Conference Transcript - PH 2026-02-18

Julian, Analyst — Moderator

Great. Thanks, everyone, for being here. It's my pleasure to have up next Parker-Hannifin Corporation, Todd Leonbruno, Chief Financial Officer. Todd has, I think, a couple of slides to go through, and then we'll get into questions after that.

Todd Leombruno, CFO

Well, Julian, thanks to be here. It's great to see so many people in the room. It's a wonderful time to be here to talk about Parker-Hannifin. I just have a few slides to give an overview for those people that aren't familiar. We are now 109 years old as a company, and we have been in the motion control space that entire time. You can just see here, our sales were guiding to be $21 billion in sales this year, and what is really nice is it's almost equally split across our businesses. The company now has 31% of our sales exposure in aerospace segment, And our diversified industrial segment, we split that into North America and international. And you can see here, it's about 30% international and about 40% North America. If you're looking for a little additional color, you can see our technology platforms, which we break out just to give a little bit more color. And again, aerospace is 31% of the company. Filtration in engineered materials is now nearly 30% of the company. Flow and process control, a little over 20. and then Motion Systems is 17% of the company. So all of this is interconnected. It all works. The portfolio is extremely focused on serving customer needs in that space. What's a unique concept about our portfolio is two-thirds of our portfolio is sold to customers that buy from four or more of those technologies. These things can be interconnected in any way that creates value for our customers. And that we have been trying over the last 10 years to shift the portfolio from more short-cycle business to more longer-cycle business. And I think we've been pretty successful with that process. We try to give you a breakdown of our markets. This is end market exposure. You can see our largest is aerospace and defense. You may say, well, why is that not 31%? We do have technologies in our industrial business, mainly filtration and sealing technologies that go to aerospace and markets. We just keep them with the technologies that are in the industrial business. That's how we get to 35. But our second largest market is in plant and industrial equipment. You can see that's 20%. Transportation would be number three at 15. We go off highway at 13, and then obviously some nice energy and HVAC exposure. And I already said this, we're guiding to $21 billion in sales this fiscal year. If you ask yourself, well, how has Parker Hannafin been able to win? We have an unbelievable operating system. We call it the win strategy. We are fiercely decentralized when it comes to our operations. We have 85 individual P&L owners across the business that are responsible for growth, for margin expansion, for cash flow generation. Those are their expectations. That's how their team is compensated and it has worked wonderfully. Our products are innovative. Some people have thought maybe these are commodity-based products. These are technologies that we apply to solve customer problems in ways that no one else can do with our offering. We have an unbelievable distribution network. Fifty percent of our industrial business goes through this distribution network. that is mainly serving the aftermarket, but also small to medium-sized OEMs across the globe. And all of that can be put together in a system if a customer finds value in it, or we could sell an individual technology if there's more value in that transaction as well. So a very strong competitive moat. That's why we believe we're the leader in the space. And it has all worked. I love this chart. This is just a 10-year look at what we've been able to do. as a company. You can see we've grown revenue at a 6% CAGR over a 10-year period. We have expanded margins unbelievably, 1,150 basis points of margin expansion over that time period. We've grown EPS at a 16% CAGR over the last 10 years, and we've grown cash flow at 10%, which is, you can see, greater than what we've been able to grow sales. So all of that has worked, and it's not over yet. When we look at how we grew EPS 16%, roughly 60%, 6-0% of that growth came from implementing the win strategy in legacy Parker Hannafin businesses. And you can see we've added five wonderful companies to the portfolio, Clarkor, Lord, Exotic, Megit, and just recently Curtis. All of that has accounted to 40% of our EPS growth. And then you probably have seen we just recently announced the agreement to acquire the filtration group. We expect this trend to continue as we go into the future, and we expect filtration group to be just another addition to the portfolio that we're very

Julian, Analyst — Moderator

much looking forward to close. So I believe that's my last slide. So Julian, I'll take questions from wherever, and we can get started. Great. Thanks so much, Todd. Maybe first question, you know, I think a lot of investors here are kind of wondering about is there a real U.S. industrial recovery, something picking up in short cycle MRO or CapEx wallets being opened a little bit wider. You know, how do you see that environment right now in the U.S.? You know, any changes in kind of recent months? Well, you know,

Todd Leombruno, CFO

I can't start without mentioning the strength in our aerospace business. Obviously, that's a separate segment from the industrial business, but that business has been unbelievably strong. I think we're in year three of double-digit organic growth in aerospace, and it just continues to perform beyond expectations. So we expect that to continue. What is promising is on the industrial side of the business, we've started to see some movement. Obviously, we've had two years of negative organic growth in that space, but our orders have turned positive that has been trending upward. We have raised our organic growth guide. We started with one. We went to two. We just recently updated to two and a half. So we feel really good about that on the North American side of the business. We're starting to see some pickup in the in-plant and industrial equipment. That has been really positive. A highway has been positive. Things like mining, construction have been really positive. Transportation still continues to be a more challenged market. You know, we are expecting still softness in that market. And then there's starting to be some growth in energy. Certainly PowerGen has been a nice positive spot there. Our oil and gas markets are showing some positivity, which is nice. And then, you know, and lastly, I would say on the HVAC side, the commercial side of the business has been positive. And, you know, residential is still pretty soft, but the commercial has shown some strength. So we think it's real. We think it's time. We have been preparing for this. And I would tell you, our operations are ready. I believe our supply chain is ready. And we're ready to see that organic growth trend continue.

Julian, Analyst — Moderator

And what do you think underpins some of that? I mean, different end markets have their idiosyncratic drivers. Is there any broad brush, you know, trigger for the animal spirits kind of warming up?

Todd Leombruno, CFO

Well, obviously, you know, this has been a pretty traumatic times with tariffs and geopolitical noise and all of that. And I think we're starting to see at least we've been able to kind of deal with it, right? Tariffs we've got some clarity on. Interest rates are moving lower. I think both our distributors and our OEM customers have done a great job leveling inventory levels to demand. I think they've been at a good level. They've been matching demand for some time now. We're starting to hear little comments around restocking. It hasn't been material enough yet to get overly excited about, but we view it as a good sign, and we view it that it's a good sign for future demand.

Julian, Analyst — Moderator

Got it. And when you think about that split of sort of distribution type channels versus OEM customers in the industrial side of the company, any difference in sort of behavior on orders or sales between the two?

Todd Leombruno, CFO

No, like I just mentioned, inventory levels we think are at a good level in both parts of the channel. There's been positive sentiment in the distribution network for some time, and we're starting to see a little bit, you know, I would say pockets of activity, right? Some things around data centers, some things around PowerGen, some things around oil and gas have been popping up as being positive. On the OEM side of it, you know, I think we're almost there. We're starting to see some good stuff in mining that is driving that. I think ag still has a way to go before that becomes anything to talk about. But overall, I would say the sentiment is leaning positive in both.

Julian, Analyst — Moderator

And in-plant equipment, you know, a big end market vertical for you. How do you see that kind of globally looking at present? and it's been a difficult two years manufacturing PMIs globally, tough for a while.

Todd Leombruno, CFO

Yeah, you know, North America and Asia-Pac, I would say, are showing some signs of growth. Europe continues to be, you know, I would say, struggling, bouncing around the bottom. What has been really fantastic about our team is our team has been able to generate record margins in all three segments in every business by utilizing tools within the win strategy, being proactive, managing the demand levels as they are, and preparing for the rebound. So I couldn't be more happy with the teams that we've been able to generate these record margins even in a not-so-great growth environment.

Julian, Analyst — Moderator

And, you know, you mentioned a good sign of pickup in orders in different parts of diversified industrial recently. You know, to what extent is that kind of longer-dated activity,

Todd Leombruno, CFO

or do you see the longer and short cycle both? It's a great point. It's something that we've talked about. It's something that we've strived really hard to transform our portfolio into longer cycle. Orders have been positive for a number of quarters. You know, usually, historically, that would immediately turn into positive organic growth. It's been a little bit more stretched out. There's been some aerospace orders. Those are very long cycle. There's been some PowerGen orders, which are certainly longer cycle. And when we dig into the detail on the orders, we're seeing more longer cycle orders than we've ever had. So that is just kind of changing that relationship to orders and organic growth. But we're happy that they're both positive. If you look at our backlog, our backlog is at a record level. Aerospace has been extremely robust. But even on the industrial side, we've finally returned to growth on that industrial backlog, and we expect that to continue.

Julian, Analyst — Moderator

I think, you know, automation investment by customers is an area Parker had mentioned recently as seeing a bit of a pickup. Any way to frame, and I realize the definition of automation is a bit subjective, but what the sort of...

Todd Leombruno, CFO

Well, I would tell you, you know, we are doing it within our facilities. I think we're doing a measured job at that. We always use lean first. We always take waste out of the process before we even think about automation. We have really focused on what we call the four Ds, dirty, dull, dangerous, or difficult. So the tasks within the facilities that fit those criteria, those are the first ones that we strive to automate. And we've been really conscious to not make big monuments when it comes to automation, but to be very flexible, very focused, and making sure that we do the right things for the business and our team members in that process. When it comes to customers, we're seeing a lot of the same stuff, right? Our products are, in many cases, driving some of those automation things when it comes to robotics or even material handling type applications. So it's a good fit, and I think, you know, the customer base and ourselves, I think we're learning together and making great progress.

Julian, Analyst — Moderator

Great. And as you said, the wind strategy has had phenomenal success. I think you pointed out the margins are up, you know, 1,150 basis points. How do you make sure, I guess, the businesses in what is a decentralized structure keep reinvesting sufficiently, you know, make sure they don't get too focused on margin percentage expansion?

Todd Leombruno, CFO

Well, that's a great concept. You know, we did raise our CapEx, our internal CapEx budget. You know, for years we'd been, you know, between 1.6% and 1.8% of sales. We did move that to 2.5%. So I think that we're appropriately investing in things like automation and productivity, in some cases capacity, where we need it in the world. So I feel like that is a great sign. But it is clearly a balance. And, you know, when we have these 85 units, the team that is running those units, they're responsible for growth. They're responsible for margin expansion. They're responsible for, you know, EPS growth, and they're responsible for cash flow. So all of those things kind of goes into that equation. And I feel like it's the right formula. I think we're investing the right amount. I don't see it spiking above that 2.5% of sales, and it is generating the results, and we can see them in the P&Ls.

Julian, Analyst — Moderator

Great. And on the aerospace side, you know, more of a focus now, I suppose, on OE production rates, picking up in commercial, defense, a lot more discussed for 18 months now. You know, how would you say Parker's position on the military side of the aero segment?

Todd Leombruno, CFO

You know, whether it's military or commercial, we are unbelievably positioned with the addition of Exotic and with the addition of Megit into our business. You see it's now 35% of our exposure. So we're able to do things for both commercial and military applications that we never had been able to do before in the past, things around safety, things around fluid conveyance, things around actuation, things around braking and landing systems that just get you into deeper conversations with those OEMs. We have a nice mix between our commercial and defense business. We see the world clearly needs more defense. and we're ready to react appropriately as that comes. So it's a great space to be in. It's been part of our growth story up to now, and it will continue into the future.

Julian, Analyst — Moderator

And, you know, I think within aerospace as an industry, commercial aero aftermarket's been a huge driver the last five years. As those other areas start to show high growth as well, Is there much of a margin mix impact we should watch for?

Todd Leombruno, CFO

We're not concerned about that. You know, we now have, you know, it's basically a 50-50 mix between OEM and aftermarket. We are glad the OEM is ramping. You know, you need the OEM to ramp to have aftermarket into the future. We are in the business for the long run. What we say about the OEM ramp is, you know, there's clarity. It's very clear what you need to do. It allows you to take efficiency and waste or improve efficiency, take waste out of your business when you know what the deliveries are. And if you look back at what's been happening on the commercial side, there was a lot of noise based on delivery demand and all that kind of stuff that I think created drag in the P&L. And with volumes ramping it, we're able to take all of that noise out. There's new platforms coming. We are going to win those platforms. We're going to invest appropriately in this business, and we're going to love this aerospace exposure for a long time.

Julian, Analyst — Moderator

Got it.

Todd Leombruno, CFO

So we don't expect to have a margin drag from OEM RAM.

Julian, Analyst — Moderator

And the absolute margins in aerospace have been a huge increase, partly top-line growth leverage, partly megat synergies coming through. Yeah, it's been wonderful. Any sort of natural ceiling you worry about there, or no? It's about getting those operating leverage.

Todd Leombruno, CFO

No. I mean, it is wonderful what you can do with a business when you have three years of double-digit organic growth. Coupled with some synergies, coupled with great aftermarket mix, it really has been stellar. It has allowed us to get closer to our customers. I said this already, but the offering that we have now has never been more robust. And the capabilities that we have across the portfolio, applying things like filtration, things like material science, things like thermal management, in the aerospace markets, we've never had more capabilities than we had now. So we really like the space, and I think we're positioned to win.

Julian, Analyst — Moderator

One thing that's come up with some other companies in commercial aerospace, OE, other suppliers, has been kind of contract renewals and sort of catching up on many years of inflation in sort of one go with a program renewal. Is that something to watch at Parker, or there's a lot of different programs in the industry?

Todd Leombruno, CFO

There's countless programs, and I would tell you we've been very active. We feel that we are a partner with our customers. In many cases, we have frank discussions with the customers. If the environment has changed from the time that the contract was made, we think that merits a discussion. These things are long-term in nature, and there's give and take on both sides, but I don't feel like we've been disadvantaged by the contracts when it comes to aerospace. It's been an unbelievable time of inflationary increases, but the pricing muscle at Parker-Hannathen is unbelievably strong, and that would include the aerospace business as well.

Julian, Analyst — Moderator

Within Diversified Industrial, you know, again, it's been a lot of price increases. Do you get any impression of price fatigue by customers?

Todd Leombruno, CFO

You know, like I said, it's been an unbelievable time on inflationary pressures. We reacted quickly. We went often. We didn't wait. We didn't have, you know, large price increases. We did that kind of in line. We are back outside of tariffs. we are back to, like, a normal pricing cadence, a normal pricing discussion. And we've always said this on tariffs. You know, this is something that wasn't agreed upon when the PO was issued, when the contract was made, so that is a discussion that we have to have. And that is when they go up and when they go down. So the thought is that we'll be flexible on that, and we'll make sure that works. But I don't sense that there's any pricing fatigue in any of our end markets.

Julian, Analyst — Moderator

And I think in the last earnings deck, you had a good slide sort of focusing on the off-highway exposure, and it seems like some share gain has been happening there. Maybe flesh out kind of why you think that's happening. Is it something to do with the broad kind of system sale that Parker can do? And do you see that in other verticals beyond off-highway?

Todd Leombruno, CFO

Well, we certainly do. We've been trying to highlight, you know, maybe one vertical a quarter when it fits into the space that we have in the earnings call. But it really is a testament to the portfolio of Parker Hannafin and being able to apply, you know, conveyance and electronics and hydraulics and filtration and sealing, shielding, thermal management. And we believe that we can integrate that better than anyone else in the space. And if there's value to be had, if a customer sees value in it, If that brings a clear, documented value to their product, then we're going to win on those applications. The off-highway market is just one example of that. When you look at what technologies we're selling into that market, we tend to win when there's more than one technology on that application. And it's really not different from any of the end markets that we play in. and it really is very thoughtful on what we invest organically in and what we invest in via acquisition.

Julian, Analyst — Moderator

And, you know, on the acquisition front, you know, a large transaction will close later this year. Curtis closed last year. Any impression you could give us around kind of organic growth profiles of those businesses?

Todd Leombruno, CFO

Well, one of the things that we have really focused on when it comes to our acquisition pipeline is do they have a history of growing faster than our legacy businesses? In both cases, Filtration Group and Curtis, they had displayed the ability to grow slightly better than our legacy businesses. And obviously we haven't closed Filtration Group yet, but I can tell you on Curtis it's doing exactly what we expected out of that transaction. and what is really unique about that is it's completely paired with our electronics offering and that is now one business, one of our 85 businesses, combined with our existing electronics business and the integration is underway.

Julian, Analyst — Moderator

And maybe kind of walk us through, because, yeah, the upcoming acquisition is pretty large. How should we think about, I don't know, first sort of hundred days yeah well we've already created the integration

Todd Leombruno, CFO

team mm-hmm so our inner integration team is staff that has been one of the key elements of success for every one of the transactions that we've done in the past we are talking to and meeting the filtration group team obviously we're two different companies so we're operating totally separately up until close but we're starting to lay out the plans for how we would do that the first thing that we would do would be a win immersion session where we would welcome the filtration group team members to the Parker Hennepin team and show them how we've created so much value over the past 10 years. And that usually is a wonderful process that both parties benefit from. So that's really kind of where we're at now. And I would say that we're on track for transactions to work their way through the system.

Julian, Analyst — Moderator

Perfect. And when you think about the, I think the channel, as you said, or distribution is a key strength of Parker, you know, how easy is it to kind of use that channel, push through different product? What's been the experience?

Todd Leombruno, CFO

Yeah, so it's an unbelievable benefit that we have. The best benefit that we have through our distribution network is the offering that Parker Hannafin has. we could cover every element of the motion and control space so that there is very little competitive pressures within our distribution channel. And what we'll do is we'll add the filtration group to that, just like we will add Curtis to that, just like we added Lord and Clarkort to that channel. So it is a benefit that will drive growth and margins for years to come.

Julian, Analyst — Moderator

And then kind of firm-wide, you know, operating margins, that 29 goal is on track, I think, you know, this year.

Todd Leombruno, CFO

Yeah, we've set 29 targets. I guess it's been two years ago. And the team has totally outperformed, so it's been great to be part of that. You know, we set a 27% segment operating margin target for FY29. We're right up on top of that right now as we speak. Aerospace has totally outperformed. Some of our longer cycle industrial businesses have totally outperformed. When we look at those margin targets, it's not just the margin target that we're looking for. It is the organic growth target. We have a range of four to six. It is an EPS CAGR. We want to be plus 10 every year. And, of course, we have cash flow targets that we are very much focused on. We also have a dividend record that we're very proud of, 69 years of raising our dividends every year. We're not going to let that record break. So we look at that holistically. Is 27 the end of margin expansion? No, it certainly is not. And we'll set a new target when we need to on that. But certainly not the end of margin expansion. I don't expect us to see a slow in margin for the foreseeable future.

Julian, Analyst — Moderator

And when we think about the kind of portfolio today, do you feel confident that you can get to X hundred BIPs higher operating margin firm-wide with the current mix, or does there have to be a change in mix?

Todd Leombruno, CFO

You know, I think the company is unbelievably set up right now. You can see on those technology platforms it's pretty balanced. You can see the aftermarket OEM mix across the company is 50-50. That includes aerospace and the industrial side of the business. We've never been in a more favorable aftermarket to OEM mix. We see continued opportunities to expand the aftermarket. Filtration group is a great example. It expands our filtration aftermarket exposure by 500 basis points. So we continue, we expect to see continued expansion across all of those businesses and all of those channels for the foreseeable future, so we don't have to do anything structurally different to continue our margin expansion story. A lot of it comes from just executing the win strategy over and over and over again. And if you look at that win strategy, every item on that strategy is a margin expansion tool.

Julian, Analyst — Moderator

And then, you know, capital deployment, you had the big announcement a few months ago. How do we think about sort of M&A cultivational pipeline? Like, do you enter a 12-month digestion period?

Todd Leombruno, CFO

I mean, it's part of our DNA. It's part of our muscle. We never rest. We never put pencils down. Some of these transactions that we've been able to do, we had been working with, talking with, understanding for 10 or 20 years. And, you know, you never know when you're going to get to yes. We've been fortunate enough to get to yes six times over the last number of years, and that has been unbelievably meaningful for the company. And our goal is to continue that. We're not naive about this. We know that a bad deal can do a lot of damage. Our goal is to not do a bad deal, and that's because we have not strayed from our financial metrics. We have not strayed from our strategic philosophies on what is a good Parker Hennepin business. We have not needed to reach out into some other technology that we're not expert in. And, you know, we're going to be $21 billion, $23 billion when we close the filtration group. You know, it's a $150-plus billion space that continues to grow and flex as the world needs more motion control technology. So we have room to grow within that space.

Julian, Analyst — Moderator

And with that, we'll pivot to the audience response.

Todd Leombruno, CFO

Survey question, please. This is my favorite part of the show. The first one is current ownership of Parker Hannafin. Yeah, it's been a great stock to own over the last 10, 5, 2 years, depending on how you look at it. Hopefully this is one. Oh, there we go.

Julian, Analyst — Moderator

Thank you for your support, everyone. We'll get that 39% over the line.

Todd Leombruno, CFO

And we've got opportunity with the 39 and 4.

Julian, Analyst — Moderator

The second one is around kind of current bias or attitude aside from ownership.

Todd Leombruno, CFO

You know, I don't want to bias the audience, but I've never seen a more positive environment around partners in stock. I've been with the company 33 years, so.

Julian, Analyst — Moderator

You've seen a lot of cycles, yeah.

Todd Leombruno, CFO

A lot of smiling faces on share owners, yes. Look at that.

Julian, Analyst — Moderator

80%.

Todd Leombruno, CFO

Fantastic, 78%.

Julian, Analyst — Moderator

And, you know, thirdly, it's around EPS growth profile, and the peer set here is kind of multi-industry.

Todd Leombruno, CFO

I mean, this is something we worked really hard on. You know, I gave you the answer, 16% over the last 10 years. I think that's pretty good. It should be above 93%. Jeff, take a picture of this one.

Julian, Analyst — Moderator

We'll take this one back. We'll take this one back to the team. I can send it off. There you go. Time for the picture. All right, perfect. Next question is around, we touched on this, but uses of excess cash sort of post the acquisition close.

Todd Leombruno, CFO

This one should be fun. A lot of choices here. It's going to be split. M&A is the big winner.

Julian, Analyst — Moderator

80%.

Todd Leombruno, CFO

We agree. We agree. We're going to continue to select and integrate thoughtful businesses.

Julian, Analyst — Moderator

This one is sort of year one calendar 26 PE multiple.

Todd Leombruno, CFO

Just a high-quality industrial right there. You guys are great. There you go. I'll come here every year. You guys are great. we always didn't get these answers

Julian, Analyst — Moderator

honest responses it's not just my team faking it and then last one

Todd Leombruno, CFO

can you tell how many people it's not just five people my team I don't think so and then

Julian, Analyst — Moderator

what's the main kind of anchor on the valuation or you know headwind

Todd Leombruno, CFO

at present well we've got a thousand basis points of margin expansion that we've done there shouldn't be

Julian, Analyst — Moderator

number two

Todd Leombruno, CFO

we've put $30 billion of capital to work

Julian, Analyst — Moderator

I think our strategy number one I guess

Todd Leombruno, CFO

Yeah, that's not a surprise. Good work. Good. Well, thanks very much, Todd. Great discussion. Thank you, everyone. Really appreciate it.