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<p>Minnesota-based Ecolab, which offers cleaning and sanitizing products, water treatment systems, and consulting services, aims to reduce water use. Ecolab provided its expertise in water technology and digital monitoring solutions to Moeve, a leading Madrid-based energy company, to develop a circular recycling system, lowering water use at San Roque Energy Park, a refining, chemical, and biofuel production hub in southern Spain. The system sends a reusable stream back into San Roque’s operations by means of a membrane water system, ultrafiltration, and specialized chemistry. The collaboration between Moeve and Ecolab reduced fresh-water intake, and the San Roque lab was able to recycle up to 317 million gallons of water per year and cut down on exposure to risks from drought. 
</p>

Change the World

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F500-2021-237-Ecolab

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Change The World

Impact Segment

Ecolab provides water, hygiene, and energy technologies and services that support safety, sustainability, and operational efficiency. The company serves a wide range of industries including food service, health care, hospitality, and manufacturing. Its solutions include cleaning and sanitizing products, water treatment systems, and consulting services. Ecolab operates globally with a focus on helping customers manage resources and meet regulatory standards.

Q2 2026

Q1 2026

Q4 2025

Q3 2025

Q2 2025

Q1 2025

Q4 2024

Ecolab (ECL): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

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Ecolab

ecolab

Greetings. Welcome to the Ecolab third quarter 2025 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants will be in listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone today should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero from your telephone keypad. As a reminder, today's conference is being recorded. At this time, it is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Andy Hedberg, Vice President of Investor Relations for Ecolab. Thank you, Andy. You may now begin.

Thank you, and hello everyone. Welcome to Ecolab's third quarter conference call. With me today are Christophe Beck, Ecolab's Chairman and CEO, and Scott Kirkland, our CFO. A discussion of our results, along with the earnings release and the slides referencing the quarter's results, are available on Ecolab's website at ecolab.com/investor. Please take a moment to read the customary statements in these materials, which state that this teleconference and the associated supplement materials include estimates of future performance. These are forward-looking statements, and actual results could differ materially from those projected. Factors that could cause actual results to differ are described under the risk factors section in our most recent Form 10-K and our posted materials. We also refer you to the supplemental diluted earnings per share information in the release. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Christophe Beck for his comments.

Thank you, Andy, and welcome to everyone joining us today. I'd like to start by recognizing the strength and the resilience of the Ecolab team. In a year defined by persistent macro uncertainty that we've all lived through and shifting global dynamics, our team continues to deliver consistent double-digit earnings growth. They focus on what matters most: our customers, our strategy, and our long-term goals, which is what enables us to perform at a very high level quarter after quarter. We've seen that in the third quarter where sales growth improved, fueled by accelerating pricing, up to 3% from 2% last quarter, while volumes increased 1%. This momentum was driven by double-digit organic growth in our growth engines, which is remarkable, and which includes Pest Elimination, Life Sciences, Global High-Tech, and Ecolab Digital. Our core businesses, Institutional and Specialty, and the rest of Global Water delivered solid growth.

All of this was supported by exceptional total value delivery through best-in-class, breakthrough innovation, and disciplined execution of our One Ecolab enterprise growth strategy. In total, our growth engines and core businesses represent about 85% of our total sales, and they delivered 4% organic sales growth and mid-teens organic operating income growth. The strong performance more than offset ongoing market softness in our underperforming businesses, Basic Industries and Paper, which together represent the remaining 15% of our global sales. These two businesses declined 3% and had an impact of 1 percentage point on volume in the quarter. Let me briefly expand on each of these drivers before sharing how we're thinking about the remainder of the year and how we are positioned to deliver another strong year of double-digit EPS growth in 2026.

Pricing accelerated to 3% this quarter, driven by the full implementation of our trade surcharge and continued value pricing that's working really well. As always, the total value we deliver to customers continued to outpace, and by far, our total pricing, as our technologies and services had to deliver enhanced business outcomes, operational performance, and environmental impact for our customers. Our breakthrough innovation is the strongest it's ever been, delivering significant value for customers and growth for Ecolab. In Institutional and Specialty, breakthrough innovations like the ones you've seen at Investor Day, like DigiQ, AquaIQ, and ReadyDose, are growing double-digits as these solutions help our customers improve operational performance, optimize their scarce labor resources, and reduce total cost. In our Pest Intelligence platform, we've now installed over 400,000 intelligent devices, formerly called mousetraps, on our way to deploying over 1 million devices.

With this leading technology, we aim to deliver 99% pest-free outcomes as we harness the power of our Ecolab 3D digital infrastructure and our expert service capabilities. Within Global Water, we recently launched 3D Trezor for direct-to-chip liquid cooling for next-generation AI data centers, which uniquely monitors and optimizes coolant performance in real time. When combined with our full portfolio of data center cooling technologies, we're helping to reduce up to 10% of the power used to cool data centers, which can now be utilized for compute power. This is just the beginning as we build our leadership position in data center cooling and water circularity in mind. Finally, within Global Life Sciences, we've launched a series of cutting-edge drug purification resins for the bioprocessing industry, which drives improved product quality and significant operational efficiencies for our customers.

When Ecolab focuses its breakthrough innovation on solving critical customer challenges like these, everyone wins. One Ecolab is helping us unlock significant cross-sale opportunities across our customer base. In total, it represents a $65 billion growth opportunity, with $3.5 billion of this sitting with our largest customers. We're seeing early successes in businesses like Institutional and Specialty and Food and Beverage that are growing very nicely. Talking about that, in Institutional and Specialty, while organic sales grew by 4%, outpacing in market trends, this good performance is being fueled by the exceptional value we are delivering to customers, which we capture through value pricing and growth from One Ecolab. With this, we're working to deliver best-in-class operating performance for customers as they utilize more of our breakthrough technologies across more of their locations.

In Food and Beverage, growth continued to accelerate with organic sales up 4% this quarter, once again ahead of market trends. This strong acceleration is being driven by One Ecolab, where we bring together our industry-leading cleaning and sanitizing, water treatments, and digital technologies. This comprehensive offering delivers significant customer value through improved food safety, lower operating costs, and optimized water usage, which was always our promise. Our growth engine delivered another quarter of double-digit sales growth. These businesses are gaining momentum, and Ecolab is well-positioned to capitalize on the strong secular tailwinds driving these markets. Let me unpack them one by one. Pest Elimination delivered 6% organic sales growth. As mentioned earlier, the Pest Intelligence rollout is going extremely well. Our pest team has just won another very large retailer here in the U.S., which has thousands of locations where we will be deploying in the coming months.

This innovation is transforming our Pest Elimination model as we shift from spending 95% of our time physically checking every device to 95% of our time solving critical customer problems and selling new solutions. Even with ongoing investment in Pest Intelligence, operating income margins improved to nearly 21%, driven by our strong sales growth and the leverage we're generating from Pest Intelligence. Life Sciences sales growth also improved to 6%, led by double-digit growth in biopharma and pharma and personal care. This very strong performance overcame capacity constraints within our water purification business. Looking at the fourth quarter, we expect Life Sciences year-on-year sales growth to moderate a little bit from third quarter's 6% growth as we compare against nearly 70% growth in our bioprocessing business last year, but underlying same trends.

Despite this strong comparison, we expect bioprocessing to still grow double-digits in the fourth quarter as we continue to gain share in this super attractive market. Global High-Tech continues to grow rapidly with sales up 25%. We've built an incredible growth platform where we're uniquely positioned to serve the high growth data center and microelectronics industries. The pending acquisition of AVEVA Electronics will more than double the size of Ecolab's Global High-Tech business to nearly $900 million, further strengthening this growth engine by bringing together AVEVA's very unique attractive water technologies with Ecolab's leading water solutions, digital technologies, and global service capabilities. The combined technology platform will enable Ecolab to expand our offerings to provide circular water solutions for microelectronics, helping to maximize chip production and quality for this booming industry. Ecolab Digital maintained its strong momentum, delivering 25% sales growth this quarter.

Ecolab Digital now has annualized sales of more than $380 million, driven by rapid growth in subscription revenue and digital hardware. Overall, digital is a $13 billion growth opportunity for Ecolab, with $3 billion of this sitting within our existing customer base. We remain focused on capturing this high margin opportunity as we leverage our leading digital technologies and monetize our large and expanding install base. We're not only leveraging AI to build new fast-growing capabilities in Global High-Tech and Ecolab Digital, we're rapidly leveraging it in our own operations to dramatically improve our customer experience and enterprise performance. With this, I'm very proud to share that Ecolab has ranked number nine on the Fortune AIQ 50 list, recognizing the companies most prepared for the age of AI. Our global teams are quickly scaling AI to drive innovation, deliver customer impact to our best-in-class model, and deliver significant cost savings.

Finally, we remain confident in our team's ability to get our two underperforming businesses, Basic Industries and Paper, back to growth. They're already making meaningful progress. We've shifted resources to support emerging opportunities like in power and precious metals, where they're supporting AI-driven power build-ups. When markets are still facing near-term demand headwinds like paper, we're focusing on innovation that can drive significant operational savings for customers. We're also leveraging our One Ecolab growth strategy in these businesses to expand relationships with existing customers. These actions are working, as evidenced by our share gains and relative outperformance in these end markets, but we're not satisfied. While we expect these markets to remain soft in the near-term, with actions well underway, we anticipate these businesses to return to growth during 2026. One of the greatest strengths of Ecolab for decades has been the breadth and diversity of our portfolio.

While not every business delivers strong performance at all times, our diverse portfolio is the key reason Ecolab collectively delivers double-digit EPS growth in nearly any environment. With our strong performance, we drove a 110 basis points increase in our organic operating income margin, which reached a record 18.7% this quarter. We continue to expect our operating income margin to expand at steady levels due to growth in high-margin businesses, value pricing, share gains, and productivity improvements, reaching a strong 18% for the full year 2025. Importantly, our margin expansion also includes significant and ongoing investments in our business. We continue to make these growth investments as they fuel high performance in the quarters and years ahead. As a result, we're increasing our 2025 full year adjusted diluted EPS midpoint to $7.53, with a range of $7.48-$7.58.

Beyond this year, we remain firmly on track to achieve a 20% OI margin by 2027. As mentioned during our Investor Day last month, we expect to continue our momentum with 100-150 basis points of annual OI margin expansion through 2023. This positions us extremely well to continue to deliver steady 12%-15% earnings growth in 2026 and beyond. In closing, our third quarter results reflect the strength of our business and the power of our strategy. Our pricing discipline, breakthrough innovation, and One Ecolab execution continue to drive share gains and margin expansion across our core business. Our growth engines are scaling rapidly and positioned to benefit from long-term secular tailwinds. All of this is enabling us to deliver consistent earnings growth, even in a complex and complicated macro environment.

With strong and resilient free cash flow and an extremely strong balance sheet, we're very well-positioned to capitalize on both organic and inorganic growth opportunities to create significant value for our customers and drive attractive returns for our shareholders. I remain very confident in our ability to deliver sustained strong performance in Q4 this year and beyond. Thanks again for your continued trust and your investment in Ecolab. I look forward to your questions.

Thanks, Christophe. That concludes our formal remarks. Operator, would you please begin the question-and-answer period?

Yes, thank you. If you'd like to ask a question at this time, you may press star one from your telephone keypad, and a confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. We ask that you please limit yourself to one question. Remember, you follow up through a caller so that others will have a chance to participate. Thank you. The first question is from the line of Tim Mulrooney with William Blair. Please proceed with your question.

Hi, this is Luke McFadden on for Tim. Thanks for taking our questions. I wanted to ask about your Global High-Tech business. We noticed the slides mentioned some recent market share wins in data centers. Could you talk a bit more about how you're achieving and measuring the gains here? I know you haven't closed the deal yet, but I'm curious to hear any updated thoughts on the AVEVA acquisition and how you would characterize the growth opportunity in microelectronics post-deal close relative to your already strong performance in this end market today.

Hey, thank you, Luke. I love that feed, as you know. Let me step back a bit because it's important. For all of us to understand, high tech for us is a combination of data centers and microelectronic plants. Many call it fabs, which at some point will be two businesses focused on different technologies, obviously. For now, it's really high tech combining data centers and microelectronics. It's a field that attracts most of the global investments, as we know. We expect these global investments to continue to drive that growth trend, even though we don't expect it to be a straight line to heaven. There will be, obviously, some more difficult and some better times ahead. Generally, it's going to be the growth of our times.

When we think about some of the facts, talking about metrics, Luke, one data center opens in the world every one to two weeks, with an investment ranging from $500 million-$3 billion. There are 10,000 data centers in the world today. It's showing a strong base that's getting even bigger as we speak. On the other hand, you have one fab, one microelectronics plant that's opening up roughly every month or so, with average investments in the billion. There are 500 fabs today and expected to be 100 more, getting to 600 in the next 10 years. We can see the pace at which those data centers and fabs are opening up. Our objective is ultimately to be in and hopefully own each of them around the world.

The key thing is that all of this will require way more power and way more water, which is where our role comes into it. As mentioned as well, by 2030, we expect that this industry powering AI with fabs and data centers will need the incremental power of the whole of India in the next four years and the drinking water needs of the whole of the United States as well at the same time. Data centers will need to be cooled, and fabs require vast amounts of ultra-pure water. The cool news is that those are technologies that we master. We've been mastering for a very long time. Nobody understands water better than Ecolab. We've been in the cooling business for a very long time, and we've been in the water business, obviously, for a very long time as well.

We're building offerings that are helping data centers to be cooled in a more efficient way by reducing the amount of water and moving towards direct-to-chip technologies. That helps cooling faster. This means more compute power, and this means less power for cooling and more power for compute, which is exactly what the tech industry is looking for. On the other hand, we're providing circular water solutions for microelectronics manufacturers because one fab requires roughly the drinking water needs of 17 million people, and the pace at which it's being built, that's not going to work for the communities, obviously. The tech industries, the famous ones, especially in Asia, but in the U.S. as well, are looking for solutions to reuse and recycle water.

Here's the key point: that water that's being used in those fabs needs to be ultra-pure water, which means roughly 1,000x more pure than the water that you would use in drugs that you inject in your bloodstream, which is exactly what AVEVA is doing. By bringing what Ecolab has always done in water circularity, plus the capabilities of AVEVA in ultra-pure water, we help microelectronics ultimately reuse and recycle water at ultra-pure water levels. At the end, 2026 for Global High-Tech, assuming we close, obviously, on AVEVA, will be roughly a $900 million business growing double digit with very strong margins. It's important to keep in mind that for us, it's a new step, a further step on our high tech journey, and one that will change over time the growth profile of our company. A very good new chapter for our company.

Our next question comes from the line of Ashish Sabadra with RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Thanks for taking my question. I just wanted to focus on the basic industries and paper returning back to growth in 2026. I was wondering if you could drill down further about the shifting resources, innovation, as well as share gains, how that can help offset some of the end market weakness. Thanks.

Yeah, thank you, Ashish. I really like the underlying performance of that business. It's a good margin business, just that you know as well, it's slightly below our company average, but it's still a good business, good margin, and good underlying performance. The biggest issue we have in that industry is it's consolidating, which means that they are closing mills. Mills are very big, and those mills, obviously, when they close, are impacting our growth, and there's not much we can do. We lose very little to competition. We gain share in the existing and new mills, but when a mill is closing, we lose those sales. That's what's happened over the last 18 months. We see that process of consolidation slowing down. We see our underlying performance driven by what you were saying, innovation improving as well. I think the combination of both ultimately will be positive for paper.

I think that we are reaching the bottom of that cycle in paper. I think in the next, I don't know, one, two, three quarters, paper is going to get back to a growth trajectory, and the sooner the better, obviously. On the basic industries, we have regrouped our resources, we're driving critical mass as well, driving efficiencies, but it's really making sure that we capture as much market share as we can right now as the market recovers as well, and similar to paper, but for different reasons. We see as well kind of the bottom come in the next couple of quarters, and then we should get back to a good place. In both businesses here, 15% of our company, we need to keep that in mind. There will always be a few businesses that are having subpar performance. I like the underlying performance.

The market trends have been hard in the past. This is changing. That's why I'm quite optimistic. We would like where those two businesses are going to go. At the end of the day, let's keep in mind that 85% of the company is growing very well with mid-teens operating income growth in a very healthy place.

Our next question comes from the line of John McNulty with BMO Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Good afternoon, and thanks for taking my question, Christophe. I had a question on pricing. If you can take the tariff surcharge out of the equation, would you say that pricing is getting easier to push through just because the value proposition is becoming more evident, or would you characterize it as maybe getting tougher just because there may be price fatigue? Inflation's maybe moderating a little bit. How would you characterize it?

Thank you, John. I would say the same. It's hard to put a metric, obviously, on that. Generally, the fact that pricing is getting stronger. Our total value delivered, by the way, is getting much stronger too. We're always trying to get 2x-3x more total value delivered than pricing that's being captured. It's a good deal for customers. I feel that we're in a pretty good place, and our retention is very high in the 90s, as you know, and it's remaining very stable as well at the same time. A good story of customer for life with good retention, sharing the savings that they get in their operations that translates into value pricing. You're right, on top of it, the tariff surcharge or trade surcharge, as we called it, is helping as well.

That's why I feel that the 2%-3% value price for the long run seems to be the sweet spot for our company.

Next question is from the line of Andrew Whitman with Baird. Please proceed with your question.

Great, thanks. I had two questions, I guess, Christophe. Just talking about the water business as well here. You discussed the top line impacts the quarter very detailed there. I'm just wondering if you could just help us understand a little bit about how that top line is affecting that segment's margin performance. Maybe if you could bifurcate that as well. Then just quickly, a quick kind of a technical question here. You mentioned a large new pest customer. I was just wondering, was that referenced into an entirely new customer that is not a customer today, or were you saying that's just a conversion to the new technology? Thanks.

Thank you, Andy. Two different questions, obviously. I think the easiest way to talk about water top line and margin, if you exclude basic industries and paper, which I know is a bit of a challenging accounting approach here to make sure I remain in GAAP. Generally, water would be having a 4% top line growth and a 15% operating income growth, excluding those two businesses. It's pretty clear where our work is focused on, and that's why we're focusing on these two businesses to make sure that we enjoy all the good side of the water business that we really love and that keeps getting better. On the first question, we never mention which customer that is, just to respect, obviously, their own confidentiality. It's a new one, which has been so really interested by that new technology.

The fact that we focused early on on the biggest out there helps, obviously, so everyone else sees that it's good. The leading companies are embarking on that journey and that it's really working. That's going to be, I think, helping us for the future as well, because the more of those great retailers we have on board, the more others will join as well. It's an ideal proposition for them. 99% so fast for a good deal for their own operations. It's good for us. It's exactly the model that we want to build in the future. We're early on that journey, as mentioned, so 400,000 devices today, but we will be at a million first half of next year. It's showing how quickly we're moving here, and we're clearly leading the industry, which is helping customers come to us.

Our next question is from the line of Vincent Andrews with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your question.

Thank you. Good afternoon. Christophe, I'd like to ask you for an update on One Ecolab. In particular, I know the focus initially was the top 35 customers. As we get to year-end 2025, where will you be in terms of sort of the work you wanted to do with that top 35? As we get into 2026, will you be rolling it out more aggressively to your next 25 or 50 or what have you? How should we think about the layering in of incremental One Ecolab efforts from 2025 to 2026?

Thank you, Vincent. The way we approached it, I don't remember how public I was with it. We launched One Ecolab a year plus ago, as you remember, mid of last year. We said we will start with three customers in three major industries of the company to move towards the, we called it internally, the max seven. They're not exactly the same as the ones you would have in mind, but some are, obviously, in 2025. To move towards the top 20 E15 in 2026 to really make sure we can demonstrate that customer of the customer and learn as an organization as well without boiling the ocean. It's progressing very well. Customers are very receptive.

The best example is really some food and beverage united, where we brought hygiene and water together in North America, which you see the results in food and beverage, how the growth trends have shifted towards higher growth. It's exactly driven by One Ecolab, focused on some of those critical customers. It's where the whole idea came from when we acquired Nalco, by the way, in 2011. It's an old idea that's coming to life, very well received by customers, working in terms of growth, and we will expand as we move forward in 2026.

The next question is from the line of Patrick Cunningham with Citi. Please proceed with your question.

Hi, good afternoon. How should we think about SG&A leverage, particularly in Pest and Life Sciences next year as you start to lap some of the growth investments you've made across both businesses? Is it a relatively linear path to your 2027 targets, or is there sort of a continued step up in growth investments embedded next year?

Thank you, Patrick. Scott was looking for a question, this is a perfect segue. I would suggest we start SG&A in general as well, then start focusing on these two.

Yeah. Yeah, hey, thanks, Patrick. As we've talked about, SG&A productivity has been a great story over the last several years. Since 2019, our SG&A leverage has improved 150 basis points, and we're expecting to improve another 20-30 basis points this year for full year 2025. As we talked about at Investor Day beyond 2025, with the benefit of the One Ecolab savings that we're driving and net of investments, we'll continue to invest in the business. That leverage, I expect it to be pretty broad-based. Certainly, we're investing in the growth businesses, the growth engines, but expect going forward to deliver 25-50 basis points of SG&A leverage benefiting from the One Ecolab program and the technology we're deploying.

What I really love on that whole journey, it's not becoming cheap and saving money left and right. It's leveraging digital technology, agents. We have many now in our organization. That is why being recognized as one of the leading AI companies in the world was really cool news. For us, it's really leveraging technology to do more with less. We are still early on that journey, so I think it's going to keep getting better. Really good work here that's feeding ultimately the growth story that we want to capture.

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Manav Patnaik with Barclays. Please proceed with your question.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Christophe. I just had a question. The 85% of your business, the core, I guess, that you said was growing 4%. Assuming the macro stay the same, it sounds like it's the growth engines that could take that higher. I'm just trying to understand from your perspective, how long do you think before that mix is big enough to start moving the needle? You've obviously delivered well on the margins and EPS, and I think we're all looking to see if revenue growth can be better.

Yeah, it's a great question. You know, as I was sharing at the Investor Day and with the team, the beauty of the company is our broad exposure to end markets, which means that we won't have all end markets in the red at the same time, which means that we won't have all end markets in the green at the same time as well. Focusing on this 15% a little bit of our time to make sure that those ones are becoming less of a drag and ultimately a positive driver. When we look at this 85% growing 4% and mid-teens, the growth engines are growing 12% and even more on operating income, which is a very good story. AVEVA Electronics is going to add to it, as mentioned earlier, obviously. High tech is going to get bigger.

Since that group of growth engines is growing double digit, obviously, the mix is going to shift towards them over time. I think that in the next few years, growth engines are going to become a really relevant part of our company. It's roughly 20% today, $3 billion. I would not be surprised if it becomes 30%-40% in a few years down the road.

The next question is from the line of David Begleiter with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed with your question.

Thank you. Christophe, on the price surcharge, how much did you realize? With the surcharge now fully in place, should we think about this 3% pricing continuing for the next perhaps two to three quarters? Thank you.

You know, it's hard to know exactly because some businesses, like Institutional, for instance, decided to bring, and that was the same in 2022, so nothing new, to have it directly within the structural price. We don't have a perfect tracking of that. Honestly, I don't really care because anyway, also converging towards structural price. With the surcharge, we're closer to 3%, obviously. That's why I'm saying 2%-3% is the sweet spot. Since we round those numbers, sometimes you might be rounding down to 2% and sometimes to 3%. I feel pretty good with where we are now. Our objective is to stay closer to 3%, but it depends what's happening with the tariffs as well, as well as what's happening with China. This week, we will know that in the next few days as well.

The good news is that we know exactly how to manage that if we need to, and it leads to very good margin performance. For me, 2%-3% is the sweet spot, and our objective is to be as close to 3% as we can.

The next question is from the line of Chris Parkinson with Wolfe Research. Please proceed with your question.

Great, thank you so much. I'm quick to dig in a little bit more into the Life Sciences Segment. Understanding it's been volatile over the last few years. However, it seems like there's a decent recovery pending in bioprocessing and pharma, so on and so forth. If we could hit on the top line first, that'd be helpful. If we could move into just the capacity additions, where we stand there, and your ultimate progress towards 2027 goals and how you feel about them. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Chris. It's a business and industry that I love. As hard as it's been the last few years, I would do it again, and we would love where this business is heading. Great team focused exactly on the right innovations that the pharma industry is looking for to produce faster, high-quality, lower-cost drugs at a lower environment. The impacts are really converging with an Ecolab model. When I look at the three elements that you mentioned, top line, capacity, and margins, let me take them one by one. The top line, we've been growing low to mid-single the last few years. That was less than what we had planned for when we acquired Purolite.

That was during a time where the market went down, and most of our competitors went down in terms of growth. It doesn't make it great for us, but at least it's adding some perspective. When I look at the growth trajectory that we have now, it's clearly accelerating. I mentioned this Q4 is going to be a bit softer because it compares to a huge growth in Q4 last year. Underlying, it's clearly accelerating. The new business is very strong. We're getting more commercial drugs as well in our pipeline, which makes a big difference, obviously. The team keeps getting stronger and better as well. We're one of the only few companies having as well capacities in various places around the world. That adds to the resilience as well to it. We add the whole water component and environmental hygiene that the other ones do not as well.

Top line, finally, getting from good to much better, and it's going to keep accelerating with one caveat: this capacity challenge that we have in our purification business just because we have max capacity of what we can manufacture. Our plants in China in mid-2026 are going to open and are going to enable us to unleash that growth in that part as well of the business, which is going to be great for the local market and as well for some international markets. Last point on the margin, as we've shared as well at the Investor Day, we are kind of in this mid-teens of today. Underlying, it's more mid-2020s because of the investments that we are making in that business as we build that franchise.

From the mid-2020s to the 2030, we see a clear path, but our focus is really to drive growth in that phase of the investment and then to drive margins once we get enough growth that we can leverage the critical mass that we've built.

Our next question is from the line of John Roberts with Mizuho Securities. Please proceed with your question.

Thank you. In hospitality, you use a metric called seats in the seats. Could you give us an update on that? It seems like we have a lot of mixed trends going on in the full-service restaurant market.

Thank you, John. I'm using the term food traffic for our business here. As you know, it's been very different versus 2019. Before COVID, people going and sitting in a restaurant, so down 30% versus 2019, and that hasn't changed. Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how we want to look at it, a third of the people are just going for takeaway, for delivery, or for drive-through, the famous 3D. We see a stabilization of the food traffic, which is kind of good news. We've gotten used to that new model. Ultimately, with all the digital solutions that we have offered to that industry to manage this different way of selling products with less people as well, it's been a very good story because we could grow very nicely because what we did was even more important to the hospitality industry. It was sold at a higher margin as well.

Less volume, better margins, very good growth. I think for us, it's been exactly what we needed. It's made Institutional or the hospitality business even much better than what it used to be. You can see it in the margin that's north of 20% today. It's going to keep moving up with very nice top line growth as well. So far, so good. The last point I'd say as well, our Specialty business is doing extremely well, doing even better than full-service restaurants. The QSR, the fast food business is growing in the high single. It's a very good story as well there, which helps us capture wherever people go, depending on the economic times that we're facing. Overall, net-net, a very good story in a very new market.

The next question is from the line of Jeff Zekauskas with JPMorgan. Please proceed with your question.

Thanks very much. In the water business this quarter, did volume grow? In basic industries and paper, was volume growth negative high single digits? Did that represent a deceleration from the numbers you had experienced in the previous quarters?

Thank you, Jeff. As you know, we don't disclose volumes by business for obvious reasons. As mentioned, every segment had positive growth that we reported. That's the good news. There was no segment that was going down. For me, it's really important that all businesses maintain positive growth, whether you're in high tech, where it's much more obvious because the flow of the river is very strong, or you're in more challenged businesses like hospitality, as we talked about before, and still there. Our teams are doing really well. Water was positive with that perspective, obviously. Paper within water was not, and it's in the low to mid-single, but it's improving. That's why I feel quite optimistic with the next few quarters with our so-called underperforming businesses, paper and basic industries. They're not where they should be. They do exactly the right thing.

The underperforming performance of underperforming businesses is strong. Markets are not, but net-net, we're going to get to a good place in the next few quarters. We're doing all the right things here.

The next question is from the line of Matthew Devoit with Bank of America. Please proceed with your question.

Thank you. I'd like to follow up on Vincent's question earlier on cross-selling in One Ecolab. Do you have any idea how much that contributed to organic growth in the quarter, or an expectation you can give us for this year as it relates to overall revenue generation?

It is very good, actually. We are a corporate account, as we call it, so driven organization. Enterprise customers, to use a different term as well. The top 20 E15 focus is contributing over average to the growth of the company. This is exactly the right place to focus. It has always been true as a company. To get the whole One Ecolab within an enterprise is harder to make it work very well. That is why we have chosen to go with all our innovation, all our technology, bringing One Ecolab digital services together towards those max seven, as mentioned before, then the T20 E15, so the top 20 customers and emerging 15, for next year as well. They are doing better than the average of the company as well. It is clearly a strategy that is working.

As we expand the focus beyond those 35 customers, it is going to help drive better performance for the overall company at higher margin because it is helping customers drive even more efficiencies within their own operations. The best example is food and beverage. Food and beverage united, as we call it, within our own company, where we brought hygiene and water together. You can see the performance of food and beverage has been remarkable in the third quarter, and it is going to keep getting better. It is only in North America that we have done it, by the way, and it is a very global business serving global customers with global quality standards, as you would imagine.

This one is going really well with a great team, with great customer feedback, also because no one else can do it as well, which is a great way for us to strengthen our moat. Generally, this One Ecolab approach on our enterprise customers is really working, and it is going to be a growth driver for the years to come.

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Mike Harrison with Seaport Research Partners. Please proceed with your question.

Hi, good afternoon. Christophe, just kind of following up on what you were just talking about with food and beverage, the performance this quarter was, I think, the best organic growth that you've shown in several quarters. You mentioned that there is some momentum from One Ecolab and from pricing. I was hoping you could help us understand a little bit more about what's going on with underlying market dynamics that you're seeing there. To the extent that you are winning new business, is that mostly share of wallets and One Ecolab opportunities with existing customers, or are you seeing some new wins in that business in food and beverage as well?

Good question, Mike. It's 4% organic growth in food and beverage is strong, for sure. It's much better than the market. Consumer goods are not exactly growing fast when you look at the companies out there, all the obviously famous names out there. Closer to flat than to mid-single type of growth. Really pleased with the performance that we're driving. We're doing it while increasing our margins as well at the same time. It's almost a perfect play. What's happening in food and beverage here with this unification of hygiene and water. Again, it's only North America that we've done it so far, which is less than half our global business. It's showing how well it's working, that whole approach. To your point on the share of wallet and the white spaces, it's a combination of both.

We're gaining definitely some new customers, new plants as well within existing customers as well. By bringing water and hygiene together, we help them not only produce higher quality, safer food, but reduce a lot of cost as well at the same time. In a slow-growth industry, that's exactly what they're looking for. What we're doing for them is exactly what they're expecting. At the same time, we're adding digital technology that we monetize or charge for, using a different term. We get as well the value share. Our share of the savings we're generating for them in terms of value pricing, that's also incremental. It's a combination of white spaces and share gains. Overall, an awesome story for probably one of our best global businesses that we have.

Our next question is from the line of Lawrence Alexander with Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.

Good afternoon. Looks like your operating results are running, I mean, your organic growth is running pretty much in line or better than what you thought earlier in the year. FX looks like it's basically double the tailwind of what it was last year. Can you talk a little bit about the gives and takes and what levers you have to pull if currency moves the other way next year?

Yeah, good question, Lawrence. Let me pass it to Scott because it's an FX DPC question.

Yeah, thanks, Lawrence. Hey, as we've talked about, the underlying performance remains really strong. Even with FX, the underlying EPS is the OI is growing double-digits. If you think about just in Q3 itself, while FX is in line with what we expected, and as we guided, you also have the impact of the year-over-year SG&A comp that is offsetting that FX in benefit of the non-operating. That underlying growth is really very strong. We previewed the year-over-year comp on SG&A during the Q2 call and expect that our Q4 performance to continue as the SG&A normalizes. We also are seeing commodity costs growing low to mid-single digits and overcoming that as well.

The next question is from the line of Jason Haas with Wells Fargo. Please proceed with your question.

Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. I'm curious if you could talk about the Pest Elimination business, if you've seen any increasing costs for leads or any increased competition in that space recently. Thank you.

Hey, Tom, just to the value question, on past Jason, the SG&A end versus competition, is it what you asked?

Sorry, just to be more clear, I'm asking if the customer acquisition costs have gone up at all, if you've seen any step up in competition from one of the major players out there. Thanks.

Customer acquisition cost. Okay, I wanted to make sure I got it right, Jason. Actually, it's become easier because we're early on that journey, as I mentioned. We got one major retailer in the U.S. We're getting the second as we speak. We wanted to do it large customer by large customer. It's not the geographic play. It's a customer play because ultimately, one brand wants to be safe and not have any issue in social media or whatever, really to concentrate on guest satisfaction and quality of the experience and the food, obviously here. What we offer here with all the digital technology, all the AI that we've developed within the company for many years now, is serving the needs of our Pest Intelligence business.

No one else can provide as much technology as we can and have such a backbone like Ecolab 3D as well at the same time. It's a leading offering. It's ahead of the competition. Customers are very open to it. What I really like as well with it is that the whole industry, even if not moving all at the same pace, is trying to add value to customers and get paid for it as well at the same time. Very healthy competition, and it's a good thing for customers and for the guests or the ultimate consumers visiting whatever those locations are ultimately.

In terms of operating costs, when 95% of your time was spent in the past checking devices that were empty and you spend 5% of your time doing it tomorrow within your system, your operating costs are getting better, and you can spend much more time acquiring new customers and serving them even better, which is why our margins are improving as well at the same time. I love that business. It's going to keep back. It's on a strong base of performance right now. It's going to keep improving as we move forward. Margin is going to improve as well. I want to make sure that we keep investing as well in there because until we are 100% with the best intelligence model around the world, we will not slow down our investments that have little impact on the operating margin.

It's still improving, as you could see, since we're now sub 20% now.

Our next question is from the line of Josh Spector with UBS. Please proceed with your question.

Yeah, hi, good afternoon. I wanted to ask from a general context. You talked about 2026, confident in the low to mid-teens EPS growth. I think around this time a year ago, you made comments around you don't really need strong volumes to get there. You were really confident in the price-cost equation. I guess when you sit here today and look out a year, do you feel the same way that you can kind of get there with 0%-1% volumes? If you start to see an acceleration, that's upside? Would you frame it differently?

I see exactly the same way, the way that you described it, with the only caveat, we don't know how the environment is going to be in 2026. We had some very firm plans for 2025 with very strong FX headwinds and delivered product costs that would be really helping. It was exactly the other way around that it happened in 2025. We delivered what we had promised in terms of top line, but most importantly, in terms of bottom line. When I think about 2026, for me, it's going to be a strong year, very similar to 2025, with 3% -4% top line, positive volume, 2%-3%% price to drive this 12%-15% EPS, and at least 100 basis points in terms of operating income margins to get to 19%+, which is bringing us closer to the 20% that we committed to for 2027.

FX are going to be ahead. Inflation might be a little bit of a headwind in 2026, and everything else that we don't know. I feel really good on that trajectory. To your point, if things improve, if our end markets are even more open to what we do, that's going to be upside. That's why I feel really good with where we're heading in 2026, one more time, like it's been in the past few years.

Thank you. Our final question is from the line of Kevin McCarthy with Vertical Research Partners. Please proceed with your question.

Hi, this is Matt Hauer on for Kevin McCarthy. Thanks for all the color on data centers that you gave earlier. Just following up on that conversation, I wanted to get your thoughts on how Ecolab is positioned with regards to next-generation cooling technologies such as directed chip cooling. Do you have everything you need to compete and win there, or should we expect additional bolt-on deals in that arena? Thank you.

Love that question, Matt. No one has everything they need for directed chip cooling. This is leading-edge technology. It's 5% of the data centers. Those are the newest. Interestingly enough, when you say directed chip cooling, liquid cooling, this is fluid management. This is exactly what we've done for a very long time, managing fluids in a bunch of different industries, obviously. In a way, it's coming closer to our own mastery of science and technology. When I think directed chip cooling, we've talked about our cooling distribution units that we call coolant intelligence unit because they integrate 3D tracer technology that we've been developing for many, many years. We have that technology in the middle of a data center integrating 3D tracer. We've developed as well a connected coolant, so the liquid itself, to make sure that you have the best thermal performance to cool the chips as well.

We have coolant monitoring systems as well to make sure that you don't have leaks, you don't have bounding, you don't have anything bad that's happening as well to maximize the performance of the data center. You have everything else, obviously, that's going up the chain in chillers and towers, ethyl towers on the roof. The latest data centers that we're serving have no cooling towers on the roof and have no water in there as well. We have many pieces that we need, and we're developing and exploring the new pieces that we will need as well in the future. That's why I think we're just at the beginning of that journey. That field is exactly what Ecolab should be focused on. We should become the owner of cooling technology for data centers in the world.

That's where we're focusing all our efforts, all our resources, and all our investments as well in Global High-Tech. On top of it, we do similar, obviously, with microelectronics, different technology, as mentioned before, which we use and recycle of ultra-pure water. That's where AVEVA Electronics is playing exactly in that field. It's really serving our dual strategy in high tech to be the owner of circular water at ultra-pure water standards in microelectronics and cooling technologies in data centers. That's why I'm so bullish about what we've done, where we are today, but most importantly, where we're going. That's why I'm saying it's going to change over time, the growth profile of this company because it's a huge growth wave, and we're very well-positioned on that wave. I really like where we are.

The competitive set is strong out there, but no one understands cooling and water better than we do. I would clearly bet on the Ecolab team.

Thank you. At this time, we've reached the end of our question-and-answer session. I'll turn the floor back to management for closing comments.

Thank you. That wraps up our third quarter conference call. This conference call and the associated discussion slides will be available for a replay on our website. Thank you for your time and participation, and I hope everyone has a great rest of your day.

Ecolab (ECL) Q3 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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