MSA Safety Incorporated (MSA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hi and welcome. Welcome to our Technology Expo Day. My name is Chris Hepler. I'm the Executive Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Development. I'm here at our flagship training center in Cranberry Township, Pennsylvania with our management team. I'm joined by Ken Krause, our CFO; Greg Martin, our Vice President of Product Strategy and Development; and Gustavo Lopez, our General Manager of Industrial Products and Connected Services. Before we get started today, I'd like to remind everyone that we may make forward-looking statements during the course of this presentation. We have listed the factors related to our forward-looking statements and risk factors in our Form 10-K. Actual results may vary materially from -- prepared -- from those that we make today. But please see our Form 10-K for those factors. Today's presenters. As I said, I'm joined by Ken Krause, Greg Martin, Gustavo Lopez. Before I turn it over to Ken, I just want to give a quick overview of what we look like today. So MSA is $1.4 billion global sales with strong cash flow and operating margins. Our business is diversified across geographies, across product lines. We are the leader in safety technologies worldwide. With that introduction, Ken, I'll turn it to you.

Well, thank you, Chris. Appreciate it. I'd be very remiss not to mention the fact that Nish Vartanian is not here today. I know he was on the slide. Nish was contact-traced over the weekend. He was with a group of customers last week. And just keeping in mind our focus on safety and our mission, we've decided to keep Nish at home for a few days and really comply with the COVID protocols that we comply with at the company. I'd also be remiss not to mention the fact that we've got a whole host of MSA people here. You can only see me at the front. But like always, I'm supported by a really strong cast of folks across MSA, and they're all here in the training center and really looking forward to a really good day of demonstrating some of the products and showcasing a lot of our talent. That's really what makes a difference here at MSA. Starting first and foremost. We are really a purpose-driven company, and that purpose is really clear. That purpose is built upon safety. Our safety -- our focus on safety and the mission of safety, that men and women may work in safety and that they, their families and their communities, may live in health throughout the world remains unchanged. We have had that mission since our founding in 1914. So well over a century, we have been executing on that focus of safety and advancing safety throughout the world in the areas that we do our business. But what has changed over the last number of years is the element of technology and the connectivity aspects of technology in the safety market. And so we continue to invest heavily at bringing new technologies to bear, technologies that not only provide safe solutions for our customers, like we've always been doing for the last century, but help elevate that experience and help improve the overall levels of productivity that our customers are seeing. And that innovation wouldn't be possible without the people that we have in our company. Really, when I look at the company and I think about the mission, it's really special and near and dear to my heart. But what's also really important to us at MSA is our culture and our people. And so when you look at some of the things that we have done at MSA over the last number of years, we've really ramped up a number of areas of focus with respect to our hiring, our recruitment, our development of our employees, and it's really made quite a difference. If I reflect on my career with MSA, which is hard to believe I'm coming up on 16 years with MSA. But when I reflect upon my career, the one thing that I identify as a key differentiator for MSA is our talent. The people that are in the back of the room right now, I bet the average tenure of those folks is less than 10 years. When I started with MSA, the average tenure was 20 or 30 years. I say that not to minimize the importance of long-tenured employees, but I think what MSA has done with melting together and bringing together that long-tenured workforce with some of the new talent that we're bringing in has really been valuable for us. And that value and those results have been recognized by a number of publications, both locally here, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, for -- in another year has identified MSA as an employer of choice. And we really find that -- we really take pride in that because we really are focused on our communities. When we think about our community impact, it's really important to us. But not only are we being recognized locally by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but we're also being recognized nationally by a number of publications. We're really proud of what we're being recognized for, and we're proud of the talent that we're bringing in and the changes that we're making across our business with all that new talent. When I think about the changes that we're making in our portfolio, if you followed us, you probably are well aware that we are a leader in many of our markets. Substantially, all of our core markets, we have a leadership position, whether it be in fire service or whether it be in gas detection or in the industrial PPE market. And that leadership position has really been enabled through a combination of acquisitions, acquisitions like the Globe acquisition back in 2017; the Sierra Monitor's acquisition in 2019; the Bacharach acquisition just a year ago now; or even General Monitors more than a decade ago; and then also in the industrial PPE area, the Latchways acquisition. So we've made really robust acquisitions in a number of our core product and market areas, but we've also heavily focused on R&D. And R&D has certainly been an enabler for us, we'll talk here in a bit. But we've got tremendous amounts of patent protection. I want to say over 85% of our portfolio has some aspect of patent protection in it. And that investment in R&D is really paying off. Another statistic I think you'll come across later is the fact that we've invested over $300 million in R&D from 2017 to 2021. And that's quite a staggering number. But I think what's also more impressive is when you look at the results that are being driven by that R&D investment. So we spent $300 million in R&D. And today, 35% of our revenue, so that's almost $450 million to $500 million of revenue that's being generated from that R&D investment. It's hard for me to find any acquisition that would ever provide that kind of return on a $300 million investment. So we continue to be very focused on investing in the portfolio, finding new solutions, opening up adjacent markets for us through those investments. When we think about the key strategic pillars, you're well aware of our focus on operational excellence. We've continued to focus on improving margins in the business, continuing to drive improvements in our portfolio. You're also well aware of the acquisitions we made and our ability to expand the addressable market, especially through the recent Bacharach acquisition. But today, what we're going to do is we're going to spend more time with you around our Connected Worker strategy. And we've got a number of programs that we're advancing across all of the portfolio that are driving a higher rate of recurring revenue and improved customer intimacy. I think it's -- I know we're going to focus a lot on the financial results at MSA with some of these investments, but I can't help but identify the improvements in customer intimacy that occur as a result of the connected strategy. Getting closer to the customer, learning the customer, learning their -- what's valuable to them and how we can provide a better solution is a really big component of the Connected Worker strategy. It's interesting when we look at LUNAR. LUNAR on the surface is a really successful and exciting product. But what LUNAR allows us to do is it allows us to get into a fire department where they may not have the experience. It gives a reason for the conversation. So as a result of being in front of a customer with a LUNAR device, we're able to open up opportunities with the SCBA. And so we continue to see that kind of interest from our customers. We're learning more about our customers each day, each and every day. And we're going to share a little bit more with you as we go through the course of the day. If we focus a little bit on the connectivity side of things, MSA is certainly focused on moving towards connectivity. Safety, I'll be the first one to say safety is not a quick adapter of new technologies. They don't -- it doesn't move really quickly to adopt new technologies. But what safety -- what the safety market is focused on is really providing solutions that are reliable and work each and every time they are needed. And so sometimes, it's a struggle to move that -- move the needle, so to speak, on the connectivity side. But as we think about the next decade and we look at the expectations for this market through 2030, we believe, and others believe as well, that this market is going to grow at a double-digit CAGR. So when we think about the connectivity solution, we expect a double-digit CAGR in that market going forward. And we feel like we're -- there's nobody better positioned in our industry and in our market than MSA with respect to our installed base. We've got a strong installed base, a very large and growing installed base with all these great products that you're going to see today. And it's how do we weave that all together and provide a solution across that installed base? And so we're looking at how we can continue to ramp up the intensity around that and make progress on that because there's a real benefit, not only from improving the safety experience, but also improving productivity for our customers. Helping them reduce operational spend, helping them reduce the cost of compliance. It's interesting. It's very -- oftentimes, you find customers that are tracking safety compliance on manual sheets. The ALTAIR io 4 that you're going to be seeing later today has helped reduce that and helped us improve the experience that our customers are seeing from a standpoint of compliance and calibration and test gas and things of that nature in the portable gas area. So a lot of exciting things to come. And Greg and Gustavo are going to be speaking a little bit about those as we move through the course of the presentation. Let me transition a little bit and talk also about what we're seeing financially, and so our financial performance. Just starting, year-to-date performance. You've seen the first quarter results. Really strong demand environment. I would start it with -- from the standpoint of we continue to see robust levels of demand across our portfolio, whether it be fire service and the SCBA, or whether it be in the gas detection area or even the hardhat area. Continue to see robust demand in hard hats, which we see as a leading indicator for our business. There's no signs of slowing. Even through April, we continue to see a robust book-to-bill well north of 100%. I'd call it healthy, but I'd like to see that start to turn a bit as we move forward. But unfortunately, the supply chain is just not cooperating. We continue to see challenges. There's a little bit of a light of hope or a light at the end of the tunnel, which we think is reason to be a little bit optimistic as we move into the second half. We're seeing some improvements in our supply chain and with the chips, but we're also very cautious. But what I can tell you is we continue to see robust demand, robust interest, and there's a number of large opportunities that we continue to evaluate and are getting close to hopefully executing upon as we think about the second half of this year. So positioned well. Secondly, incremental margins remain really healthy. If you followed MSA for the last 5 or 6 years, incremental margins were a major part of the conversation. And it was good to see the fourth quarter of last year finish with incremental margins above 30% compared to the pre-pandemic levels of fourth quarter of 2019. So really good to see that come through. It was also good to see it continue to come through here in the first quarter of the year. So our focus here, driving growth, delivering products to our customers and improving the profitability profile remains unchanged. And so we continue to execute with those priorities as we head into the second half of this year. Bacharach acquisition is progressing really well. Aaron Tufts is doing an exceptional job at really leading the team around the integration. There's 3 major focus areas for him as we execute on the integration plan. First and foremost, it's about growth. How do we grow this business? How do we continue to grow our position with our core markets? And the team's doing an exceptional job there, seeing really strong order growth year-over-year coming through that business. Again, book-to-bill is well north of 100%. Unfortunately, it's related to the supply chain issues that we're seeing in gas detection. But really robust levels of interest, robust levels of growth. And the team is doing a really good job at identifying new markets for the product as well. Secondly, complexity and cost reduction. We just finished the SAP rollout across the Bacharach business in our Neutronics site, in our Virginia site and over in Ireland. And so we've continued to roll out SAP. It's not without its challenges. I mean, every time you roll out the system, it's -- there certainly are a number of challenges that you face. But I think the team, with Martina Hahn and the leadership on the IT side, is partnering well with our business to really work us through some of those challenges and setting us up for improvements in our cost structure. We continue to leverage the Bacharach -- we've continued to leverage the SAP implementation to really drive improvements in our business model. Gustavo, who is here today, led our integration on Sierra Monitors a few years ago. He put the SAP tool into Sierra Monitors and realized some significant improvements in that business during the course of his leadership on the integration of that acquisition. But Bacharach is already a profitable business. It's only going to get even more profitable. You look at the results in the first quarter of this year, high 20% EBITDA margins. It was a really good acquisition, and we're really glad to have those folks from Bacharach as part of the MSA family. And speaking about the talent in the company. We continue to be impressed with the talent that we've acquired as part of the Bacharach acquisition. When we looked at it initially, we were concerned. It was coming through private equity ownership for a long time, and that brings its challenges. But what we've been pleasantly surprised by is the fact that we've been able to bring in some really new -- really good resources as part of that acquisition. In fact, we've recently hired on to MSA a few folks from Bacharach to come into MSA roles as leadership positions across a number of functions. So it's really good to see that coming through. And we've had that success. Aaron Tufts, who's leading the acquisition integration for Bacharach, I'm working closely with Aaron, was an individual we acquired through the General Monitors acquisition. So we have a really good track record of going out and buying good businesses with really good people and bringing them in and really letting them grow through the MSA ranks. Capital allocation remains unchanged. We're positioned really well when we think about capital allocation, our debt to leverage ratios are very healthy. We deployed over $400 million of capital in 2021. We feel like it was the perfect time to deploy capital. When we look at what our cost of borrowing is today in our capital structure, our capital structure, our cost of debt is just north of 2%. As part of the acquisition of Bacharach, we took the opportunity to fix out a portion of our capital structure and enter into some long-term notes. Those long-term notes take us out 15 years and are priced at about 2.69% on a fixed rate. So we feel like we were able to put the balance sheet to work at the perfect time as we think about the interest rate environment. And when we think about priorities going forward, growth continues to be the priority. We'll continue to pay the dividend. We'll continue to service the dividend. I'd hate to be the first CFO in the history of the company to cut the dividend, so I'm continuing to be very much committed to it. But it's driven by the business model. Our business model is solid. It's robust. It generates a significant amount of cash flow. And we continue to use that cash flow to invest in growth opportunities like Bacharach. And we continue to look -- Chris Hepler continues to be responsible for corporate development, and he's continuing to be very active on the M&A environment and identifying additional opportunities for growth. But we're being very measured at this point in the cycle. It's a tough period, as we all know, that from a standpoint of all the market volatility, the inflation, the interest rate environment, it's really a challenging environment for us. And so we're going to be smart when we think about capital allocation and investing for growth going forward. And then last but certainly not least, repurchasing shares is a priority. We're in the market right now buying shares back to offset dilution. We had about 200,000, 250,000 shares of dilution over the last 12-or-so months. And so we're in the market today buying shares back to offset that dilution that we've seen in our company associated with employee stock ownership. As I said earlier, we're committed to innovation. The statistic I started with and I'll leave you with here when it comes to innovation is spending $300 million for almost $500 million of revenue. And not only is it $500 million of revenue, it's revenue with an average gross margin of about 50%. So incremental margins are in that 30% to 40% range. So if I'm -- if we're investing at $300 million and we're generating $500 million of revenue with a 30% incremental, you're paying 2x earnings for that return. So that's -- as people oftentimes say, we'll take organic growth over inorganic growth any day. And we have a great team here led by Greg Martin, who will be speaking to you here in a bit, that are really driving some incredible results when you think about the innovation pipeline. And on the right-hand side of this slide here, we're continuing to focus on the Grid, the FireGrid, the cloud-based software and the Safety as a Service, the recurring revenue, the business model that we started to lead under Gustavo's leadership just a few short years ago. And he'll talk a little bit about all that we're doing in that area. Long-term outlook remains unchanged with the exception of -- we've always talked about mid-single-digit growth. But if we continue to see the pricing environment that we see today, if we continue to see the acquisition environment, there's no reason to believe you shouldn't be in a high single-digit sort of growth as we go through that. Steve Blanco, who's here as well, has done an exceptional job in the Americas at really leading the pricing initiatives that we've seen there. And this goes back over a year now, where his team really got involved and put together a pricing strategy, and it's allowed us to raise prices as the cost inflation has come into the business. So we've consistently raised prices almost on a quarterly basis with [ Leni Losito ], who's also here. She heads up our North America business. Under their leadership, they've done a nice job at trying to stay ahead of that inflation cycle. Bob Leenen is doing the same in Europe. The inflation cycle is a little bit different in Europe, but he's continuing to examine and raise prices as appropriate in response to the inflationary cycle that we're seeing. But as I said, mid-single digit is the long-term kind of expectation. But with the pricing environment, we could see a lift in that as we think about the next couple of years, along with the backlog. I mean, our backlog figure of almost $400 million today is at a record high. It's in a really high level. And it's a big reason why the #1 goal for all of our associates, and you ask them today as you walk through here, is how do we increase throughput in our factories? How do we look at our factories, take a new fresh look at them? How do we partner with the team? Everything, whether you'll be in a functional role or in a business role, is focused on increasing throughput across our factories. And second, our incremental margins. We continue to be focused on incremental margins across the portfolio. How do we continue to drive 30% to 40% incremental margins? And we're confident in our ability to do that as we think about some of the strategies we have going forward. And last but certainly not least, cash flow and capital deployment. Focus here is to continue to generate cash flow in line with earnings. So 100% conversion. You might see that change as you go through different periods of the cycle. Like right now, we're in a period where we're investing in inventory, we're building inventory. But as we move forward into the second half into next year, we would expect to relieve some of that inventory and return to that 100% sort of cash flow conversion. With that, I'll ask Gustavo to join me here at the front, and he can lead conversation around connectivity. Gustavo?

Thanks, Ken. Thanks everybody that's listening in and everybody that made the trip to Pittsburgh. And really looking forward here to talk to you about a topic that I'm very, very passionate about. And it's something that I've had the pleasure and opportunity to work out at MSA over the last years as we've seen a lot of transformation. So let me give you a little bit of background of how we see connectivity and why connectivity is important throughout -- adding customer value right now and moving forward for our users. So we certainly are in a time of tremendous change. And I'd be remiss to say that pandemic certainly accelerated that. But if you look at safety, safety is a very, very complex environment. You have demographics that are changing as the workforce obviously is transitioning and it's very difficult to get workers. So picture an environment where you're going into an industrial facility and you have thousands of contractors that come on site and you have to manage all of those contractors and ensure that they're working safely and doing the job that they need to do. We also have a transition, with some of those folks that have been in the industry for quite some time, 20-, 30-plus years, and they're actually leaving the industry. So there's a tremendous amount of brain drain that's happening in a lot of these facilities. And it's hard to get people to come in and work in some of those facilities. So how do you manage that change? It's a very, very challenging time to be a safety manager right now and try to handle all of those things. Also data. Ken talked a lot about it. And it is amazing when you go to some of these facilities and you still see the paper trail on how they manage something as easy as checking an instrument or checking a device in and assigning it to a worker. How do you know that, that worker did what they were supposed to do during their 8- or 10-hour shift? All those -- a lot of those processes right now are manual. So how we can digitize those processes, how we can help them just ensure that they have transparency and awareness of what's going on, is crucial. Last but not least. When you look at regulations and compliance, this is certainly an area that's changing. It's an area that is continuously evolving. Whether it would be EPA regulations as we're seeing right now with some of the methane leak detection, or whether it would be just standard operating procedures within a facility. And whether it's an Exxon Mobil or a Shell or any of those heavy industries may have their own standards that they want to comply with that go above and beyond what an OSHA or some of those other regulatory bodies would enforce. Connectivity certainly can help. It's not the only approach. But the way we look at it is we look at it in a way that's going to be able to be a proactive safety management tool for our customers. You can get compliance and understand whether or not you're in compliance with your SOPs, or standard operating procedures, as well as regulatory environments. You can also take some of those information and be able to provide it in a real-time assessment, which is some of the things you're going to see later on today with some of the product innovations that we have both in the industrial, the fire service side and also on our infrastructure protection type of the business. And help our customers through this journey. We do believe but there is no one solution that you can implement today and save all this information, but it is a journey. And how we partner with our customers is tremendously important. We believe a lot in voice of the customer, and we start every single process that we have, everything, with how is this going to make the customer lives better? A lot of the folks that you see in the back there, they're really experts in understanding and putting themselves in the shoes of the customer, on how they use it. Part of the reason we have this training facility here is a lot of our folks go through the same training that our customers are going to go through. They use our products, they use our services. They understand how they're going to be placed in some of those situations so that they can design the best products and services to solve those needs. So how does the connected safety program look like? And I always point to the statistics because they are really, really staggering and points to the fact that something has to change and we have to do some things differently. So as you see there, about 2.8 million injuries a year in 2019 of lost time incidents. And what's really staggering to me is that 80% to 90% of those injuries are attributed to human error. So quite frankly, it's not enough just to provide them safer gear. You have to understand their process. You have to understand what they're doing day in and day out so that you can actually solve and help them with some of those behavior-based safety issues. A couple of things that we found just as we started to do connectivity is you may go to a facility and say they have 100 incidents over the course of the month. Well, we've been able to track 98% to 99% of those through a specific operator. Well, guess what? Now we can go out there and provide training to their operator or actually resolve the issue, which is key, right? Without connectivity, without having that awareness, you're never going to be able to provide the tools to -- whether it's a safety manager or an incident commander to be able to solve a lot of those issues. And really, the way we look at it is through this hierarchy of controls in this inverted pyramid that you're seeing there. And you see where traditional PPE sits. So as you elevate to eliminate the hazard, you have to go in various steps. Our platform really allows them to do that. What you'll see later on today is how that platform scales within various problems and how we solve very specific customer issues along the way so that we're adding value along the way. And one of the things that I think is really, really cool, certainly as some of the newer products like LUNAR and the io 4, is because they are direct-to-cloud devices, we can improve them over time. And one of my favorite stories, which I know I'm personally very proud of and I know the team is really proud of. As we were launching the product, we got the units out in the field. And we wanted to improve the battery life, started collecting that data, started collecting that information of how it's being used. And we were actually able to push out a software upgrade and improve the battery life 25% to 30% just by having that. So there's a lot of power on just being connected. And really, the future is bright with what we're going to be doing here moving forward with our services and our cloud-based systems. And with that in mind, I'll hand it over to Greg, who will give us a chat about how we're scaling our business.

Thank you, Gustavo. Yes, 2 things that Gustavo mentioned: Value and scale. Both are really, really important to this business. We talked a lot about the Connected Worker. But as we all know, MSA has a very diverse product line, whether it's the fire service, it's protecting infrastructure, construction sites, oil and gas refineries. And at the end of the day, it's safety. The applications may be a bit different. What data the end user needs or how it's used is a bit different, but finding the value for the customer and then providing a backbone infrastructure that can cut across all of these markets is really where we're able to get scale. So what we look at is we go into all the markets and we really understand the customers' problem statement or the customers' problems. We then look at the technology that we have, where we could collect data, how we could connect our products to either provide: It could be a hardware solution, it could be software, it could be a managed service. We're getting more and more into managed services. And at the end of the day, if it provides value to the customer, we're definitely interested in doing more and trying to raise that level of safety. We hear time and time again how complex safety is. And I can tell you, I can speak for our whole product development team, every day we come into work, and it's about simplifying safety. How do we make the customer more productive so that they can focus on whatever their job is? Putting out a fire, working at an oil refinery, building a building, and let us worry about the safety as much as possible by supporting them with data and insights. And so what you'll see later and what you'll see if you go through our website, go through our products, is we don't have all of these disparate products in disparate markets. They are all connected. So we're not only connecting to the customer, we're connecting all of our products together on one system that we can then leverage and really leverage that investment so that we're not just getting a return from one market, it's from all of the markets. And what we get out of that is a very defensible position. We have a lot of patents, and we've talked about them before. Many of you have probably seen this slide before. But when you start getting into software and infrastructure, a lot of times, you don't patent software. But what you have is trade secrets and how you're connecting everything together. And once you get a lead on the competition, if you keep accelerating and you keep your foot on the gas, it's very, very difficult for anyone to catch you. And so we feel like, when you look at the diversity of the products that we have, the markets that we're in, how we've connected them together, we feel like we're in a very good position in the market versus our competition. We feel like we're uniquely solving our customers' needs, and we're going to keep doing that. And I can tell you, and I'll speak for the entire product development organization, we are so excited about the future. With that, I'll turn it back over to Ken.

Thanks, Greg. Thanks, Gustavo. Appreciate it. Just to wrap up here real quick before we go into Q&A, 3 things I'd leave you with. Mission. Mission, it's all about -- that's what we do. That's why we're here. It's all about advancing our mission as the safety company. Secondly, people. When we look at the business and the difference that's occurring and all the changes that are occurring and the performance we're driving here, it really is all about the people that we've been able to bring in, to invest in and to develop. And then last but certainly not least, performance. We are certainly driving a high-performance culture. The people that we brought in, the culture that we've been able to create is definitely high performance-based. And in our financial foundation today has never been any stronger. So that allows us to continue to execute upon our strategy and to focus on advancing our mission all around the world. So with that, I'll open it up for any question, anything that we'd like to talk about in a little bit more detail. I know there's a webcast, so we might have some questions coming in over webcast and as well in the room.

So Rob?

I'll focus on the financial update first. Just you talked about the situation around your supply potentially getting better in the second half. Should we infer then that, as we go through the first half, volumes will look very -- fairly similar, first quarter to second quarter? Or is there any opportunity seasonally for that to move up? Or is supply still looking the bottleneck there?

So Rob's question's around expectations for the first half and then into the second half. So to answer the question, we expect -- as I said on the earnings call in April, we expect a sequential improvement in Q2. We do expect an improvement in revenue, something to the tune of $360 million to $370 million is probably not unrealistic or out of the question at this point. Things do change on a dime a bit in today's day and age and the environment that we're executing upon. But in that range is kind of how we're managing our business towards. And so we do see improvements from Q1 to Q2. The second half, we would hope for further improvement. But again, it's dependent upon further improvements in the supply chain. We have seen some slight improvement in certain areas, but we're being very cautious because it, again, changes -- it's quite an ever-changing environment that we're executing upon. But we're hopeful that we'll see improvement between the first half and the second half in terms of revenue performance.

Yes. And then somewhat related, it was good to see the performance in Bacharach, some color on that in the first quarter. But gas detection has been supply constrained. How do you feel about that business relative to when you made the acquisition, the earnings accretion forecast? Is that under some pressure from the supply standpoint or how your synergies playing out maybe to offset?

First and foremost, we're really happy that we were able to bring Bacharach into the fold at MSA. The people that we were able to acquire as part of that acquisition, the product set and the end-market exposures are all really exciting to us at MSA. And so we're really happy about that. We continue to track nicely versus our valuation model, especially when it comes to the margin profile and the cost synergy takeout. The revenue is a little bit light, but the orders are very much intact, as evidenced by our book-to-bill. So the growth is there. Our guidance around that acquisition when we bought it is still very much intact. It may be coming in at the low end of that range at this point, but it's still very much intact. And we see further opportunities as we move forward. We're looking at a number of strategic changes in that business, which might open up some more leverage in the supply chain. And so we're hopeful we'll be able to execute upon in some of those things. But we certainly are very committed to driving long-term value at that business.

I'll ask last question just around the connectivity strategy. How do you -- you mentioned double-digit growth potential around the connectivity portion. How do we separate that from the products itself and think about incremental addressable market opportunity from the connectivity aspect of that?

So I think what you'll see as we move forward, as I started earlier, I talked about safety, slow to adopt and slow to make changes. But I think as we look at '23 and into '24, you'll start to see even more meaningful changes in the portfolio. And as we make those changes, we'll start to report more completely on those -- on the results associated with that. But it's going to be a change that will occur over time. We don't see this changing in, say, '22 or even the early part of '23, but we'll continue to ramp it as we scale up that business. And as we scale that business, we'll start to report on that business probably a little bit separate from our existing business that we're reporting on today.

Two quick question. One, you mentioned moving more and more to full suite of products, for example, in firefighter gear, all the way from the boot to the helmet, including the SCBA and the turnout. Do you see the customers changing the way they bid the business out? Or do they bid on one piece of the business, one product, and cross-selling doesn't really impact your ability to win?

It's an interesting question. I wouldn't say cross-selling is not important. I would say the purchase process and the acquisition process for an SCBA is different than turnout gear and is different than hard hats. Hard hats and turnout gear are probably more similar in the approach to purchasing versus the large sort of project business you see in the SCBA. But there's definitely leverage across the portfolio. It's important to have that position across the firefighter so that you're top of mind on all the activity and all the purchasing that's occurring in that department. Channel partners love having the full suite of products, and so it really helps them go to market in a more effective manner. And Greg, I don't know if you want to add anything to that.

Yes, if I could add to that. I think what you're seeing more and more in larger bids are total cost of ownership. So it's not just an upfront purchase price. So if you have, let's say, an asset management system that cuts across and you already have -- you're already using it and you already have parts of the products loaded into it and you have systems to preload other parts, it really lowers the total cost and the burden of the customer. And that can then be factored into the bid.

And if I may ask a second question on demand. On the first quarter call, you mentioned gas was strong. You just mentioned hard hats as a leading indicator. So it sounds like more of the late-cycle private markets are getting stronger. Is that what you're seeing? Maybe a little bit of color on the end market and demand from your...

Yes. We've executed through the latter part of '21 and coming into '22. You certainly saw hard hats early on. So hard hats were one of the first businesses, of course, to come back as employment levels came back. But as we navigated our way through '21 and into the first part of '22, you started to see more focus on some of the gas detection products and other sort of industrial PPE products. So we continue to see the business really unfold across the portfolio. And today, I'll tell you, we're seeing broad-based demand. And so it's a really good environment, a really good demand environment. I just wish we could deliver on some of that demand today. And so we're -- we feel like we're positioned really well. And that's on the industrial PPE and gas detection side. If I look at the fire service portfolio, I'll tell you what, we've got a number of opportunities in the fire service portfolio that we're executing around. Not only are we seeing future opportunities that might come in, but we've been really successful over the first 4 or 5 months of the year at really bringing in a lot of new business with the SCBA. And so we finished March and then even into April with robust levels of demand on the SCBA side. And so we're excited about that. The turnout gear business is certainly constrained. There's 2 businesses that are really constrained in our portfolio. One is gas detection, and that's all chips, we're all familiar with that. The other one is the turnout gear area, and so finding people and labor constraints we're seeing in a few of our plants. But I'll tell you, the team is doing an exceptional job at trying to go out and be creative with hiring programs and using our footprint across the MSA geographies. And so we feel like we're positioned well on that front. On the gas detection side, just a little bit more detail on that. Greg can talk about this as well. But what we've done on gas detection, it's really interesting. We've -- you know MSA as a company that focuses on new products and investing in platforms. What we've done on gas detection is we've started to go in and redesign some of our products that will open up a wider supply chain for us. And so we feel like that will be beneficial for us, not only as we manage through this post-pandemic world, but as we think about the next 3, 4 and 5 years and having a wider supply chain base. So the team is doing a really good job really navigating through that and redesigning. It's a ton of work and it doesn't happen overnight. And so as we -- part of the reason why I think second half might be even more -- a little better and improved, Rob, is because of some of the work that we're doing on that redesign work will come through, and we'll see approvals as we go through the second half.

So 2 questions. First, earlier, you talked about the sequential revenue move. But can you talk about the puts and takes on incremental margin? We started off around 30%. And how confident are you to get to that upper level? And then the second question is, you talked about -- earlier about Safety as a Service. Can you give us some examples of markets in Safety as a Service model you're doing? And does that imply more risk to MSA or not?

Yes. So let me handle the first on the incremental margins, and I'll touch a little bit on Safety as a Service, and then I'll ask Gustavo also to talk a little bit about that. But the incremental margin profile, you're going to see things move around on a quarterly basis. Just due to our overall size, you're going to see a little bit of volatility on margins. First quarter, for example, in the International segment, some look at it and say maybe you took a step back in the International segment. But what we saw there is some really large deliveries of lower-margin business that's going to sit in a refinery, one of the largest refineries in Africa, for probably well over a decade. And so we're going to have this installed base in this large refinery where we're able to recoup, recurring revenue, higher profitable margin business. So we did see that. But that -- large orders and mix will have an impact on the incremental margins. So if you're in the low end of that range, you're probably seeing maybe a less favorable mix. You might see a little bit more project business. You might be seeing a little bit more SCBA business. Turnout gear is a lower-margin business. It's still a healthy EBITDA margin, but the gross margins are a little bit lower on that business. So that could have an impact. If you look at the high end of that, you would expect to see more improvement around gas detection. But just -- even just pure volume. If you look at this business and you look at the fourth quarter of last year, that fourth quarter of last year gives me a lot of confidence in our ability to drive 20% operating margins. We got to almost 20% in the fourth quarter of last year. So -- and that was on a very significant and robust level of volume that we did it in our business. And then what's interesting, we had that great volume come through. And then in the first quarter of this year, our order pace was at about $400 million. And we have, quite frankly, never seen a Q1 at that level. And so we're pretty confident in the outlook there. But in terms of the incremental margins, that mix effect is really one of the biggest drivers you'll see of taking us to 30% or our opportunity to get to 40%. Gustavo, do you want to handle the Software as a Service?

Sure. So when you look at Safety as a Service and some of the things that we're doing. So number one, obviously, we work very closely with Stephanie Sciullo and the legal team and making sure that we understand the risk. But one of the areas is that we are tackling first is that idea of uptime for our customers. So when you look at gas detection, just as a quick example, these are products that have consumables. You have to calibrate them. You have to do maintenance work. If you digitize those entire processes, there is tremendous value for our customers, right? Making sure that they have parts on hand so that they can go out there and do their day-to-day job as they are going out there and reducing the downtime there. So those are the first things that we are really, really tackling. As you look into the future, you certainly are going to get a lot -- a little deeper into just trying to understand some of the behavior-based safety tests and just making it apparent and transparent for our customers and our safety managers so that they can take the necessary decisions the rest of the people. So we're just really exposing the information to them, and it's their business of how best to really attack that and solve it. So there is tremendous value in just -- again, just doing that from a safety perspective.

Time on toll is important. And so how do we make sure our customers' employees are doing the job that they're getting paid for? And if we can reduce the time it takes to comply from a safety perspective, there's a direct return on investment associated with those activities. And so that's a big part of it.

Yes. I think there's a lot of benefits that are just around efficiency gains, whether it's automatically recurring calibration gas, where it just shows up when you need it; predictive maintenance around sensors. Sensor shows up, you don't have any downtime. Training, building in. Is the person trained? Do they have the equipment? Was the equipment inspected? Automating the compliance. You're taking some of the work away and it's more of the reporting than it is the safety. So you're really not adding risk to it, but you're making life easier for the customer.

Ken, I think 1Q organic growth was 5%, right, organic constant currency. Do you have the volume/price breakdown of that?

Yes. I think that, that first Q number was either 5% or 6%, you're right. I think there was 3% of acquisition growth, driven primarily by the acquisition of Bacharach. And so when you look at the impact, price/cost, I would roughly say that half is price, half is volume. And the reason I say that not more is price is because, as I said earlier, the Americas business was early to the price increases, but the International business was a little bit slower. And it was slower for the right reasons. But that's why that price contribution was not greater than, say, 3% in the first quarter.

Okay. And I think you also said on the call that you're taking another price increase in Americas in May and then maybe midyear for international. Is there any -- could there be like a pull-forward dynamic that maybe helped the April orders that I think accelerated from first quarter?

It's interesting you asked that. We've evaluated it. We did see a little bit of pull-forward into March, and so that price increase in the Americas came through in April. And so we saw a little bit of pull-forward into March, but we continue to see broad-based demand in April. And so even after the price increase, we've seen broad-based demand. And we're evaluating further increases as we move throughout the year, taking into consideration the environment we're in. And so we're going to be smart. We're going to try and be proactive as we have been. But we continue to see -- as I indicated, we continue to see really good demand for our products, even after the price increase came through.

Okay. Great. And then last question. What's the negotiation like with your customers when it comes to pricing? Is there -- are you sensing that maybe there is some elasticity? Or is there pushback? Or is it just a hyper-inflationary environment, and they're accepting?

Yes. It's interesting. I'll make a few comments, and I'll also ask Steve who will come to -- and talk a little bit about he's seeing. He's here with me, so he should talk about that. But when I look at the pricing dynamics, it's interesting. I was with a fire service distributor. [ Lenny ] and I were up in Long Island in March. We were with industrial PPE partners in South Florida in April. And then we were down in Houston with gas detection customers. And what I can tell you is MSA's products are highly valued. And so there's a value proposition associated with our products. I'm not going to tell you that inflation is not going to erode demand eventually. But right now, we continue to have an ability to pass along price in line with the challenges we're seeing in the macro environment. Steve, why don't you talk a little bit about what you're seeing?

Yes. Absolutely. Well, first of all, because this is a broad inflationary environment, our customers are seeing this from a number of different suppliers, right? And if you look at our channels and you can see what they report, they're getting price across the board from their end users. So we're not seeing any area where we've got concern with our customers, our end customers accepting that price. Certainly, we continue to monitor it, but we're passing on any of the costs we're seeing from our suppliers.

Yes. It's a great point. It's interesting. We were with -- in that same fire service distributor, we were talking to them about fire trucks. And so in the fire truck market, it's taking a couple of years to get a firetruck, unfortunately, in today's environment. But they're seeing price increases -- it's interesting. They have a price increase when they buy the truck and then they're seeing another price increase between the time they buy it and when it's delivered. And so it's a -- as Steve indicated, we're not the only product that our customers are seeing price increases on. It's a pretty normal environment.

Any other questions? Well, I think with that, we're good to wrap. I appreciate your attendance today. Thanks for joining. We'll make the webcast available on our Investor Relations website as well as the slides that will be posted later today. Thanks for joining.