Andrew K. Silvernail - IDEX Corp.
Management
Yes, one of the things that I feel very passionate about, and also very fortunate, is we're not capital constrained when it comes to growth investments, organic growth investments. We do not hold back, we fully fund our organic growth investments, fortunate to have the kind of free cash flow. So through thick and thin, we're going to maximize that and push as hard as we can to drive new market development, new product development, et cetera. And so that's going to be priority one, and it's always going to be priority one in our business because the returns on capital are outstanding and the defensibility of those cash flows long term are outstanding. Secondly, we want you guys to have a consistent view of what dividends are going to be, so kind of 30%, 35% of net income. And then it really comes down to M&A and share repurchase. And so our first priority after those things is going to be, hey, how do we put money to work strategically around building our platforms of businesses that are going to have the same kind of characteristics that we have today. And then, if the market presents the opportunity, to buy back our shares and drive shareholder value in a differentiated way, we'll do so. So we pivot back and forth there. But with all that, patience, to me, is absolutely critical. And so when you're in a marketplace of very high valuations and what I think is oftentimes irrationality around pricing, being patient, being willing to build cash for a period of time and then taking advantage of opportunities when they present themselves aggressively, I think, is the way to do it. So there'll be times when we'll build cash, when it's prudent to do and there'll be times when we get really aggressive, and we deploy capital towards acquisitions or share repurchase when it makes sense.