Fortive - Earnings Call - Q3 2025

Executive Summary

• Fortive delivered a clean Q3 2025 beat: revenue $1.03B (+2.3% reported, +1.9% core) and adjusted EPS $0.68, both above consensus; adjusted EBITDA rose 10% with margin expanding ~220 bps to 30.1% (consensus: Rev ~$1.007B*, EPS ~$0.57*).
• Management raised FY25 adjusted EPS guidance to $2.63–$2.67 from $2.50–$2.60, citing Q3 outperformance and $1B of buybacks (21M shares, ~6% of diluted shares) executed in the quarter.
• Segment performance was broadly positive: IOS grew 2.6% (core +2.2%) with adjusted EBITDA margin to 34.6%; AHS grew 1.9% (core +1.1%) with adjusted EBITDA margin to 28.1%.
• Stock reaction catalysts: guidance raise, visible margin discipline with selective reinvestment, and accelerating recurring/software narrative (ServiceChannel AI release; strong radiation monitoring “Landauer”) alongside manageable tariff headwinds (~$0.01 EPS drag in Q3, minimal in Q4).

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• Clear beat and margin expansion: Adjusted EPS $0.68 (+15.3% YoY) and adjusted EBITDA $309M (+10.4% YoY); margin expanded to 30.1% (+220 bps) on disciplined cost actions and operating leverage.
• Capital allocation and guidance: Raised FY25 adjusted EPS to $2.63–$2.67 and executed $1B buybacks (21M shares, ~6% of diluted shares), positioning share count favorably.
• Strategic narrative and innovation: “Fortive delivered solid results in our first quarter as a simpler, more focused company… ahead of our expectations across all key financial metrics” — CEO Olumide Soroye; highlights include ServiceChannel’s AI-powered release and Fluke’s solar ground fault locator, supporting recurring/software growth.

What Went Wrong

• Tariff-related margin pressure: Adjusted gross margin was down ~60 bps YoY; direct tariff costs net of countermeasures were a ~$0.01 headwind to adjusted EPS in Q3.
• Europe softness: Western Europe deteriorated sequentially; management does not expect notable improvement through year-end.
• Q3 gross margin within IOS declined ~90 bps (to ~65.7%) on tariffs; management plans reinvestment in Q4, and some Q3 benefits (capitalization/incentives) were one-time in nature.

Transcript

Speaker 1

My name is Brock and I'll be your conference facilitator this afternoon. At this time I would like to welcome everyone to Fortive Corporation's third quarter 2025 earnings results conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during that time, simply press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star two. I would now like to turn the call over to Ms. Christina Jones, Vice President of Investor Relations. Ms. Jones, you may begin your conference.

Speaker 3

Thank you and thank you everyone for joining us on today's call. I am joined today by Olumide Soroye, Fortive's President and CEO, and Mark Okerstrom, Fortive's CFO. As a reminder, we successfully completed the separation of our Precision Technologies segment, now operating independently as Rallian, on June 28, 2025. Today's call marks Fortive's first quarterly results under our new structure. During today's call we present certain non-GAAP financial measures. Information required by Regulation G is available on the Investors section of our website at fortive.com. We will also make forward-looking statements including statements regarding events or developments that we expect or anticipate will or may occur in the future. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and actual results might differ materially from any forward-looking statements that we make today.

Information regarding these risk factors is available in our SEC filings, including our annual report on Form 10-K and the subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date that they are made and we do not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements. Our statements on period to period increases or decreases refer to year over year comparisons unless otherwise specified. Our results and outlook discussed today are on a continuing operations basis unless otherwise specified. With that, I'll turn the call over to Olumide.

Speaker 4

Thank you, Christina. Let me begin on Slide 3 with a few key messages. Q3 was our first quarter as new Fortive. Following our successful spin-off of Rallian, we are now a simpler, more focused company with a clear strategy poised to create meaningful shareholder value. Our Q3 results offer a waypoint along our path towards creating exceptional returns for shareholders in the years ahead. Four highlights I would like to call out. First, our teams are executing very well with laser focus on driving profitable organic growth with the power of our Fortive Business System. This drove solid results ahead of our expectations, including core growth of roughly 2%, adjusted EBITDA growth of 10%, and adjusted EPS growth of 15%. Though we aspire for much better as we continue executing our growth strategy, we were pleased to see acceleration in the business.

Second, we are raising our full year adjusted EPS guidance. We now expect to deliver between $2.63 and $2.67 per share, reflecting our adjusted EPS overperformance in the third quarter, the impact of incremental Q3 buybacks, and our otherwise unchanged view on Q4. Third, we deployed capital in the quarter in accordance with our new approach anchored in delivering the strongest relative returns for shareholders. During the third quarter, we deployed $1 billion to share repurchases, retiring approximately 21 million shares or 6% of our fully diluted share count. Finally, the financial framework we outlined at our June Investor Day remains fully intact and our Fortive Accelerated strategy is now in execution mode. We are focused on delivering benchmark-beating shareholder returns by leveraging FBS to accelerate profitable organic growth, allocating capital intelligently to optimize shareholder returns over the medium to long term, and rebuilding investor trust.

It is early days, but we couldn't be more excited for the road ahead. Before we dive into our Q3 results, let me highlight some examples of the progress we are making in executing our Fortive Accelerated strategy on Slide 4. Our strategy to drive faster organic growth is built around three core levers: innovation acceleration, commercial acceleration, and recurring customer value, all powered by our amplified Fortive Business System and enhanced by our disciplined capital allocation approach. We made meaningful progress in advancing our strategy in Q3, starting with innovation acceleration. Our new product introduction velocity continues to accelerate as a result of our renewed focus on customer-centric innovation. During the quarter, we had several notable product launches, including ServiceChannel's SaaS R2 release, which introduces AI-powered work order insights and streamlined payment solutions. Additionally, Fluke continued its innovation momentum with the Fluke GFL 1500 solar ground fault locator.

This marks a further foray into the high-growth solar operations vertical and increases customer productivity by reducing troubleshooting time and decreasing hazard exposures in the quarter. We also launched a new innovation studio in Nashville, Tennessee, and opened a new customer experience center at ASP's headquarters in Irvine, California. Both properties were built to foster collaboration, accelerate innovation, and deepen customer relationships. Turning to commercial acceleration, we further intensified our commercial focus on faster-growing end markets and regions. Though it is early, we are starting to see green shoots in several areas. In our Intelligent Operating Solutions segment, for example, we have begun to put in place a series of commercial initiatives in North America to enhance our focus and deploy more resources towards high-growth verticals like solar operations, distributed energy, data centers, and defense. We are seeing the early signs of impact in North America Q3 performance.

We also recently stepped up our efforts in South Asia, including India, as our region continues to see exceptional economic growth. We saw significant acceleration in the region across both segments, and we are confident that our enhanced regional presence will drive strong momentum in this high-growth region in the years to come. Moving on to recurring customer value, we remain focused on increasing recurring revenues. Here again, we are early in our journey and have meaningful runway ahead of us. In the quarter, Fluke continued to make great progress on increasing its percentage of recurring revenue through enhancements to our maintenance software and further expansion of our service plan offerings. In general, we saw recurring revenue growth continue to outpace our consolidated growth. Finally, disciplined capital allocation is an integral component of our Fortive Accelerated strategy. Our capital deployment priorities for new Fortive are clear.

Invest in organic growth, pursue accretive bolt-on M&A, return capital through share repurchases, and maintain a modest growing dividend, all with a focus on best relative returns and maximizing medium to long-term shareholder value. Consistent with these priorities, we repurchased about 21 million shares in the third quarter, reflecting our belief in the attractive relative return of share buybacks at the valuations we saw in the quarter. We have also revamped our M&A funnel and process to reflect our different M&A strategy going forward, focused on accretive smaller bolt-on M&A which meet our stringent strategic and financial criteria. With that, I'll turn it over to Matt to walk through our financial results for the third quarter.

Speaker 0

Thanks, Olumide. I'll begin with slide five. In the third quarter we delivered total revenue of just over $1 billion, up roughly 2% year over year on both a reported and a core basis. While market conditions remain dynamic, we were encouraged to see growth at both iOS and AHS and modest outperformance versus our expectations in both segments. In iOS, resilient customer demand drove better than expected results at both Fluke and our facilities and asset lifecycle software businesses. In AHS, healthcare customers continue to exhibit caution as they navigate recent changes to healthcare reimbursement and funding policy. However, we saw sequential improvement in demand for healthcare equipment and consumables and continued strength in healthcare software. From a geographic perspective, North America showed solid growth, improving sequentially from Q2, driven by strengthening demand trends for professional instrumentation and healthcare equipment.

Europe was down year over year and worsened modestly from Q2, driven by weakening macro conditions in the region. Rest of world was mixed. Adjusted gross margin in the quarter was down about 60 basis points, driven by tariff-related costs partially offset by pricing actions and supply chain countermeasures. Adjusted EBITDA was $309 million, up 10% year over year with growth accelerating from Q2 levels. Adjusted EBITDA margin expanded approximately 200 basis points to 30%. This strong operational performance was driven by operating leverage alongside deliberate organizational streamlining and an overall sharpened focus on corporate cost discipline. We delivered adjusted EPS of $0.68, up 15% year over year, a meaningful acceleration from Q2 driven by growth in adjusted EBITDA, favorable interest expense on lower debt balances, and the positive year over year impact of share repurchases.

We estimate direct tariff costs net of countermeasures created a roughly $0.01 headwind to adjusted EPS in the quarter. We generated $266 million of free cash flow in the third quarter and our Q3 trailing twelve month free cash flow grew to $922 million. Our Q3 trailing twelve month free cash flow conversion on adjusted net income remains comfortably north of 100%. Moving to our segment results starting with Intelligent Operating Solutions on slide 6, revenue for the segment grew just over 2.5% on a reported basis with core revenue growth at 2%, slightly ahead of our expectations. Growth was driven by demand for facility and asset lifecycle software, resilient demand for professional instrumentation despite tariff volatility, and strong growth in gas detection products.

At Fluke, we saw an improvement in customer purchasing patterns drive modest growth with particular strength in North America, partially offset by continued softness in Europe related to macro conditions. While the acceleration is encouraging, ongoing volatility in global trade policy remains a source of uncertainty. Our facilities and asset lifecycle software businesses performed modestly ahead of expectations, supported by strong demand for multi-site facility maintenance and marketplace software in North America. However, tighter fiscal policy and constrained funding continue to pressure government demand for our procurement and estimating solutions. Our gas detection business is growing nicely with strong demand for our hardware as a service model to ensure worker safety, with particular strength in North America and Latin America.

Adjusted gross margin in the segment declined by just over 90 basis points year over year to 65.7%, primarily due to tariff cost pressures, partially offset by pricing and supply chain countermeasures. Adjusted EBITDA grew 7% to $242 million, accelerating from the more modest growth we saw in Q2, driven by operating leverage and reduced costs associated with flattening and rationalizing segment-level organizational structures. Adjusted EBITDA margin grew to 34.6%, up from 33.3% in the prior year period. Moving to our Advanced Healthcare Solutions segment on slide 7, we delivered total revenue of $328 million. Revenue grew approximately 2% year over year, just over 1% on a core basis. As we noted last quarter, we continued to see reimbursement and funding policy changes impact the AHS segment, specifically the deferral of U.S.-based hospital capital expenditures on healthcare equipment.

However, demand trends in North America improved from Q2 levels, driving sequential improvement in capital performance as some customers executed on deferred orders for sterilization and biomedical test equipment consumables. Demand also improved sequentially across most regions. Encouragingly, our software products in the segment continue to deliver solid growth, fueled by strong execution and structural advantages from resilient SaaS-based revenue models. Our adjusted gross margin of 58.4% in the AHS segment was similar to last year. Adjusted EBITDA grew approximately 7% year over year. Adjusted EBITDA margin expanded from roughly 27% to 28%, driven by operating leverage, flattened organizational structures, partially offset by modest incremental R&D investments.

Turning to Slide 8, as noted earlier, we deployed just over $1 billion of capital to share repurchases in the third quarter, reflecting confidence in our ability to deliver on the core value creation plan represented by our Fortive Accelerated strategy and the attractive valuations we saw in the quarter. We funded these repurchases with a combination of the remaining proceeds from the Rallian spin-off, dividend cash on hand, and increased commercial paper issuance in anticipation of continued strong free cash flow generation in the quarters ahead. As previously highlighted, our free cash flow on a trailing twelve month basis was $922 million. Moving to Slide 9, we are raising our full year adjusted EPS guidance to $2.63 to $2.67 per share.

Our guidance reflects Q3 results ahead of our expectations, the impact of incremental buybacks in Q3, and otherwise no change to the view we held on Q4 as at our last earnings call. This outlook also assumes a continuation of the market dynamics we experienced as we exited Q3. It also reflects current or known future tariff rates expected to go into effect through the end of the year, with tariffs net of countermeasures not expected to be material in the quarter. Let me provide a few additional modeling considerations based on what we see today. We are expecting overall core growth to moderate in Q4, with AHS core growth broadly in line with Q3 levels and very modest core growth at iOS.

We continue to expect a full year adjusted effective tax rate in the mid-teens and a Q4 tax rate in the single digits due to discrete tax items in the quarter. We also expect a sequential increase in net interest expense in Q4, reflecting our cash and debt levels at quarter end. As a final note before turning it back to Olumide for closing remarks and Q&A, in our first quarter post spin-off, we took important first steps to demonstrate our steadfast commitment to unrelenting execution on the Fortive Accelerated three pillar Value Creation plan that we outlined at our June Investor Day. We have much work left to do, but change is underway and we are energized by the exciting work ahead of us. I'll now turn it back over to Olumide.

Speaker 4

Thanks, Mark. I'll close out our prepared remarks with a few reflections from my first quarter as CEO and offer a bit more color on the changes we have catalyzed at Fortive in the past hundred days. First, our thesis behind the creation of new Fortive as a simpler, more focused company is showing promising early outcomes. We are seeing the benefits of simplification in our day-to-day operations, enabling us to be notably more customer centric. With fewer operating brands, we've been able to simplify our organizational model and processes. That is freeing up more time across our team to focus on the source of growth, our customers. Personally, I have really enjoyed spending significantly more time with our customers across both segments as we deepen relationships and uncover additional opportunities to accelerate growth.

We have also flattened out our executive leadership team to ensure that business leaders in closest proximity to our customers have a stronger voice at the top of our company. With 100,000 customers across our portfolio, I am energized by the impact our enhanced customer centric approach will have on our growth trajectory. Second, we are taking deliberate steps to accelerate growth. We are giving our 10 operating brands more growth oxygen and encouraging them to freely and frequently surface the next best organic growth opportunity that may have been underexploited in the past. We have transformed our strategic planning process into a more aggressive growth focus engine, and we are emerging from our recent strategic planning cycle with a robust pipeline of investable growth opportunities. We are re-gearing our annual financial planning, forecasting, and governance processes to enable in-year reinvestment into growth as overperformance materializes.

Third, our Fortive Business System is powerful not just for leadership and lean, but as a systematic growth engine. We are making great progress in evolving the mindset, cadence, and tools of FBS to better support growth, not just by integrating our AI Center of Excellence directly into our FBS team, but also by evolving and enhancing existing tool sets and best practices around innovation, commercial acceleration, and creating recurring customer value. Finally, our new approach to capital allocation is very different from what it was in the past. Our dynamic and disciplined capital allocation approach has one singular purpose: maximizing medium to long term shareholder returns, and we have demonstrated our commitment to this approach in our first quarter as new Fortive. We are pleased with our results this quarter, but we are not satisfied.

We are driving hard towards our ambitious agenda and look forward to demonstrating continued and accelerated progress in the quarters and years ahead. Thank you for your continued interest in Fortive. I especially want to thank our shareholders, our 100,000 customers, and all our Fortive employees around the world who do a tremendous job every day to deliver strong results and build enduring advantages in our businesses. With that, I'll turn it to Christina for Q and A.

Speaker 3

Thanks, Olumide. That concludes our prepared remarks. We are now ready for questions.

Speaker 1

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Our first question today comes from Nigel Ko of Wolfe Research. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 4

Oh, thanks. Good morning.

Good afternoon, even if it's been a long day. Thanks for the details.

Obviously, you know the margin performance was.

To our mind, the real highlights.

It seems, you know, when I look at your sort of implied 4Q guide, it looks like you're not assuming much of a sequential pickup in EBITDA margins. I mean, we're back in something in the range of about 31% EBITDA margin for the fourth quarter. Just curious, is there any sort of, you know, was it a sort of stars aligning kind of quarter on margin? You're not assuming that repeats, any kind of details there, especially around some of the tariff offsets you expect in 4Q. Hey. Hey Nigel.

Speaker 0

How are you? Thanks for the question. If you think about the overperformance we delivered in Q3, a part of it was revenue performance, as you call out, a big chunk of it was cost discipline. You can see that show up in the numbers both in unallocated Corporate costs and also in the segments. Most of that was actually discrete actions that we took in the quarter really to start to free up resources for us ahead of annual planning so that we could deploy against some of the initiatives that we're starting to see as part of the Fortive Accelerated strategy to accelerate growth into 2026. We do expect to redeploy some of the resources we freed up in the fourth quarter. There were a few little one-timers, incentive compensation, some increased capitalization of software development that happened in the quarter.

We're going to maintain our cost discipline through the fourth quarter, to be sure, but we are going to reinvest some of it as we look forward here.

Speaker 4

Okay, that's good color.

My follow on is really around the government shutdown. I think we hit the fourth week today.

You called out some government funding pressure within Gordian. Just curious how you know how that's impacting performance in October. Yeah, thanks, Nigel. The government business for us is mostly state and local government agencies. In that sense, the federal government shutdown is not a big factor. Our direct exposure to federal government is relatively small, just a little bit in our file business and Fluke and AHS. It really just hasn't been a major factor for us right now. It's difficult to predict the duration of a shutdown and second level impacts of a prolonged shutdown. We feel good about the guidance based on what we know today. Given it's not a big direct exposure to the federal government for us, we feel good about what we've laid out.

That's great to hear. Thank you.

Thanks.

Speaker 1

The next question is from Dean Dray of RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 4

Thank you.

Good day, everyone.

How are you doing?

I was hoping just to circle up on capital allocation. That was a sizable buyback in the quarter.

Just kind of give us your thinking.

About the decision making on doing buybacks. Is there intrinsic value calculation you're doing internally, and then just the setup for M&A because you had been through this moratorium on deal making leading up to the spin. Where does that stand in priorities? Thank you.

Yeah, thanks for the question, Dan. We were quite pleased to be able to deploy $1 billion towards share repurchase in Q3. That reflected strong free cash flow, the Rallian dividend proceeds, and the attractive valuation we saw for our shares in the quarter. Like we've mentioned with respect to Fortive going forward, share repurchases will be a big part of our capital allocation option set. Anytime we see conditions like that, we'll continue to do that. To the extent that M&A is still part of our formula, we've been quite clear that we are not looking at transformational M&A. We're looking at smaller bolt-on acquisitions that can accelerate the go-forward growth of our existing businesses. It's a very different playbook on M&A. We are going to be more balanced across share repurchase and this bolt-on M&A acquisitions that we do.

Like we mentioned at our investor day, the formula we laid out for shareholder value creation the next three years does not require us to do M&A. From our point of view, we're going to take the path that offers the lowest risk to create value and that for us does not include big M&A. We continue to cultivate our funnel of proprietary bolt-on assets that are smaller and can help existing businesses. That's how we think about it. We do the analysis to your point of what gives us the best relative returns between share repurchase and the M&A options that we have. In the third quarter specifically, the case was very clear just given where the stock price was to deploy that heavy $1 billion purchases.

That's really helpful. Just as the second question, was hoping to get some color on Fluke in the quarter. It's such a good indicator of short cycle demand. Anything about the sell in versus sell through channel inventory would be helpful.

Yeah, no thanks. Thanks Dan. We were quite pleased with Fluke in the quarter and having it return to growth in the quarter. All these fundamental metrics that set up the future looked really strong. We had order growth. POS continues to be really strong, especially in North America, and stable in the rest of the world. Book to bill for the year continues to track north of one. Channel inventory outside of North America, we've said all year, has been elevated, but that's been improving over the course of the year. We're in a much better place than we were at the beginning of the year. On top of that, our team continues to accelerate product innovation.

I talked about a couple of those in the prepared remarks and also commercial execution. There are some markets, both verticals like data center and defense, that are doing really well right now and also geos like India that are doing very well. Our team continues to put a lot more horsepower behind those markets, and we're driving more recurring revenues at Fluke with maintenance software enhancements and additions to our service plans. Both by reason of how we did in Q3 at Fluke, the underlying metrics of the health of the business, and the actions the team's doing to really continue to accelerate growth, we feel quite good about the setup for the next three years at Fluke.

That's really helpful.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Speaker 1

The next question is from Scott Davis of Melius Research. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 4

Hi, Scott. Congrats on the first full quarter, it's pretty clean. One of your competitors has been getting.

A lot of attention in the radiation test business, and I haven't heard you all talk about Landauer in a while.

Can you get us up to speed?

On the outlook there and what you're seeing?

Yeah. Thank you, Scott. You're right, there's a lot of excitement in the Landauer business for us. As you know, it's one of the highly recurring parts of our AHS segment. We like that attribute of a business, and we've said the recurring part of the company Fortive overall has been growing faster than our fleet average. Landauer is a great example of that. It's continued to grow really strongly, and that comes from the fact that customers really rely on us for this mission critical radiation monitoring. It's a very stable need for customers. They're looking for really the number one brand that they can trust, and that helps Joint Commission reviews and other regulatory requirements they have to meet be much easier to meet. We see a lot of strength in that business.

The thing that I find exciting for us is the work that our team's doing on innovation, and that includes finding add-on services that we can tag on to our existing customer base. We have tens of thousands of customers in that business, and the idea of thinking about that business like a software business that you can add on to existing customers besides price and expansion to other facilities. Sorry, you're breaking up. I can't hear you. Are you there, fellows? Yes, can you hear us? It's breaking up. It could be our phone, it could.

Be you guys, I don't know.

I'll pass it on because I don't want to be disruptive to the call.

Speaker 3

Are you hearing us?

Speaker 1

Okay, yes, you're coming through loud and clear. We'll move on to the next question. I'll pass it to Julian Mitchell of Barclays. Please proceed with your question.

Hi, good afternoon. Maybe just wanted to follow up on the demand trends in AHS. You know, maybe help us understand sort of what's happening in terms of the equipment demand versus consumables. You mentioned the policy and funding change headwinds kind of. How have you seen those play out affecting customer demand in the past kind of couple of quarters? Just trying to understand if that headwind is getting worse or it's holding steady and what does it mean as we're going into next year please.

Speaker 4

Yeah, thanks Julianne for the question. The AHS segment overall, just maybe to break it down, the software part of the business, really strong, continues to do really well. We're quite, quite pleased and excited about that acceleration in that part of the business. With respect to capital equipment in the AHS segment, we talked last quarter about, to your point, the reimbursement and funding policy changes and how that's causing some of the U.S. hospitals to defer capital equipment purchase. What we've seen since then has been encouraging, which is sequential improvement in demand for healthcare capital in North America based on just more certainty around the legislative conditions that they're operating under. They're still working through the full kind of long-term effects of the OBV Act.

We certainly see improvement in the demand patterns significantly in September, especially because we have a funnel of deals and we know what things were deferred, and we began to see more and more of those get funded in September. We expect that trend to continue through the rest of the year. The sequential improvement in that capital equipment purchase we quite like. We see the same sequential improvement in consumables as well, and our biggest markets continue to grow in consumables. Overall, I'd say software doing well. The capital equipment piece, we're seeing sequential improvement, and that's quickening in September and into October as well, and then the consumables continues to be solid. That's great.

Thanks, Olumide, and maybe one for Mark, just very much a CFO type question, so apologies for that. The tax rate outlook, I think this year's sort of overall adjusted P&L tax rate is maybe 14% something like that. I just wondered is that sort of a normal run rate in future, kind of best view on the next sort of year or two. Any perspectives on that you could provide?

Speaker 0

Happy to, always happy to answer your CFO questions. I think it's a good framework to think about. Right now mid teens, the pillar two proposals that are out there, there is some risk that to the extent that the U.S. is not excluded from that, which is the current thinking, although it's not written into law, we could see something drift higher. Right now from what we see, I think mid teens is a good way to model the tax rate through 2026 at least.

Speaker 4

Great, thank you.

Speaker 0

Welcome.

Thanks Juve.

Speaker 1

The next question is from Charles Tusa of J.P. Morgan. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 0

Hey, good afternoon, and congrats on a solid quarter.

Speaker 4

Good execution. Thanks, Steve.

Speaker 0

Thanks, Steve. The software business, the FAL business, what are you guys seeing in the other businesses?

Speaker 4

I think you mentioned some.

Speaker 0

Of the construction, I guess related drags, are you seeing how are your customers kind of treating your part of.

The budgets there from a kind of.

An IT spending perspective?

What are you guys seeing there?

Speaker 4

Yeah, thanks Steve. Overall we like, we continue to see growth in that platform. We quite like that and the components of that, the ServiceChannel brands, really great pull through. We talked about some of the AI-powered work order insights we're adding to that platform, which is an expansion for existing customers. They love that. I think for customers they view facilities software as a good way to scale the impact of AI because we have real networks built around this business. The IT spending around that, to the extent that we're helping them capture the value of AI, is really, really strong right now. We quite like that. The Gordian software part, which is really around planning, facility planning software, also continues to do really well. We talked last quarter about the new products we launched, assessment and capital planning.

The other growth in that business has been terrific, separate from the procurement part of Gordian. That's been a terrific story for us from a software point of view. Current continues the act of improvement that we've talked about over several quarters now. Overall, just given the nature of what our software does for customers and the fact that in the grand scheme it's a small spend with very high return on investment that helps them on AI monetization and getting real value out of AI use cases, it's been a strong part of our story and that's why we said the recurring revenue part of the company has been growing much faster than the FBS average.

Got it.

Speaker 0

What in the quarter was FAL above the like what was the organic at FAL in the quarter in total?

Speaker 4

Yeah. FAL grew in total in the quarter. You can think about it as helpful to the fleet average.

Okay, got it.

Thank you. Thanks, Steve.

Speaker 1

The next question is from Andy Kaplowitz of Citigroup. Please proceed with your question.

Good morning, everyone. Good afternoon.

Speaker 4

Good morning, Andy.

I think one of the primary goals you have or you had as you said is to simplify your overall business. Obviously, the first quarter out of the gate with good margin is a good start, signpost for that. Maybe talk about where you are in terms of that self help. I know it's early, but should we get increasing impact from that simplification as we go into 2026?

Yeah. Thank you. I think the short answer is yes. If you think about what we've laid out as our plan here, the plan is we have a simpler company in the stand brands, which means, frankly, we can simplify how we run the company, free up more time to spend with customers and to spend on growth. Like Mark mentioned, we've also created space in our P&L, as you saw with the big margin expansion in Q3. We can actually put some more investment behind this growth idea. All of that's in motion right now. I would expect that to keep building momentum for growth as we come out of this year. Secondly, the other thing that's been quite important in this change with the company is the capital allocation strategy.

Not only are we going to grow the company faster and the seeds we're planting around products, commercial, and recurring value is playing through on that, but we are also going to significantly shift how we think about capital allocation. You saw that with the share repurchase that we did in Q3 here. As we go forward, you're going to see that balance continue to play out. We're one quarter in, barely 100 days into the journey, and I would expect that the best is still ahead of us here.

Helpful. Could you give us a little more color on what you're seeing in demand by region? I think you mentioned Western Europe maybe downshifted a little, China. What are you seeing across your end markets by geography?

Yeah, I think you have it generally right. I'd say the star of the show continues to be North America. Really strong performance in North America. I think part of that's the market. Part of that's kind of our team really have pushed hard from an innovation point of view in some of the best end markets, data centers and so on in the U.S. especially. Part of it is just the market conditions have been more favorable for us. On the other end, I'd say Western Europe especially, it's been the softest market for us and that's been the case most of the year. Q2 got a little bit better in Western Europe, but that didn't really sustain in Q3. We're not expecting anything to get dramatically better in Western Europe for the rest of the year.

We've kind of planned that in here and anything better will be upside for us. The rest of the world was just mixed and generally stable, I would say in China and mixed everywhere else. North America really good, Western Europe really soft. Everything else in the middle.

Appreciate the color.

Thanks.

Speaker 1

The next question is from Jeff Sprague of Vertical Research Partners. Please proceed with your question.

Hello everyone. Thank you.

Speaker 4

Hey, wanted to get a little.

Speaker 0

Bit better sense of maybe the margin trajectory.

Speaker 4

First off, can you just elaborate a little bit more? You said there were some one-timers.

Speaker 0

In the quarter, I don't know.

If it was a change in capitalization policy or something.

Did that all run through corporate?

Essentially, you're saying that you're using that "benefit" in Q3.

Speaker 4

To spend for growth in Q4.

you just put a little bit more color or detail around that and correct?

me if I'm wrong there.

Speaker 0

Yeah, sure. Happy to, Jeff. There were a few one timers in the quarter. There were two primary drivers. One was just increased capitalization rates at some of our software companies as they were building new product that was not yet sort of deployed into live production. That was one impact that basically lowers R&D and then ultimately will come back in the future as that's amortized in. The second was that we did have some adjustments to incentive compensation and that was a good guy as well. Those items hit a combination of the segments and the corporate costs. The expectation, even though we are actually making direct cost reductions to actually fund growth, is that overall OpEx will step back up in the fourth quarter.

As we don't repeat some of these one timers, as we start to pull in some of the investment ideas that we've got as part of the strategic planning exercise, an annual planning exercise that Olumide laid out, we're going to maintain discipline and expect to still have a strong margin profile. Overall, OpEx should pop back up a bit in the fourth quarter.

I mean, trying to triangulate between what.

Speaker 4

You gave us and making an educated.

Guess on interest, expense and everything and the share count, it looks like you're sort of guiding segment level margins, I don't know, kind of flat-ish in.

Q4 on a year-over-year basis.

Is that correct?

Speaker 0

I think you're in the zone. You're in the zone. You're going to get year over year basis out of the corporate or year on year expansion out of the corporate cost. You're broadly in the zone. You'll see some pressure in gross margin, particularly in iOS that then is largely offset below the gross margin line. Right, right.

Okay.

Speaker 4

Right.

Thank you for that help.

Speaker 0

Appreciate it. You're welcome.

Speaker 1

The next question is from Joe O'Dea of Wells Fargo. Please proceed with your question.

Hi, thanks for taking my questions. Wanted to just get a little bit more color on comments around giving brands more Growth Oxygen, which sounds like an exciting initiative. We saw the Q3 R&D down, but maybe that's a little bit more non-repeat. I'm just curious in terms of what exactly is encompassed in resourcing the Growth Oxygen for 10 operating brands and how to think about the timing of that flowing through to organic growth impact.

Speaker 4

Yeah, no thanks. Thanks for that. Maybe just describe what it is that we've done. What we've done the first hundred days here is we've gone through our strategic planning process with each of our 10 brands, and the nature of that is really digging deep to find the best ideas for organic growth acceleration that maybe we've underleveraged so far. It may be really compelling enhancement products for customers. It could be commercial capacity expansion in attractive markets like data center or India, or it could be expansion to add on services or software offerings for customers that we just haven't had the space in our P&L to get to. We went through a process to really assemble all of those ideas across our brands. I'm just incredibly impressed by this slate of pragmatic and actionable ideas that came out from that process.

We now have this funnel of terrific ideas that we're getting after very aggressively. What we've then done is to say, look, we are going to be very disciplined in assessing which of those have the highest confidence and the best return potential. For those ones, we will make space in the P&L. That's what we mean by Growth Oxygen, to fund those and to get them done. Some of the margin expansion we got in Q3 that we talked about, we are going to save some of that to invest over the course of Q4 here to really think about it as a surge in getting those great ideas executed faster as we go into 2026, they're having a lot of impact. Keeping in mind that some of them are short time to impact, things like commercial capacity add, some of which are marketing demand gen add.

We feel quite good about the setup and the space we've created in the P&L to get after this and really give these businesses more, as we call it, growth oxygen than maybe they've had historically when we've been really tight across the board. We're just really being intentional in planting seeds that will power the growth. The case that we've made is faster growth, and we're planting the seeds for that.

On organic growth composition, sort of thinking about the price and volume piece, and volume kind of slightly down in the quarter.

Speaker 1

Is the setup.

That you think the volume decline rate is actually a little steeper into the end of the year. Is that primarily comps, and then just any color on where you see the best opportunity for volume to get a little bit better? Maybe areas that you're watching most closely?

Speaker 4

Yeah, again, a few ways to think about that. One is we like what we've seen from pricing this year because I think in many ways that's a reflection of the value of those brands. Some of it has been the benefit of tariffs and recovering that. Underneath all of it, it's been an affirmation that we can get price in this business. We expect that to continue. The exciting thing for us is a lot of the growth ideas I talked about are really about volume. I would say across our businesses we see real upside from volume. I think you think about our biggest brands in Fluke and the segment, those are areas where we have very specific ideas that can help with volume growth over the next year here going into 2026.

We certainly expect the price kind of strength to continue to be a big contributor to our growth, and the volume piece of the math will get better over the course of our journey here the next year to three. That's what we'd expect.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Speaker 1

The next question comes from Chris Snyder of Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 4

Thank you. I wanted to follow up on some of the Q4 commentary, and I think you guys said you expect organic growth to moderate in Q4 relative to Q3. Is that just a function of a more difficult comp, or did some of the Q2 disruption get pushed into Q3 revenue? Maybe that was a little bit overstated versus demand. Any color there would be helpful. Thank you.

Speaker 0

Sure. Happy to answer that, Chris. There are a few things that are happening. One is that in Q4 we do have a little bit of a tougher comp. If you look at the script commentary from last year, we talked about some pull forward from Q2 into Q4. I think it's particularly acute in the iOS segment. There was a little bit of a snapback in Q3 in terms of just some of that $30 million coming back. I would just say, overall the trends that we're seeing across the iOS segment and the AHS segment are broadly consistent. They're encouraging. I think, as Olumide said, we've got lots of optimism for better volume growth as we step into 2026, but we do have some timing-related impacts that are shifting things from Q2 to Q3 and then out of Q4.

Speaker 4

Thank you, I appreciate that. Maybe just a follow up on AHS. From the outside looking in, it's very difficult to kind of have a sense for the performance versus the healthcare policy and funding challenges that could be coming or maybe leaving the market based on the policy. I guess it seems like you guys think AHS will have another pretty solid quarter here in Q4. What gives you guys confidence that the North America healthcare spend can be supportive or resilient through a kind of choppy, hard to predict policy backdrop? Thank you. Yeah, no, thanks for that. We overall like the AHS path that's set up here. If you think about it, this time last year, the AHS segment grew 9% organic growth in Q3 2024, 6% for the year overall. We know what the capacity of this business is.

Despite the choppiness of 2025 with all the healthcare related policy changes, our businesses continue to do the right things for our customers. The depth of customer loyalty, customer support, and I've experienced this personally just being out there. A lot of our customers in that segment is incredibly strong. We like our setup, we like what we're doing with respect to innovation, we like what we're doing with respect to the commercial engagement with customers and recurring value that we're adding to those customers across all our brands. That piece we really like. If you think about the fundamental kind of spend and demand profile of healthcare in the U.S., whatever is going on, in the end it still comes down to the basic fact that we've got aging demographics.

We've got increasingly sophisticated healthcare options and intervention options for these aging demographics, a lot of which have two or more chronic conditions. We continue to have shortage in provider capacity. That means the kinds of solutions that we bring to drive productivity and safety are going to be incredibly supported by this tailwind over the next three to five years. Irrespective of the choppiness of policy decisions in 2025, we like what we're doing on innovation, on commercial and recurring value, and we like the underlying sustained circular trends that make this healthcare and especially the industrial part of healthcare that we focus on be a good market to be in. That's kind of where we focus, is play for what's going to create value beyond quarter to quarter noisiness in the space. We really like the business and we think we're well set up.

Thank you, I appreciate that. Thanks.

Speaker 1

The next question is from Jamie Cook of Truist Securities. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 3

Hi, good afternoon. I guess a couple quick, two quick questions. One, you know you talk about Fortive Accelerated innovation acceleration, commercial acceleration, like all these opportunities to sort of ignite growth profitably, just to be clear. I mean it doesn't sound like you embed any of that in your guidance. Just wondering if there, you know, if there's opportunity for upside, you know, on the top line as some of these initiatives go through. Just my second follow up question, the $63.6 million in other on the adjusted operating profit, what I mean that's usually trends I guess in the low 30s. Can you just break apart like what was in that number and then what's implied for the fourth quarter. Thank you.

Speaker 4

Great, thanks for the question. I'll take the first part and I'll have Mark take the second one. The way we think about it is we laid out at our investor day in June a financial framework for the two-year period 2026-2027, and the premise of that is the company we now have is going to be 3 to 4% organic growth. After 2026-2027, it gets better than that, and we'll have margin expansion, 50-200 basis points, and then adjusted EPS growth that's high single digit plus growth. That financial framework benefits from all of this Fortive Accelerated strategy. That's what gives us confidence that the financial framework remains intact. That's where you're going to see the impact of it.

With respect to the guide for this year, we feel good about the way we've reflected the macro conditions and all the forces at work across the three areas we've talked about, and on tariffs and healthcare spending and state and local government spending. That's all reflected in the guide for this year. The way to think about our Fortive Accelerated strategy and the impact of that is it really is what gives us complete confidence in the financial framework that we laid out for 2026-2027. I'll let Mark touch on the second part of the question.

Speaker 0

Yeah, I think Jamie, we'll get back to you about, I think you're referring to that other operating income in the AHS segment. Just give us a bit and we'll circle back with you on that. Maybe we can go to the next question.

Speaker 1

The next question is from Joseph Giordano of TD Cowen. Please proceed with your question.

Hi, good afternoon, this is Chris on for Joe. You'd called out the growth, the double-digit growth in recurring revenue, and he noted that it was outpacing the overall average. Where do you see recurring revenue potentially ending up as a % of total?

Speaker 4

In the longer term, what are.

Some key levers that you have in both segments to sustain that above corporate average trajectory?

Yeah, thanks for the question. We like the recurring revenue percentage continuing to go up, and we don't, we've deliberately not set a ceiling on how high it goes. We expect it to continue to grow with no limits on what's possible over time. The second thing I'd say is if you think about the pieces of the company today that are still not recurring and then you think about how quickly those can change. We still do have some incredibly powerful professional instrumentation offerings at Fluke. That's the biggest chunk of our business that's nonrecurring now. That business was almost 0% recurring 10 years ago. If you go back five years ago, it was probably 5% or 6% recurring. Today it's 15% recurring. The biggest lever for us to keep driving recurring revenue is continuing to attach more recurring things at Fluke.

We also have some examples from businesses that were mostly transactional like Industrial Scientific 10 years ago, and we've shifted those to more hardware as a service recurring offerings. That gives us a little bit of a template of some of the things we could do for some of our offerings at Fluke as well, to shift them to more of a hardware as a service offering. That's probably the single biggest bucket of revenues that will move the needle the most as we shift more of the company towards recurring, and we're going to be intentional. It's one of our three pillars for the accelerator that is driving recurring customer value. Thanks very much.

Speaker 1

The next question.

Speaker 0

Maybe I'll just circle back on Jamie's question. That incremental expense was predominantly related to separation-related stock compensation matters, fair market adjustments, as well as the acceleration of certain executive compensation associated with the transition of leadership.

Speaker 4

Great, thanks.

Speaker 1

Thank you. The next question is from Andrew Buscaglia of BNP Paribas Asset Management. Please proceed with your question.

Hey, good afternoon everyone.

Speaker 4

Good afternoon. You know, you guys, there's a lot.

Of noise on the margin side Q3 to Q4, but I'm looking high level into 2026.

Speaker 0

How volume depends on margins and can.

Speaker 4

We count on some of these savings helping you expand in a low or.

No volume environment. Is there any update on other incremental stranded costs? Will we see fallout in 2026 or where?

Speaker 0

Do we stand with that side of the story? Thanks for the question. At this point I would just turn your attention to the financial framework we laid out at investor day, which was again 3 to 4% revenue growth, 50 to 100 basis points of adjusted EBITDA margin expansion, and high single digit plus adjusted EPS growth. We're in the middle of annual planning right now and really we're just trying to strike the balance between driving the appropriate amount of margin expansion along with accelerating growth. We'll be able to give you a little bit more color on that obviously on our next call. In terms of stranded costs, we're almost there. We took some other actions as you saw in the third quarter. There are some stock comp related stranded costs that will be sort of working out.

A lot of that sits in the segments, but we're almost there. In six to twelve months we'll have the rest of it out. As a reminder, I think we said we had $25 million that was out and there was $25 million left to go. There's probably half of that remaining for us to take out over the course.

Speaker 4

Of the next six to 12 months.

Speaker 0

Okay, great. Thank you. You're welcome.

Speaker 1

This now concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the floor back over to Olumide for closing comments.

Speaker 4

Thanks, Brooke. Thank you all for joining us. We really appreciate your interest in Fortive. We could not be more excited about the journey. We're just starting here and it's still early. We realize that some of you know us and some of you are new to us, but we are incredibly excited. We have a simple playbook here. We've got a great portfolio. We believe we're going to drive faster, profitable organic growth from this portfolio. We are going to continue to be very disciplined in terms of leverage down the P&L and our cost discipline with FBS helping us through that. Our capital allocation approach is going to be intelligently positioned to balance share repurchase and smaller bolt-on M&A.

We believe that that formula and us doing what we said we'd do on that and building trust and maintaining trust will do incredible things for shareholder value creation in the next three years. That's exciting for us. We hope it is for you as well. Thanks for joining and we'll see you next time.

Speaker 1

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation. This does conclude today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines and have a wonderful day.