Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. My name is Krista and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Gates Industrial Corporation 3rd Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, simply press star followed by the number 1 on your telephone keypad. And if you'd like to withdraw that question, again, press star one. Thank you. I would now like to turn the conference over to Rich Quas, Vice President of Investor Relations. Rich, the floor is yours.

Greetings, and thank you for joining us on our third quarter 2025 earnings call. I'll briefly cover our non-GAAP and forward-looking language before passing the call over to our CEO, Ivo Yurik, who will be followed by Brooks Mallard, our CFO. Before the market opened today, we published our third quarter 2025 results. A copy of the release is available on our website at investors.gates.com. Our call this morning is being webcast and is accompanied by a slide presentation. On this call, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures that we believe are useful in evaluating our performance. Reconciliations of historical non-GAAP financial measures are included in our earnings release and the slide presentation, each of which is available in the Investor Relations section of our website. Please refer now to slide two of the presentation, which provides a reminder that our remarks will include forward-looking statements within the meaning of Private Security Litigation Reform Act. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks that could cause actual results to be materially different than those expressed in or implied by such forward-looking statements. These risks include, among others, matters that we've described in our most recent annual report on Form 10-K and then other filings we make with the SEC, including our Q2 quarterly report on Form 10-Q that was filed in July of 2025. We disclaim any obligation to update these forward-looking statements. This quarter, we will be attending the Bayer Global Industrial Conference, the UBS global industrials and transportation conference and the goldman sachs industrials and materials conference and look forward to meeting many of you before we start please note all comparisons are against the prior year period unless stated otherwise and now i'll turn the call over to eva thank you rich good morning everyone and thank you for joining our call today let's begin on slide three of the presentation gates posted solid third quarter results with positive core revenue growth of almost 2% under macro industrial demand conditions that remain

subdued. Our replacement channel grew low single digits, supported by mid-single-digit growth in automotive replacement. Our OEM sales were relatively flat. At the end market level, Industrial was mixed. Globally, off-highway realized positive growth with stabilizing demand in construction of setting incremental weakness in North American and European agriculture. Commercial on-highway declined mid-single digits, impacted by decreasing production rates in North America. Personal mobility generated another strong quarter of growth, exceeding 20 percent year-on-year. Our adjusted EBITDA margin increased nicely year-over-year to 22.9 percent. We generated record adjusted EBITDA dollars and margin for a third quarter. Our net leverage ratio declined to 2.0 turns, a 0.4 turn reduction compared to last year's third quarter. With that, we are on pace to reduce our net leverage to under two times by year end. We have updated our 2025 guidance, raising our adjusted EPS midpoint to $1.50 per share. We have maintained our full year 2025 adjusted EBITDA midpoint of $780 million, while slightly lowering our core sales growth outlook at the midpoint. Brooks will provide more color and comments about our updated guidance assumptions later in the presentation. Additionally, our board recently approved a new $300 million share repurchase authorization that will expire at the end of 2026. The new authorization replaces the prior authorization, which had over $100 million remaining. On slide four, we have heard from a number of you on the call that you would like to see an update on what is occurring in the end markets. So we have laid out an updated view of our underlying end markets and how they have progressed during 2025. Coming into the year, we did not anticipate a broad macro recovery, but we have continued to see uneven end market performance since we set our initial expectations for the year in february we did however enter the year with some expectations that the pmis could begin to recover in the second half of 2025. that has not emerged to date industrial of highway demand trends have continued to languish and softened a bit relative to our expectation during the third quarter in certain geographies on reduced build rates and dealer inventory de-stock. Additionally, in the on-highway end market, the North American commercial truck production levels deteriorated as the third quarter evolved. Despite some of these near-term headwinds, we are still outperforming our underlying markets and believe that many of our challenged end markets are troughing or are close to troughing. Our automotive replacement and personal mobility business continues to grow nicely, while our data center opportunity set continues to expand. As such, we are optimistic that demand in the majority of our end markets will be more stable to improving at some point in 2026. Please turn to slide five. Third quarter total sales were $856 million, which translated to core growth of 1.7%. Total revenues grew 3% and benefited from favorable foreign currency. As I have highlighted earlier, the end market performance was mixed in a quarter. Personal mobility continued to trend nicely higher, with its year-over-year growth rate accelerating compared to the second quarter. Off-highway grew mid-single digits with growth in construction and agriculture globally. However, ag declined incrementally in both North America and Europe. Diversified industrial and energy were both down slightly, and on-highway demand was soft. automotive grew low single digits with solid growth in auto replacement more than offset a slight decline in auto oem our key growth verticals personal mobility and auto replacement contributed to the performance our revenues from data center also continues to increase although from a small base. And we see the liquid cooling opportunity in early stages of more broad-based adoption. Adjusted EBITDA was $196 million, with adjusted EBITDA margin coming in at 22.9%, an increase of 90 basis points, and represented a record third quarter margin rate for the company. Our adjusted earnings per share was $0.39, an increase of approximately 18% year-over-year. Operating performance contributed $0.02, while a lower tax rate and consolidated mix of other items, each contributed two cents. We believe we are effectively managing the enterprise across all aspects. On slide six, we will review our segment highlights. In the power transmission segment, we generated revenues of $533 million in a quarter and core growth of 2.3 percent most industrial and markets realized growth personal mobility continues to be a strong contributor with growth exceeding 20 percent in a quarter at a channel level replacement grew with automotive and industrial channel core growth each growing low single digits OEM sales also grew low single digits, with industrial sales growth more than offsetting a decrease in automotive. We continue to invest in our strategic sales initiatives and innovation to help drive potential outgrowth in the future. Our mobility opportunity pipeline is staying robust. In the fluid power segment, our sales were $322 million, representing core growth of just under 1%. Many of our key end markets in fluid power continued to experience various levels of demand pressure, but our teams have held its own. Commercial on-highway sales decreased mid-teams as industry inventories are elevated both highway grew with positive construction trends offsetting a low single-digit decline in AG the agricultural performance year-over-year was worse impacted by incremental OEM production cuts to better align our customers inventory levels heading into the year end we believe the underlying AG market is troughing and should be better positioned for recovery sometimes in 2026. Replacement demand was strong, driven by double-digit growth in automotive replacement globally, with broad-based growth across regions. Industrial OEM sales declined mid-single digits on a core basis, driven by soft demand trends in agriculture and commercial truck. Our data center opportunity pipeline exceeds 150 million dollars and design in activities remain robust with respect to profitability both segments expanded adjusted EBITDA margins at a similar rate I will now pass the call over to Brooks for further comments on our results thank you Eva I'll begin on slide 7 and review our core sales performance by region the majority of our geographic regions generated core growth in the quarter, highlighted by EMEA's return to growth.

In North America, core sales were about flat. The incremental demand weakness experienced in agriculture and commercial on highway during the quarter was primarily concentrated within the North American region and led to a low double-digit decline in industrial OEM sales. Industrial replacement sales were also down slightly. Industrial was offset by growth in automotive as automotive replacement sales increased high single digits supported by year-over-year growth contribution from our new channel partner. Automotive OEM sales grew low single digits. In EMEA, core sales grew 2.6%. Industrial and markets were mixed. Construction returned to growth and more than offset weak demand in agriculture on-highway grew while energy and diversified industrial saw declines personal mobility was very strong growing almost 75 percent at the channel level oem sales grew high single digits supported by construction on highway and mobility partially offset by lower automotive oem sales into replacement channels increased slightly east asia and india posted approximately 5% core growth. Most industrial in-markets grew. Automotive OEM sales decreased slightly, which was more than offset by high-teens growth in automotive replacement. China core sales expanded 6% year-over-year, with growth across all channels and most in-markets. South American core sales declined low to mid-single digits. On slide 8, we showed the key components of our year-over-year change and adjusted earnings per share operating performance contributed approximately two cents per share driven by core growth and higher adjusted eva dumb margin a lower tax rate contributed two cents per share other items including lower interest expense lower share count and other income together generated about two cents per share Slide 9 provides a summary of our cash flow performance and balance sheet metrics. Our free cash flow was $73 million and represented 73% conversion to adjusted net income. Our restructuring cash outflows have increased, which impacted our free cash flow conversion. Our net leverage ratio declined to 2.0 times at the end of the third quarter, which was an improvement on a year-over-year and sequential basis. During the quarter, we paid down $100 million of gross debt. We expect our net leverage to be under two times at calendar year end 2025. Our trailing 12-month return on invested capital was 21.6%, an improvement sequentially as improved operating performance helped offset the impact from internal investments in high-return projects. On slide 10, we provide our updated 2025 guidance. We have trimmed our core revenue growth midpoint to 1% and narrowed the range from 0.5% to 1.5% to reflect current macro conditions for the balance of the year. In addition, we have maintained our $780 million adjusted EBITDA midpoint and narrowed the range to $770 million to $790 million. numbers. We have raised our adjusted earnings per share guidance to the range of $1.48 per share to $1.52 per share, the upper half of our previous range. The $1.50 per share midpoint reflects a $0.02 per share increase relative to our prior guidance. Our guidance for capital expenditures is unchanged. We have lowered our free cash flow conversion outlook to a range of 80 to 90% from 90% plus as a result of increased restructuring cash outlays as part of our footprint optimization and restructuring initiatives. Turning to slide 11, we want to provide an update of our ongoing restructuring plans as well as a strategic system conversion that we have been working on and that we expect to be complete by the middle of 2026. Beginning late in Q4 2025 and finishing by the end of Q2 2026, we expect to close multiple factories, complete a labor realignment, and go live with an ERP conversion for most of our European footprint. As we complete these activities, we will be focused on providing continuity and service for our customers and our effective team members. We expect to incur additional costs and other one-time operational impacts from these projects in the first half of 2026. From a financial perspective, we anticipate an unfavorable year-over-year impact of 100 to 200 basis points to our adjusted EBITDA margin in the first quarter and a more modest unfavorable effect in the second quarter ranging from 25 basis points to 75 basis points year over year. In the second half of 2026, as we look towards completion of these various projects, we expect operations to normalize and realize favorable impact to our adjusted EBITDA margin from our restructuring activities of 75 to 125 basis points year over year. Excluding volume considerations, we expect our footprint optimization, restructuring, and material cost out activities to generate 0 to 25 BIPs overall adjusted EBITDA margin improvement year over year for the full year 2026. We anticipate being at a 23.5% adjusted EBITDA run rate in the second half of 2026 in a volume-neutral environment. As I said, we have not taken volume impacts into this analysis and plan to update those assumptions, as well as provide further insight into our restructuring activities when we initiate our formal 2026 guidance in conjunction with our Q4 earnings call in February. I will now turn the call back over to Evelyn.

Thank you, Brooks. Moving to slide 12, this is our illustrative update on our walk towards the midterm stated adjusted EBITDA margin target of 24.5%. In 2025, we have experienced a highly fluid business environment and continuation of prolonged negative PMI prints, resulting in constrained volume performance. with that as a backdrop we now anticipate to complete our initial phase of the committed footprint optimization projects amid 2026 and still expect that those projects will achieve 100 basis points of savings from the footprint optimization program exiting 2026 coupled with our ongoing focus on material cost savings and 80 20 we estimate that our adjusted ebitda margin will be nearing 24 on a run rate basis exiting next year most importantly this does not assume any margin benefit from a potential broad volume recovery in our industrial end markets while the end market volatility has not been supported we are very pleased with our execution and performance to date we believe the prospects for incremental improvement over the midterm are positive especially as the end market conditions begin to potentially inflect with that let me summarize our views on slide 13. We believe we have executed well, delivering solid results given the lackluster demand environment we have encountered throughout this year. We generated record third quarter adjusted EBITDA margin rate and achieved our highest quarterly core growth rate since Q2 2023. For the year, we are on target to deliver adjusted EBITDA margin expansion and earnings growth in a muted demand backdrop. We continue to make progress with our personal mobility and data center strategic initiatives and believe we will encounter a better industrial demand landscape in 2026 we continue to adjust our structural cost base and we expect our savings to begin to compound during the second half of 26 and anticipate our adjusted evita margin rate to be approaching near 24 percent exiting next year with that as a baseline level we would expect any volume improvements to be additive to our margin performance lastly we believe we now possess a strong balance sheet that can be utilized to support various potentially value creating capital deployment options our board recently approved a new 300 million dollar share repurchase authorization separately that reduction continues to be an option we just repaid 100 million million dollars of debt during the third quarter and of course at this juncture our ability to execute bolt-on M&A transactions is increasing as we move towards our midterm financial leverage target before taking your questions I

want to thank the approximately 14,000 global gifts associates with their diligence and commitment supporting our customer needs with that i will now turn the call back over to the operator for q a thank you we will now begin the question and answer session if you would like to ask a question please press star one on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue and if you would like to withdraw that question again press star one we do ask that you limit yourself to one question and one follow-up your first question comes from the line of Nigel Koh with Wolf Research please go ahead oh thanks good morning everyone

thanks for the first question I wanted to maybe clear up some some just some questions around slide 12 so it's very clear that the 24% for 2027 is to be viewed more floor here right I mean if we if we continue to just bump along the bottom here uh 24 is where you see uh margins and then volume uh gives us some upside i just want to make sure that that's that's the case and then maybe just uh you know kind of dig into some of these you know kind of costs uh you're flagging for the first half of the year and um you know what sort of benefits you see from this erp implementation yeah thanks nigel let me let me

take the first part of your question and then i'll pass it off uh to brooks on the on the erp side and some of the other attributes of the cost question that you've had. But, you know, thinking about slide 12, right, so that margin walk was created, if you think about it, more to provide you with an opportunity to model the impacts of the transitory costs to be incurred as a part of our restructuring program restart. it. And, you know, that the program is intended to, you know, significantly improve our cost structure, all else equal, right? So, not representative of growth forecasts for our top line in 26. So, to your point, you know, this is kind of a foundational floor. We do expect growth in 26. The margin impact for the full year in our presentation deck, however, excludes any benefit from revenue growth. Frankly, because we are not providing you an updated guidance for 26 yet, as you know, we will do that at the conclusion of our Q4 fiscal year, and we'll do that in January, right? So we, you know, look, we certainly believe that many of our end markets are at trough or close to troughing, as I said in my prepared remarks, and we believe that they will turn positive in 26. In addition, we are excited, and I said that a number of these calls over the last couple of quarters, we are quite excited about the strategic revenue generation initiatives for next year, and we certainly expect them to contribute nicely to our growth trajectory in 2026. With that, Brooks, if you want to take the second part of the question, please.

So, you know, there's several things that we expect, you know, from a one-time cost perspective, you know, relative to the restructuring and the, you know, the headcount alignment as we do the restructuring, you know, there'll be, we expect some additional, you know, freight costs, expediting costs, you know, redundant labor costs and productivity, you know, costs as we move through, you know, some of these relocations, and that's a normal course of business. We do expect, you know, to Ivo's point, I'm going to remind everyone, a lot of, you know, The backdrop for the reason we're doing a lot of these for optimization activities is to support our future growth. And so, yes, we're going to get a cost benefit, but even moreover, we're going to have additional capacity both from a machinery and equipment perspective, but more importantly, more capacity from a labor perspective to ramp through the cycle. From an ERP perspective, you know, we're replacing a fairly antiquated system, you know, with a new system that's going to provide us, you know, much more capability in terms of, you know, warehouse management, in terms of, you know, managing the front end of the business to the back end of the business. But we really haven't built any of those benefits into our outlook. So, you know, we've been very neutral on building those benefits in, but we definitely expect to improve our efficiencies and capabilities and, again, support the strategic initiatives of the company with the ERP. But it does take, you know, we do think it will take us the first half of the year, you know, to get that all lined out, which is why we wanted to be transparent and provide you an update of, you know, the cost and the impact associated with those activities.

Oh, yeah, we definitely appreciate that. Thank you. Just wanted to double click on growth. You mentioned growth about four or five times there. What kind of tailwind or visibility do you have right now on some of the structural growth vectors like data center, personal mobility? I'm guessing you're going to have some price carryover for next year. But more importantly, when you talk about the bottoming in some of these, you know, off-highway, on-highway markets, how much visibility do you have on production schedules for your OEM partners, and do you have any visibility or maybe kind of a turn in production for those end markets?

Yeah, sure. So, look, great question, Nigel. Thank you for asking that. Very, very optimistic, as you probably noticed over the last couple of earnings calls about some of the growth factors such as personal mobility and liquid cooling in data centers the personal mobility I think on the last call we suggested that we anticipate kind of over the next three years and again while that's not going to be every quarter I want to kind of remind everybody that things are not always linear right but but it's going to take next three years personal mobility you know we anticipated personal mobility to grow kind of 30% year-on-year compound annually between 25 and 28, right? And, you know, there'll be time that it's going to grow 22% to 25%. There'll be time that it's going to grow 35%. But on aggregate, we believe that that's going to grow about 30% compound annually. And, you know, we have that confidence because of the design that we've been talking to you about over the last couple of years. You know, the DSTAC post-COVID has occurred, and obviously we are delivering a real nice acceleration uh to the growth trajectory and and that will continue uh into the next uh you know couple of uh two to three years so so we're quite positive about that we've talked about the uh the the accelerated the accelerated adoption of liquid cooling and well you know i'm not ready to you know to give you a forward-looking revenue forecast for 26 today and i'll do more of that on our next call, we are seeing tremendous amount of activities out there. And, you know, there are some real positive attributes because what we are realizing is there's more cooling that's required, not less in the projects that we are involved with. And we are seeing pretty substantial growth across the various customer base in the designing activity. And that's a really good precursor into what will be occurring over the next 12, 24, 36 months. So think about it kind of in a similar vein as when we were discussing personal mobility. So we believe that over the next one to two quarters, we're going to be giving you some more tangible attributes associated with the dollars and cents about what that's going to represent in 26 and 27. But so far, quite optimistic about what we see there. So our automotive replacement market, while we don't necessarily talk about it as necessarily a growth twerk, we have been growing that market quite substantially and quite nicely over the last couple of years, provided a great deal of stability for our revenue generation. and we believe that that's going to continue as we move into, you know, 26, 27, and 28. There's still plenty of opportunity, plenty of firepower left to be able to continue to grow that market in that kind of 2% to 3% range, which is, you know, which is rather nice for kind of a more mature type level of applications. So put that aside from kind of the incremental over and above, if you would, growth trajectory to kind of your standard base. Then when I take a look at some of our more traditional end markets, look, we certainly believe that the auto OE business, while it does not represent a significant size of our business, you know, that's stabilizing. And we believe that we will start seeing more additive growth rates in North America and ultimately in 2026 in Europe. So we believe that those markets are stabilizing post-Liberation Day announcements that these companies are starting to – different countries are developing different agreements with our administration, and I think things are starting to stabilize there. I think people are becoming a little more optimistic about that end market. We see some positives, you know, I would say formation of green shoots and certainly in commercial construction end market. and we are starting to hear more positive news about what our customers expect there. Ag is still a challenge, and I talked about ag actually got incrementally worse for us in Q3. While we have delivered maybe a positive core growth overall in ag, it got a little bit worse than what we've anticipated, but we do believe that that's troughing and that while it's not going to go off to the races in 26, it's going to be significantly less bad than it has been over the last eight quarters. And so, you know, we are somewhat, you know, positive about that. And then ultimately the, you know, the diversified industrial market, you know, we've talked about it being kind of more kind of bottoming out over the last couple of quarters. And we certainly believe that that's bottomed out and that should start being more accretive in 2026. So I don't want to give anybody an idea that, you know, we have come out and we have given a forecast that we will not anticipate to have an organic growth rate in 2026. We're actually quite optimistic about it, but we just wanted to give you a visibility on, you know, modeling of certain structural cost removals that are going to be going in and out over the first half of the year and resetting our cost structure, becoming more competitive, and giving ourselves the opportunity to actually support that growth rate, which we are very optimistic about.

Great. Thanks, Eva.

Your next question comes from the line of Dean Dre with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Thank you. Good morning, everyone.

Hey, I wanted to circle back on slide 12 again. And I know you've given this as a margin walk, but I don't know if you've provided this previously, but can you give us some dimensions of the restructuring? Like how many plants, where are they, what kind of headcount reduction, the dollar amount being invested, and the dollar kind of payback cadence? I know you're providing it as a margin, but it would be helpful if you provide that dimension to it as well. Maybe you're restricted. I know that if it's outside the U.S., you've got some works council, but maybe if you could start there, that would be helpful.

So, look, Dan, it's fairly complicated because it's a combination of – if you remember when we said we were doing the restructuring, It was mostly around North America and EMEA, right? So, you know, we'll kind of leave it at that we're closing multiple factories, and, you know, there'll be, you know, hundreds of affected employees. You know, I would say the payback generally ranges, you know, from one to two years, you know, depending on, you know, the amount of severance, the amount of move, the amount of investment um that we need to make um you know when we talk about the headwinds you know just to kind of size it um you know we talked about the 100 to 200 bps and 25 to 75 bps um you know that's kind of a 30 to 35 million dollar one-time expectation uh for the first half of of 2026 uh and that also includes the you know the system conversion and all the costs associated with that and so you know from uh i would say the other part if you if you think about our uh increased capital spend over the past couple of years you know that's part of the investment as well right and so you know if you look at what we spent over the past couple of years you could say you know maybe 20 million last year 20 million this year so that's part of the investment as well so when you calculate all that up um you know that kind of you know you know gives you that you know one to two year payback again depending on the timing of when the projects get implemented and when the savings come through and as I said you know we feel you know we feel as we you know as we exit the second half of 26 you know that the first part of all that restructuring will be complete and you'll see the flow through in the second half but let me also say that we're still working on additional projects and there's still money that we're spending right now that's kind of part of that group that uh that that investment i talked about that we haven't put into our run rate yet that we haven't disclosed yet right because we you know when you when you think about the back half of the year you know there's there's probably uh five million you know per quarter so 10 million in the back half of the year of savings which will also roll over into the first half of 27 so that's kind of 20 million or half of the $40 million. So we're still working on the other half. And those projects will be implemented, and we'll disclose those here over the next year or so. Hopefully that kind of gives you enough color in terms of how all those things are working.

Yes, it really did. I appreciate that additional color. And then as a follow-up, I was hoping you could take us through kind of the tariff impact. pricing? And do you see any, and it sounds like there could be some volume fall off because of some demand destruction, but just kind of where does tariff stand on a net basis?

So let me take the cost piece and I'll let Ivo talk about the volume piece. So from a cost basis, we're okay in terms of the total EBITDA impact. What I would say, though, is you look at some of the gross margin dilution in the back half of 2025, and that will fall through to EBITDA dilution. We're probably seeing 30 to 40 bps of dilution because we're not getting anything in in terms of bottom line, you know, bottom line ad from the tariffs, right? We're just kind of holding our own and making sure that we don't cost ourselves money. So the impact from a profitability perspective is kind of 30 to 40 bips, you know, zero dollars from a total EBITDA dollars perspective. And then I'll pass it over to Ivo to talk about the volume.

Yeah, Dina, I think that that's, you know, I'm not sure whether I would call it volume destruction or what have you, but, you know, I think I would probably call it more of a short-term, you know, transitory growing pains. I believe that there's probably some impact to ag in particular. certainly the the trade uh you know the the trade environment has gotten more challenging particularly for farmers and you know that's kind of what we have seen in terms of probably delayed recovery in ag overall and as i said on the call you know ag in future got you know slightly worse than what we've anticipated at the beginning of of q3 around the edges but But we do believe that that market will also start normalizing as we enter 26. And sometimes during 26, it should start getting a little less negative. So, you know, around that, I think that you're starting to see more stabilization around the auto businesses. Overall, I think you start seeing forecasts maybe getting a little more positive in terms of production output by the car makers. So, you know, I think that some of those transitory headwinds are probably beginning, and as we enter 26, I think the environment should be more stable. Thank you. Thanks, Steve.

Your next question comes from the line of Julian Mitchell with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon. Maybe just the first question, trying to drill into perhaps a little bit the sort of exit rate from 2025. Just looking at the fourth quarter, for example, you mentioned Evo was sort of firming of the industrial environment in the prepared material. But I think the revenue guide seems to embed sort of fairly normal seasonality for the fourth quarter. Just wondered if you could clarify that. And then similarly on kind of the EBITDA rate in the fourth quarter, often down sequentially. I think this time it sort of flattered up. just wondered if there was anything to call out there in terms of enterprise initiative benefits or mix or something.

Yes. So, look, Julian, I think that you said it correctly. I mean, if you think about our Q4 revenue, it really is kind of taking exit rate Q3 environment, applying normalized seasonality. So, there really isn't anything peculiar. I wouldn't say that, you know, we have baked in any further recoveries. You know, we're obviously very cautious around ag, but, you know, we're taking that present environment and we say you're probably not going to really see any tangible change in Q4. And taking into account that, you know, many of these end markets, many of our customers have had somewhat, you know, challenging years. I don't see anybody, you know, trying to preposition themselves for 2026. And that, in a way, I would say is, you know, is positive that folks are not prepositioning themselves. I think that people are now focusing more on 26. And, you know, we are seeing or we are hearing certainly more, you know, kind of an optimistic outlook about 26 and, you know, certain segments of our business. So, you know, that, you know, that being said on the, on the demand, and I'll let Brooks chime in on the, on the EBITDA for Q4.

Yep. So from a, from a Q4 perspective, you know, we're still, we're still seeing some, you know, we're seeing, you know, some of our initiatives roll through around material costs. You know, that's sort of – that's offset by, you know, some of the tariff dilution and kind of normal, you know, normal seasonality in terms of Q4. You know, we're pretty – I think we're pretty happy with where our inventories are in terms of service and then building, you know, being ready for some of these activities in Q1. So, we're not building, you know, significant inventories as we head into the end of the year. You know, so nothing, you know, some puts and takes, right, in terms of, you know, things working in our favor, you know, other things, you know, that we're taking on and making sure that we're able to deliver EBITDA growth year over year, but nothing, you know, structurally different as we end the year.

But, Julian, we're also executing rather well, right? I mean, 18% EPS growth in Q3, record level of margins in a reasonably muted end-market environment.

So I think that the organization is doing a good job in managing during some of these challenging times and, frankly, delivering differentiated operating results. great and then just one quick follow-up on the sort of cash conversion you know I think you walk down the guide a bit there there's some higher cash restructuring should we expect much improvement in conversion next year or no because of the EMEA and North America restructuring charges will sort of weigh on next year yeah we'll have to take a look at that I mean I would I would think that, you know, the bigger part of what's affecting us in 2025 is the restructuring charges that get, that are an add back to adjusted EBITDA and adjusted net income, but flow through the free cash flow, and then the higher CapEx as well. You know, I would say that, you know, we're going to continue to spend CapEx, although I would imagine it starts to dial down just a tad in 2026. And we will probably see some small headwinds related to the restructuring, you know, cash out versus how it shows up in adjusted net income, but probably not as much as we do this year. And, again, you know, we called out the headwinds. Those are going to show up in the numbers and show up in the cash. So that won't really affect the overall cash conversion number because those will be in both places. So we'll update that, and we'll make sure that we call that out specifically when we update our guidance for 2026. But, again, that's really just a kind of it's in one number, it's not in the other number. And so it's a little bit out of balance. We need to make sure we call that out in our cash conversion.

Great. your next question comes from the line of jeff hammond with key bank capital markets please go ahead hey uh good afternoon now um appreciate all the color so just just to kind of you know put a bow on this you know noise around you know margins and the margin bridge because i think that you know the message is getting confused that you know next year's a transition year and maybe your long term targets getting pushed out it seems like to me um you had said you know to get to your margin target you needed 100 150 base points from volume and that hasn't played out and it seems like

you've you've maybe outperformed on you know internal execution material savings and you know the volume has been the whole but you know maybe just level set me on that i think jeff you you said it perfectly uh we've actually we're actually delivering on our midterm targets without getting any help from the underlying macro and you know we feel really good about that right because it's really tough to execute in such um you know negative pmi uh environment and so i think that there was that was the point of delineation where we want to ensure that we communicate to the markets that the company is executing well. We certainly believe that the volume is going to inflect. We all certainly know that none of us are very good at being able to call the inflections in the macroeconomics, taking into account that there are so many different moving pieces associated with trade policies and industrial policies and kind of the global behavior of these end markets itself but I think all would all of us would anticipate it after 36 months of negative PMI we would we would be on a verge and some point in time to see some inversion and when that occurs obviously that's incremental to what we have described in our in our presentation okay great and then just

on capital allocation you know i i sense you know a little bit of a tone change where you'd kind of been saying before hey we're just going to buy back our stock the market doesn't you know appreciate what we're doing here and the multiple hasn't expanded relative to our peers but now it seems like you're you're maybe talking a little more about boltons and so you know am i reading that right or or do we you know lean in on a day you know where our stock's down six percent and the markets confused?

Yeah, look, I mean, our stock is, you know, I think our stock is inexpensive. You know, it's a, you know, it's trading at, you know, a valuation that is not akin to the performance that the company is delivering. So we'll certainly lean into buybacks. The board authorized $300 million of buybacks. So, you know, we'll certainly be utilizing what we can. But the company as well is generating tremendous amount of free cash flow. So I think that we can do all of the things that have been outlined as plausible outcomes for capital deployment. You know, we've bought back, I mean, we've paid down some more debt. You know, we will be strategic about buying back our stock. But we also believe that, you know, as our balance sheet is trending towards below the two times leverage that we have kind of put in, you know, in a place as a demarcation point for us. And so hopefully, you know, I won't have to be talking about a leverage in the future. We believe that, you know, we can use all three levers for capital reform, and we will be leaning more aggressively towards both on M&A.

Great. Thanks, guys.

Your next question comes from the line of Andy Kaplowitz with Citigroup. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning, everyone. Good afternoon now. you've been talking about accelerating footprint optimization and doing 80-20 since your investor day a year and a half ago but obviously your growth since then has been somewhat slow so I'm just trying to figure out if you're accelerating or enhancing any of your restructuring plans versus when you updated us at that investor day and then maybe can you update us on how 80-20 is impacting Gates as you go into 26 and beyond if you do organically grow can you do core incrementals over 40% Yeah, look, I think that we've, you know, I want to kind of be fully transparent, right?

So as the Liberation Day came forward in April, we kind of took a little pause to try to understand what will the new mercantile regime look like and, you know, how do we, you know, how do we think about our overall operating structure as a company? and obviously we have been in region for region for a long time so we just wanted to reassess and get a better sense of what is happening in the world. I think that as we got more comfortable with what we are seeing and how we are organized we you know we've come to a conclusion that our original plan was the right plan as Brooks indicated we need to be capable of having an access to a labor that will give us an ability to flux up and down as these cycles occur. We believe that we're on the verge of an upcycle, so we've got to be positioned well to support the growth that we anticipate over the next upcoming upcycle. And so we are really just executing on our original plan, Andy. Nothing really has dramatically changed around what we have anticipated vis-a-vis footprint optimization and restructuring. So I think we are in a very, very good shape, and it also validated that our plan was the right plan. We just needed to hit a pause for a couple of quarters. So that's kind of beyond us, and we are moving forward. As to 80-20, look, 80-20 material cost reductions and driving a better operational focus have been really the attributes that have given us the opportunity to outperform what we've anticipated during our capital markets day in 2023 and still deliver on our midterm targets without the growth. So it's a very powerful tool. We, again, believe that we have the very early innings. You know, we take a look at somebody like ITW that has been doing it for over a decade plus. and they continue to deliver good, you know, good margin expansion. We believe that we not only have the opportunity for a very certainly intermediate future to continue to support 80-20 as the key attributes of our enterprise initiatives to add to our profitability, but also grow our franchise through our strategic, you know growth verticals so we think that we can do both and we think that 80 20 is going to be very additive to us and you know if you exclude the benefits from restructuring and again i want to be very specific you know if you if you exclude the benefits that we have described on on slide 12 we still believe that in a normalized growth uh environment that we anticipate kind of in 26 and beyond, we should be generating 30% to 35% incremental over and above the benefits that are described on that page.

Yeah, well, that's helpful. And then just in terms of growth by region, I think you explained what's going on in North America well, but you also mentioned AMIA return to growth, which is interesting, and China continues to put out durable growth for you guys. So maybe you could sort of click on or give us a little more color about what you're seeing.

Yeah, look, I mean, I think that, you know, North America has been probably most challenged from kind of agriculture and market exposure that got slightly, you know, slightly worse. And remember, we, you know, it wasn't a ton of dollars that we've, you know, that it got, you know, around the edges less supportive than what we've anticipated. So it's just around the edges, less supportive there. The other end markets, look, I mean, automotive overall grew nicely. Automotive replacement grew really well for us in North America. Our industrial replacement market is growing. So, you know, the things are not, you know, they're not, you know, bad in, you know, any form of imagination. They're kind of around what we've anticipated with maybe slightly worse behavior in the ag environment. South America has been tough last quarter, but it's been predominantly tough after extraordinary several quarters or maybe six quarters of significant growth. So it's kind of a more normal vision. And we, again, anticipate that South America is going to start moving into the growth phase as we kind of exit 26, I mean, 25 into 26. Europe, you know, I mean, Europe has been a little bit surprising to us, right? I mean, it's behaved a little bit better than what we've, you know, what we've kind of envisaged with positive core growth. I would say that the auto markets are quite negative in Europe. I don't think I'm telling you anything that has not been already communicated, but our AR business is performing well. Our industrial first fit, particularly around the commercial construction segment and mobility, has been performing quite well. And IR has been stabilizing and starting to perk up a little bit in Q3. So maybe around the ages, more green shoots than less. And, you know, China has been okay. Automotive has been doing quite all right for us in China. Industrial replacement has been doing quite all right for us. So, you know, China has been behaving more or less as we have seen over the last several quarters. And, you know, East Asia and India is growing. I mean, we are growing nicely. Automotive replacement business in India. The industrial first-speed business is doing well. I mean, I think that India is poised to continue to be on a trajectory of, you know, nice growth with the overall economy evolving nicely and becoming a real alternative to China over the midterm. So we are quite optimistic about what we can see out of India in particular. So, you know, overall, we're actually reasonably tending to be more optimistic than less, and we believe that 26 should be more positive than perhaps might have been taken out of our release today. Thanks for all the color.

Your next question comes from the line of Tomo Sanyo with J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.

Hello, everyone. Good morning. Hi, I'd like to ask about the data centers. Of the $322 million in fully power revenue this quarter, how much was related to data center sales and what is your expectations for 2025 data center revenue and the conversions of your $150 million plus pipeline in 2026, please?

Yeah, Tomo, good afternoon to you. We're not going to be addressing exactly the revenue flows because it's still reasonably a small size of revenue that is growing rather nicely for us, but from a very, very small base. So I don't think it's worth, at this point in time, to spend time yet on the sizing of this. It's in the millions, not in the tens of millions yet. But designing activities remains very, very robust. I mean, we see a significant number of new customers that are coming to us and we are working with on new designing opportunities. And we will be providing you with some additional color in January, early February on our Q4 earnings call. But we do continue to be quite optimistic that the data center growth as a vertical is going to ramp up rather nicely. And we still feel that, you know, $80 to $200 million, $100 to $200 million by 2028 is certainly doable for us as an intermediate target for us over the next two to three years. We also, incidentally, are going to be at the show Super Compute next, I think, weeks from now in St. Louis. So we would invite anybody to stop by and have a conversation with us about some of the new products, innovation. We can provide additional color on what we are working on from a technology perspective there as well.

Thank you, Ivo. And follow up on pricing perspectives, could you talk about how effective you have been in passing through cost inflation in Q3 and what is your pricing strategy for 2026, please?

Well, I mean, we've all, you know, going back, I mean, we've always been, I would say, as effective as anybody in terms of passing pricing through from an inflation perspective. You know, when the tariff, all the new tariffs came out, you know, for the most part, we're able to cover that with pricing. I mean, there's certain regions that are a little bit more pricing challenged, particularly in Asia, where we're able to offset it more operationally than through pricing. You know, we've always been very, you know, very transparent in terms of, you know, we're going to cover, you know, material utility inflation on a yearly basis with pricing. And then, you know, the 80-20, you know, when we implemented 80-20, you know, we added a value pricing lever to our pricing, you know, kind of tactical approach. um you know we we make you know hundreds of thousands of skews right and so you know some of these skews uh you know you you want to be more competitive on some of them you're the only ones that make it and you know you can price those uh you know based on the value you bring because you might you may be the only one that makes that particular part and so you know we continue to to use our 80 20 playbook to optimize pricing uh and in the aggregate you know we're We're always going to make sure that we use pricing to cover our material and utility inflation.

Thank you. I appreciate it.

That concludes our question and answer session. I will now turn the conference back over to Rich for closing comments.

All right. Thanks, everyone, for joining. If you have any further questions, feel free to reach out. Otherwise, have a great rest of the week.

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's conference call. Thank you for your participation, and you may now...