Zurn Elkay Water Solutions Corporation Q2 2026 Earnings Call

Good morning. Welcome to the Zurn Elkay Water Solutions Corporation second quarter 2026 earnings results conference call with Todd Adams, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Dan Klun, Chief Financial Officer, Dave Pauli, Chief Operating Officer, Jeff Schoon, President, and Bobbi Belstner, Vice President and Corporate Controller for Zurn Elkay Water Solutions. A replay of this conference call will be available as a webcast on the company's investor relations website. At this time, for opening remarks and introduction, I'll turn the call over to Bobbi Belstner.

Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining the call today. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that this call contains certain forward-looking statements which are subject to the safe harbor language outlined in our press release issued yesterday afternoon and in our filings with the SEC. In addition, some comparisons will refer to non-GAAP measures. Our earnings release and SEC filings contain additional information about these non-GAAP measures, why we use them, and why we believe they are helpful to investors and contain reconciliations to the corresponding GAAP information. Consistent with prior quarters, we will speak to certain non-GAAP metrics as we feel they provide a better understanding of our operating results. These measures are not a substitute for GAAP. We encourage you to review the GAAP information in our earnings release and in our SEC filings.

With that, I'll turn the call over to Todd Adams, Chairman and CEO of Zurn Elkay Water Solutions.

Thanks, Bobbi. Good morning. I'm on page three in the slide deck. This morning I'll start with some comments on the quarter and trends in our business. Our CFO, Dan Klun, will cover the Q2 results, and then just a little bit later, our outlook. You'll hear from our president, Jeff Schoon, on the Intellihot acquisition, followed by our chief operating officer, Dave Pauli, who will provide an update on Drinking Water as well as some color on the operations and what's driving our record operating results. After that, we'll open it up to your questions. Sales grew 10% organically in the second quarter while EBITDA grew 15% as margin expanded by 120 basis points to a record 27.7%.

In the quarter, we generated $112 million of free cash flow and repurchased $50 million of Zurn Elkay at roughly $48 a share, bringing our year-to-date investment and repurchases to $100 million. With respect to the Intellihot acquisition, this is a category and a company we've been interested in for a really long time. It's a terrific adjacency for us in a category that we feel we can really grow over the coming years as we leverage all the capabilities we bring to bear. The most important being the approach we're going to take to really scale this business by leveraging the Zurn Elkay Business System. The great thing about Intellihot is that its products are best in class from a performance perspective, but there is work to do around the integration. The primary integration work centers around the things that we're really good at.

Scaling a specified product into our core verticals through the same path we take to market with respect to specification, relationships at the end user, engineer, contractor, and at the wholesale level all nationally. Followed by supply chain excellence, finally, the power of bringing this additional content to market alongside our leading market share positions within our core verticals in institutional and commercial non-residential construction. In terms of the deal, we paid $109 million in the transaction, $100 million net of a tax asset for a business that will generate about $37 million of sales this year with 50% gross margins and low teens EBITDA margins. We see a very clear path for a double-digit return on invested capital in three years. In our view, we believe that Intellihot can be a $100 million business with a 30% EBITDA margin in the next five years.

To be conservative, maybe it's six. The point is that to get on that kind of trajectory, we're going to invest in it, add products around it, work the efficiency and regulatory angles, and grow the installed base. A great example of where we've done that with great success is what we've been able to do with the Elkay and filtration. Dave will take you through an update on that as part of his remarks in just a couple of minutes. The final point for me this morning is on our full-year outlook. We've had a solid first half and are raising our outlook for the year for sales, EBITDA, and free cash flow. From an underlying market perspective, there's always a few small puts and takes to our underlying assumptions, but generally consistent from what we've assumed for the year.

For the year, we've got three to four points of price, a point of market growth, the rest coming from share gains or simply our exposure to higher secular growth categories, some of which the guys will point out later in the call. The highlight to point out in our outlook is the increase in our anticipated EBITDA margins and free cash flow, which at the midpoint equates to 140 basis points of margin expansion year-over-year. As you've heard us say many times, we develop a three-year strategic plan annually. We then prioritize a small handful of things to focus on, and we call these breakthroughs. We then leverage the Zurn Elkay Business System to create the capabilities to bring these to life, whether it's product, channel, supply chain, sometimes it's some or all of the above.

What you're seeing in our results and outlook is the compounding benefit of the success of those things happening over the last three to four years, with the fastest-growing parts of our business also happen to be amongst our most profitable. We've also leveraged a disciplined approach to prune certain things in our business that we don't feel provide us the ability to create a sustainable competitive advantage, which then gives us the flexibility to flow resources to and reinvest the management time into things that can. Last but not least. I think it's critical to highlight the significant competitive advantage we've created with all of our supply chain work over the last several years, which provides us enormous advantages and flexibility in these years being impacted by trade and tariff policy.

The cherry on top of all this is the compounding benefit of the thousands and thousands of continuous improvement activities our people do year in, year out. The net result is a focused business that can meaningfully outgrow and serve markets with terrific profitability and cash flow that allows us to continue to invest in our business to drive even higher levels of growth and performance. With that, I'll turn it over to Dan.

Thanks, Todd. Please turn to slide number four. Our second quarter sales totaled $491 million, which represents 10% core and reported growth year-over-year, above the high end of the guidance we shared at the outset of the quarter. Our end market continued to perform in line with our expectation as our institutional end markets continue to show positive momentum, partially offset by residential and pockets of commercial softness. While we're experiencing broad-based growth across all product categories, our overperformance in the quarter was led by strong demand within our Water Safety and Control and Drinking Water product lines, both growing above the fleet average. Similar to the first quarter, we saw price contribute approximately 5% of growth in the quarter. Turning to our profitability, our second quarter adjusted EBITDA was $136 million, and our adjusted EBITDA margin expanded 120 basis points year-over-year to 27.7% in the quarter.

This exceeded the high end of our guidance range of 27%-27.5%, and this margin performance in the quarter represents our highest quarterly margin since the Zurn Elkay merger. The strong margin and year-over-year expansion was driven by operating leverage on higher volume, continued productivity from our Zurn Elkay Business System, and ongoing mix improvement as our highest margin products continue to lead our growth. With respect to the first half, our sales and EBITDA have increased by $91 million and $36 million respectively year-over-year, delivering a year-over-year incremental margin of 40%. Our first half EBITDA margin of 27.3% improved by approximately 140 basis points year-over-year. During the second quarter, we received $48 million in cash related to IEPA and reciprocal tariff refunds, inclusive of $2 million of accrued interest.

This refund is reflected in the cost of goods sold caption on our income statement and had a significant impact on our reported GAAP earnings and EPS for the quarter. I want to be clear that this item is excluded from our adjusted earnings and free cash flow. This cash receipt strengthened our already healthy balance sheet, but is not a recurring item and as such has been excluded from our adjusted results. As of June 30th, we have approximately $60 million of IEPA and reciprocal tariffs that remain uncollected and unrecognized in our financial statements. Please turn to slide five, and I'll touch on some balance sheet and leverage highlights. With respect to net debt leverage, we ended the quarter at 0.3 times, the lowest leverage we've ever had as a public company.

Free cash flow in the quarter was $112. Our balance sheet liquidity leverage and free cash flow generation remain in excellent shape and reflect the financial flexibility we have to continue to invest in the business, as evidenced by the recently closed acquisition of Intellihot. I'll now turn the call over to Jeff to cover the transaction in more detail on page six.

Thanks, Dan. I'm excited to walk through the Intellihot acquisition we announced last week, a relationship we've cultivated for years. This transaction expands our available market by $1.1 billion, within which the tankless segment represents over $200 million today. Tankless is growing meaningfully faster than the overall commercial water heating category. It's a strong initial step into a highly complementary adjacent category and one with some of the most favorable regulatory and demand tailwinds we've seen in the space. A few drivers give us real conviction here. First, the DOE's efficiency mandate requiring new commercial water heater installations to meet condensing level efficiency. Second, we are seeing owner mandates emerge around health and safety as it relates to Legionella liability, moving brand preference to tankless. Third, tankless systems deliver a meaningfully smaller mechanical room footprint, which developers and owners increasingly value.

Fourth, tankless delivers real operating savings on a large spend category for building owners, reinforced by local and state-level efficiency mandates layered on top of federal standards. Since the announcement, we've received strong support from the industry, and our combined teams are energized by the growth opportunity ahead. Which brings me to why Intellihot itself is such a strong fit and natural complement. Like our core business, it's a specified product sold through the same rep and wholesale channels we dominate today. They have a growing install base with nearly 40% of the revenue already coming from MRO, backed by a growing certified contractor network, which we plan to bolster and leverage. Their tankless condensing water heaters deliver meaningful better efficiency cost savings than boilers and traditional tank systems for commercial and institutional customers.

Combined with Zurn Elkay's specification, contractor, and wholesaler relationships, we're confident this accelerates our product roadmaps and our growth. Shifting now over to core growth. A big part of why we consistently outperform the market and take meaningful share comes down to our commitment to the Zurn Elkay Business System. Through our business system, we continuously seek voice-of-customer feedback and look for ways to drive continuous improvement in how we serve our customers. This discipline has translated into consistent high customer ratings and loyalty, which we do not take for granted. We continue to challenge our teams and partners to find ways to improve. We feel that we've developed the best commercial team and local rep agencies in the industry. Over the past four years, we've made sustained investments in new product development technology that supports ease of doing business and our technical and commercial resources.

We've used 80/20 to create focus and over-resource our largest growth opportunities, such as Drinking Water, high growth regions, and key institutional verticals. Together, these investments are what allow us to deliver consistent above-market growth. Right now, Drinking Water Safety and Control, and Flow Systems are our fastest-growing businesses, and all three operate above fleet average margins. With our strategy, our investment in NPD and adjacencies, and our focus on operational and commercial excellence through ZEBS, we are confident we can continue to outperform the market. With that, I want to share two wins in this past quarter that show the strategy playing out. Delivering over $3 million of sales, first, we leveraged the Drinking Water facilities relationship to address a health and safety concern tied to recent Legionella outbreaks.

We worked with the end user to upgrade the Drinking Water and commercial faucet units to Zurn Elkay with connected technology, solutions that monitor usage and automatically flush water lines during low-use periods to help reduce Legionella risk and lower the cost of their overall water management plan. Second, out of our institutional vertical focus, we leveraged our specifier and contractor relationships to pull through our full suite of products on a recent hospital expansion in Virginia. As we continue to build out our adjacencies and the breadth of our product offering, the value we deliver to specifiers, contractors, wholesalers, and owners will continue to increase. With that, I'll pass it over to Dave.

Thanks, Jeff. I'm on slide seven and wanted to give a quick update on our margin performance over the past couple of years. This is the output of our relentless commitment to the Zurn Elkay Business System and getting better each day. On a trailing 12-month basis, our adjusted EBITDA margins have improved 660 basis points from Q1 2023 to Q2 2026. On a point-to-point basis, our adjusted EBITDA margins are up 820 basis points over the last 14 quarters. That starts with 19.5% margins in Q1 2023 compared to this quarter's adjusted EBITDA margins of 27.7%. Talked about it last quarter and will provide some additional color on our margin improvement over the last three years. First, part of the Zurn Elkay Business System is sharing ideas and wins across the organization so that we can replicate successes.

These #CI ideas, as we call them internally, are associate-led ideas that save time, eliminate waste, enhance a process, or reduce cost, to name a few examples. No single #CI on its own is material. They do become material when we have thousands submitted across the organization throughout the year. The graph on the left-hand side of the slide highlights how #CI submissions have grown over the years. Our associates across the organization have bought into the concept and are continuing to find ways to improve their work each and every day. Second, we are seeing unit volume growth in the most profitable areas of our business. Water Safety and Control, Flow Systems, and Drinking Water have all grown over the last several years while we have continued to systematically exit our lowest margin products within the portfolio through the application of 80/20.

This strategy has allowed us to reposition resources to focus on growth opportunities while simultaneously reducing complexity and excess cost in our business. I'm going to highlight Drinking Water on our next slide, but take filtration as an example. The year before our merger with Elkay, the filtration business was less than $25 million of sales. Now, four years later, that high-margin business has more than doubled as it will end at over $60 million of sales this year. We did this with focus and intention around filtration, building a dedicated team to focus on filters, investing in innovation, and listening to our customers' filtration needs. Our 80/20 work is not a once-and-done process, but something we are continuing to look at.

Understanding customer buying patterns, eliminating unnecessary SKU complexity in our offering, and making sure that we focus on the core products that matter and make sense from a margin perspective. You will see us continue to challenge our product portfolio and deploy 80/20 on a go-forward basis. Third, we continue to make positive structural changes, consolidating our footprint to reduce overhead, introducing and sustaining the Zurn Elkay Business System lean tools into the Elkay manufacturing facilities, and continuing to challenge our strategy around internal manufacturing versus outsourced alternatives. Lastly, our supply chain has been a clear competitive advantage that has allowed us to improve profitability while successfully navigating the tariff environment. Our efforts to move sourcing out of China have proven to provide us with both geopolitical risk mitigation as well as a lower landed cost profile.

A combination of these four factors have led to solid incremental margins, which we are currently seeing at around 40%. From 2024 to 2025, our actual incremental EBITDA margins were 40%. Year to date this year, our incremental margins have also been at 40%, ahead of the original 35% incremental margin that we guided to at the start of the year. Turn to slide eight. It's been four years since the completion of the merger with Elkay, and we tend to get a lot of questions on the Drinking Water business, so wanted to provide an update. Our most notable product launch since the merger was the recent introduction of Elkay Pro Filtration. We listened to our customers, solicited feedback from installers, maintainers, and users, and built Pro Filtration with them in mind, incorporating their feedback and addressing their concerns. Simply stated, Pro Filtration clearly differentiates Elkay from our competitive set.

The list of upgrades within Pro Filtration is significant. Filters are now at eye level and can be changed with a simple drop-down cover and quarter turn on the actual filter. Anyone can now change a filter in a matter of seconds. Historically, our units had one filter. Pro Filtration now has the ability to house two filters, allowing customers the flexibility to increase their capacity, increase performance, or protect against sediment through a variety of filter combination options suited to optimize customer needs. We've updated the aesthetics of the unit to appeal to architects and engineers. Pro Filtration has an enhanced user interface to more clearly articulate the remaining life of the filter. The units are smart and connected to allow for notifications on filter changes or remote line flushing. Filters now are designed with a proprietary head that does not allow for counterfeit filters to work in the units.

As I will talk about in a minute, we updated our line of filters as well. So far, we've seen very positive reaction in the market to Pro Filtration. Our team is working with architects and engineers across the country to change the legacy Elkay specs to Pro Filtration based on the improved features and benefits. We've also put a significant focus on not just selling any unit, but selling filtered units. Our internal team and third-party reps are focused on growing the installed base of filtered units as we retrofit the large installed base. In 2023, 50% of the units we sold were filtered. In 2026, over 60% of the units we will sell will be filtered. Our internal goals are to continue to increase that to 70% filtered in 2027. Team's efforts, legislation, and water quality concerns are all helping to drive the percent of filtered units higher.

Lastly, the technology around filtration has improved considerably over the last four years. At the time of the Elkay merger, Elkay's main filter was a 3,000-gallon lead filter, and we've evolved the filter technology over time to provide both longer lasting and higher performing filters. In 2022, we added a high capacity 6,000-gallon lead filter to help reduce the number of filter changes our customers needed to make. Then in 2023, we released the first point of use PFOA and PFOS certified filter that was rated for 2,250 gallons. In 2024, all of our filters were certified to protect against microplastics, and later in 2024, we added a pre-sediment filter to our lineup.

In Q3 of 2025, we started shipping units with a proprietary head to prevent counterfeit filters from being used, and at the same time, launched the ability to incorporate UV filter technology in Pro units and added a longer lasting 10,000-gallon filter, further upping the bar from our current industry leading 6,000-gallon filter. We also added a total PFOS filter rated for 4,000 gallons, which is the longest lasting total PFOS filter in the industry. Pro Filtration customers get longer lasting filters with less maintenance events, and the maintenance event itself is significantly easier and quicker than non-Pro units. Drinking Water has performed ahead of our expectations through the first four years, and we see a lot of opportunity for continued growth in the coming years with Drinking Water. I'll turn the call back over to Dan to walk through our outlook.

Thanks, Dave. Now onto the guidance on slide nine. For the third quarter of 2026, we are projecting core sales growth of 6%-7% over the year and adjusted EBITDA margin around 28%. Our core growth rate in the third quarter and second half reflects the roll-off of last year's tariff-related price increases that largely became effective in the back half of calendar 2025. As a result of our strong first half performance, we are also updating and raising our full year 2026 outlook. We now expect core sales growth for the fourth quarter to be in the mid-single digits, and I would estimate the Intellihot contribution for the second half to be approximately $18 million in net sales for the last five months of the year.

Inclusive of the recently closed acquisition of Intellihot, we expect full year adjusted EBITDA to range between $503 million and $513 million, and full year free cash flow to be at least $350 million, excluding the past or future IEPA reciprocal tariff refunds. Lastly, our outlook fully contemplates the transition away from the expired Section 122 tariffs to the new Section 301 tariffs announced late last week. In the guidance slides, we have included our third quarter and full year outlook assumptions for interest expense, non-cash stock comp, depreciation and amortization, adjusted tax rate, and diluted shares outstanding. Please note that the D&A figures do not include the incremental impact of the Intellihot acquisition, as we have not yet contemplated a preliminary purchase price allocation. We will update our outlook for these items on our next quarterly call. We will now open the call up for questions.

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you have dialed in and would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and enter the queue. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press star one again. If you are called upon to ask your question and are listening via loudspeaker on your device, please pick up your handset and ensure that your phone is not on mute when asking your question. On today's event, we request everyone to please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up only. Thank you. Your first question comes from the line of Bryan Blair with Oppenheimer. Your line is now open.

Thank you. Morning, everyone. Another really solid quarter.

Morning, Bryan. Hi. Morning. You mentioned the continued outgrowth of your higher margin platforms, Water Safety and Control, Drinking Water Flow Systems.

Curious if you could rank order those. I assume that Drinking Water is leading the pack. Then Hygienic and Environmental, how much below the growth rates of the other platforms is that currently?

Yeah. I don't know that it's discernible between Water Safety and Control and Drinking Water are sort of a little bit above flow control, Flow Systems. Then Hygienic and Environmental is still positive, and much more so on a unit volume basis because that's a more competitive category. It's our smallest category in general. It's still positive. That's the ranking as you've asked the question.

Okay. Understood. Intellihot is a very intriguing deal for your team. Maybe offer a little more color on the uniqueness of the asset, why Intellihot specifically was the right deal for you to enter this adjacency. Then you gave us a snapshot of current operations and profitability and the medium long-term outlook and what your team can do with the business. Can you offer any additional detail on what we should anticipate for year one or 2027 as we contemplate shorter-term outlook?

Yeah. As you probably can assume, it's a complicated category to get into. When you look at the competitive set, it's a combination of foreign suppliers and some domestic suppliers, but the roadmap to develop technology is pretty extensive, and it's one of those, sort of the last remaining business around in that category with the best technology. It was a founder, inventor sort of led company for a long time, and we stayed close to it. Eventually, it became an opportunity for us to acquire. It's one of those things where if you would've asked us 7 or 8 years ago what would've been the best target, we would've told you this. We stuck with it, and were able to sort of find a transaction that worked.

I think we're really excited about getting into the category because it's really a very positive extension to us, in the mechanical room, particularly in non-res. As it relates to next year, we honestly didn't buy it for next year. We bought it because we do think this can be a $100 million business in the next 5 or 6 years with 30% margins. It's already got 50% gross margin, as Jeff pointed out, a nice both MRO and retrofit opportunity. The power for this is something that we've coveted for a long time. We've cultivated this particular business based on the technology that it has relative to anybody in the industry. We think we're going to treat it and act like this is something we're going to own forever and grow a meaningful share in.

I think the sketch that we gave you for 2026, assume that it's going to grow nicely and we're going to work the margins, but as Jeff said, part of this is the longer game of driving specification preference, adding innovation, bringing it to, and alongside the content we already provide a lot of the customers we serve today. I think we're thrilled to have gotten into this category, and we think that there's more to do.

All understood. Makes sense. Appreciate the comment.

Your next question comes from the line of Andrew Krill with Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open.

Hi. Thanks. Good morning, everyone. One ask on price. I think it's great to see realization stay elevated and at 5% in the second quarter. For the full year, I think, is it fair that you're trending towards the high end of the 3%-4% you cited? Can you give us any update on have you had to put through more price or are close to needing more price mid-year, or have these been more surgical changes with inflation, tariffs a little bit more under control this year? Thanks. Yeah. I think it is sort of in that 3%-4% range, and it obviously varies by category and competitive set.

You can sort of back check that by thinking about $50 million in refunds against the prior year of about $1.7 billion, and you get to right around 3 points of price for the year. We haven't really had to put in any additional price throughout 2026. I think as we look forward, it looks like sort of a normal pricing year for us, as opposed to being any elevated. It's 3-4 points for the year, points of market growth in the remainder, and some of the things that we've talked about this morning. Nothing out of the ordinary.

I think that the new tariff regime that was announced, we had sort of assumed something would replace what was in place, and so no hiccups there. I think as Dave highlighted, we continue to make progress.

Great. Very helpful. Then circling back to Intellihot on the margin expansion. I think great to see the gross margins are very similar to a modestly above Zurn, so no problem there. Can you unpack a little bit like the progression of the EBIT margin getting those higher? Is this some combination of private company, elevated cost structure you can wring out and then also leverage your scale purchasing powers? Any more help there, and is it a somewhat linear progression over this timeframe, up to 30%? Thanks. I think the answer is simply yes to all of the above.

Okay. Fair enough. Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Nathan Jones with Stifel. Your line is now open.

Morning, everyone. Morning. I've got a bit of a longer-term or maybe more philosophical question for you, Todd.

You talked about every year having a three-year strat plan that has just a handful of things that are the primary focus in each year. Can you talk about what you think those few areas of primary focus will be for 2027?

I think it'll be a continued progress on adjacencies. Categories that are in and around what we do today in the $100 million-$200 million range, where we think over a three-year period, we can generate $20 million-$30 million of revenue by launching the product, leveraging the channels and relationships we have, pulling it through, and obviously leveraging our sourcing platform. Those are the types of things that we've been working on. You'll see some of those be announced over the course of the back half of this year and into 2027. As we go through the fall here, it'll probably be a handful of things like that. Expanding our available served market by $100 million-$200 million a year across three or four different things is the way to think about it, Nathan.

Then maybe one for Dave or Dan, looking backwards a little bit. The 660 basis points of margin improvement over the last few years, I wonder if you could give us a little more details on the different buckets that have driven that. I know there's been things like probably positive price/cost, mix, obviously with higher margin stuff growing faster, productivity. Could you just give us the main contributors maybe? I'm sure you don't want to break it out per basis point kind of thing, but maybe rank order the buckets in order of their contribution to that margin expansion over the last few years. Thanks for taking the questions.

Sure. I think if you go back to where that graph started, Nathan, that was at the time of the Elkay merger. Call it the first $50 million of profit improvement was really around some of the synergies with Elkay. At a very high level, the first 25 were a lot of SG&A cost out type activities. The next 25 were more structural things. Footprint, reducing our overhead, putting through some of the process improvements in the Elkay manufacturing sites. Even beyond that, while all that was going on, you've got the mix factor, you've got the just CI, continuous improvement activities that we're doing on a day in and day out basis. I think all those things are combining for what you see in the margins.

The other thing I'll point out is just we did a nice job with 80/20 along the way. Reducing some of those low margin sinks in the beginning, we've continued to prune and do 80/20 in the product portfolios along the way, that's also helped. Reducing some of those low margin products and focusing on the higher growing, faster margin products.

We're ready for another question.

Your next question comes from the line of James Ko with Jefferies. Your line is now open.

Good morning. Thanks for taking questions here. I wanted to touch on the Intellihot again here. You kind of framed the hot water heating addressable market as $1.1 billion and tankless at like $200 million today. Yeah. Are you targeting that full $1.1 billion water heating market over time, or is the ambition specifically the tankless segment?

Yeah, thanks. That's a good question. I think as you think about the $1.1 billion, that is commercial water heating, that's going to be over the 200,000 BTU threshold. This is more your large institutional commercial jobs. If you think about the tankless portion of it, tankless is a little bit over $200 million today. That organically is going to grow just with the industry trends that are taking place. If you look at our commercial engine, we feel that we have an ability to accelerate that and also take our unfair share of the $200 million. Over time, the $1.1 billion is absolutely what we're targeting. It'll take time to move that from traditional boiler and tank units to tankless.

Got it. That's very helpful. Touching on incremental margins here, you talked about that being over around 40%, way above 30%-35% long term kind of framework that you guided to. I think you guys talked about revisiting this framework when you guys are ready. Given that you guys have been, what is it, outperforming that guidance for a while, are you now ready to formally raise that incremental margin guidance? If not, what is the kind of threshold that would get you to raise that?

Yeah, James. Again, I think when you say formally, I guess we've always provided that as sort of a guidepost for people to think about. Obviously with some of the progress we've made over the last several years and many of the things that Dave just touched on with respect to faster growing, higher margin supply chain benefits and all that, at least in the near term, it's at 40%. I think I would view it as a snapshot today and really sort of moving forward is sort of the same kind of general guideline. I don't totally understand like the formal part of what you're asking us, but yeah. There may be periods where we invest more in new products. For the present, with the pace that we can see, I think that the 40% is a reasonable way to think about our incremental margins.

Great. Thanks for taking questions.

Your next question comes from the line of Edward Magi with BNP Paribas. Your line is now open.

Morning, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. Starting here with the Intellihot. Again, I know we talked about some sizable competitors in the space, I have to think that, given some of your prepared remarks on the quality of the asset, that this would be something that they might have wanted to have. Any color on the process, and if it was a competitive bidding process, that would be helpful to start.

It really wasn't a process. Again, I think as we've highlighted in the past and with essentially all the transactions we've done over the years, and even with legacy companies, we prefer to develop relationships and find the right time. In this case, I think the first contact was somewhere around 2016. There was not a process, it was really a relationship. Frankly, I think they felt like this was the right place and the right home for it. It's a technology leader in a space that is maybe not as progressive as the industry is trending. With us, by entering the category with the technology leader as our sort of anchor into this, I think they viewed that as a great home as well. That's how we got to the finish line.

Yeah, I can appreciate that. It sounds like an exciting asset coming in, and maybe the follow-up would be on some of the stuff that's come out of the portfolio over the last couple of years. Can we just click into 80/20 a little bit more, how you guys have gone about identifying some of those businesses to walk away from? Moving forward, is there any more areas that you guys have identified specifically where you would expect to move away from in the coming year or two?

Yeah. As a precursor to our strategic planning process, we go through a detailed product lifecycle management review, where we look at all of our products, our categories, our channels, and really sort of dive into the competitive dynamics, the outlook, and also investments required in things that we know we want to invest in. Falling out of there's usually been a handful of things. Early on, as Dave highlighted, residential sinks sold through big box retail. There's hundreds of competitors. The channel's really disrupted with online activity, and it's a big fixed cost investment. We made the, at the moment, the difficult decision to do it, but you can see the benefits long-term, not only in the profitability and the growth, but the management time and the resources to reinvest in faster-growing things.

As we sit here today, obviously we're going to go through that review, and of course there might be things that fall out. I don't think that's going to be anything significant in any particular way, but there is always going to be something that we're looking at, saying, "Should we continue to invest in this at the expense of things that can grow faster?" That's, to me, the full life cycle of 80/20. It's one thing just to exit it, but the real power of 80/20 is focusing your resources on things that actually grow and can outrun the deficit that you're creating by exiting something. As we go through the summer here, we'll go through that review, and do I expect that it'll be anything significant? No. Do I think that there likely could be some? Of course. All great color.

Thanks, guys. Yep. Your next question comes from the line of Jeff Reeve with RBC Capital Markets.

Your line is now open.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. You talked about growing filtration attachment rates in Drinking Water, but also shifting the mix towards retrofit and replacement, which is now about 50%. How important is expanding either recurring revenue and MRO exposure as part of the adjacent growth strategy? Is there a long-term mix you're targeting?

Yeah, within Drinking Water, we've always focused on growing the installed base of filtered units. You see in some of the numbers that I talked about how that filtered install base has grown. That growth in the filtered install base has then directly led to a nicer mix in terms of how big the filter business is itself. A combination of making the units easier to change filters, doing some things to enhance the attachment rate, has all led to that filter portion of Drinking Water growing even faster.

Jeff, maybe one thing to add to what Dave said. I think if you look at our new construction versus MRO retrofit/replace, as you highlight, it is about 50%. I don't know that we have a target other than to say it certainly creates a hedge against new construction activity. I don't know that we have a specific target, but with the massive installed base of not only Drinking Water, but Water Safety and Control, Hygienic and Environmental products, all those do undergo a combination of Placement due to usage, as buildings and facilities get repurposed, there is a retrofit opportunity. A 50/50 mix is a great place to start. You're seeing that sort of play out even with Intellihot and obviously Drinking Water.

It's a great point to make that 50% of our business that is MRO retrofit replace is sort of immune from whatever activity happens in new construction.

Very helpful. Then as a follow-up, just on the organic opportunity to expand in adjacencies, is there a framework for how much annual organic growth you'd like adjacencies to contribute? Should we think of this as 50 basis points a year, 100 basis points, or something more meaningful over time?

I don't know that I would give it to you per year. I think it's going to be one of those things where as we look at these $100 million-$200 million markets and bring things where we can develop a meaningful share in, we're trying to think about it as, a $20 million-$30 million opportunity over three years. It may not all show up in year one. It may be more aggressive in year two. I think it's really a function of identifying categories where we can win and build a competitive advantage, develop the products, source them the right way, work through the specifications, and then begin to pull it through.

The compounding benefit of that is what you're seeing in some of that outgrowth today, and our objective is to continue to do that pretty much in the same way over the coming years.

Great. Thank you. Yeah. Your next question comes from the line of Jeff Hammond with KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Your line is now open.

Hey, good morning, everyone. This is David Tarantino on for Jeff. Maybe following up on Intellihot, how should we think about the levers you can pull to grab more of the TAM aside from just the shift to tankless from the broader end market? I guess, what are the opportunities to grow spec share, and are there gaps you'd like to fill from a product perspective, either organically or through bolt-ons?

Well, maybe a way to think about it, David, is when you think about some of the regulatory tailwinds, some of the efficiency tailwinds, we think that that tankless addressable market today is growing in the mid to high single digits relative to the remainder of the category, which is growing 1%-2% a year. Again, this is all sort of ex price. So we think we're in a great segment of a very big market that will convert over a long period of time. So we're not anticipating big changes in the size of the served market, but we do expect that tankless category to grow. So if you marry that with our ability to leverage the portfolio we have and specification capabilities we have with the full suite of influencers, right? Owners, engineers, architects, wholesalers. We think that not only can the spec share go up, but the category itself will grow, and on top of that, our ability to leverage everything else we do with these customers will aid in all of that pull through.

Jeff, I don't know if you had anything else.

Yeah. I think as you asked the question, this is a heavy spec product. As Todd mentioned, these are projects that we're already working on. As you think about the beginning of the construction cycle, starting with our waterworks and Flow Systems portfolio. We feel that these are engineers that we're already having deep relationships and design discussions with and contractors that are using the breadth of our portfolio. We think that with those leverages, we can take our unfair share of that TAM versus Intellihot being a single-line manufacturer and trying to get leverage with not only the rep network, but also the specifiers, contractors, and wholesalers.

Okay, great. That's helpful color. Maybe looking at the guide for 3Q and 4Q, how should we think about the underlying assumptions here from an end market standpoint? I assume the core growth step down is more moderating price as you lap kind of the tariff increases last year. Is there also some conservatism here, especially in 4Q on the end markets?

You're absolutely right in that the compounding benefit of the price that was put in place is less in the second half versus the first. We're still seeing good unit volume growth. I wouldn't call out any discernible changes in our end market view. We've given you a Q3, we've got a place marker in for Q4, we'll update what that looks like when we announce Q3 earnings right around Halloween.

Great. Thanks, guys. That concludes the question and answer session.

I will now turn the call back over to Bobbi Belstner for closing remarks.

Thanks everyone for joining the call today. We appreciate your interest in Zurn Elkay Water Solutions, and we look forward to providing our next update when we announce our third quarter results in October. Have a great day. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's call.

Thank you all for joining.