Ingersoll Rand at Laguna Conference: Strategic Moves in M&A and Revenue Growth

On Thursday, 11 September 2025, Ingersoll Rand (NYSE:IR) participated in Morgan Stanley’s 13th Annual Laguna Conference, unveiling its strategic focus on mergers and acquisitions, recurring revenue growth, and navigating market dynamics. While the company highlighted its robust acquisition strategy and service model expansion, it also addressed challenges such as tariff impacts and customer hesitancy in North America.

Key Takeaways

• Ingersoll Rand has completed 75 acquisitions in five years, focusing on family-owned businesses with high gross margins.
• The company aims for $1 billion in recurring revenue by 2027 through its "care" service model.
• Ingersoll Rand is managing tariff impacts with operational efficiencies and price adjustments, maintaining EBITDA neutrality.
• Positive growth is noted in Europe and India, while North America shows a "wait and see" approach due to tariff uncertainties.
• The company expects margin expansion in the latter half of the year driven by volume growth and integration synergies.

Financial Results

• Revenue stands at approximately $7.5 billion.
• In 2024, Ingersoll Rand exceeded $300 million in revenue from its care model.
• The company maintains a high teens to 20% free cash flow margin.
• Margin expansion is anticipated in the second half of the year due to increased volume and productivity.

Operational Updates

• Ingersoll Rand’s acquisition strategy targets companies with gross margins in the mid-30s or above.
• The decentralized P&L structure supports integration, with nine leaders reporting directly to the CEO.
• The care model, offering performance guarantees, aims to expand beyond North America to other product lines.
• 40% of revenue comes from aftermarket services on the ITS side.

Future Outlook

• Ingersoll Rand is expanding into adjacent markets and underpenetrated regions, focusing on local operations.
• The company is adapting to "made in country" initiatives, which may affect efficiency but align with local content requirements.
• Despite tariff challenges, Ingersoll Rand remains confident in its pricing power and innovative solutions.

Q&A Highlights

• Tariff uncertainty remains a primary concern for U.S. customers, elongating the sales cycle.
• Positive organic orders momentum was observed in 2024 compared to the first half of 2025.
• The company continues to leverage AI-driven pricing software to enhance agility and customer ROI.

Ingersoll Rand’s strategic focus on acquisitions and recurring revenue models positions it well for future growth. For more detailed insights, refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - Morgan Stanley’s 13th Annual Laguna Conference:

Analyst: Thank you, everybody. Very excited to kick off day two of the Laguna Conference with Ingersoll Rand up here with CEO and Chairman Vicente Reynal and CFO Vikram Kini. Thank you guys for joining us.

Vicente Reynal, CEO and Chairman, Ingersoll Rand: Thank you for having us.

Analyst: I think what really separates Ingersoll Rand from broader industrials is the M&A engine. Can you talk about the process within the company, how you are able to not only just identify four to five points of M&A growth every year, but also integrate them in a way that you can grow margins while you’re bringing all these businesses along?

Vicente Reynal, CEO and Chairman, Ingersoll Rand: Yeah, no, absolutely. Let me add on to that because, I mean, definitely the M&A flywheel is great. We like to say that our culture, the ownership mindset culture that we have, where employees at Ingersoll Rand Inc. are owners of the company and we teach them how to be owners, how to think about cash conversion cycles and things of that nature to all 25,000 employees, is pretty unique. That ownership mindset, when you combine that with an operating execution cadence that we call IRX, or Ingersoll Rand Execution Excellence, proves to be very, very unique when we start doing M&A. It’s unique in the sense because, again, we generate a lot of cash, almost, kind of, we say high teens to 20% free cash flow margin. We take that cash and put it back into driving bolt-on M&A mostly.

Over the past five years now, we have done 75 acquisitions. About 90% of them follow the same path of being family-owned, founder-based. We do a lot of cultivation. That really helps a lot to be able to then obtain just a phenomenal price and return. Typically then we get, you know, we’re in the low, low double digit, 10 to 12 times. This year we have done 10 acquisitions, all bolt-on in nature. I think the average pre-synergy EBITDA multiple is like 9.5 times. That is even included too in the life sciences side. That bolt-on acquisition then leads into being able to achieve mid-teens ROIC by year three on the bolt-on in nature. The integration happens, as you very well said, very quickly. We’re very decentralized. In corporate, if you go to our headquarters, we’re basically leasing a floor on a building in Davidson, North Carolina.

We like to keep it pretty low key from that perspective. The way we operate is that we have nine P&L leaders that report into me. The integration really happens in the nine P&Ls. Those nine P&Ls, then underneath them, there’s another 60 more P&Ls. We’re very P&L-centric. That’s where the integration happens by leveraging the IRX, the Ingersoll Rand Execution Excellence process, and leveraging this ownership mindset that people really feel very attracted to. Hey, this is our company. Now that we bring this technology, how do we make it better? A lot of the synergies, as you said, very quickly, is because of things that we can control. When we do the mid-term ROIC, it is based on whether the price that we can generate or sophisticated on our pricing actions. Many of these family-owned companies, they’re not.

Supply chain, 70% of our cost of goods sold is direct materials. I mean, we put a lot of attention on our supply chain and suppliers. Family-owned companies, they don’t have that leverage and that power. We can provide that. In some cases, you know, then we leverage the SG&A and we are able to obtain a lot of the good integration savings pretty quickly.

Analyst: It feels like a lot of it, you guys have this infrastructure. They come onto the platform and you’re able to help them improve the businesses. When you’re out there identifying businesses, is there something you’re looking at? Okay, you know, they have this technology or a high gross margin that, you know, we can very much kind of leverage that.

Vicente Reynal, CEO and Chairman, Ingersoll Rand: Sure, sure. Yes, absolutely. First, we look for, we exactly look at the gross margin. We say, you know, gross margins need to be kind of mid-30s or above because we’re looking for companies that can definitely have that pricing power, unique technology that can be much more uniquely priced positioned. Give you a good example. I mean, we acquired three years ago a company called Cpex. They had 50% gross margins, but their EBITDA was in the mid-teens. Three years later, they’re basically 55% gross margin or above 50, and 30% EBITDA margin. That shows the power of what we can do with this. Definitely gross margin is one. From a technology perspective, we’re very concentrated on the core of what we make, which is compressors, blowers, vacuums, pumps, and things of that nature. Very industrial products that could be applicable to any end market. We look at adjacencies.

A great example of that is compressors. Clearly, you know, we make a lot of compressors that we continue to acquire companies in the compressor side. We moved three years, two and a half years ago into air treatment. That’s because 70% of compressors, you sell an air treatment to treat the air. Believe it or not, we were a company that we were buying and reselling air treatment. Now we’re one of the largest global producers of air treatment, and not only to treat the air, but to treat gases. We can treat and generate nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen with the use of a compressor.

Analyst: Yeah, I mean, maybe just following up on that, you know, kind of looking for maybe market adjacencies or kind of natural movements. Maybe a high-class problem here, but you guys have grown about 50% versus 2019. Do you have to go further out on the risk curve to get that mid-single-digit M&A contribution every year?

Vicente Reynal, CEO and Chairman, Ingersoll Rand: No, not necessarily. Because right now, think about it, we’re $7.5 billion revenue approximately, and we operate in a $75 billion addressable market. We have, there’s plenty. It is a very highly fragmented market. We’re always looking at how do we continue to be close to that workflow steps within the technology that we have.

Analyst: Yeah, no, just, you know, kind of last one on M&A, how does the pipeline look today? You know, how do you think about allocation or preference for more of the traditional industrial side versus the growing life science platform?

Vicente Reynal, CEO and Chairman, Ingersoll Rand: Yeah, so the pipeline is still very, very strong, very, very robust. I think the cultivation that we have done here over the past decade with a lot of these acquisitions, when you operate in this global environment, there’s an uncertainty and a lot of changes and dynamics. Some of these companies, the family-owned companies, are finally saying, hey, this might be the right time. That continues to move actually quite well. In terms of the allocation, we’re not saying let’s double down here or there. We’re always looking for high-quality companies that can actually improve the quality of the portfolio. Net-net, that’s what we’re looking for. Definitely, even on the life sciences, as we move there, it is also closely adjacent to a lot of the technologies that we have. It’s not all based on the return on that investment that we can achieve.

Analyst: Appreciate that. I think one of the big themes that’s going on in industrials is energy efficiency and the returns that come from that. If I look at commercial HVAC, we’re kind of seeing that bifurcate from construction. It feels like in your market, just because we’re in a cyclical downturn, it’s not really being appreciated right now. Compressors can consume 30% or so of energy in a factory. Can you talk about customer paybacks or ROI? Is that better today versus five years ago with how electricity prices?

Vicente Reynal, CEO and Chairman, Ingersoll Rand: Yeah, you know, I think the beauty, and you’re absolutely right, that 30% to 40% on average of the energy at a typical manufacturing facility is consumed by the compressor. When you think about a compressor, also during the 10-year life that it will have, 80% of the cost of the ownership is electricity. It is very important, not only that you sell at the right time, at the time to be able to save energy, and the payback today continues to be less than two years. Anywhere on average, you know, 15, 18 months. It’s definitely less than two years. We believe that clearly with a lot of the expansion that we’ll hear about, you know, data centers and how that’s going to consume more power, power that is not in existence is going to continue to create a bit of a pressure on electricity.

That obviously provides a return of that investment asset to even be potentially less than clearly what we’re getting today. I think it’s a bit of a, what maybe to your point, commercial HVAC started, I don’t know, maybe 10 years ago or call it. Now more and more customers are realizing as they look into other energy sources for them to achieve savings, that they realize that, oh yes, I mean, that compressor is consuming a lot of my energy in my facility and I need to do something about it.

Analyst: Yeah, no, appreciate that. Obviously cycles come and go. One more secular emerging opportunity for you guys is service. You’re in this process of moving just from a more traditional parts business to the care model, where it seems like you guys are effectively, like, it’s performance guarantees. Can you just kind of maybe talk about that model? I believe you guys said $300 million in 2024 with plans for $1 billion in 2027. Any update on how all that’s progressing?

Vikram Kini, CFO, Ingersoll Rand: Yeah, maybe I’ll start with that. I think you’ve kind of nailed the kind of the goalpost there. To take a step backwards here, yes, when we did our Investor Day back in November of 2023 or late 2023, we kind of put out that billion-dollar target specifically around recurring revenue. Just to level set today, roughly speaking, approximately 40% of revenue is aftermarket to go on the ITS side. A subset of that is recurring revenue. It’s a component of aftermarket, really, things that are multi-year contractually guaranteed, whereby you’re getting that kind of recurring annuity flow stream on the revenue side. At its gold standard, we have the care model. At its gold standard, the care model, or what we call package care, is a risk transfer agreement, whereby we are guaranteeing to the customer a certain amount of uptime.

In return, they are essentially turning over all operation and maintenance of that compressor to us as the manufacturer. In return, we’re getting a, it’s usually a five-year contract on average is typically what that means. We’re getting a kind of set per month revenue. It’s a very healthy and attractive gross margin profile. When you think about, let’s say you said, a 10-year life of a compressor, there’s multiple care contracts you can typically attach to one unit. For us, this is all about how we can continue to kind of increase our share of wallet with regards to, typically speaking, a compressor, you sell it historically, like you said, the historical model of just parts and lubricants, you were getting approximately one time of revenue on that over the life of that compressor. Care is really now adding another one time to that.

What we’re really looking to do is how do you continue to attach more offerings to that care model so that you can continue to increase that multiplier on, if you buy a compressor for $100,000, how do we get $300,000, $400,000, $500,000 over that life through increased attachments, whether it be care, whether it be air quality sampling and testing, whether it be the EcoPlant kind of software platform that we purchased, all of that is now really kind of being bundled more and more into that care model. In terms of the numbers, you’re absolutely right. You know, we put out that target in 2023. In 2023, we said approximately $200 million in revenue. We eclipsed the $300 million mark in 2024. We have not given an update to date here as we sit in 2025.

I think the kind of moral story is we continue to be very pleased with the momentum we’re making. It’s also worth noting here that this is now what started as a, you know, North America compressor kind of based model. This model is now being leveraged across the entire portfolio. What’s really intriguing and exciting to see is that parts of our portfolio, blowers, vacuums, pumps, even like power tools, businesses that historically never would have thought about a care-like model, when you flip it around and say, do you have maintenance? Do you have service techs? Do you have recurring maintenance you have to do for your customers? If the answer to that is anywhere yes, then there’s probably some degree of a care model that can potentially exist. I’d still say it’s early days for many of our businesses, but continue to see very good runway.

I will tell you, this is the single biggest organic growth initiative for the company.

Analyst: Interesting. You guys have talked to, I believe, about 60% gross margin for that care business. On one hand, I would think that as you guys get more sophisticated in the model and it develops, that would seem positive for the gross margin of the business. On the other hand, I would think that the ability to provide performance guarantees and get that level of gross margin would cause competitors to do a similar approach. I wonder if some of that margin could be competed away. You mentioned service as kind of a moat. Can you just maybe talk about, is that 60% gross margin sustainable there?

Vicente Reynal, CEO and Chairman, Ingersoll Rand: I think we definitely believe so. Let me put it in perspective. Even back in, you know, when we were going to Denver, our gross margins were in the low 30% to the kind of mid-40%. We think that we can continue to improve that. It just shows you how we continue to think about ways to improve our gross margin so we can improve the total profitability and keep investing. One of the examples that Vik mentioned, EcoPlant. EcoPlant is now operating at, you know, much higher than the 60% gross margin. That one is a purely software solution that we have a two-way communication with a compressor or a device on a remote basis to be able to fine-tune it for specific needs of energy reduction. It’s just purely software. We used to call it machine learning. We can call it now AI, right?

It’s that ability to be able to, and that comes in, you know, at 80% plus gross margin because all you’re doing is just automatically fine-tuning. We have definitely the software to be able to do that. We’re always looking for solutions on how can we continue to have recurring revenue and how do we get that 40% that Vik mentioned to be, you know, 50%, 60%, and always thinking about becoming very innovative on those solutions.

Analyst: No, I appreciate that. Maybe turning over to the market a bit. You guys said on the Q2 conference call that July was tracking stable from a trend perspective. I don’t know, any update or market color on how things are progressing in Q3?

Vikram Kini, CFO, Ingersoll Rand: Yeah, I think probably not too surprisingly, I don’t think things have dramatically changed is probably the right way to think about it. I think things have continued to be kind of moving sideways. If we think about the major regions, I’ll kind of start east to west here just to start somewhere. China or the APAC region, of which China is the biggest piece. China’s low double-digit % of revenue now, as we sit here today. I think the story with China, as we’ve kind of entered in Q2, is things haven’t necessarily gotten better, but they also haven’t gotten worse, right? It’s been a couple of years of tough flooding there. I think if there’s a positive silver lining with China, it’s that we walked into 2024, we were pretty explicit about some of these large project headwinds in EV and solar and things like that.

The good news is that’s kind of comped out at this point in time. Kind of moving sideways at this point, but not any real material change.

Vicente Reynal, CEO and Chairman, Ingersoll Rand: We deliver positive organic growth in China as well.

Vikram Kini, CFO, Ingersoll Rand: Europe has actually probably been the brightest spot in the context of this year. We have seen some pockets in the Western European realm, including India, which we kind of put into one of our MIA businesses that have been positive growth drivers. I actually have seen some good momentum across not just kind of the base business, but also in some of those longer cycle projects that we talked about in the first half, finally starting to see some of those come to fruition. Obviously, North America and U.S., this is the area that’s probably been, I’d say for lack of a better word, kind of the most wait and see and hampered by just what’s been going on in the environment with the tariffs.

I think, and I’m sure we’ll talk about it here, from a tariff perspective, I think the biggest thing for us is we continue to manage, as you would expect, and we’ll talk about that from a tariff perspective. Clearly, it’s just getting to that level of certainty from a customer perspective, right? There still is continued swirl and things of that nature in terms of where will things settle down and things of that nature, which I think continues to just create a little bit of pause from a customer perspective. That’s the piece that I think everyone will benefit from when there’s just a little bit more certainty. Then customers can finally get to the point where they can make whatever said investment decision may be. Not dramatically different, quite frankly, than when we exit Q2.

Analyst: Yeah, no, I appreciate that. Maybe starting on and just following up on the international markets first, where, you know, things it seems like have been tracking better for you guys versus the U.S. I guess my concern on the international markets is that, you know, Trump policy and effectively the U.S. pulling back as the biggest buyer of all those goods would make it difficult for those markets to justify new capacity adds because perhaps now they’re overcapacitized if their biggest customer is pulling back. I guess when you talk to customers in those markets, it seems like things have been stable. How has that communication been? Do you think that there is risk that some of those could see negative rate of change?

Vicente Reynal, CEO and Chairman, Ingersoll Rand: Yeah, sure. No, great question. Let me put it maybe in a couple of buckets. One, and we’ve spoken about these underpenetrated markets that we have. Whether you think about Latin America or Southeast Asia, Vik talked a lot about China, as you hear. In the past, we never even focused on Southeast Asia. That is the place that we’re putting a lot of focus. Whether you think even go to Australia, and obviously the mining industry is doing actually fairly well, and other industries are doing very well, we are in Australia. We’re one of the largest shares also in Australia. When you go to Latin America, a lot of fairly good growth that we’re seeing in Brazil, driven in some cases by some of the expansions that they’re doing due to the natural resources, Chile, the same, Peru.

The way we do it is that we operate at this level of the kind of that micro level of the country, where there’s actually unique growth vector trends that are happening. That’s where we put a lot of focus and attention to. When you think about our market share and being underpenetrated, it offers a lot of opportunities. The second opportunity, big bucket there, or big opportunity for us is that we are in region for region. We’re very localized, and we’re working with a lot of local customers. Let’s say, let’s go to India. In India, we work pretty closely with a lot of the large companies in India to be able to provide the services and solutions that we provide here in the U.S. We’re not dependent on U.S. companies having to apply to a lot of CapEx to bring product here, right?

I think that localization of being in region for region, and the fact that we’re underpenetrated from a market share perspective, is giving us a lot of focus with the investments that we’re making organically, with more salespeople, more service techs, in some cases even factory expansions that we have done. It’s allowing us to be able to continue to see the growth in those regions. I would say we’re not concerned on that because there’s also a lot of reshoring and localization of supply chains in a lot of these countries that I just mentioned.

Analyst: I appreciate that. Maybe transitioning over to the U.S. market, you know, you guys, for the last, maybe almost the last year, have been kind of highlighting, you know, positive demand indicators. Even all day yesterday at the conference, we’re kind of very consistently hearing, you know, there are sentiments positive in the U.S. You know, there’s optimism in the market, but things really aren’t converting. Does that still remain the case for you guys, and what could just cause that to start converging?

Vicente Reynal, CEO and Chairman, Ingersoll Rand: It is still the case. I mean, as we said on the earnings calls, our leading indicators that we use, and I know I hear other companies that use dealer quotations and things like that. I mean, we use our own marketing qualified leads that we’re generating by talking directly to customers. That still is actually fairly, I mean, positive and growing. Our earnings call, we said double digit. Now that’s not the representation of the entire universe of our products. It’s a good portion of the representation, but it’s a good indicator that we track by country, by end market, to see exactly what you said, you know, the momentum that we’re seeing. A marketing qualified lead is not just a customer asking for something.

It has been already qualified, and it’s a hot lead that then we turn and give it to the sales guy, and the sales person will convert that into a sales qualified lead, and then goes into our funnel. We are a very sophisticated funnel management process that then we track the velocity through the stages. That’s when we talked about seeing the elongation is because we know very well how long it takes to go from that MQL all the way to the order. We have the historical numbers by stage gate, and now clearly we see that elongation. I think, you know, we continue to nurture those customers that are there. The good news is that there’s just no cancellations.

There’s just kind of a little bit of a wait and see, and a bit of an understanding, you know, of our prices changing or what’s going to change here based on the, you know, primarily the tariff situation here. Yeah, which is that is the main driver that we hear. We don’t hear much about interest rates, or although, you know, that, you know, psychologically kind of helps the customer think more better. We don’t hear much about, you know, the tax depreciation acceleration. We just hear a lot about this level of certainty that they want to have with the tariff.

Analyst: When you talk to customers, do you sense or feel any change in their regional allocation of capital? I would think if I look across my companies that I cover, historically, they’ve been building a lot in China. Maybe they’re not building in the U.S. yet, but they’re also not building in China either. I guess, have you sensed any sort of shifts from one market to the other?

Vicente Reynal, CEO and Chairman, Ingersoll Rand: We’re definitely seeing a lot of shifts of made in country and in the country. We have a pretty good presence in India, and that is very prevalent. Even also in Latin America, very, very prevalent that the governments are pushing for the local content to be much higher. Today, if you want to do business with a very large oil and gas producer in Brazil, you need to have local content. The local content gets required by that customer, and it’s now even now doubled down by the government. Yes, that’s the benefit of being in region for region is that we can provide that local content and the investments are happening that we see.

Analyst: That’s interesting because in some ways, if the whole world goes, you know, local for local and made in their respective country, you could effectively have a world with more factories, but worse efficiency and utilization.

Vicente Reynal, CEO and Chairman, Ingersoll Rand: Yeah, potentially.

Analyst: Could be good for compressors.

Vicente Reynal, CEO and Chairman, Ingersoll Rand: Yeah, that’s right.

Analyst: You know, you guys have kind of talked about that disconnect between orders and revenue, both on the shorter cycle side with the MQLs, but also on that larger project funnel. I think you called out like robust growth last quarter. Should you expect the short cycle piece to converge or turn first?

Vikram Kini, CFO, Ingersoll Rand: Yeah, it’s a good question. I mean, I think it’s still yet to see. I mean, typically, if things get more certainty, typically that is the first place you would see it. I think logically, that’s probably a right correlation. To your point, when you think about our business, let’s say 40% is aftermarket, by definition, book ship. When you look at the balance and the original equipment, we have a pretty good bifurcation there. It’s about 70% to 75% that’s that short medium cycle, 25% is longer cycle. That kind of goes back to the point that we do have a purview into both sides.

I think if there’s an encouraging piece to say, I think kind of 2024 versus the first half of 2025, where we still have seen particularly in ITS positive organic orders momentum, you wouldn’t get there without at least some degree of contribution from both sides, right? Just from the math itself, it kind of chores itself out. That’s not to say that things have necessarily corrected or anything like that to the centage point. We still do see that elongation. I think the encouraging part here is at least some of the projects that we talked pretty explicitly on the longer cycle side in 2024 that we just continued to see get no cancellation. They were still in the funnel, but delayed decision making for whatever the reason may be. We have seen some of those come to fruition with POs in the first half of the year.

At least that’s encouraging. I would by no means say that funnel has unclogged, for lack of a better way to say it.

Analyst: Yeah, I appreciate that. I very much understand on the long cycle side the uncertainty. These are big dollar projects. You might be buying things next year and you don’t know what the price is. Why is there so much hesitancy on the short cycle side? I would imagine a lot of that’s just like replacement MRO type work. What causes the disconnect there?

Vicente Reynal, CEO and Chairman, Ingersoll Rand: I would say it’s just understanding in some cases. I mean, I think this year has been a year where price increases and surcharges are very prevalent based on, you know, clearly the tariffs and the changing of the tariffs. I think customers are just trying to understand what is that price going to be that I’m going to be really paying for. That is definitely number one. If they can continue to extend it and keep it there by doing a little bit of repair and service solutions, they’ll continue to find ways on how they can extend the life of that product while obviously waiting until that moment in time that, okay, I got a clear view here as to how things are transpiring. We think a lot of this uncertainty kind of peaked earlier, obviously in the year.

It seems things to be kind of getting more stable in terms of customers thinking about, okay, I think I better understand this now, how the situation could be, and you know, globally it could be, you know, this is the right number. I don’t know. We’re hopeful and optimistic that this will hopefully clear here soon.

Analyst: Appreciate that. When we look at the U.S. market, is the tariff policy having any sort of competitive impact on the market? I know there’s international competitors here. When I look at import data, there’s a lot of pumps and compressors from China that are coming. Maybe that’s just like a lower tier part of the market anyway. Is there any, you know, positive or just material impacts from that?

Vicente Reynal, CEO and Chairman, Ingersoll Rand: You know, with the new 232 derivatives of the tariffs that kind of got implemented in August 18, 2023, just a few weeks ago, it’s still early to see the impact of that. That really is now, we believe, I mean, we’re not immune to that clearly, but our competitive advantage is that we produce a lot of technology here in the U.S. If you think about compressors, we have two facilities of making compressors in the U.S. If you look at the rest of our competitors, that is not to be seen. Same thing on the blowers and the vacuums. In region for region, it is really a very strong competitive advantage that we have. We’re still now trying, obviously, maneuvering. I mean, we clearly have done the math.

We know what our bill of material cost increases versus our competitor bill of material increases based on this 232 tariff. We’re playing an understanding of that game as to, okay, we know we’re competitive. We have always been competitive on technology. We believe that this is providing maybe some competitiveness now on a cost position. We’re just waiting to see a little bit more as to what the reaction is from our competitors and whether we can leverage that as a way to maneuver, obviously, price. We have always been on price, but then also have the ability to take some share.

Analyst: Appreciate that. Just on the latest 232, you know, going up in August, is there any color that you guys could share just like from a gross tariff impact, like how that could impact yourself?

Vikram Kini, CFO, Ingersoll Rand: Yeah, so we haven’t shared that yet. We’ll kind of park that for the time being. To Vicente’s point, obviously not immune. I think the way we should think about it is this is not really, if you think about it, necessarily inter-company dynamics, meaning we’re producing in one region and bringing it into the U.S. As Vicente said, we’re largely in region for region. That piece, it’s not zero, but that’s relatively the smaller piece. Clearly, we have a global supply chain. As you would expect, we do have impacts from that, whether it be 232, but then also the India, Brazil, the other kind of components that come to fruition here. I think in terms of the way that we’re managing it, it’s not too dissimilar from what you’ve seen the entire year. Yes, there are some operational items that we are absolutely working through.

The one thing I’ll say is compared to maybe like six months ago, where it was largely just a China dynamic and you looked at, okay, gets to a certain level, you move a source of supply for XYZ widget to another country. Now every country has it. That sliding scale, as I say, has become a lot more challenging. In certain cases, to be very transparent, there are certain things that China just still makes more sense, right? More sense. I think for us, though, it’s still continuing to mitigate partially for those operational items. Those will just take some time to really be baked in. The balance will be through the pricing side of the equation, like you’ve seen. Price for us, we’ve been very explicit that we are not looking to make margin on the tariff. It’s really a pass-through.

It’s neutral on the EBITDA dollars or bottom line dollars side. That is slightly diluted from a margin perspective. That’s no different in that respect. I think the teams you can invest have taken said actions, including as of late, to make sure that we’re keeping that equation balanced. I would say, haven’t talked about the dollar amount, but I think the approach is exactly the same as what we’ve talked about Q1 and Q2.

Analyst: Appreciate that. You know, you guys and the industry has a really good track record on price. Obviously, you know, good consolidation at the top. Now with, you know, potential competitive tailwinds, obviously that, you know, also supports pricing power. I guess, you know, how have price conversations gone? Is there any just pricing fatigue in the market? Not because of the absolute level of price, but it’s just like every three months just coming back and back and back because this keeps inching higher. I’m just, what’s the perspective?

Vicente Reynal, CEO and Chairman, Ingersoll Rand: That fatigue is a little bit of a great way to talk about this uncertainty. I will say that we sell based on total cost of ownership, and we sell based on the ability to be able to create a good return on investment to that customer on a solution that they’re buying. All of our sales reps have this calculator, and that’s how they sell. As long as we continue, we are always looking for technology innovation that is going to allow us to maintain that return on investment to be at that less than two-year payback. If we can increase the price while maintaining that, we’ll definitely do it. Clearly, we don’t want to be increasing prices without offering a return on investment to that customer in a different way. Yes, there might be definitely some pricing fatigue. That’s kind of the shocks that this year has created.

That has also created our ability to be very nimble and pretty agile on navigating that system. The pricing, the way we do pricing internally, we have our own, we develop our own pricing software solutions. We’re now leveraging a lot of these agentic AI and things of that nature to be able to really become more and more sophisticated on how we can do it and how fast we can do it, and how can we navigate and do scrubbing data to understand competitive market data and compare against our internal data. I think that a year like this has proven to be a great way for us to continuously improve on how we can actually navigate this pricing dynamic. Again, it has always to be done thinking with the customer. Can we still generate that return on investment on a total cost of ownership for that customer?

That has to be done.

Analyst: Appreciate that. I know, Vik, you’re saying that the dollar impact is zero. Is there any, would there be any lag or would you guys push through surcharges and kind of be able to sync up whatever that gross tariff impact is in somewhat real time?

Vikram Kini, CFO, Ingersoll Rand: Yeah, I mean, that’s the intent. Obviously, there’s always a bit of a lag, quite frankly, whether it be in terms of when tariffs go into effect, as well as even when you do pricing actions. In a lot of cases, you have to give a certain amount of lead time in terms of notification to the channel in a lot of cases. Even then, there’s a lead time between booking and shipment, right? There’s always that kind of, I’d say, timing. I think the teams do their best job and effort to make sure that they’re trying to kind of sync those up. We’re staying real time. We got the question a lot, does that mean you’re waiting to see what other competitors do? No, we’re taking the actions we think are requisite to make sure that we’re trying to keep that equation as balanced as possible.

Analyst: Maybe just following up on margins there, you know, from a year-on-year perspective, if I remember correctly, you guys are calling for expansion in the back half of the year after some pressure in Q2. Is that just a function of volumes coming back and being able to leverage that? Is there anything else? I guess as tariffs go higher, that’s obviously just an incremental headwind to the %.

Vikram Kini, CFO, Ingersoll Rand: Sure. I mean, that latter part is very true. Obviously, what’s come to bear here. I think in terms of the back half of the year, listen, we always tend to end the year a bit stronger in that margin profile for a couple of reasons. One, yes, the volume piece of the equation, Q4, just from a seasonality perspective, typically tends to be the heaviest quarter from a volume perspective. With that also comes typically some of your direct material productivity, I2V type things that follow cost of goods sold. I think some of the other pieces here to point to, on a system-wide basis, in the midst of this year, it’s hard to see it from the outside in.

As you can imagine, we’ve taken, we’ve had tariff pricing, but there’s been also what I would call some of the normal course of pricing that you would typically tend to see. There’s a little bit of that, and that’s not uniformly taken throughout in one, January 1st, and it’s taken throughout the course of the year depending on the businesses. I think we have continued to lean in on the cost side of the equation, particularly given this year, and taken some prudent cost actions in that respect. A couple of things here. One, we continue to integrate on the M&A side. For example, on the life sciences side of the equation, the ILC Dover acquisition, continuing to see good traction on the integration. It should continue to see some good, I’d say, margin compression as we go through the course of the year.

It’s worth noting the Q4, we probably have the easiest comp from a PST perspective that you should expect to see. That doesn’t hurt that equation, I guess is probably the right way to say it.

Analyst: Yeah, we’re up on time. Thank you guys so much for the time.

Vicente Reynal, CEO and Chairman, Ingersoll Rand: Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, guys.

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