IDEX (IEX) Q4 2026 earnings call transcript

I will now hand the conference over to Jim Gianna Carros, VP Investor Relations. Jim, please go ahead. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to IDEX's second quarter, 2026 earnings conference call. We released our second quarter financial results earlier this morning, and you can find both our press release and earnings call slide presentation in the Investors section of our website, idexcorp. com. On the call with me today are Eric Gashleman, President and Chief Executive Officer of IDEX, and Sean Gillin, our Chief Financial Officer.

Today's call will begin with Eric providing highlights of our second quarter results and an update on our business outlook and strategies. Then Sean will discuss additional financial details and our updated outlook for 2026. Following our prepared remarks, we will open the line for questions. But before we begin, please refer to slide two of our presentation, where we note that comments today will include forward-looking statements based on current expectations.

Actual results could differ materially from these statements due to a number of risks and uncertainties which are discussed in our press release and SEC filings. As IDEX provides non-gap financial information, we provided reconciliations between gap and non-gap measures in our press release and in the appendix of our presentation materials, which are available on our website.

With that, I will turn the call over to Eric.

Thanks, Jim. Good morning, everyone. And thank you for joining us today. I'm on slide three. Continuing the momentum established coming into the year and in the first quarter, IDEX delivered strong second quarter results. Organic sales grew 5%, adjusted EBITDA margin expanded 70 basis points year over year to 28.1%, and adjusted EPS grew 12% to $2.32. These results exceeded our expectations, driven most significantly by higher volumes from our growth platform supported by outstanding operational execution.

Our results this quarter were modestly impacted by IEPA tariff refunds, which reduced organic growth a bit and provided slight favorability to margins and earnings. Sean will walk through those details later in the call. In addition to the strong sales and earnings performance, orders came in better than expected, growing 28% organically for IDEX overall. We experienced double-digit year over year order growth across all three segments with our health and science technology segment or HST, once again leading the way with organic order growth of 47%.

Please turn to slide four. To provide some additional context on key drivers, the HST order growth is predominantly coming from growing demand in three areas. Data center, semiconductor, and space and defense markets. Year to date, these application sets collectively have grown to represent over a third of HST revenue. Our performance pneumatics group continues to win as we support primary and standby power generation applications currently fueled by rapid data center build outs, as well as liquid cooling flow control solutions that deploy within the data center infrastructure.

Within semiconductor, our material science expertise helps us engineer high purity gas filtration, sealing, optical detection, and thermal management solutions that support process tools, inspection systems, metrology equipment, and many other applications. Our critical components in this area follow the classic IDEX business formula. We provide maximum solutions impact as a small percentage of overall systems cost while retaining flexibility to move laterally across markets to exploit the widest set of commercial opportunities.

Additionally, with the rapid growth of mozz filtration business, we now have approximately 50% recurring revenues within HST's semi-con portfolio. Finally, in space and defense, we provide highly engineered components that support demanding applications in these rapidly growing end markets. The pace of collaborative innovation within this sector is amazing, as our teams race to set foundational specification points that define how an emerging technical job will be done today and in the future. Claiming this territory for IDEX launches strong annuity streams to fuel customer beneficial investments and shareholder value creation for decades to come.

Within the fluid metering and technology segment, or FMT, we saw double-digit growth from our water platform. IDEX Intelligent Water provides critical insights for municipal wastewater management, delivering analytics with speed, precision, and actionable data. Also, our ultra-high purity pumps, heater, and fluid management solutions provide differentiated, environmentally sustainable support for semiconductor fabrication facilities. To strengthen these areas, alongside other pockets of improving demand within the portfolio, collectively drove record orders of over $1 billion.

We are managing and investing to meet our customers' needs, including investments in throughput improvements, supply chain readiness, higher staffing, and select capacity expansions. Also, AD20 is a critical tool to effectively allocate resources toward these highest value opportunities. Orders performance year to date not only gives us greater confidence in our 2026 outlook, but also provides greater visibility to sustain this momentum in the next year.

Our fastest growing customers are increasingly submitting orders with request dates further into the future, primarily to pre-book capacity. Our more traditional rapid replenishment customers on the whole are also running slightly better than we expected earlier in the year. Taken together, our growing backlog gives us the confidence to raise our full year 2026 financial outlook. Sean will provide greater detail later in the call.

In addition to the strong order growth, our teams are executing very well to drive margin expansion as they deliver more revenue. Our teams in HST drove year over year margin flow through of approximately 40%, excluding tariff refunds in the second quarter. We expect additional healthy volume leverage through the second half of this year.

Finally, we continue to meaningfully implement AD20 with a focus on newly acquired businesses, many of them producing the highest growth rates in the company to set up greater margin expansion potential into 2027 and beyond.

With that, I'll turn it over to Sean to walk through the quarter in more detail, including segment performance in our updated outlook.

Thanks, Eric. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Please turn to slide five. In the second quarter of 2026, IDEX delivered strong results, which meaningfully exceeded our guidance for the quarter. Organic revenue growth of 5% was better than we forecasted with notable strength in HST. Adjusted EBITDA margin expanded 70 basis points year over year and adjusted EPS of $2.32 came in significantly higher than our guided range in the second quarter.

Overall, our orders grew 28% organically in the quarter. HST again led with order growth of 47% year over year, while FMT orders grew 11% and FSDP orders increased 19%. Touching on some of the more meaningful business demand trends in the quarter, we saw a continuation of strong order activity in areas influenced by artificial intelligence, which for us is most meaningfully in power generation for data centers, semi-conductor and optical switching.

We also continued to see strength in municipal water, mining, space and defense, and in commercial aerospace. As Eric mentioned, we received IIPA related tariff refunds in Q2. This impacted our financial results in a few areas.

First, the tariff refunds from the US government result in a reduction to our cost of sales. Second, the US government paid interest on the tariff amounts, which slightly reduced our net interest expense in the quarter.

Lastly, in select circumstances, we expect to provide customer rebates for a portion of the tariff refunds. This is accounted for as a reduction to sales in the period. The net impact of all this in the quarter was a benefit of eight cents, which is included in our reported adjusted EPS of $2.32. Even when excluding this benefit, our financial results were meaningfully ahead of our Q2 guidance range of $2.07 to $2.12. As I go through our financial results, I will note where any impact occurs to provide transparency and visibility to the strong underlying performance of our businesses.

Organic sales in the second quarter grew 5% with HST growing at 12% and FMT growing at 1%, while FSDP was down 1%. As just mentioned, sales were partially offset by expected customer rebates related to IIPA refunds, which reduced organic growth by 2% in the quarter. On a consolidated basis, organic sales growth was primarily driven by higher volume with positive price contribution.

I had adjusted gross margin, expanded 110 basis points to 46.4%, driven by productivity gains, volume leverage, and the net benefit of tariff refunds, partially offset by mix. Volume leverage was led by strong growth in HST. Adjusted IIPA down margin, expanded 70 basis points first last year, as noted on the slide, the net impact of the IIPA refunds was a benefit of 130 basis points.

Importantly, our adjusted IIPA down margin excluding IIPA came in towards the high end of our Q2 IIPA down margin guidance of 26.5% to 27%. I'd X generated $177 million in free cash flow in the second quarter, and we ended the quarter with strong liquidity of over $1.1 billion. And finally, we spent $77 million to repurchase IITEX shares in the quarter, and we remain committed to that quarterly pace for 2026.

Now quickly, some color on our results by segment. I'm on slide six. In HST, organic orders increased 47% and revenue grew 12% organically. Volumes increased in advantage markets, including semiconductor OE and consumables, data center applications, and space and defense. And notably, these exposures are, as Eric mentioned, in the areas we have pivoted the portfolio towards and where we have focused our integrated growth strategies.

HST adjusted IITA down margin expanded 270 basis points year over year due to positive volume leverage and positive price costs driven by the net benefit of tariff refunds.

As noted, tariff rebates reduced organic growth by 2%, and were a 90 basis point benefit to our adjusted IITA down margin in the quarter. Our underlying businesses performed exceptionally well with strength across orders, sales growth, and margin.

Turning to slide seven. In FMT, organic orders increased 11%, and organic sales increased 1%. Sales growth was supported by our water platform and our mining exposures partially offset by softness and ag, chemical, and energy and markets. Looking at our leading indicator industrial order rate, they continue to show increasingly encouraging signs, a second quarter orders, and revenue in these businesses were slightly better than we had expected.

FMT's adjusted IITA down margin declined 20 basis points year over year as unfavorable mix, more than offset the net impact from tariff refunds and productivity benefits. The net impact of tariff refunds benefited margin by 180 basis points in the quarter. Last year's adjusted IITA down margin of 35% is a tough comp, as in Q2 last year, we were quick to adjust pricing for tariffs, while the cost of tariffs were slower to impact the P&L.

FMT's underlying margin performance is right in line with our expectations and guidance we provided for Q2. Please turn to slide eight.

FSDP organic orders increased 19% year over year, and organic sales declined 1%. FSDP orders were boosted by strong aerospace demand at Bandit, including a significant blanket order, and continued momentum in fire and safety from North American fire and integrated system orders. Sales declined due to the expected reduction in activity and dispensing, and some softer performance in European rescue markets, which was partially offset by continued aerospace strength in Bandit.

FSDP adjusted IITA down margin decreased 50 basis points year over year, driven by unfavorable mix and volume deleveraged, partially offset by strong productivity improvements. The net impact of tariff refunds benefited margin by 120 basis points in the quarter. Please turn to slide nine, where I'll touch on capital deployment.

First, our gross leverage position decreased from 2.1 times a year ago to 1.9 times due to strong cash flow and earnings growth. Second, as you can see, we continue to invest in our business as well as return capital to our shareholders. We have increased CAPX from the year ago period as we support the strong growth in our businesses.

Additionally, we have continued to return capital to shareholders as we paid 54 million in dividends and repurchase 77 million in shares during the second quarter. Compared to the prior year, we have increased our share repurchase activity by 53 million or 53%. We plan on maintaining our quarterly repurchase level at around 75 million through the rest of 2026.

We can flex above this amount based on leverage levels, relative bolt-on M&A and 8020 led portfolio optimization decisions going forward. We look forward to executing on our capital deployment methodology and our confidence in our ability to drive increased shareholder value. Now I'd like to discuss our updated guidance for 2026. Please turn to slide 10. For the full year of 2026, we now expect organic growth in the 5 to 6% range and increase over our previous guidance of three to 4% organic growth. Our overall IDEX organic growth guidance balances approximate low double digit growth for HST and outlooks of slightly up year over year for FMT and FSDP.

These outlooks reflect HST's strong order book and relative stability, but also some signs of improvement at our FMT and FSTP segments. We are raising adjusted EBITDA margin expectations to a range of 27% to 27.3% up from 26 and a half percent to 27%. We continue to expect productivity benefits throughout IDEX businesses and solid leverage and margin expansion at HST this year.

Taken together, we are raising adjusted EPS guidance for 2026 from a range of $8.35 to $8.55 to a range of $8.70 to $8.85, representing high single digit to low double digit growth year over year. For the third quarter of 2026, we expect five to 7% organic growth, adjusted EBITDA margin in the 27% to 27.5% range and adjusted EPS of $2.20 to $2.25.

Additionally, we are increasing our capital expenditures forecast from 90 million to approximately 110 million as we make select investments and capacity expansions to support our highest growth and high return businesses.

With that, I'll turn the call back over to Eric.

Thanks, Sean. I'm on slide 11. As we step back, we're pleased with both the quarter and the momentum we continue to build across IDEX. Strong orders, growing backlog and increasing contributions from the markets where we've invested most intentionally give us confidence in both our updated outlook for 2026 and the opportunities for sustainable value creation ahead. We are clearly seeing the benefits of the work we've done over the last several years to strengthen our capabilities, build durable platforms and improve the quality of growth across the portfolio.

At the same time, we believe there's still meaningful opportunity to further enhance shareholder value through continued application of 8020, discipline portfolio management and thoughtful return-focused capital allocation.

We're also becoming more confident that signals of broad demand support for our premier industrial businesses are starting to form. Remember, these are incredibly positioned, highly profitable businesses that expand margins and generate superior cash flow when volume increases.

With that, I'd like to thank our teams around the world for their hard work and execution. For participants on the call, we appreciate your continued interest in IDEX and I'll now turn the call back to the operator to take your questions.

Hello, Mike. Hey, so maybe Eric, just a question on what you're seeing on a forward basis. It's kind of a two-flow question here. One, on the short cycle side of things, obviously the advantage markets are doing very, very well, but you're starting to see some sequential improvement in the more traditional short cycle avenues.

Maybe you can talk to what you're seeing there, but then as the first question, you know, more end-market commentary, what's working, how much of those are good leading indicators for the stuff that tends to lag, maybe the chemical side, something like that.

Any context would be great. Okay. Yeah, thanks, Mike. So on the kind of the FMT side of the house, it is a little interesting in the second quarter. You know, we made a comment in the slide deck talking about longer lead time items. What we actually saw was something a little different than we've seen before in inflection points where kind of the leading order capture and backlog generating items were more attributable to specific parts of the business, more direct OEM relationships.

I suspect a lot of this is because they're, in some ways, derivatives of very strong advantage secular drivers and markets that have that. So our water business was a strong player here. We have longer cycle projects in mining, which we saw in our Apple business. That was a strong part of the quarter. Even some of the work in a business like Viking, you know, they've got some data center support items in there, which we can attribute to end customers.

So a lot of our backlog build in this particular quarter were those items. However, as we got closer towards the end of Q2 and it's continuing into July, we are seeing more of that typical rotation to, you know, kind of up and down the street, smaller order flow business, you know, that comes through our distribution channels. You know, typically for us that it kind of led the other side, but I think because of just so much strength in some of the markets, you know, that are driving not just didex, but the economy, we saw that flipped around a bit.

And so as we sit here today, I mean, we're encouraged, it's early, but we're encouraged by both sides firing in both the FMT segment as well as, you know, the more industrial pieces of FSDP is additionally.

Yeah.

Sure. Well, kind of starting where we ended. Again, this is a little different in terms of the way that the inflection trend would be driven in a segment like FMT. So already here, we've got some great visibility in water. We can see it in mining, the areas that I mentioned. And now it's great to see some of the breadth forming around it, but that's shorter cycle business.

HST is where you see this in quite a different way. You know, so we've had now a number of quarters with strong backlog build. And what's interesting here is if you track that over time, and I'm talking about those three sectors I identified, if you look at the businesses that contribute that, and we've been kind of building that momentum for about a year and a half or so. And then we took an inflective turn up at the beginning of 2026.

Q2, actually, a lot of the businesses are pretty aligned with where they were in Q1. I mean, they're strong. They're still building some backlog as we go. You know, kind of the one exception there on the positive side is we did receive in Q2, a big chunk of data center business in the pneumatics world that's clearly positioned for 2027.

And so what we're seeing, most notably in HST, is, you know, kind of a division between more typical IDEX-like businesses that are based on our lead times. We still have a lot of that in all pockets. But we've increasingly got this portion which is tied to the markets that we mentioned and covered that are driving a lot of growth for us and others where we're getting some more visibility. We're getting requirements not just in the current quarter, but one quarter out, two quarters out. And then most notably that case in data centers, we've actually got some good volume into 2027.

So it's sort of the midpoint of the year, just as an example. We've kind of got twice the business set up for the following year than we had at this point last year. And as you'd suspected, it's in the areas that we're talking about here and isolating. So it's great to have it. It accounts for some of the CAPX inflection you see there. That's a modest lift. But that's frankly us getting ready to support business in 2027 and 28 because we have the visibility in that backlog. And most importantly in the conversations that we're having with a customer.

You bet.

Morning, Dean. Hey, it really looks like you've regained some nice momentum here. So congrats there. And Sean, thank you for the navigating us through all the tariff impacts. We haven't seen other companies have a revenue impact, but that's crystal clear now. So thank you for that clarification.

My question is kind of follow up here on the profile of demand. And Eric, you always give some good entry level into some insight into the business. When you talk about the day rates, you know, the cadence of these orders. And you mentioned some of the bellwethers, but if you could help us there in terms of what that order pattern tells you regarding that kind of short cycle dynamics may we start there. Thanks.

Sure. As I said that, you know, that built as we went through the quarter, it was probably strongest in June, and then it's continued into July. And specifically, I'm referring to the classic kind of up and down the street. Small order flow kind of, you know, order quantities of five to 10 of things, which is a decent part of IDEX business, almost all of which comes through points of distribution.

And so we've always considered that to be very representative kind of the state of the industrial economy. It indicates things like people working overtime and expanding a shift profile or something like that. So we've got, you know, we've got some of that strength starting to show in our businesses. As I mentioned, though, in the second quarter, the interesting part here is that because of the strength of some of these secular areas and are linked to those, they were more pronounced because that duration was each of the months in the second quarter. So business like Bandit is an example, which is one that we often cite as a good representative Bellweather business.

You know, kind of the news is dominated by a really, really strong blanket order in the aerospace and defense sector for them that frankly kind of dwarfs any slight moderate lift on the, you know, more classic short cycle things. So I think right now it looks like it's settling into a more typical launch where we've got sort of both elements starting to form, and we're encouraged by that. We'll certainly be watching it in terms of that more mixed model breadth as we go through Q3 and Q4. That's an important component, but as of today, we see both forming there. Again, as we said in Mike's follow-up question, you know, the HST profile has some elements of that.

Remember, there are still some kind of classic distribution-based businesses, although they're a smaller percentage now at the segment, but really some dramatic shifts in demand profiles because of the work that we're doing in data centers, semicon, and space. You know, these are all areas where not just for us, but for others, you know, the customers are intentionally making sure that we're having future-based conversations.

In many cases, they're back stopping that with orders and commitments. And it's kind of a different profile for us. We welcome that visibility. It's great to have. It helps set us up. And then as we saw here at the end, it helps us support, you know, the capital moves that we need to make, even though they're modest, to be ready for it.

Yep. Nothing really in the area blanket, but I wouldn't mind just peeling that business back a little bit because we didn't see some positive signs in our IDEX Health and Science area. So kind of the core piece of the business that does a lot of fluidics work providing components for instrumentation, recall that that goes into, you know, areas the customers were referred to as analytical instruments or liquid chromatography.

That's kind of the port, if you will. You know, that for a long time had been basically kind of moving along at low single digit growth rates. We did see that move up a bit in the second quarter. So that business and our optical filters business, which is also completely tight around life sciences, those are sort of mid-single digit rates right now. And we did see actually part of the backlog build in HST, although it was a smaller piece on a relative basis, was in the area of life sciences and it's around those two spaces.

So that was good to see. And we've seen some of that, you know, as we talk to our customers externally, some of that favorability. You know, for us, if we were to look at on a reportable basis, we do have a larger dollar optical systems program that's in there. We've long had that. It is moving, you know, it's starting to move from one platform to another that I'll set some of it for us will for a little bit.

But either way, in the long term, starting to see a little bit more momentum there, we do think is a positive sign and it was really good to see some backlog build there at the end of the second quarter, albeit not coming in the form of, you know, large chunky blanket orders.

Well, Dean, you stole my thunder. I was going to recognize that before you signed up, but I appreciate you doing it and really, really enjoy your support and interest in IDEX over the years. And you have a great retirement.

Hi, thanks.

Yep. Well, as I said, I encourage to see a bit of movement in that category. Again, we're talking about the more fragmented.

Broadly exposed order, order pattern that frankly converts a lot faster. We did see some movement and reflection there at the end of the second quarter. And maybe most importantly, saw that continue into July. So that's the piece we will be looking at. You know, I still think there's, there's still a fair amount of, you know, uncertainty out there that's going to inflect and play out in industrial markets. I mean, we talked to distributors and small business owners and people out there. You know, they're still looking for geopolitical things to simmer down. They're still wondering about rate directions, inflation is higher probably than they like.

But we also have kind of a duration phenomenon where everybody admits this has been a long time and that we've been waiting for some things to move. So I think all of that is coming together in some positive ways. And we'll continue to monitor this. But either way, I think it's great to see the strength on both sides. The sort of longer lead time further out, you know, chunkier commitments where we've got line of sight to the customer in the markets, as well as the more classic mixed business, which always supports, you know, great economics for IDEX. We'll be watching both through the quarter.

But, you know, as I said in the opening here, we may be atypical to other inflections. We did see the more direct business first and are now starting to see more of that broad lift here in the last few weeks.

Well, look, I take, you know, remember our water platform kind of has two distinct pieces to it. There's the classic municipal water where we're very, very focused around analytics and inspection on the stormwater wastewater side. So we really don't do anything on the clean water and the drinking water we stay over on the messy part of things.

And as you can imagine and probably see on television, I mean, there's a lot of reasons that people are very focused on that area with catastrophic floods and all the kind of aging infrastructure, et cetera. The work we do is really classically tied to the IDEX model, you know, where essentially for relatively low dollar, you get a lot of impact. So we'll come, you know, we provide inspection tools and cameras and analytical software that essentially tells customers in most cases, municipal cities and things like that that, hey, here's where your problems are. This is what you need to go fix.

Then that becomes a question of big capital outlays. We don't really have to participate in that side of it. We just help diagnose that you should probably go look and put some capital to work in that area. And so we always kind of think of like where the tip of the spear here and our teams have just done a really nice job. We acquired in-virus site into this platform to give us breath. We're selling a lot of cutting equipment and cameras and things that go down into the sewer. So that's been strong for quite a while. What's kind of kicked it into another gear is the other part of the water platform where we've got this great franchise that pumps high-purity water for semiconductor applications.

So it's kind of caught up in that cycle. This business in particular not only just does work like everyone else, it's very, very differentiated solutions. I referenced it in the comments around environmentally friendly because we actually have a high-purity water solution there that essentially heats water for use. And unlike competitive offerings, ours actually doesn't have to full-on idle, so it saves tons of water. And as you can imagine, that is one of the pressing needs of that industry.

So we think of this together. The current rate and the current rate profile is really being driven by both pieces. Whereas in, let's say, last year and the year before, we only really had the municipal water side of it firing in the positive direction. Both right now, I mean, for us, I think we see good roads ahead. We don't really see anything on either side that would suggest that they're going to inflect downward, and nothing's really on the radar. So positive, positive, really good platform.

Joe.

Well, you know, like, I, what I'm trying to emphasize probably in the firm part is, is more typically for IDEX over the all years I've been here. I mean, we're, you know, we're a rapid replenishment business everywhere, and we often don't get visibility much past, you know, kind of current quarter and beyond. That's always been kind of our story.

So while it's true, we've got some chunks of the fast-growing pieces that are there. I will say this, this is a, this is a relative story. You know, that's, that's still maintained. That's a small part of what next year's profile would need to be. It's an important part of it. We love having the visibility. It really helps us understand kind of where floor levels will be and where we need to deploy capital. But to be candid, I mean, it's a relatively narrow corridor that we're describing here, and much of IDEX remains, as it always has, in quickly times, rapid replenishment, agility, and kind of chasing business up and down the street. So I want to be clear that while this is an inflection, it's a positive one.

It's one we've longed hoped for. The vast majority of IDEX still kind of operates on the same cadence and rhythm it classically had. That being said, those, you know, as we've seen here, most of the arrows are pointing in a positive direction there. So we, you know, we overall feel confidence. We've got some specific points that even give us tangible confidence around that, but we still have a half a year to go and look forward to seeing where we are as we go through it.

Well, because I go down and actually look at the innovation and the solutions we're providing and how unique they are, not only to the market, but for us. And so, you know what, I think it's a great question. What we're not doing here is taking things that we've made for, let's say, the last 10 or 15 years and then simply riding along on a wave.

What we're actually doing is because we purchased these assets because most of them are coming out of the acquired businesses and we're linking them with usually one or two other areas. We're actually developing technology and space and defense is probably the best example of this. And coming up with solutions, frankly, that never existed at volumes that have never existed. And in many cases with no real natural direct competitor, at least in terms of the technical solution.

And so because, you know, we always kind of play close to ground level here and know the business pretty well and there's not a lot of layers in between guy like me and then the customer, you can see it. You can see where we're winning, how we're solving a problem, and that's probably what gives me the most confidence and frankly, the most inspiration is to what we're doing and where we're taking it. It's very different from some others in that respect.

Yeah. I'll probably take it in reverse order. On the mining side, I mean a lot of what we're referencing there is coming out of a business that we acquired kind of at the beginning of the work we've done over the last five years or so with apple pumps. And it's just a great example of what a great business can do when you introduce it to 80-20. Tell them we're serious and let a great team go to work. So they basically have just built this thing around chasing the mining of critical minerals.

You know, and they've done it on a global basis. And so as you can expect, you know, that's kind of what's powering most of the secular trends that are here. They've got some great technology with some connectivity and things that they do a little different from others. It just lends itself perfectly for that work. And they've chased it around the globes with pins in a map. And again, I think where we've made it better at IDEX is we've allowed them to just singularly focus, kind of bet the whole franchise on that story and that work.

And it's grown at every year since we've had it, including this one. So you can kind of easy identifiable trend. I hope I'm illustrating here for you where just the power of 80-20 supports that growth. And it's largely coming there. We have a few derivative applications and a few of the other FMT businesses where we know that that's also going into the area. But kind of the lead story here is that singular business that was acquired, you know, just here at the beginning of the decade.

On the other side, in terms of quantifying, you know, the remarks to Joe's question, I mean, we have said at a high level, I mean, these three areas that we're talking about are now a third of the revenue of HST. And if we kind of went through it solution by solution, clearly there's some pieces of it that were incumbent and had been developed that are being pulled along here. But I would say that, you know, certainly more than the majority of it.

These are things that have come online as, you know, businesses come together, done the work and said, you know, we think we can solve that and maybe do it in a slight different way. You know, development at IDEX has always been one of rapid iteration and derivation. And so if we were to line them up on a table, they might look somewhat similar, era to era. But if you really get into the guts of them and see that, you know, material composition is changing and that is a significant thing, that continued innovation is all over that platform.

And frankly, a faster clip than I think we've seen anywhere else in IDEX. So, you know, that really is what's powering things here. You know, it's kind of a classic IDEX component, but it's in a world that's just moving a lot faster. And I'm really happy to say we've moved along with it.

Yeah, I would say the vast majority of it is within the HST segment, and it's around those three areas that we describe. What's important to understand is, and this is longer-term deployment, you know, so because we're talking with customers and they're telling us, you know, what they're thinking about two, three, five years from now, they know that some of the capital that we use here has pretty long lead times, or if we might need to make a, you know, expansion into a facility that takes a while as well. So everything that's in that inflection is really about making things and making them at higher levels in 27, 28, and beyond.

None of it really is being positioned now to, you know, break a bottleneck or a log jam that we have today. That's, you know, that's where you want it to be, ideally. And also, I point out, while it's, you know, it's real money, it's still a pretty modest level. And, you know, as we track and pay attention to capital intensity overall, you know, we see the growth on the revenue side, slight growth in capital, but we're staying nicely where we wanted to. This is still pretty asset-like in terms of the work that we do here.

And, you know, we're trying to keep it that way as we go.

Yeah. No, it's a great question. You know, I think back to where we were, you know, at the point that you're mentioning here, the start point, I mean, we had just built what we consider to be a really, really good framework for growth, and we were just starting to integrate a business or two here and there, and now we're just starting to see a lot of the, you know, really impressive results that are coming out of that innovation.

Alongside it, you know, if I was going to describe what's happening again at street level, you know, we're in some rooms in some areas that we haven't typically been, and we're meeting some people with some interesting technology that are maybe new to us because we're in those arenas.

And so remember, our inquisitive model has generally been one that's pretty proprietary. It depends a lot on individual conversations, cultivation over time, you know, respected technologies, you know, sharing intelligence about how they see the world. We're doing that. We're doing it around these areas that we're describing here. So the growth platforms that are out in front right now. So, you know, the reason I think the best place for us to use our time now is to look for other attachment points, you know, that take what we're doing today and make it even stronger.

And so, you know, we're engaged in those conversations. Because of the nature of how it's done, you know, the proprietary level kind of, you know, just business person talking to a business owner, timing's kind of hard to predict, but the intensity of that is at a very high level, and I think for right now, it's the absolute right strategy to capitalize on what we're seeing here in terms of momentum.

And I would just add that, you know, the repurchase gives us flexibility around that. So, as you mentioned, kind of communicated consistent through the back part of this year. And then thereafter, it'll be informed by the M&A pipeline, right? So if it stays in kind of that bolt-on area, we're trying to get some deals done. I think the same level of repo activity would be the base case, and we'll flex it up and down based on what becomes available to us.

Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. I think we're still pretty early here. I mean, you know, where we're, any of the, remember, any of the kind of solutions where you see us winning, you know, those generally have been in the works for a while. We engineer them because of the critical, criticality of the solution and the risk of verse nature of these markets. They've intertested and people, you know, make sure that we're ready to go and then they're deployed.

And so, you know, the things are the kind of points you're seeing put on the board here. I mean, this has been a story that's been building over the last, you know, two to five years, depending on when these businesses came in. And so as we do this, each opportunity that we introduce and win in many ways immediately opens another door where we're able to say, okay, now that that's happened, what else is out there? What would be the other thing that we could take? Where else is this business going? Where else is the sector going?

And then I think in a, again, remember we do a lot of it at kind of a component level here. And I said in my opening remarks that a big piece of our strategy has been able to move right and left with the same technology into different advantage markets. That's probably what I'm most excited about because you can see evidence of it in our growth patterns that we're presenting here today.

A good example of this is breadth of solutions and semicon. It's not a big part of IDEX. We kind of like keeping it at about the level it is here today, but it's performing really, really well. I made the remarks here that we're now at 50% of it is recurring revenue, and that's bringing mod in with their filtration solutions next to some of the things that we already had in ceilings.

Then we're in metrology. We're in the lithography equipment. Each one of those little nodes, if you will, has little tentacles and branches that our teams are exploring in terms of what else could we do? Where else could we add value?

And very often with the exact same technology and the same people. You see the same thing happening in the space and defense area and certainly in some of the data center applications. We sort of just walk that, you know, pneumatics and fluidics path and are able to see other problems that we can solve. So I think, you know, I guess, swing back to Nathan's question on the M&A side. What's exciting is to see all this form and then see where there may be gaps. Technology gaps or capability gaps that we want to fill in through acquisition.

It all becomes part of this. We're talking a lot about HST because, of course, it's leading the way now, but we're doing the same work with an FMT and the water platforms. You know, there's some other areas that we're interested in as well. But I think very good things to come. You referenced 80-20. What 80-20 allows us to do is just dedicate resources and swing them towards areas of best growth.

We're really comfortable with being able to segment and say, you know, this is an area of focus. Go spend your time on it. Spend 100% of your time on it. Here's an area where we shouldn't focus and there's power in the alignment of everyone understanding that too. That's, frankly, intuitive.

Now for us, we just got it marshaled over in a way that's supporting growth. In addition to the margin expansion, it's always driven for IDEX.

You know, you gave me a multiple choice test, so I'll pick the first answer. I think it's really a continuation of a theme. You know, we're well represented with, you know, multiple technologies on mobile fire platforms. We've been talking a while about a multi-year backlog in that industry that continues.

And then, you know, so we've sort of enjoyed that throughput comes through the system, you know, in our share position. It kind of works mathematically, if you will, and that continues. We've had this additional kicker with the automation gear, you know, that we've talked about for a number of years here, where we're very differentiated and kind of out on our own. And honestly, running the backlog through actually helps drive growth in that area as well, because we've had for a while now, you know, some adoption captive in that backlog. So think of the two forces working together, throughput of a very long duration backlog with great share of presence, and then additive, you know, automation gear that we have it that was embedded in that backlog.

So it's a continuation of a theme.

Thanks, Vlad.

Good morning, Andrew. I wanted to focus on your FMT margin, a little bit more. I think it's definitely been a positive surprise, your ability to sustain such high margins with almost no organic growth really over the last two or three years to years. So if we indeed see some relief on the volume front. You know, where do you, where should we, you know, where is the ceiling for FMT margins or is it not something we should get carried away with? Are there other dynamics that would prevent a really strong expansion from these high levels.

Good question. I would tie it to, as you are, to when you see volume growth, because when you start to see kind of normalized volume growth where, as you mentioned over the past couple of years, volumes have been slightly down kind of price and productivity and other things have been what's driving the margin performance and the sustained margin.

But once you start to see that, you know, the volume pick up, you would see the flow through in these types of businesses based on their profitability, being in that high 30s, 40s, percent. Range. So, you know, if we start to see that volume pick up uniformly across the FMT businesses, you'll see, you'll see the flow through at that kind of close to 40% type range.

I think probably on a geographic basis. Yeah, I think, you know, for a while, I think we've seen greatest strengths in North America. You know, that's where a lot of the faster growing markets that we're talking about here are kind of, that's their headquarters, if you will. You know, I think Europe has been steady, never too high, never too low, generally. It depends on market to market.

You know, Asia for us, certainly probably more aggressively growing in India. That's been the case for a while than what we would say in China. You know, China, both of those regions, we hit pretty surgically. We've got campuses that kind of host IDEX product lines. And we try very hard to pick the ones that are going to be, you know, most successful in each one of those geographies.

So we've been able to hold our own and the China front with a generally softer economy, but in India, I think we've taken great advantage of that. And increasingly, you're starting to look at that area is a jump off point, you know, for the globalization of some of the growth that we see here in HST. It's a lot of the customers in these end markets are doing the exact same thing. They're asking us, how can you help globalize this? We want to take it to other markets. We want to continue to grow and grow on a worldwide basis.

Our support in India is going to be an important part of that. And we're starting to really talk about flexing it.

Yeah, well, you know, a lot of these areas that we highlighted on that opening slide. I mean, they're pretty broad in terms of all the things you can do there space and defense is a good example. I mean, where right now our technologies are deployed and very focused around kind of lower orbit communications on the one side. Many of our optics businesses are playing there. And then, you know, Mott brings some propulsion, you know, actually rocket payload lift technologies through filtration into the game. And then there's a vast array of things in between that could be interesting for us. So any heading we have today, even with some great success that we have, you know, we think there's a big map underneath each one of those where we want to continue to move forward.

So I'd say, you know, from an HST perspective, the areas that are probably most focused for us are the three that I've mentioned here, continued expansion to some of the data center solutions, broad work that we can do within semiconductor support. Almost all of it involved in, you know, producing wafers and inspecting them to some degree, or the facility that does that work. Space and defense, you know, the reason defense kind of comes into the picture for us as it leverages a lot of the same technologies. You know, imaging and high quality solutions like that where you're seeing those start to emerge in that space as well. And then I can very encourage and still very supportive of life sciences and technologies there in the long run.

So those are probably the predominant areas of focus. And again, just remember how much breadth is under each one of those headings and appropriate for IDEX technologies. I always want to remember, you know, our water platform and FMT many ways has some of the same characteristics, you know, it's high tech equipment, analytical software, diagnostic imaging and things that happen there as well.

So I probably put those at the top of the list and just again emphasize that we've got a lot of room to run within those headings.

Yeah, good question. I think you would start to see him higher than the traditional flow through, you know, kind of HST more recently has been in kind of that low to mid 30%. We had a really nice quarter given the volume and the mix of where it came from on flow through. When you strip out the IEPA noise, you're in kind of the high thirties for the quarter. And then I think as you look through the balance of this year and into next, you know, that's probably the right place to be with volumes at these levels. So sustaining volumes at these levels will see flow through higher than we have in the recent past within HST.

And again, to your point, it's because the mix of the businesses that are driving it, a lot of that is a creative at the gross margin level.

Yeah, good question. So the nature of it really depended on the nature of the customer relationship and how the pricing was put in when you go back when the tariffs kind of first came about. And then so selectively seeing some of that rebate activity based on that. And then on point 2, this really should be confined to Q2, meaning we received essentially all the refunds that were eligible for in Q2. And then the associated rebate activity is included in the financial results in this quarter. So as you look into the next couple quarters, there might be a little on the margin that deviates, but I think pretty much all the activity is in this quarter.

And it's a credit to the team of moving quick and making sure that we were kind of lined up to receive the refunds. And then when we did what the knock on customer impact would be, but should be confined to Q2.

Well, thanks for everybody for joining us today. You know, as we step back, I mean, we're pleased with our progress and momentum at the midpoint of the year here. If you recall, as we described our goals for the thoughtful evolution of IDEX over time, we wanted to deploy capital intentionally to acquire some great technologies and capabilities that we really lead the way for growth for IDEX. I think we've seen that build over the last year and a half, and as we noted earlier in the call, nice inflection point into 26, continuing here in the second quarter, and feel really good about the future path there.

We also saw, you know, to drive margins and make sure in these acquired businesses they performed like more typical IDEX businesses. We just in the last question covered some of that, and are really pleased to see that lift specifically in HST here as they're executing well on that volume. And remind everybody that, you know, we still have some consequential 80-20 that we're positioning in those acquired businesses that should give us a nice support into the years to come.

And then finally, you know, on the other side of IDEX, the, you know, more sort of legacy fluidix businesses very encouraged to see that early sign of sector-driven inflection now followed by what appears to be, you know, some of those more typical bellwether signs of broader industrial support. Again, those are incredible businesses, super profitable as we just covered in the last question, and they really flex and provide nice growth margins and cash as they move.

And so you put it all together, very, very encouraged, looking forward to the second half of the year and taking you through our story as we go. Have a great day.