A.O. Smith Corp (AOS) — Q4 2017 Earnings Call Transcript

Thank you, Andrew. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen and thank you for joining us on our 2017 results conference call. With me participating in the call are Ajita Rajendra, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer and John Kita, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin with Ajita's remarks, I would like to remind you that some of the comments that will be made during this conference call, including answers to your questions, will constitute forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks that could cause actual results to be materially different. Those risks include, among others, matters that we have described in this morning’s press release. In order to provide improved transparency into the operating results of our business, we have provided non-GAAP measures, including adjusted net earnings, adjusted earnings per share, and adjusted effective income tax rate for 2017 that exclude the estimate of our total tax expense related to US tax reform. Reconciliations from GAAP measures to non-GAAP measures are provided in the appendix at the end of this presentation and also on our website. Also, as a courtesy to others in the question queue, please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up per turn. If you have multiple questions, please rejoin the queue. I will now turn the call over to Ajita, who will begin his remarks on slide 4.

Thank you, Pat and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Our double-digit sales growth in 2017 was driven by continued strong demand for our consumer products in China and positive end markets for our boilers and water heaters in North America. Here are a few highlights. Record sales of $3 billion grew nearly 12%. China sales were up 18% in local currency and up 16% in US dollar terms, reaching over $1 billion in 2017. China water treatment sales grew 35% and air purification sales grew 75% to $45 million. Our global water treatment sales exceeded $300 million in 2017. We are very proud of the global water treatment platform we have built over the last seven years. Beginning in 2011 with about $35 million of water treatment sales in China, we grew significantly to almost $240 million last year. As we experienced rapid organic water treatment growth in China, we added several bolt-on acquisitions in the US and Europe, launched water treatment products in India and Vietnam, and added a significant number of water treatment engineers and technologists to our global engineering center. As a result of our investments, we project our global water treatment sales to be approximately $400 million in 2018. Record-setting adjusted net earnings of $2.17 per share was 17% higher than our earnings per share in 2016. We are delighted to welcome the Hague team to the A. O. Smith family through our acquisition of the US-based water softener company in early September. Hague fits squarely in our acquisition strategy to grow our global water treatment platform. We are excited about the global opportunities Hague’s innovative and high-quality products bring us as well as Hague’s experienced water quality dealer network. We continue to review our capital allocation and dedicate a portion of our cash to return to shareholders. We repurchased over 2.5 million shares for approximately $139 million. We announced a 29% increase to our dividend earlier this month. The five-year compound annual growth rate of our dividend is over 25%. AOS joined the S&P 500 index as of July 2017. We are honored to join this prestigious group of US companies. Our inclusion is a significant milestone in our company's very rich history. John will now describe our results in more detail, beginning with slide number 5.

Before we discuss the financial results of our fourth quarter and full year, I will provide details of the new tax law impact. Our one-time tax charge in the fourth quarter is estimated to be $82 million or $0.47 per share and is primarily related to the mandatory repatriation tax on undistributed earnings under US tax reform. The one-time charge is expected to be paid over eight years. We project our effective income tax rate in 2018 to be between 22% and 22.5%. We expect to repatriate approximately $200 million in the first half of 2018 and use the proceeds to repay floating rate debt. Our capital allocation strategy will remain focused on three pillars: one, to support our growth with capital spending; two, to pursue acquisitions, which expand our core water heating and water treating platforms globally as well as expand our product lines, primarily in China; and three, to return cash to shareholders. We will continue to review opportunities within the three pillars and discuss with our board. Sales for the year of $3 billion were 12% higher than the previous year. Adjusted net earnings of $378 million increased 16% from 2016. Adjusted earnings per share of $2.17 increased 17% compared with 2016. Sales in our North America segment of $1.9 billion increased 9% compared with 2016. The increase in sales was primarily due to higher volumes of water heaters and boilers and pricing actions related to steel cost increases. North America water treatment sales comprised of recently acquired Hague as well as a full year of Aquasana incrementally added approximately $40 million to our North America segment sales. Rest of World segment sales of $1.1 billion increased 16% compared with 2016. China’s sales increased nearly 16%, driven by higher demand for our consumer products in the region, led by water treatment and air purification products and pricing actions, primarily due to higher steel and installation costs. The declining Chinese currency unfavorably impacted the translation of China sales by approximately $18 million and sales growth by 200 basis points. Water heater and water treatment sales in India increased approximately $8 million or over 40% in 2017, compared with 2016. On slide 9, North America segment earnings of $429 million were 11% higher than segment earnings in 2016. The favorable impact from higher sales of water heaters and boilers and the pricing actions in the US were partially offset by higher steel costs. As a result of lower selling, general, and administrative expenses as a percentage of sales, 2017 segment margin of 22.5% was higher than the 22.1% generated in 2016. Rest of World earnings of $149 million improved 16% compared with 2016. Higher China sales, including the price increase, were partially offset by higher steel costs, higher fees paid to installers, and increased SG&A costs. Expansion of water treatment and air purification product retail outlets in tier 2 and tier 3 cities, higher advertising related to brand building in our newer product categories and higher water treatment product development engineering costs were the primary drivers of higher SG&A in China. Segment margin in 2017 was essentially the same as 2016. Our corporate expenses were $2 million higher than in 2016, driven by commissioned water treatment market studies in the US and higher engineering costs at our corporate technology center. Our adjusted effective income tax rate in 2017 was 27.4%. The rate was lower than the 29.4% experienced in 2016, primarily due to lower US state income taxes and higher deductions for stock-based compensation. Comparing the lower adjusted effective tax rate with the effective income tax rate of 28% originally projected benefited 2017 results by $0.02 per share. Sales for the fourth quarter of $769 million were 10% higher than the same quarter in 2016. Adjusted net earnings in the fourth quarter of $105 million increased 26% from the fourth quarter in 2016. Fourth quarter adjusted earnings per share of $0.60 increased 28% compared with the same quarter in 2016. Sales in our North America segment of $461 million increased 6% compared with the fourth quarter of 2016. The increase in sales was primarily due to higher volumes of boilers and commercial water heaters and pricing actions related to steel cost increases. We estimate the commercial water heater industry experienced the pre-buy of approximately 5,000 electric units in the fourth quarter due to an anticipated regulatory change in early 2018. North America water treatment sales comprised of Aquasana and recently acquired Hague incrementally added approximately $9 million to our North America segment sales. Rest of World segment sales of $314 million increased 17% compared with the same quarter in 2016. China sales increased 16% driven by pricing actions primarily due to higher steel and installation costs and higher demand for our consumer products in the region. India sales grew over 40% compared with the same period in 2016. On slide 13, North America segment earnings of $105 million were 17% higher than segment earnings in the same quarter in 2016. The favorable impact from higher sales of boilers and commercial water heaters, pricing actions in the US and lower ERP costs were partially offset by higher steel and other input costs. These factors drove fourth quarter 2017’s segment margin higher to 22.8% compared with 20.5% last year. Rest of World earnings of $51 million improved 33% compared with the fourth quarter of 2016. Higher China sales, including the price increase were partially offset by higher steel costs and higher fees paid to installers. Fourth quarter segment margin was 16.2% compared with 14.2% in the same quarter of 2016, due to improved margin for our water treatment products sold in China, lower selling and advertising costs as a percent of sales as well as improved performance in India. Our corporate expenses were higher in the fourth quarter compared with the same period in 2016, primarily due to higher spending at our corporate technology center and higher employee incentive costs. Our adjusted effective income tax rate in the fourth quarter of 2017 was 25.8%. The rate was lower than the 28.9% experienced during the fourth quarter last year, primarily due to lower US state income taxes and higher deductions for stock-based compensation. Cash provided by operations during 2017 was $326 million and similar to our previous projections compared with $447 million provided during 2016. Higher adjusted earnings were more than offset by higher outlays for working capital, primarily due to the higher than anticipated positive cash flows in the fourth quarter of 2016 as well as higher inventories in China to reduce the impact from our new plant this quarter. Over the two-year period from 2016 to 2017, we generated operating cash of $773 million, which compares with $612 million during 2014 and 2015. Our liquidity position and balance sheet remain strong. Our debt to capital ratio was 20% at the end of 2017. We have cash balances totaling $820 million located offshore and our net cash position was approximately $410 million at the end of 2017. We completed the acquisition of Hague, a US-based water softener company during the third quarter for $45 million plus a potential earnout of $2 million. Primarily as a result of continued strong cash flow and escalating PBGC premiums, we made a voluntary contribution to our pension plan of $30 million. The after-tax impact to our cash flow was approximately $18 million. During 2017, we repurchased approximately 2.5 million shares of common stock for a total of $139 million. Approximately 2.4 million shares remained on our existing repurchase authority at the end of December. This morning, we announced our 2018 EPS guidance with a range of between $2.50 and $2.58 per share, which includes the benefit related to our lower projected tax rate under US tax reform. The midpoint of our EPS guidance represents a 17% increase in EPS compared with our adjusted 2017 results. Excluding the US Tax Reform benefits from our 2018 guidance midpoint, in other words, using the 2017 adjusted tax rate of 27.4%, our operational performance is expected to improve over 9%. We expect our cash flow from operations in 2018 to be between $475 million and $500 million, which is much higher than the $326 million generated in 2017. We expect higher earnings and lower outlays for working capital this year, specifically lower inventory levels. We broke ground in 2016 on the construction of a new water treatment and air purification manufacturing facility in China to support the strong growth of these products in China. Our 2018 capital spending plans of approximately $100 million includes $30 million related to completion of this plan. Total costs for the facility, which is expected to begin production in the second quarter, will be about $67 million. Our depreciation and amortization expense is expected to be approximately $80 million in 2018. Our corporate and other expenses are expected to be approximately $49 million in 2018, higher than the $47 million in 2017, partially due to higher projected spending at our corporate R&D center. Our effective income tax rate is expected to be between 22% and 22.5% in 2018, lower than the previous year's due to US tax reform. We expect to repurchase our shares in the amount of approximately $135 million in 2018 under a 10b5-1 plan, similar to 2017. We may supplement our 10b5-1 plan with opportunistic share repurchases in 2018. We expect our average diluted outstanding shares in 2018 will be approximately 173 million. We increased our dividend earlier this month by 29%. I will now turn the call back to Ajita, who will summarize our guidance, the business assumptions for 2018, and our growth strategy beginning on slide 17.

Thank you, John. We considered several tailwinds and headwinds as we built our plans for 2018. First, our tailwinds. Both residential and commercial water heater volumes experienced strong growth in 2017. We project US residential water heater industry volumes will increase 250,000 to 300,000 units in 2018 due to continued new construction and expansion of replacement demand. This assumption includes a slight dip due to weather impacting volumes. Boiler revenues grew 13% in 2017, driven by solid demand for our condensing boilers and new product-related market share gains. We expect our boiler business to grow approximately 10% in 2018. We improved profitability in India in 2017 due to scale in our water heater and water treatment businesses, moving from losing over $9 million in 2016 to a $7.5 million loss in 2017. We met our projections despite uncertainty resulting from the implementation of a national goods and services tax and demonetization in the country in 2016. We project India's water heaters will approach breakeven in 2018. Improvements for water heaters and water treatment will continue in 2019, and our total India business will be slightly profitable in 2020. The overall loss in India is expected to be $5 million this year. The headwinds include rising steel prices which are above year-ago levels. At current prices, steel will be a headwind to margins this year compared with last year. Following double-digit volume growth in 2017, we project US commercial water heater industry volumes will be down 5,000 units this year compared with last year due to the pre-buy of electric units in the fourth quarter of last year. Our China sales grew 18% in local currency in 2017, easily exceeding $1 billion and surpassing our 15% expected growth rate. China sales in the fourth quarter exceeded our projections by about $20 million. We believe the fourth quarter outperformance was driven by customer orders to qualify for volume incentives as well as larger-than-expected inventory builds by our e-commerce customers for the notable online shopping days in November and December. We project the fourth-quarter outperformance of $20 million will negatively impact our first quarter and full year 2018 China sales. We believe China will grow about 13% for the full year. If you adjust for the $20 million pull-in in the fourth quarter, this represents a 17% year-over-year growth rate. Our movement of water treatment and air purification manufacturing into our new plant in China will result in a projected incremental cost of approximately $5 million, the majority of which will occur in the first half of 2018. I’m now moving to slide number 18. Combining the impact of the tailwinds and the headwinds, we are optimistic about our growth and bottom line performance for 2018. We project revenue growth will be between 8.5% and 9.5% for the year and EPS between $2.50 and $2.58. We expect North America segment margin to be between 22% and 22.5% and Rest of World segment margins to expand 30 to 40 basis points over 2017. Please advance to slide number 19. We have updated the components of our growth model to be consistent with the new disclosure rules, for disaggregation of segment revenue as well as to incorporate recently acquired and organically grown high-growth businesses. We combined North America water treatment and India with our strong consumer products business in China and its mid-teens growth rate. This is our high growth category and its sales are 36% of company sales. We expect sales of North America water treatment, composed of Aquasana and Hague products, will reach nearly $100 million in revenue this year. India grew over 40% last year, and we are enthusiastic about our distribution now being pan-India for both water heaters and water treatment. Based on the investments we have already made and are expected to make in the future, we project this high growth portfolio to grow 14% per year. As many of you know, our Lochinvar branded products are composed of approximately 60% boilers and 40% water heaters. As such, going forward, our growth model will separate the boiler piece of our company with an assumed growth rate which matches its five-year revenue CAGR of 10%. Sales of our North America water heater products remain the largest portion of our company sales at 58%, including our Lochinvar branded water heaters. Given the expected new construction required to support household formation and expand the replacement demand, we project water heater revenue growth at a rate of 4%. The weighted average of our growth model continues to be 8%, which is consistent with our 8.5% to 9.5% growth projections for 2018 and reasonable for the medium-term timeframe. Especially in these uncertain economic times, we believe our organic growth potential in our stable defensive replacement market, which represents approximately 85% of North America water heater and boiler volume positively differentiates A. O. Smith from other industrial companies. Coupled with growth and stability, we have a strong balance sheet poised to take advantage of strategic acquisitions that add shareholder value as well as allow us to return cash to shareholders. This concludes our prepared remarks. And now, we are open for your questions.

Just I guess on the steel costs, I guess I didn’t hear any mention of additional price increases being put through to offset that. Any particular reason why? I mean you guys have been pretty successful doing that in the past.

Charlie, I think – this is Ajita. We never comment about future price increases. And in terms of steel prices, it’s tough to predict what's going to happen in the future. As we mentioned in the comments, the steel prices today are a headwind versus what they were last year. And if you look at our past history, over time, we've been able to pass along commodity prices to the marketplace.

Could you quantify what the headwind is today from steel?

Well, I can tell you this. I mean, steel has gone up about 11% since the beginning of December, it’s gone up hot rolled over 11% and cold rolled over about 8%. So it’s been a significant increase.

Yeah. I didn’t hear a whole lot of commentary on US residential water heater sales in the fourth quarter. Can you just comment a little bit on how that fared?

Sure. I think as you look at, we pretty much hit our numbers that we expected for the total company and we talked about China sales being up almost $20 million where we did miss what’s on the residential side. The industry was up, I think, for the first two months about 90,000 units. We were up minimally during that time period. When we look at the full year though, I think which is important the way we look at it is our market share in the first three months, first three quarters had improved. In the fourth quarter, because we didn't grow as much as the industry, it came back down. But when you adjust for Sears decline, our market share was right on for the year. And I guess the other comment I’ll make is there's really been no change in distribution over the years. So I mean, we're comfortable with our position. But it did not do as well in the fourth quarter as we expected.

So I want to maybe look at the earnings expectations internally, maybe a little bit more holistically. And I remember way back when you guys had your analyst meeting over a lock in for some time ago, of course, one of the things I think was discussed was an earnings growth number and I don't want to put words in your mouth, but sort of in the 15% to 20% territory. Now that's several years back, and the large numbers kind of catch up, but at least the last couple of years, we have had 17% earnings growth with the larger numbers being comped and still getting there. And it appears this year we’re looking at sort of 8% to 9% base earnings growth. Could you give us an idea on sort of where maybe the push and pull points are to get that level of base business earnings growth higher and could one of them be share repurchases?

I believe you're correct. We’re projecting just over 9%. We’ve surpassed that in the past couple of years. There are a few factors at play when considering how 2018 is developing. Our commercial business has performed very well, almost reaching double digits each of the last few years, contributing significantly to our bottom line. This year, however, we're forecasting a decline due to the pre-buy, which will impact our margins. Additionally, we’ve mentioned the rise in steel prices, which has increased nearly 10% since December, also affecting our margins. Furthermore, the new plant opening in Nanchang presents some challenges as well. Despite these factors, we remain confident in achieving 9%, with the potential for our upper range to be even higher. I don’t recall the earlier 15% to 20% figure, but we evaluate each year on its own merits.

Right. I guess John though, my question wasn't why it's 9, my question is more, how it can go higher than 9. What lines on the P&L if you will, what regions or product lines maybe could offer some upside and again are share repurchases an acceleration of the same being contemplated?

Well I think we talked about that we're going to buy $135 million plus opportunistically buying more. So theoretically, yes, buying more shares could help the bottom line. I think the upsides we think that exist would be we have higher volumes. Commercial, we're underestimating the volumes we hope. Residential could be stronger. It's been very strong in the last couple of years. And we get some relief from this. So those would be kind of the major areas. China margins, because of the movement of the plant, we're not expecting much growth, but quite frankly, our expectations which we thought about is to grow those margins. So we would hope we’re being conservative on the rest of world margins.

So just an easy quick one. The 13% China growth, is that a constant currency number?

We’ve said that’s US dollars and we expect the currency to be flat to maybe RMB, maybe a little bit stronger year-over-year.

And then kind of continuing a little on the rest of world margin side. If I think about the puts and takes here, obviously the price-cost side you lined out, the $5 million water treatment you lined out, anything unique that you think is going to happen this year relative to the last couple of years on advertising, product expansion build out relative to what's normal or and then any other puts and takes on some of the other growth initiatives there this year that we haven't talked about, whether commercial rental, water purification and how some of those numbers kind of line out as we work through the year as well?

Air purification is certainly significant, though it's on the periphery. We began the year hoping to break even, but ended up with a $5 million loss, which fell short of our expectations for 2017. We anticipate a move towards breakeven in 2018, so that’s a key point to consider. In terms of operational efficiency, I’ll elaborate a bit on the $5 million loss that Ajita mentioned. During the first half of the year, we will face inefficiencies as we operate two plants, incurring additional costs and higher depreciation due to our investments and increased operational costs like electricity. However, we expect to operate more efficiently in the latter half of the year, which should help offset some of the earlier inefficiencies, even as we still deal with depreciation and other costs. On a positive note, water treatment performed very well in the fourth quarter. The margins in our international markets improved significantly, with water treatment contributing about 100 basis points to that. While the third quarter was challenging, the fourth quarter showed a strong recovery, with margins up by about one to one and a half points compared to the previous year. We're also growing faster than the market, with our growth rate at nearly 35%, compared to the market's 18% to 19%. We've established a strong position in a high growth market, which is encouraging. However, we do need the market in China to keep growing. There's been no significant shift from electric to gas, which is impacted by distribution increases. A few years ago, the split was 55% electric and 45% gas; it’s now nearly reversed, which poses a bit of a challenge. We’re performing well in the gas sector and are gaining market share, but it hasn't reached the same levels as electric. In summary, there are many factors to weigh this year.

When considering the initial guidance you provided for 2017, there was an expectation to possibly enhance the return on advertising and promotional spending while continuing to grow it. Is that the strategy for 2018 at this point?

I would say yes, that is the thought going forward. It might get hidden a little bit by the new plant costs, et cetera, but I think Kevin, Ajita, and I have talked, that’s clearly one of the objectives is to start leveraging our SG&A as China gets bigger.

I'm currently dealing with the flu, so I'll keep my comments brief. First, regarding capital allocation, could you discuss your perspective on the balance sheet after the tax changes? How do the current conditions influence your approach to mergers and acquisitions, including your priorities and what you are willing to pay? I have a general sense of your capital allocation strategy, but I'd appreciate your insights on the M&A landscape, including any challenges or opportunities you see ahead. You are clearly managing a strong organic growth outlook, but there seems to be a high threshold for potential deals. Please share your thoughts on M&A opportunities over the next few years, including aspects such as size, scope, and geography.

I'll start with our capital allocation strategy, which remains consistent. Seven years ago, we initiated our stock repurchase program and outlined three main focuses. First, we committed to investing in ourselves, resulting in over $550 million in capital investments, primarily for capacity expansion. We've opened a plant in India and two in China, which represents about 50% more than our depreciation over this period, and we intend to keep investing in our business. Second, we promised to return cash to shareholders, and in the last seven years, we've returned over $1 billion. This includes around $400 million in dividends, with a 25% annual increase over the past five to seven years, along with over $650 million in stock buybacks at an average price below $30 a share, which we consider a solid investment. Third, we aimed to make acquisitions. While Ajita and I agree that we haven't executed as many acquisitions as we initially expected, we did achieve a significant success with the Lochinvar acquisition six years ago. In the past two years, we've enhanced our water treatment business, generating about $80 million in organic sales from an investment of roughly $150 million. To summarize, our approach remains unchanged, and we are committed to these three pillars. We do not anticipate significant shifts in our strategy due to changes in tax policy. Our tax reform will incur an $82 million cash charge over eight years, but it will also lead to an annual cash benefit of around $30 million to $35 million from lower taxes. While it may take us two to three years to recoup the costs, we see long-term benefits and increased flexibility in our operations.

And I’d just like to reinforce what John said in terms of our overall capital allocation strategy has not changed. It’s essentially looking, number one, investing in ourselves, looking at appropriate strategic acquisition and then returning cash to shareholders appropriately as John mentioned. In looking at the M&A outlook out there, prices are still high. But as you saw when we did Aquasana, we certainly paid a high multiple, but that was a very strategic acquisition. So we're going to be balancing what we do in terms of return, but at the same time, be very disciplined in terms of the financial goals we've laid out and the acquisitions will be very strategic, which is essentially in heating and cleaning water globally and in China, we expand that judiciously in looking at how we can leverage our brand and distribution in new categories that really fit. So that's been our strategy. I don't see any change in that capital allocation strategy or acquisition strategy going forward other than to reinforce, we will be very disciplined and any acquisitions we do will be very strategic.

And in theory, I guess I'd say that with a lower tax rate, if multiples don’t adjust, it makes it easier for us, domestically, to hit our ROIC targets.

Just on the 13% growth you explained that the pull forward, but can you walk through how you're thinking about growth for the traditional water heater business versus air versus water or versus the water treatment.

We expect the water treatment market to grow by approximately 18% to 20%. We anticipate our water treatment segment will see growth of 25% to 30%. As I mentioned earlier, we feel confident in our position. We expect air purification to increase by 35% to 40%, particularly as we introduce new products that we believe will be advantageous. In terms of the electric and gas markets, we expect gas to grow while electric remains relatively flat due to the transition I discussed. This should yield some benefits from our gas sector, along with other service product units like renewable and commercial, which we predict will experience significant growth. Overall, this contributes to our goal of reaching 13% growth.

And then can you just walk through what the loss in India was versus what, I think you said was going to be approaching breakeven or close to this minus 5 and just the ERP delta, 18 versus 17 as well.

Well, I’ll give you the ERP, the ERP ’17 to ’16 first was about $6 million less. The ERP delta 17 to 18 will be down a couple of million bucks. So we're at that kind of run rate that we're going to be at above $16 million I guess, somewhere around there. Maybe, we need to clarify the India breakeven, but what we said is in 2016, India lost over $9 million. In 2017, it lost $7.5 million or basically hit exactly what our plan was. Even under fairly difficult conditions, given the GST tax changes and the monetization. So we think India had a good year. Our expectation now is this year, ’18, we move from that $7.5 million loss to about $5 million. So, a pickup of about $2.5 million of less loss if you will. And then as we move into ’19, and then ’20, we expect to be breakeven. We actually expect to be profitable. So we this move down from over 9 to 7.5 to 5 to 2 million to 3 million to a positive by 2020.

I guess I had a couple of questions on sort of the longer-term considerations in the business. And for starters, you talked about the rest of world margins being up maybe 30 to 40 basis points in 2018, and I realize there's a lot of moving parts in there. I guess I want to just tap you for your latest thoughts on where this ultimately could get to by 2020 or some point further down the road on a sort of a raw materials normalized basis.

Well I would tell you and we’ve talked about this in the past and Kevin, Ajita and I have talked about it, we need to raise rest of world margins. And that’s the objective and quite frankly, the India improvement from 7.5 million to 0 by 2020 improves margin by 60 to 70 basis points, right there. But in addition, China obviously is the largest component there. The objective is to raise margins there. We hope to do it this year, but again, we have that implant tailwind, et cetera, but we hope to do it this year. So I mean I would hope that that 13.75 that we're forecasting this year is conservative, but we'll see. But long term, the objective is definitely to increase rest of world margins.

It appears there are various factors affecting that segment beyond just India and China, such as Turkey and the water treatment situation in China. It seems that many, if not all, of these elements are currently impacting the margins for the rest of the world.

And we agree with that. The losses from air purification, boiler, and commercial water treatment total about $14 to $15 million. Therefore, I concur with you. Our goal is to shift these losses to breakeven, which would equate to approximately 1.5% based on this year's performance, not what sales might be two years down the line.

And I think, that's a great point, because we are probably always going to have some businesses incubating where we are investing for future growth. It so happens that at this particular point, in the last year, couple of years, we've had more than a normal run rate of businesses incubating. But all of these, as you look at them individually, the ones we mentioned, clearly, are investments for longer-term growth, longer-term profitable growth. So the opportunity to continue to leverage that revenue margin is clearly there.

Second question again, just kind of a longer-term question, but as we talk to distributors, it's pretty clear that within the commercial world, tankless is making some pretty good progress and you've got product in there that you rely on is disproportionately large in terms of its margin contribution lifecycle. And I’m just wondering to what extent you're feeling the pressure in those sort of higher margin contributing categories for products from tankless and ultimately I guess longer term question is, where does A. O. Smith go with regard to tankless, what's the strategy there longer term and do we see a greater commitment to that format over the next two to three years?

There's no doubt we think tankless increases. It’s been increasing kind of at double digits. We would still be of the opinion that the majority of it is going to new construction and going into retrofit, et cetera, residential. There is probably some going into commercial, but we don't think it’s a significant amount. And so, but Ajita can talk about our position long term, but it’s clearly growing, but again, it’s still 700,000 units on an industry that was 9.2 million. So we're certainly watching it and we participate in it. We have a very attractive product offering in it, but you're right. We have a lower market share there than we do in the other businesses.

Yeah. And I think if you look at it from a global perspective in response to your question about our commitment to the technology, clearly, we are very committed to the technology. In fact, if you look at our market in China, we are the leaders in our market in China. And we manufacture everything that we sell and we compete with the same players who are leading in the US. It's just that we got a later start in the US market. Now, in the US market, we source our product from Japan. In China, we make it ourselves and just to put in perspective in terms of numbers of units, John mentioned that the total market here was close to 700,000 units. We sell about 2 million units that we make in China as the leaders in the market.

I guess conversely, looking at in terms of capital allocation and M&A, I mean you've done a great job, the returns have been strong, you've moved to the S&P 500, the company is a lot bigger, you’ve got a lot of opportunity in China. Part of the attraction is obviously you can definitely leverage your channel in China and bring in a lot of products either through licensing or otherwise if you did some form of joint venture, and I've asked this question of you before, but is that something you're looking at? And the related question is, let's not talk about gossip or what you'd be willing to do, but would it make sense over the longer term for you strategically to be part of a larger company and what could it bring in terms of investment, brand, things like that that perhaps you could even execute an even faster, larger growth strategy in China, because you’ve just got a very valuable channel you've been developing there. Not like for your core products, but for these add-ons. Just any thoughts there.

First of all, I’m not going to speculate about the future, as that doesn’t help us. From a strategic standpoint, we will always remain an independent company. We are not considering any sort of combination as you suggested. When it comes to licensing products, we are open to various strategic options if the right product aligns with our brand. We can pursue several approaches, such as entering new markets from scratch, acquiring companies, or licensing our brand to others. We have assessed all these avenues to determine the optimal growth pace. Entering a new category typically requires significant investment, around $40 million to $50 million, to break even because this is a branded consumer products business, which incurs high advertising, promotion, and retail entry costs. Therefore, we strive to find a balance between nurturing and growing businesses while also enhancing our margins, especially as mature businesses like our electric water heater segment continue to develop. We aim to maintain the 15% growth rate we've been projecting for the long term while also increasing our margins.

Thank you all for joining us this morning. Please take note that we will participate in the Boenning & Scattergood Conference on March 8 in London. Have a wonderful day.