Rob Painter
Analyst · Joshua Tilton from Wolfe Research. Your line is open
Well, good morning. Hey, thanks for the question. This is Rob, I'll give you the lens I have on it. I think about two axes on this one. One axis is the financial profile of the business, call it, the -- yes, there's a short-term view on the profile and then there's a long-term profile view on a business. And can it meet the expectation of returns that we have, whether it's return on invested capital or accretion at an ARR growth or at an EBITDA level. On the other axis, we'll look at the strategic attractiveness of that. That could involve the competitive position, but it also looks a lot at an individual businesses or product, let's say, capability to make the whole stronger. And if something sits on its own and isn't making the whole of the business stronger, so it doesn't contribute to a stronger Transportation business or a stronger Construction business, then it's not in the -- let's say, in the favorable side -- it's on a less favorable side of my 2x2 that I'm laying out, and the financial one speaks for itself on that 2x2. So, if I look and apply it against the portfolio, one of the things, if I take Field Systems as an example, within that, going back to the financial crisis back in 2008, there was a time when we had to step in and be the ballast for some of the dealers at the company. And we came in and we acquired a few of the dealers. But we're not ultimately long-term the best owners of a distribution business. We really think that belongs with entrepreneurs out in the field, very, very local businesses. So that would be an example of the divestiture we talked about here in just actually the last few weeks, as an example. So, we would look for parts of the business like that, that really we don't see ourselves as the best owner. So, I'll comment there as opposed to specifics within each of the businesses. But I think we can demonstrably say that we've had the courage to take a look in the mirror, as evidenced by 21 of the divestitures in the last few years driving this simplification and this focus, because we think that that drives the efficiency and the output and the outcomes for the company.