of accretion, particularly as we move into '26?

Sure. I would say, let me spend a little bit more time on the revenue synergies. This is where we saw more and more opportunities. In some cases, for example, the customer were coming to us with the requirement of some fiber cable solutions with the connectors. And we didn't have the credibility. We had a little bit small business with fiber cable, but we didn't have the credibility or the knowledge or the competence to do so when it was very complicated. So the acquisition of kSARIA enabled us to enlarge the piece of the cake that we go after. So that is a big opportunity for us. Second is that if you go to the kSARIA plant and you walk the shaft floor, you will see, in many cases, some connectors and not ITT Cannon connector. So that's an opportunity for us. There are cases where that platform we have been qualified. So that will be an easy switch. There are cases where we are not qualified, and it will be relatively easy -- an effort, but relatively easy to get qualified. You go through all the steps so that there will be a synergy to come a little bit later. And there are cases where we will not make sense. But all of those will be good revenue synergies for both kSARIA as well as our traditional connectors business.

As well as from a pricing standpoint. So for instance, we worked hand-in-hand with kSARIA at the beginning of the year, end of last year when it came to the renewal of a really large defense program. And so as a result, we were able to get that renewal business and at a higher price point, which allowed us to also expand our margins.

With that, I think we're at time. Thank you very much, Luca, Emmanuel. Appreciate it.

Thank you, Matt. Thank you very much.

Thank you.