Conference Transcript - NDSN 2025-02-20

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. My name is Kelvin, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Nordson Corporation's first quarter fiscal year 2025 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 during this time, simply press the star button followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press the pound key or star 2. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Laura Mahoney. Please go ahead.

Laura Mahoney, Head of Investor Relations

Good morning. This is Laura Mahoney, Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications. I'm here with Sundaram Nagarajan, our President and CEO, and Dan Hopgood, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. We welcome you to our conference call today, Thursday, February 20th, to report Nordson's fiscal 2025 first quarter results. You can find both our press release as well as our webcast slide presentation that we will refer to during today's call on our website at www.nordson.com forward slash investors. This conference call is being broadcast live on our investor website and will be available there for 30 days. There will be a telephone replay of the conference call available until Thursday, February 27, 2025. During this conference call, we will make references to non-GAAP financial metrics. We've provided a reconciliation of these metrics to the most comparable gap metric in the press release issued yesterday. Before we begin, please refer to slide two of our presentation, where we note that certain statements regarding our future performance that are made during this call may be forward-looking based upon Nordson's current expectations. These statements may involve a number of risks, uncertainties, and other factors as discussed in the company's filings with the Security and Exchange Commission that could cause actual results to materially differ. I also want to take a moment to highlight that effective November 1, 2024, which is the beginning of our fiscal year, the Measurement and Control Solutions Division, formally reported as part of the Industrial Precision Solutions segment, has been realigned to the Advanced Technology Solutions segment based on a reassessment of our portfolio. Our segment reporting reflects this change, and prior year financial information has been revised to be comparable. Please refer to the appendix in our earnings press release for comparative segment data by quarter for fiscal 2024. Now moving to today's agenda on slide three, Naga will discuss first quarter highlights. He will then turn the call over to Dan to review sales and earnings performance for the total company and the three business segments. Dan will also discuss the balance sheet and cash flow. Naga will then share a high-level commentary about our enterprise performance and provide an update on the fiscal 2025 second quarter guidance. We will then be happy to take your questions. With that, I'll turn the call over to Naga.

Sundaram Nagarajan, CEO

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining Norton's Fiscal 2025 First Quarter Conference Call. We're starting the year with the sales of $615 million, which is at the low end of our guidance range due to soft demand in key end markets, particularly electronics and industrial, and foreign exchange headwinds that were slightly worse than expectations. This more than offset the solid performance of our Atrion acquisition, as well as organic growth within our consumer non-durable product lines. Positively, order entry rates accelerated throughout the quarter, growing double digits above the prior year order entry run rate. You can see this growth in our backlog, which increased sequentially from fiscal year end by approximately $85 million, ending at approximately $670 million as we exit the first quarter. The improvement in order entry rates and backlog is particularly encouraging to see in our electronics businesses. Our continued focus on top customers and products, coupled with leveraging NBS Next to drive factory efficiencies and manage costs, led to another strong quarter of operational performance. The team delivered 56% gross margin, 26% operating profit margin, 31% EBITDA margin, and converted free cash flow at nearly 150% of net income. We achieved adjusted earnings per share of $2.06, slightly above the midpoint of our guidance despite weaker sales. As a growth compounder, we remain steadfast with our balanced capital deployment strategy, repurchasing approximately $60 million in shares during the quarter. In addition, we paid $45 million in dividends and decreased our net leverage ratio to 2.4 times, exceeding the first quarter, comfortably within our targeted range. Our consistently strong operating performance, quarter over quarter, positions as well to capitalized profitably on growth as demand improves throughout fiscal 2025. I'll speak more about the enterprise performance in a few moments, but first I'll turn the call over to Dan to provide detailed perspective on our financial results for the quarter.

Daniel Hopgood, CFO

Thank you, Naga, and good morning to everyone. On slide number five, you'll see a summary of our overall operating company results. First quarter 2025 sales were $615 million, down 3% from the prior year first quarter sales of $633 million. This was driven by an 8% increase from the Atrion acquisition, offset by an overall organic sales decrease of 9% and unfavorable currency translation of about 2%. Demand was choppy to start the year, and we experienced headwinds in several end markets as we exited the calendar year, particularly in selected systems and medical businesses. Coupled with a 2% FX headwind, this drove sales at the bottom end of our guidance range. As Naga mentioned, we were encouraged to see order entry rates accelerate throughout the quarter, which is reflected in our backlog growth since the start of the quarter. In addition, organic growth in packaging, non-wovens, optical sensors, and measurement and controls businesses helped soften the revenue decline. Gross profit remained strong in the first quarter at 56% of sales, and EBITDA, adjusted for special items in both periods, totaled $188 million, or 31% of sales. While overall EBITDA was down 4% from the prior year, driven by lower sales volume, EBITDA margins were flat year-over-year, inclusive of the newly acquired Atrion business. Looking at non-operating expenses, net interest expense was $26 million, an increase of $5 million versus the prior year, driven by higher debt level, tied to the atrion acquisition this was partially offset by a two million dollar improvement in other income and expense primarily reflecting foreign exchange transactional variations compared to the prior year tax expense for the quarter was 22 million dollars or an effective tax rate of 19 this is in line with our guidance range for fiscal year 2025 and 200 basis points lower than the prior year. Net income in the quarter totaled $95 million or $1.65 per share, excluding $10 million of non-recurring costs related to the Atrion acquisition and selected restructuring actions, as well as $19 million in amortization of acquisition-related intangibles. Adjusted earnings per share totaled $2.06 per share, slightly above the midpoint of our quarterly guidance, but a 7% decrease from the prior year adjusted earnings per share of $2.21. The decrease in year-over-year earnings reflects the impact of lower organic sales volume and higher acquisition-related interest expense I referenced just a moment ago. Now let's turn to slide 6 through 8 to review the first quarter 2025 segment performance. Starting with industrial precision solutions, they had sales of $300 million, a decrease of 11% compared to the prior year first quarter, down 8% organically, and 3% due to unfavorable currency impacts. Weaker system sales in our industrial coatings and polymer processing product lines were partially offset by growth in packaging and non-woven product lines. Both our industrial coating and polymer product lines are coming off as strong system delivery years in 2024, and you may also recall that we're in the midst of transitioning selected industrial coating manufacturing to our new South Carolina plant, which should be substantially completed in the second fiscal quarter. EBITDA for the segment was $113 million in the quarter, or 38% of sales. This is a decrease of 10% compared to the prior year EBITDA of $126 million, driven by lower sales volumes in the quarter. EBITDA margin improved 1% despite lower sales year-over-year due to a higher mix of parts and consumables versus the prior year. Turning to slide 7, you'll see medical and fluid solution sales of $194 million increased 21% compared to the prior year's first quarter. Growth was driven by the acquired Atrion business, which delivered $53 million in revenue during the quarter. This was offset by double-digit declines in our medical interventional product lines, where destocking trends continue to impact demand, and we completed some strategic program rationalizations to reposition the business for profitable growth. It's important to note that these destocking trends began in our second quarter of fiscal 2024, impacting the year-over-year decline on a comparative basis. We expect our interventional product lines to return to sequential growth heading into the second quarter of this year. EBITDA for medical and fluid solutions was $64 million, or 33% of sales, which was an 8% increase from prior year EBITDA of $60 million. The increase was driven by higher sales from the Atrion acquisition. EBITDA margins were down 400 basis points, reflecting the lower contribution from Atrion. But as a reminder, we expect our EBITDA margins to improve sequentially for the Atrion business as we continue to integrate and implement NBS Next to improve manufacturing efficiencies and overall profitability. Importantly, Atrion's first quarter performance was actually well ahead of our initial targets for this business. Turning to slide 8, you'll see advanced technology solution sales were $121 million, an 11% decrease compared to the prior year first quarter. The decrease included a 10% organic volume decline, as well as an unfavorable currency translation of 1%. The decrease in sales was driven by double-digit declines in electronics processing and X-ray product lines. partially offset by growth in our optical sensors and measurement and control businesses. Despite weaker Q1 performance, we continue to see improvement in order intake as the semiconductor and electronic applications we serve continue to show signs of improvement. Orders were up double digits in the quarter versus the prior year, and backlog grew double digits sequentially from the end of the year for this segment. In short, we continue to see encouraging signs in ATS for the balance of 2025, despite a slow start to the year. First quarter EBITDA was $23 million for the segment, or 19% of sales, in line with the prior year first quarter EBITDA of $23 million, or 17% of sales. The improvement in EBITDA margin was driven by continued emphasis on cost management and improve manufacturing efficiency. The margin enhancements we've implemented position the ATS segment well as demand continues to improve. Finally, let's turn to the balance sheet and cash flows on slide nine. At the end of the first quarter, we had cash on hand of $130 million, and net debt was $2.1 billion, resulting in a leverage ratio of 2.4 times based on trailing 12-month EBITDA. This is a slight improvement from year-end and within our long-term targeted leverage range of two to two and a half times. Our free cash flow generation continues to be a compounding strength at $138 million during the quarter, resulting in a 146% conversion rate on net income. And we continue to strategically deploy this strong cash flow. During the quarter, we repurchased approximately $60 million in shares in addition to our quarterly dividend of $45 million, which, as a reminder, we increased by 15% at the end of last year. We also reduced net debt by $20 million during the quarter, while continuing to invest in our base businesses, spending $21 million on capital investments during the quarter. All in all, we had a solid operational quarter despite a slower sales start, and we're well positioned to capitalize on profitable growth as demand normalizes in selected key end markets. With that, let's turn to slide

Sundaram Nagarajan, CEO

10, and I'll turn the call back to Naga. Thanks, Dan. I also want to thank the Norton team for delivering strong operating performance in a challenging demand environment. While first quarter was a slow start to the year from a revenue perspective, I am encouraged by our ability to deliver best-in-class profitability in varying market scenarios while remaining invested in our best growth opportunities. Among our bright spots is the ongoing integration of the Atrion acquisition. During the quarter, I had the opportunity to visit our three new Atrion manufacturing sites. I'm excited about the strong product portfolio that we acquired, as well as the Energetic colleagues for quickly embracing and starting to deploy the NBS Next Growth Framework. We're also seeing growing acceptance of Atrion's newest generation myocardial protection system, which is used during open-heart procedures. Positive market acceptance is accelerating sales for this product, including an attractive opportunity to recapitalize its installed base. Also during the quarter, several of our product lines were celebrated with notable industry achievements. Norton's SpinSam Acoustic Inspection System won three awards for its industry-leading wafer inspection throughput and best-in-class image quality, defect capture, and footprint. Our QuadraPro manual x-ray system received the Productronica Innovation Award for its exceptional image clarity and defect detection capabilities within back-end semiconductor and SMT applications. And our Precision Agriculture Division's new Orion Pro product was recognized for technical innovation at the EIMA 2024 International Agriculture Machinery Exhibition. The Orion Pro is an integrated system for regulating and measuring the actual amount of products sprayed by liquid fertilizer distribution systems. Two notable electronics customers also recognized our market-leading collaboration. In December, we received supplier awards, both from TSMC and JABL, recognizing our product performance and support of critical underfill applications, as well as our dedicated, responsive, and talented local Norton teams. We remain committed to product innovation, tracking strong vitality metrics in our packaging assembly and non-woven product lines. This is reflected in the strong performance of those product lines in the quarter. We also have new products currently being launched in our medical fluid components and polymer processing product lines. In all cases, these new products are designed to solve the unique needs of our customers. Regardless of dynamic environment, NordSyn remains steadfast in our commitment to innovation through differentiated products, our customer intimate sales model, and protecting the diversified niche and markets we operate. These competitive advantages secure our position as a high-quality growth compounder, even in challenging macro environments. Our division-led organization provides our teams with a clear view of our end markets and they know where we need to focus and where we're doing well. We will continue to manage costs in weaker sales environments while balancing investments that support the increasing order entry trends that we experience throughout the quarter. Turning now to our outlook on slide 11, we're entering the second quarter of fiscal 2025 with approximately $670 million in backlog, an order entry that continued to improve throughout the quarter across all three segments. Based on these factors, as well as current foreign exchange rates and end market expectations, we anticipate delivering second quarter sales in the range of $650 million to $690 million and adjusted earnings in the range of $2.30 to $2.50 per diluted share. At this point in time, we're not updating our full year guidance range, although we would now expect our sales for the year to be on the lower end of our full year expectations, given the slower start to the year and broader geopolitical macro environment dynamics. As always, I want to thank our customers, shareholders, and the Norton team for your continued support. With that, we will pause and take your questions.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. At this time, I would like to remind everyone that in order to ask a question, press the star button, then the number one on your telephone keypad. One moment, please, for your first question. Your first question comes from the line of Matt Somerville of DA Davidson. Please go ahead.

Matt Somerville, Analyst — DA Davidson & Co.

Thanks. A couple questions. Help me understand a little bit more about what played out in your electronics-related business in the quarter. I guess I was under the impression that you had seen order inflection supporting a returned and sustained sort of pathway to organic growth in that business. So help me understand kind of how the quarter played out and then how incoming orders inform the go-forward view on semi-slash-electronics, and then I will follow up.

Sundaram Nagarajan, CEO

Thanks, Matt. But, you know, the myths of our ATS business really was largely timing of orders, particularly in our X-ray and electronic processing product lines. In short, you know, we expected more of our backlog to ship in the quarter at the beginning of the quarter, which is what happened. But that said, order entry throughout the quarter progressed very positively, and we expect the sales or shipments of ATS to continue to be strong through the year. And, you know, in this segment, order entry is up double-digit, backlog is up double-digit, probably the strongest we have seen in this part of the cycle.

Matt Somerville, Analyst — DA Davidson & Co.

And then as a follow-up, just getting over to the interventional side of your medical-related business, starting the anniversary that de-stock, you mentioned you expect to see quarter-on-quarter growth. When do we start to see year-on-year growth more aligned to the long-term trajectory you lay out for that business?

Daniel Hopgood, CFO

Yeah, I think the inflection of that, as we said, the destocking really started in earnest in the second quarter of last year. And so from a year-over-year comp, I think we'll continue to see tough comps through the first half of the year. And then we would expect to see that inflection point starting in really Q3 and heading into Q4.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Andrew Buscalli of BNP Parabo. Please go ahead.

Andrew Buscalli, Analyst — BNP Paribas

Hey, good morning, guys. Good morning. Morning. In the ATS segment, if you were to include that the movement of that measurement control solutions piece, what would organic growth have been? And then what's the rationale behind moving that out of IPS and into ATS? Yeah, let me take that question first. Look,

Sundaram Nagarajan, CEO

there is a significant overlap in customers for MCS with the IPS customers. But if you look at it from a product perspective and the technology perspective it is more a test and measurement kind of division and so it belongs better with our you know further analysis we have decided to have that in the ATS business and you have you can you answer the part of that without and with

Daniel Hopgood, CFO

Yeah, and to be honest, it's not a huge impact. Certainly, organically, they were a positive contributor to the segment. But when you look at the materiality of the MCS business versus the total segment, it's not a big needle mover on the overall growth or organic impact year on year. Certainly, MCS grew year over year, and it mitigated a little bit of the decline that we saw in some of the electronics processing and X-ray that we mentioned. But it's not a big needle mover to either segment, I would say.

Andrew Buscalli, Analyst — BNP Paribas

Yeah, and I'd say a slower start to the year than you expected, and you're trending towards the low end of that guidance range for the top line for the full year. Are there things you're working on to still achieve at least the midpoint of EPS, whether it's further restructuring or some sort of margin enhancement?

Daniel Hopgood, CFO

Yeah, it's a great question. Let me take that one. And, look, I would say as we think about the full year and the reason we're not changing our guidance range is it's frankly a little soon to call exactly how the year is going to play out. We're in a very dynamic environment, depending on the headlines you read changing day to day. What I would say is just based on the soft start to the year, you know, we see our sales toward the lower end of our range. But as we've demonstrated in Q1, we're still quite confident that we can deliver on our earnings commitment, even with sales toward the lower end of that range. So for those reasons, we're not going to tighten things up. I think as we get into, as we finish out the second quarter and we reassess, you know, where our backlogs and order rates, which, as Naga mentioned, have been quite strong, we'll reassess what that looks like for the full year and tighten things up. What I would say is we're comfortable in our sales range and pretty comfortable with our earnings commitments despite the slow start to the sales year. And that's really demonstrated in our first quarter profit delivery.

Sundaram Nagarajan, CEO

let me let me maybe add to that you know so if you think if you zoom up and say look let me look at it broadly and think about the market and where the company's at and what we're thinking about for the full year i'll tell you on the positive side order entry is up in all three segments backlog building in all three segments ats being a significant contributor to the backlog increases operational performance is strong in a weak environment like dan mentioned we had a very strong operating uh operating income performance very well positioned to grow third thing i would tell you is our innovations in many of our businesses are starting to deliver on growth if you think about our adhesive business our harmony applicator that is in the market is contributing nicely to our growth. If you think about SpinSam and new addition, it is not contributing to growth yet, but it positions us really well to continue to grow. If you look in the medical side in our fluid components business, a new product line called PharmaLock starting to launch. So innovation, operational performance, order entry, all three positives for the outlook that we're thinking about. But clearly, one negative is this environment we live in. If you ignore the environment and we look at our order entry in backlog, you'd be very confident. But one negative is there is a broader trappiness in geopolitical as well as macroeconomic environment. So hopefully that helps you.

Andrew Buscalli, Analyst — BNP Paribas

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Jeff Hammond of Keyback Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Jeffrey Hammond, Analyst — KeyBanc Capital Markets

Hey, good morning. Good morning. Morning. So just real quick on the guide, it sounds like you think right now lower end of the sales guide, but you're still kind of closer to the midpoint. One, is that correct? And two, what are kind of the drivers that are kind of offsetting, you know, the weaker sales?

Daniel Hopgood, CFO

Yeah, so I appreciate the question, Mike, and I think that's the right way to think about it. And, you know, I would say the best indicator is look at our performance for the first quarter. We were at the very low end of our sales guidance and still delivered the midpoint or slightly above the midpoint of our earnings guidance. That's not a fluke. We think that's replicatable for the balance of the year. Again, the sales outlook, I think it's too soon to call. You know, typically, I'll remind you guys, we typically see a much stronger second half in general. You look at our history across the company. In a market where we see accelerating orders, that trend could be even exacerbated. And so it's a bit of a wait and see and continue to monitor how demand continues to play out for the year. Indicators today are very good. If that continues, you know, we'll see how the second half plays out. But what I would say in general is even if we don't see any continued acceleration, we're comfortable with our sales on the lower end that we can still deliver on our profit commitments by simply managing our operations and our cost structure to ensure that we can deliver on those commitments.

Sundaram Nagarajan, CEO

You know, maybe add a little bit color to it if you take segment by segment, right? So if you think about ATS, we've got this business position from a cost perspective through the last down cycle. And if you look at the decremental performance of this segment in the first quarter, it is very strong. I mean, they had a tough organic revenue growth, but their decrementals were pretty much flat in terms of dollar income they generated when compared to last year. right? So from an ATS perspective, a nice performance. And if you think about decrementals for IPS, again, a very strong performance. This is a solid business. This is a business where we have implemented NBS Next and has delivered great. So if you think about those two, we're in very good shape. And if you look at MFS, if you look at MFS with the ATRION together, there is a mix issue and you could think that our operating performance or operating margin performance was not that good but i would remind you that you have atrion which is at a lower margin when compared to our core mfs businesses and if you if you account for that our core mfs businesses again had strong detrimental performance so so that is the confidence we have as we think about it And in businesses where we have weaker sales, we are taking action to reduce cost. It is not broad-based. It's not across all of our businesses. But in places where our sales is weak, we are adjusting costs. So that's maybe adding a little bit more color to what Dan is telling you about what our expectations are.

Jeffrey Hammond, Analyst — KeyBanc Capital Markets

No, that's very helpful. i wanted to follow up on that that medical margin dynamic can you give us a sense of how much of the margin dilution was just atrion coming in and and what the decrementals were on the base because you know and it's and then and then how it looks you know from a dilution perspective as we go forward and then just on the medical destocking i mean i understand that the comps get easier but just any update on you know kind of where we're at in that process is it still the view that you know that carries through the first half and then you know and then

Daniel Hopgood, CFO

abates thanks yeah so the simple way to think of it i would say medical our core medical business were basically in line with what we would expect here on the line. The majority of the overall, even I'm speaking to EBITDA margins, the majority of the overall EBITDA is tied to, you know, look, the growth in MFS came from Atrion, which is a lower EBITDA margin from our base business. But I would say, to Naga's point, our decrementals in our base business are right in line with what we expect, and you throw on top of that, adding, you know, $53 million, let's say, you know, mid-20s EBITDA, that's the majority of the dilution that you're charging year over year.

Sundaram Nagarajan, CEO

Let me, I'm not sure, you know, at least the line was cutting out a little bit. Let me make sure we, you know, I repeat what some of what Dan mentioned here. Let's start with our core MFS business. Clearly, our core MFS business EBITDA margins are, you know, better than Atrion. Atrion margins are sort of in the mid-20s, and we certainly have a very good line of sight for that business to continue to improve and get to our valuation model expectations around, you know, high 20s to low 30s, right? So that pathway is there. So long-term, Atrion continues to improve and continues to add to MFS, right? In terms of MFS core decrementals, the core decrementals were in line with what we have for the company. So there is, you know, for us, the MFS performance was mainly due to mix issues with Atrion contributing while core businesses organically being down.

Jeffrey Hammond, Analyst — KeyBanc Capital Markets

And then just the de-stocking.

Sundaram Nagarajan, CEO

Yeah. From the de-stocking perspective, you know, if you remember, de-stocking started some time last year. There are two things going on here, and this is probably something that we have not talked about. But you have, you know, we were organically down 11% in MFS, and half of that is from de-stocking, but half of it is also, for the first time, you're seeing a reset in our strategic repositioning of some programs that we have in our finished devices. And so that restocking is, that repositioning of programs is substantially complete. And so you will start to see from second quarter a sequential growth in that, and destocking should abate sometime in third to fourth quarter. And we are starting to see order rates. So I think what is important to know is that order rates in our medical interventional component business are picking up, or order rates in our medical fluid components have been very strong. So, this is the business that had undergone a lot of de-stocking from a biopharma and surgical perspective. That is coming back very nicely. And we're beginning to see sequential improvement on MIS.

Daniel Hopgood, CFO

Yeah, I think that's an important point, Naga. Our medical business is contributing to both the order growth and the backlog growth. As I said, all three of our segments are here. And so, we see a very good line of sight to sequential improvement. The year-over-year comp will be tough until the second half.

Jeffrey Hammond, Analyst — KeyBanc Capital Markets

Okay, thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Michael Lauren of Bird. Please go ahead.

Michael Lauren, Analyst — Baird

Hey, good morning, everyone. Good morning. So, not to overly harp on the guide, I just want to make sure I understand what's embedded on the revenue side of things. Obviously, the first quarter, as you said, was a little earlier expectations, FX a little worse. Is that a majority of the move, excuse me, for the revenue to be at the low end? And maybe I suppose, what is the assumption then for end market recovery curves, normal seasonality, backlog conversion that's embedded in that lower assumption? Is it pretty normal sequentials from here, pretty normal backlog outlay? Any kind of color around those things would be super helpful.

Daniel Hopgood, CFO

Yeah, I appreciate the question. So I'll start with a couple of things. As you look at our backlog, I can't say 100% because there's some one-offs in there, but the vast majority of our backlog will ship in 2025. We're not taking multi-year orders. This isn't a replay of COVID where we're taking orders three years out. These are current year deliveries. And so I think as you look at ongoing book-to-bill and or backlog, I think that's the way to think about it is that these are normal recurring orders that we're taking in, not any type of long-term pre-orders like we've had coming out of COVID in some of our businesses. As I think about the full year, again, if you just play out the first quarter miss or the first quarter shortfall of sales, I mean, that's naturally, if you flow that through for the year, going to put us toward the lower end of our sales guidance. We are expecting some level of recovery in the second half that is supported by, number one, I would say our normal cyclicality of the business. We typically have a stronger second half to begin with, but it's also supported by the acceleration that we're seeing in order intake throughout the first quarter, and frankly, even into the early days of the second quarter. And so I think if you think about that outlook, I'll maybe talk about what underlies our revenue assumptions for the year. If you think of the low end of our guidance, you know, that basically says we're going to see low single-digit growth for the year in ATS. We're going to see basically flattish to slightly down sales within our IPS and our medical business. And then we're going to see the contribution come through from the Atrion acquisition. If you think of the higher end of our guidance, that anticipates, I would say, a more accelerated, more historical recovery in our ATS segment, which we're not banking on. So let's call that a bigger ramp in ATS, as well as recovery in some of the capital investment cycles and industrial and a bigger rebound from the destocking and medical. So, you know, we're not counting on new significant recoveries. That doesn't mean it couldn't happen. And so as we look at it today, we're simply following it based on what we see today. And that would say, you know, the first quarter miss is going to kind of flow through. But the rest of the year seems to be playing out in line.

Michael Lauren, Analyst — Baird

Good. Super helpful there. And then just kind of a question on once that recovery happens in these markets, I know earlier Naga was talking about the positive decremental margin performance, particularly in the ETS side, and I suppose as well in the MFS side. What does the torque look like to the upside? You know, obviously the IPS margins are already at really healthy levels, and no aided by mix, but still really strong levels. What kind of work would you expect to see in those margins or incremental margins as the volume recovers and normalizes to a more historically normal pattern?

Daniel Hopgood, CFO

Let me make sure I understand your question. You're asking from an incremental margin performance what we would expect going forward. Is that the question? Correct. yeah um yeah i think our my best guidance to that would be in line with what we've said um historically which is you know look overall we've said about a 35 incremental mixed between acquisition and organic and as you think about that obviously the organic growth comes with a higher incremental acquisition as we talked about with atrion's margins comes with the lower incremental. So, I would think of that blended rate of 35% as still a good long-term planning target. Obviously, the organic above that, the inorganic below that, but that 35% mix is kind of a good blended range to use still. Appreciate it. Thank you. Yeah. Next question comes from

Operator

the line of Sergey Boroditsky of Jefferies. Please go ahead. Thanks for taking the question. So,

Sergey Boroditsky, Analyst — Jefferies

maybe building on the last question, as we think specifically on ATS, you know, that business has seen margins decrease substantially over the last few years. So how should we think about incrementals in this segment once demand inflects? And what would it take to get back to that, you know, 23% plus margins you saw in 2022? Or is that sort of a one-time event? Thanks.

Sundaram Nagarajan, CEO

Yeah. You know, in general, we expect that as the sales recovers, we get back to where the margins are we were in 2022. You know, there may be some upside, but, you know, remember, this is a business where our R&D investments are critical to our growth. And so you're always going to see this business have higher R&D investments. But as the sales recover, I have, you know, confidence that we get back to the margins we were at in 2022. That's helpful. And maybe just

Sergey Boroditsky, Analyst — Jefferies

on the weaker growth in IPS, how much of this is related to underlying demand versus the challenging comparables that you had from the strong incoming backlog from last year? I think the IPS, let me,

Sundaram Nagarajan, CEO

I'll give you a broader view and then Dan can help you with a little bit more detail. On IPS, the biggest comparable issues are in our system businesses, our two large system businesses of PPS and ICS, where we had shipments from prior huge backlogs. But if you think about our consumer non-durable business, our diesel business, they are growing nicely in line with our expectations

Daniel Hopgood, CFO

already. And I think maybe just to add some additional color on the industrial coatings and polymer businesses. To your point, if you go back to last year, large backlogs, large multi-year backlogs that we were working on, that has normalized. And so from a year-over-year compability standpoint, that does create some tough comps this year. But importantly, when we talk about order strengthening and backlog growth, we are seeing it in those businesses as well. And so we see a clear path to that starting to rebuild and inflect. And I think, you know, you'll see that play out in the form of sequential growth in those businesses going forward. But we'll have this year-over-year comparability to work through because of the large system backlog that we had coming out of the last couple of years.

Sundaram Nagarajan, CEO

You know, one additional point to make here is we're also beginning to see modest sequential improvement in our ARAG business. And I know the general agriculture market is still down, but we're beginning to see some modest improvement in order entry and backlog in that business.

Sergey Boroditsky, Analyst — Jefferies

Thank you.

Operator

Once again, ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, press the star button, followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from the line of Chris Dankert of Food Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Chris Dankert, Analyst — Loop Capital Markets

Hey, morning, guys. Maybe just a conceptual question. I guess if we go back to the medical segment, Atrion's been doing really well on an organic basis. is there anything to learn from Atrion's operations in terms of they didn't seem to get de-stocked the same way that Legacy Interventional did. So, I mean, is there a difference in customer set? Is there a difference in how they stocked? Maybe just conceptually, how do we think about

Sundaram Nagarajan, CEO

that? Yeah, I think it's a great question, Chris. There are two things going on which you need to recognize atrion serves the fluid components and that you know atrion has two parts to it one is the consumable component part another is the system part so in their system this is the myocardial protection system that they're launching their new generation product which is the third generation and that market acceptance as i mentioned in my comments uh is going really well so you have the benefit of a new product launch and a recap of existing systems, which is different and has got no resemblance to our MIS business, our medical interventional business. That's one. On the component side of the business, which is their Hockey Roberts business, in that business, they went through de-stocking long before we started seeing it in our medical interventional business. So there is a timing difference there. And then the third thing I would tell you is our fluid component business resembles more the Atrion component business than our medical interventional business, right? So there are different products, different end markets. We are seeing the same patterns we are seeing in Hockey Roberts' business, in Atrion's component business, as we are seeing in our medical fluid component business, right? Hopefully that helps you.

Chris Dankert, Analyst — Loop Capital Markets

That's extremely helpful. Thank you, Naga. Sure. And then maybe just to circle back, I mean, back in October, and I could be interpreting this wrong, but you sounded fairly optimistic about just the deals that were out there from an acquisition perspective, what was kind of coming across your desk. I guess, would you echo that same level of optimism today?

Sundaram Nagarajan, CEO

Yes. You know, we continue to be active. We continue to look at deals. But we're going to be pretty strategically and financially disciplined, you know. And so we continue to work the pipeline. Our pipeline continues to build. A number of inbound may be lesser, but, you know, we still have a pretty good pipeline, you know. so what you read in the papers around inbound is lesser but the activity level continues to be pretty good for us but you know we're going to be uh we're going to be thoughtful in what what we choose to do makes sense well thanks for the color yep

Operator

your next question comes from the line of walter libtac of seaport global please go ahead hi good morning guys good morning

Walter Liptack, Analyst — Seaport Global

I wanted to ask, go back to that, the 2025 guidance on sales, you know, questions again, and just, I think, Dan, when you were going through, you gave some good kind of delineation around the segments, and so just to repeat it back so, you know, I heard them right. You're thinking that MFS could be mid to high end of the revenue guide, ATS at the low end, and IPS at the low end. Is that kind of what you guys are thinking on a segment basis?

Daniel Hopgood, CFO

No. So what I was referring to is if you think of the upper and lower bounds of our guidance, what I would say is if you think of the lower end of our guide, that would say our IPS or the industrial businesses are down low single digits for the year. and MFF is down most single digits or near flat year over year, excluding Atrion, right? Set aside Atrion. And then the low end of our guidance would contemplate what I would say a very modest recovery in ATS. So think of ATS being up low single digits. That's kind of our, that's our low end thinking, right? Converse that with the upper end of our guidance would be a more traditional ramp in ATS of higher growth, again, which we're not counting on, but could happen. And it would also contemplate a faster recovery from some of the de-stockings that we're seeing in the medical business. So think, you know, low single digit growth in medical, as well as the general recovery in the industrial markets. And so I would say the upper end is more stronger recovery in ATS, low single-digit growth in medical and industrial, versus the low end of our guidance would say there's very little recovery in medical, very little recovery in industrial, and just modest recovery in ATS, if that helps with some color. Okay, yeah, I appreciate

Walter Liptack, Analyst — Seaport Global

that. That's very helpful. And just kind of drilling into the industrial precision part of it a little bit. Happy to hear that ARAG, that there's a potential plus there. I wonder if you could go into maybe a little bit more detail about is it a new product? Is it Europe? Is it rest of the world where you're seeing some green shoots? And then maybe talk about some of those other sectors beyond polymers and coatings. Now I know you know the auto sector very well, you know, what's going on there, you know, what's happening with other things.

Daniel Hopgood, CFO

So, great question. Maybe I'll start and let Naga add some comments. I'll start with you responding maybe to the ARAG question. So, as Naga mentioned, so, A, on the product side, we are continuing to, you know, evolve and bring new products to market. In fact, I think we mentioned one that we received some awards for recently. More generally, as far as demand in that business, we've certainly seen that business stabilized. We're seeing good, what I'll say, ongoing recovery and order rates. We would expect that business to return to year-over-year growth in the second quarter as they're continuing to show strength in order rates. I will tell you, really Q1, and I think we've mentioned this before, Q1 is really the last tough comparison for them. If you recall last year at this time or in the first quarter, they were working off a large backlog. And so that first quarter last year was kind of the last tough comp for them. We've seen that business stabilize, I would say, even going back to Q4. We're now starting to move back into this growth mode as we're past the year-over-year comparisons, our tough comparisons. So good stability, good ongoing demand improvement, and a good path to returning to growth in that business in the next quarter.

Sundaram Nagarajan, CEO

So let me follow up with that. You know, one other additional data point on ARAG is that during last year, you know, So this business performed really well on the margin side as well. And partly that was because they used the short work week program that is available in Italy for industrial businesses. Now, what is interesting is that in the first quarter, given their order dynamics, they have brought back their workforce completely. So essentially getting ready and being able to make products so that they can start to meet the commitments they've made with their customers. So that is kind of another data point that gives us confidence that our ARAC business will start to return to growth. So now let's take the broader industrial businesses, and we've already talked about our plastic business. We've talked about our ICS business. Interestingly, even in both those businesses, we have two new product introductions. On the ICS side, we have a new manual powder coating product that has been launched, which is doing really well. And you also have a prodigy dye that is in the plastics business that is getting very good market acceptance. So we have some new products, but it's very difficult to overcome the system declines that they have. But interesting comments to sort of share with you. In terms of our other adhesive businesses, our non-woven business is doing extremely well. We have new products there. We have a Harmony applicator that I mentioned that is doing very well, adding to the work that they're doing on parts growth. That is also doing well. Their system business through product tiering has been very successful for them. So that business, after a couple of years of down years, it is coming back nicely. Our packaging business, adhesive packaging business, is holding its own. And they have some pretty exciting new products that they're working on that, you know, we expect towards the end of the year that we'll be in market with. So, you know, pretty good movement across our industrial businesses. You know, one thing to note, and I'm not sure how it came across in our conversations, our parts mix in the ADC businesses are pretty strong, and they've done well, and they have mitigated some of the system weaknesses. But having said all of that, the order entry is up in this segment. It is up in plastics. It is up in ICS, and it's also up in our businesses that have grown in the quarter. So hopefully that gives you a little bit more data points. Yeah, thanks for that detail. Appreciate it.

Operator

There are no further questions at this time. With that, I will now turn the call back over to Naga for final closing remarks. Please go ahead.

Sundaram Nagarajan, CEO

Thank you for your time and attention on today's call. Have a great day.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes your conference call. We thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your lines.