Blake D. Moret - Rockwell Automation, Inc.
Management
Yeah. I think there's a combination of factors that we triangulate to arrive at that outlook. First of all, our business, over a long period of time ever since I've been in business, is correlated to industrial production. And obviously industrial production forecasts will change when you get to the actuals, but if you look at the actual IP over decades, it's correlated pretty well to our growth where our growth is a multiple of that. IP, particularly in the U.S. is that the highest rate that it's been at in years. Now, the mix by vertical is certainly changing. There's no question that auto has moderated from what growth rates we saw last year, but again we're seeing a positive program commits, as the industry transforms to one that's more weighted to EV, then it's going to be volatile. And everybody starting from a small base so run rates and growth quarter-to-quarter is going to be less meaningful than in a mature business. So from a macro standpoint, we see positive signs. In terms of our order book and our backlog, Patrick mentioned before, we had a historically high book-to-bill in Q1. We had good book-to-bill in this quarter. We're chasing projects, we think that are very reasonable, that are good fits for our capabilities, but the mix is changing. And so you're going to see more on the heavy industry side, amidst the fundamentals of consumer and then I've talked before about transportation. From a regional standpoint, emerging markets, high-single-digits, we still see that, that piece is playing out as the growth of the middle class creates demand for things that we're good at helping manufacturers produce, consumer, automotive and then there's obviously semiconductor and other heavy industries that are strengthening. So from a variety of directions, that gives us confidence that we are in the early stages, but I agree with you Scott about the weirdness of this. I mean capital with our customers has still remained on the sidelines compared to some of the historic ratios. And where we think that our fundamental mission of helping them increase productivity whether they have in their minds large capital projects or not, we're still in our wheelhouse to be able to help them be able to save money and time.