Greetings, and welcome to the Ecolab Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Release Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. At this time, I'll turn the conference over to Andy Hedberg, Vice President, Investor Relations for Ecolab. Thank you, Andy.
You may begin.
Thank you. Hello, everyone, and 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 our 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 cautionary statements in these materials, which states that this teleconference and the associated supplemental 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 in 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.
Christophe Beck
President & CEO
Thank you so much, Andy, and welcome to everyone joining us today. I'm really super proud of what the team delivered once again. On our last call, we described Q2 as a transition period as we mastered higher commodity costs within the quarter.
The third quarter well marked an inflection point for Ecolab. Our core businesses strengthened, our growth engines accelerated, and together they drove 7% organic sales growth. But just as important, every business outperformed its end market, demonstrating the power of our One Ecolab strategy.
Despite significant commodity cost inflation, we maintained organic gross margin as our teams continue to create more value for our customers, win new business and manage supply chain costs very effectively. This will remain a critical focus in the quarters ahead as commodity costs are expected to remain high. Through continued pricing execution and disciplined supply chain management, we expect to continue to offset the impact of higher commodity costs.
Our productivity also strengthened as we leverage the investments we've made in our One Ecolab growth initiative. As a result, our organic OI margin in the quarter expanded to 19.6%, accelerating organic OI growth to 11%. Beyond our reported results, the performance of the underlying business was even stronger as we absorbed additional amortization and interest costs from our recent M&A. On a pro forma basis, including the operating performance of CoolIT and Ovivo, Ecolab's Q3 sales would have grown high single digits and adjusted EPS would have grown mid-teens.
These results reflect the strength of our core businesses and how our growth engines are materially accelerating Ecolab's growth algorithm. One Ecolab is making a difference across the company. We bring our water, hygiene, test and digital solutions together with our field expertise to deliver best-in-class performance for customers at scale.
We help customers improve business outcomes and operational performance while using fewer resources. That creates differentiated value for our customers, strengthens relationships and helps us win new business. Since launching One Ecolab, we generated over $400 million of sales growth with our largest 35 customers only, capturing more than a 10% incremental share of our targeted $3.5 billion growth opportunity with these 35 customers.
You can see this clearly in Food & Beverage, which accelerated to 8% organic growth, with broad-based growth across dairy, protein and beverage against stable end market demand. Now as we bring our integrated water and hygiene solutions, customers look to Ecolab to help protect food safety, while improving operating performance and environmental impact. We connect cleaning, sanitizing and circular water management solutions to help customers achieve all 3 at the same time.
Light Water also strengthened, accelerating to 5% growth. We're winning in the manufacturing and institutional markets as we bring our end-to-end water management capabilities to customers around the world. Paper and Heavy Water also returned to solid growth.
In these businesses, strong new wins and improved pricing are helping us outperform stabilizing end markets. Now more than ever, these customers look to Ecolab to help them produce higher-quality products while significantly reducing operating costs and environmental impact, which is the Ecolab model as we all know. Institutional & Specialty performance remained consistent despite industry trends that continue to get tougher, including restaurant foot traffic that declined mid-single digits in North America.
So while I'm pleased with what our team is doing, I'm not satisfied with our results. Given the proven value we bring to customers and the strength of our offerings, we should be outperforming the industry by a much wider margin and growing much faster. New innovations like DishIQ, AquaIQ and KitchenIQ, combined with our global service capabilities, deliver what our customers need most: improved guest experience, labor automation, and lower operating costs.
So we'll be shifting gears. To deliver even more value to our customers, we will be expanding our field sales power, maximizing our service offering across our hospitality and foodservice segments, and bring our technologies together through our One Ecolab model to drive higher solution penetration. Our growth engines are also accelerating.
Life Sciences continued to drive very strong share gains with organic sales growing 17%. Bioprocessing again led our performance. As customers advance drug molecules from development into commercial manufacturing, our opportunity grows with them.
Last month, we started up our latest Life Sciences plant in China, positioning us extremely well to meet growing customer demand across Asia for the years to come. These investments are helping us win where breakthrough technologies, quality and reliability are super critical. We've been building this major growth engine for a few years, investing in commercial and technical expertise, breakthrough innovation and additional capacity.
With this critical investment, our Life Sciences businesses is soon approaching $1 billion in sales and delivering the performance we committed to you: double-digit sales growth and OI margins that are on a trajectory to expand to 30% over the next few years. As a result, the return from our acquisition of Purolite is strong. And the NPV we expect to realize from this acquisition is actually greater than we had initially forecasted.
I love how this business is performing and even more where it's headed. Ecolab Digital also continued to grow rapidly, with sales up 34%. Customers increasingly want visibility into their operations and the ability to act in real time.
ECOLAB3D and our expanding IQ solutions across water, Institutional, Life Sciences and Pest connect unique data insights with our global field expertise to deliver best-in-class customer performance. Pest Elimination is a great example of how we're using breakthrough digital technologies to deliver superior customer outcomes and growth for Ecolab at the same time. In the third quarter, Pest sales growth accelerated to 8%, driven by strong new business wins from our One Ecolab growth platform and Pest Intelligence.
Pest Intelligence today connects over 800,000 devices. Around-the-clock monitoring and predictive insights help our team identify issues sooner and target service more precisely. We combine those insights with local expertise to help deliver nearly 99% pest-free for our -- pest-free environment for our customers versus the 94%, which is the industry standard.
And with $3 million of additional -- $3 billion of additional cross-sell opportunity, we're actually just getting started. Global High-Tech, now Ecolab's largest growth engine, continues to accelerate, growing organic sales by 63%. Growth remains very strong across both data center cooling and circular water for microelectronics as AI infrastructure rapidly expands around the world.
At the heart of AI is water. Water is required to produce, to power and to cool chips. Ecolab's leading innovation, expert service and digital capabilities help the world's leading tech companies maximize their growth and performance across the value chain.
Our recent acquisition in Global High-Tech add complementary strength to this leading business. CoolIT is off to an incredible start within Ecolab, more than doubling its sales with very strong profitability. Its leading liquid cooling capabilities address a critical need as advanced computing becomes more demanding.
We have already fully integrated Ecolab 3D TRASAR liquid monitoring technology with CoolIT CDU platform, and we're excited about what we can now deliver to customers through one integrated liquid cooling platform. Ovivo is also performing very well, delivering strong double-digit growth versus pre-acquisition sales. It's mission-critical ultra-pure water systems and on-site expertise provide semiconductor manufacturers with the purest water on earth.
Together, we can deliver unique circular water solutions that improve chip quality and production yields while recycling more than 80% of the water used in a fab, and no one can truly do that today. Global High-Tech significantly strengthens Ecolab long-term growth and margin potential. Last quarter, we outlined our global ambition for Global High-Tech to grow more than 25% annually, reach $4 billion in sales by 2030 and deliver 25% operating income margin.
This growth platform alone adds more than 2 percentage points to Ecolab sales growth algorithm 1 year after closing. This is just one example of how we're building a higher growth Ecolab, and we look forward to sharing more at our Investor Day next month. The acceleration we're seeing today is the result of the organic and M&A investments we've made over the last several years to strengthen our core business and build new growth engines.
As our growth engines become a larger part of the business, our mix shifts towards faster-growing markets with attractive margin potential. Our growth engines win using the same proven operating model as our core businesses, providing mission-critical anchor technologies and consumables that deliver best-in-class operating performance for customers. This is fueling faster, more durable sales growth, faster earnings growth and strong returns for shareholders.
We are entering 2027 with momentum and confidence in our ability to deliver another very strong year. We expect organic sales growth to grow at the upper end of our 5% to 7% target, and Ecolab's adjusted operating income margin to reach the 20% that we promised. Adjusted EPS growth is expected to accelerate in the second half of next year as we lap M&A transaction impacts and operating performance continue to accelerate.
That provides a clear path to meet or exceed our long-term adjusted EPS growth target of 12% to 15% in 2027. In closing, the third quarter marked an inflection point for Ecolab. Our core strengthened, our growth engines accelerated and all our businesses outperformed their end markets.
We're leveraging the power of One Ecolab to build a higher growth company with the same, durable and consistent core. We have a strong foundation, increasing momentum and a tremendous opportunity ahead. I want to thank our global team for making that possible and for the value they deliver to customers every single day.
Thank you for your continued trust and your investment in Ecolab. I'll now turn it back to Andy for Q&A.
Thanks, Christophe. That concludes our formal remarks. Operator, would you please begin the question-and-answer period?
[Operator Instructions] And our first question is from the line of Tim Mulrooney with William Blair.
Christophe, congrats on the strong quarterly performance. So I was hoping we could talk a little bit more about your High-Tech Water business in a little more detail. The legacy business that accelerated to 60% plus organic growth, that's a major step-up from the first half.
CoolIT more than doubled again. Can you talk about what you're seeing in both of those businesses that's driving the strong growth there? And also, I was also wondering, as you progress towards that $4 billion target, I wonder if a 30% CAGR is the right number to use based on what you've seen over the last couple of quarters.
Christophe Beck
President & CEO
Thank you, Tim. I love that question, and especially that business, it's obviously early. So for us, we owned CoolIT now for almost 3 months.
Ovivo for a little bit less than a year, and we've been starting our High-Tech business just a few years ago. So pretty early, pretty new, but probably one of the best businesses that we have with the best growth potential as well ahead. So we'll talk more at Investor Day in a few weeks, but I like a lot where we're positioned right now, for a few reasons.
We have the best technologies and we clearly work hard at it. We have the best team. We've been building that as well for a long time.
But most importantly, we offer what the industry truly needs, and especially now in that environment, which is best performance and the lowest impact on communities and nature, since we've seen that it's become a big topic in the media and in all the discussions we have now. So if I unpack a little bit that, in microelectronics, and we'll talk more about it at Investor Day, well, ultra-pure water is becoming a critical component. It was less the case in the past.
Because purity drives the chip performance for the most advanced chips that are available on the market today. And at the same time, it drives yield in manufacturing, which means that the microelectronics manufacturers can produce more chips coming out of their fabs, which is very critical. Today, it's roughly 60% to 70% for the latest chips, and we'd like to move that obviously so much closer to 100%.
You can imagine how much money that represent when it's really well done. At the same time, the amount of water that's required to produce those chips are immense. So the water circularity is absolutely essential, and this is what we do at Ecolab.
So bringing together Ovivo and the capabilities of Ecolab in water circularity are providing something that no one else can truly deliver today. Similar in data centers, well, performance drives power required, and power drives the heat. And that level of heat can only be extracted through direct-to-chip liquid cooling, which is what CoolIT does.
And interestingly enough, water is the best heat extractor, but hot water is pretty hard to manage. But the good news is it's what we master really well at Ecolab. At the same time, while this water usage and power usage question in data centers has become a top topic in all the discussions today that's impacting, obviously, the growth for the tech industry, it's creating political challenges as well at the same time.
So for us, our approach is really helping tech companies build data centers, the way we call it, done the right way, which means zero water, less power and at the right places as well at the same time. And that's not including what we do for power, which is providing the electricity for data centers. And that's a business where we've been really strong at for decades.
And today, this business is also gaining steam. So you're right, we are very well positioned. We're even better positioned than what we thought a year ago.
We'll share more at the Investor Day when we get together in a few weeks. But I really like how we're positioned around performance of chips and data center, making sure they can be done with the least amount of water and done in ways that are cost competitive for the customers that we serve, which is the typical Ecolab offer. It will require investments.
Obviously, we've demonstrated that in M&A, but also in technology. So we'll make sure we invest in order to fuel this growth in the future as well at the same time. And what's also important is to remain very agile because nobody knows exactly the shape of that curve in the years to come, and I want to make absolutely sure that, well, we are benefiting from the AI infrastructure build.
But at the same time, we, most importantly, so driven by the recurring nature of both of those businesses. So yes, the targets we've set out there for me are more achievable than ever. Let's talk more about how much better we can get when we get together in a few weeks.
The next question is from the line of Manav Patnaik with Barclays.
This is Ronan Kennedy on for Manav. You're now expecting '27 organic growth at the upper end of the 5% to 7% range. How should we think about the price/volume algorithm underpinning that assumption, both for the full year and then anything to be particularly mindful of in terms of first half and second half dynamics, particularly as I think surcharge pricing starts to lap at the half year mark and the move to structural.
And then your expectations for volume contribution and build throughout the year.
Christophe Beck
President & CEO
Thank you, Ronan. So talking about '27, it's obviously a little bit early right now, but I want to give you a little bit of how I'm thinking about it and we'll go more in details when we get back together at the Investor Day, mid-November. But what was first most important to me, I made a commitment to you that we would get to this 5% to 7% organic growth, we would get to the 20% OI margin, and we would deliver this 12% to 15% earnings per share growth and all that, so in 2027.
And I'm glad that commitment that we've made, we will be delivering it in '27. And if the key question is how much better we can be? Well, this is a question I truly like.
And that's why we get together in a few weeks, it's to talk about, well, how can '27, but most importantly, the years beyond '27 as well look like with all the investments, the new portfolio we have as well and how the world around us is turning into an opportunity as well for us. So when I think today about '27, well, I think it's going to be a very strong year. It's going to be an even stronger year than what we have or will be delivering in '26.
And the best way to think about it is, our underlying earnings growth is in this mid-teens type of growth. That's true today, if you strip out the cost of amortization and interest and then you have the Nalco amortization coming off as well in 2027. So it's to think about this mid-teens type of growth for earnings.
And then if you look at the first half of next year and the second half of next year, well, they will be different, mostly because of transaction cost and Nalco amortization, but the base of this mid-teens growth of earnings will remain fairly stable. And the way you can think about it is kind of mid-teens earnings growth for '27. You're going to have roughly 5 percentage point headwind in the first half and a 5 percentage point tailwind in the second half when you consider those one-time external factors in a way, but not directly related to the operating business.
When I think about the top line, it's also going to be -- and that's assuming obviously that the inflation of DPC is kind of leveling out at some point, that the first half of the year is going to be stronger in pricing and volume is going to be still in this 1% to 2%. And then the second half, volume is going to be faster, so kind of 2% to 3%, and pricing is going to be a bit lower because you'll be lapping against what we did in 2026 in the second half. So underlying growth, it's reasonable to think it's strong top line, 1% to 2% volume, 5% to 6% pricing, and then the bottom line at this mid-teens type of growth.
So thinking those 2 parts of the year, but underlying more or less stable, so at top and bottom line.
Our next question is from the line of Ashish Sabadra with RBC Capital Markets.
Really strong momentum in Life Sciences, and you talked about the new facility going live in China over the last month. How should we think about the tailwind from those? And then maybe just one quick question there.
There were some negative headlines around one of the drug companies around mRNA vaccine. Have you seen any impact from a demand perspective?
Christophe Beck
President & CEO
Thank you, Ashish. So first, no negative news or impact from what you're describing to our business. So that's not going to impact us good or bad, generally.
But when I think about Life Sciences, for me, it's probably one of the best stories in our company's history. And we know that's the intent, obviously, geared at pharma and especially biotech, is closely related to this tech revolution that we're experiencing right now, because it's an industry that's going to be one of the first and best beneficiaries of that tech revolution, because drug development itself gets a major boost. New drugs are going to be developed much quicker.
That's all good news. So as GHT or Global High-Tech keeps accelerating, I think it's going to help ultimately as well our Life Sciences business. It's a great business.
It's been a hard business to build over the past few years, as we all know. But I really like where we are today, and as mentioned in my open, we're exactly where we wanted to be, just a few years later than expected. But overall, our investment thesis when we acquired Purolite is totally intact and, if anything, so we're ahead of that curve and I feel really good about that.
So why am I constructive and optimistic about this business? It's because we have the best technologies. We had to because we were the smallest in the industry, and our teams has done unbelievable work in innovation.
We have the best team that's very agile as well, so to be very close to those customers, being the one that can really respond very quickly to their evolving needs. And at the same time, we're bringing water and contamination control together, which is an Ecolab play that we've played in many different industries, as you know, as well. And no one else can do that, which is pretty unique for our company.
So the 10% to 12% top line growth, I think, is a good kind of base in terms of top line trajectory for our future. When I think about the earnings, as I've said, my objective is to reach this 30% operating income margin in the next few years. Feel really good to getting towards that.
It's mostly related to the pace of investments. The underlying margins are really strong in that business. It was especially strong in the third quarter because we're also lapping a maintenance period that we had in 2025, so a year ago.
So we won't have that type of earnings growth continuing in the quarters to come. But solid top line growth in this 10% to 12%. So steady type of trajectory and really an operating margin that ends up at 30% in the next few years.
So as we have promised and really happy with what the team is delivering here.
The next question is from the line of John McNulty with BMO Capital Markets.
So I wanted to dig into the High-Tech organic growth maybe a little bit deeper. Your 2Q level was a pretty strong 29%. This quarter, it was 63%.
So you've kind of doubled even the 2Q levels. I guess in terms of what you would attribute that growth to, is it more the shift that we're seeing from data centers toward liquid cooling and some of the benefits that you're getting there? Or is it kind of early signs of now you have the CoolIT sales team and force and you're kind of integrating the kind of a total unified platform, and that's helping to grow some of the legacy business.
I guess, can you help us to parse that out a little bit, just because it seems like it's been even faster than kind of the general data center growth that we've been seeing.
Christophe Beck
President & CEO
Thank you, John. It's a very good story, for sure. And no, there is no cross-sell yet between the different businesses.
We're clearly doing it. We've integrated now those businesses as well. Maybe just for perspective, our data center business and CoolIT is now integrated, and by the way, led by the leader of CoolIT.
And the same is true on microelectronics, where we've integrated with Ovivo, and the leader of Ovivo is the leader as well of our microelectronics business. A very good story from a setup perspective. But that happened in the last few weeks, there's not much cross-selling that has happened so far.
That's going to come in the near, sort of the midterm future, which is really good. So no, the growth that we have today is not driven by cross-selling, but that's going to be a major opportunity, obviously, going forward. Today, the growth that we're having, yes, the shift to direct-to-chip cooling is helping us because the technologies that we had prior to those acquisitions, well, are more in demand, because it's about fluid management, which means 3D TRASAR.
It's about coolant, which is something that we master quite well as well. And it's about services as well because those tech companies who are looking for partners who can help them get the job done, especially in a steady-state manner, not just the buildup, but operating the data center afterwards and making sure that the cooling as a service is as well managed as it can be. Just as a side note, when you think about it, you need 4 minutes of cooling disruption to kind of destroy the chips that you have in a data center.
So the cooling is becoming super critical for those operators. So what we do is becoming as well more important. 63% is not going to be the steady-state growth that we're planning. Quarters are not all created equal.
But I like a lot where we are now. So if you have a strong, steady legacy business on top of the new 2 acquisitions that we've made, it's a pretty good mix of things that we have here, which is why, as mentioned before, I feel really good with the commitments that we've made, and we'll work hard to exceed them.
Our next question comes from the line of David Begleiter with Deutsche Bank.
Christophe, on CoolIT, can you discuss your visibility in this business into next year in terms of sales growth? Obviously, you're going to double sales this year, which is a phenomenal performance. I suspect maybe it's a little bit less next year.
But any further insight would be helpful in terms of '27 sales growth for CoolIT?
Christophe Beck
President & CEO
So thank you, David. We will share more when we get together. But the fact that our first lap together to the first year, obviously, since we closed in July, but if we look at the whole year in 2026, more than doubled the business of what we had in '25 on a pro forma basis, obviously.
So it's a good way to start. Keeping in mind that, obviously, it was a smaller business back then, so the growth rates are obviously slowing down as well as you keep moving, even though you add significant dollars to the base business. So we feel really good about the trajectory.
If anything, we are ahead of what we had planned, a few months ago, which is a good sign so far. It's a shorter type cycle of business than microelectronics that needs a few years to build. Data centers are more quarters than years.
So you have a bit less visibility than what you have in microelectronics, which, by the way, is going really well as well. So on the CoolIT data center piece, when I look a little bit about the next few quarters, I feel good, especially compared to what we had expected and committed. So slightly ahead of what we had planned.
We'll give you more visibility to that when we get together in the next few weeks. But so far, it looks really good for '27.
Our next question is from the line of Seth Weber with BNP Paribas.
Just following up on that question, can you talk about your expectations to whether you will need to add capacity for CDUs or cold plates? And can you just give us an idea of what your lead times look like on the CDUs?
Christophe Beck
President & CEO
Good question. It's something that we used to do. We had planned to build capacity for CDU and cold plate manufacturing and 3D TRASAR technology and coolant as well.
So that was true a few months ago. It's even more true today because we apparently might need more capacity than what we had planned, kind of a good problem to have. Our base will remain in Calgary, where our business is based and will be based as well in the future.
But in a typical Ecolab manner, we want to produce and supply as close to customers around the world. So we will keep expanding capacity not just at the center in Calgary, but as well as closer to our key customers around the world. So it's going to be serving a dual purpose, to getting more capacity to supply a high-growth business.
But at the same time to get closer to our customers in a very Ecolab manner way to manage resilience as well as we can because we know the world is a bit complicated out there.
The next question is from the line of Laurence Alexander with Jefferies.
So just want to confirm in case there's any upside surprises on inflationary pressure next year that you see the 20% margin target is doable regardless of the environment?
Christophe Beck
President & CEO
Yes. So the world is a bit different than what we had expected, but I see no reason not to deliver the 20% in 2027. I feel really good about that.
The path to get there is and was different than I had planned a year ago, but that's been true for the last 6 years. I'm not totally surprised that the world is not always following our plans or my plans. So I feel really good about the 20% for next year.
My focus is really what's next? Because once we've delivered the 20%, well, we're not going to stay at 20%. We have many of our businesses that are already north of 20%.
My objective is to bring, obviously, to everybody north of that and getting closer to the next milestone, which we will share as well in the next few weeks. But feel good about the trajectory that we have and the annual increase that we had committed to a while ago. We'll stick to it.
So there will be no major surprise for all of you. It's going to be a good story.
Our next question is from the line of Vincent Andrews with Morgan Stanley.
Maybe just to circle back on the Institutional business. Christophe, you made in your prepared remarks some comments about wanting to do better there. Obviously, tough environment with the foot traffic.
But could you just give a little more detail on the new initiatives you want to put in place there? I thought I heard something along the lines of you wanted to do more cross-selling and just make sure that the customers are getting the full value that you're offering. So I don't know if that was more about getting more volume, price or mix, or just what it was that you were going to put in place over the next 12 months to improve the performance there?
Christophe Beck
President & CEO
So Vincent, it's a traditional place to be in one of our most traditional businesses, where we continuously need to reinvent ourselves. You remember, as we went through COVID, well, we had to refocus on labor automation for our customers because, well, they had lost most of their employees and they had a hard time to get them back. And when they got them back, it was at a higher salary.
So not exactly the best mix for an industry that doesn't have a very high margin. That was really our point of focus, and it's worked really well. That's how we develop all those IQ solutions, AquaIQ, DishIQ and so on over the last few years.
And it's worked well. It's driven very nice as well as the margin performance in that business. So I like that business a lot.
Our key opportunity in Institutional, in I&S, or Institutional & Services, up more broadly, serving retail, serving quick-serve as well at the same time, is to accelerate the growth in a market that is not growing. So we're getting together here as a team, we did it in the past few months and saying, okay, how do we double down on what we have in order to gain share in the market that's a volume play, obviously, but also a value/price play as we capture the benefits that we're generating for our customers or share of the benefit as we've always done, so the value/price approach here? So the 3 things I mentioned.
The first one is, we will rebalance sales and service in our team. On one hand, we will double our sales firepower in North America. That's the feet on the street, the people serving our customers and selling new customers.
The second one, when I think about how we serve our customers in the various segments, restaurants, hotels, quick-serve, retail, we do it in a fragmented way today. We'll do that in an integrated way tomorrow, which allows us to get more efficiency in service, which allows us to deploy more of those efficiencies into the selling arm of our organization. And the third is what you mentioned, it's to integrate the proposition to our customers, where we integrate hygiene, water, Pest Intelligence, audits that we provide to our customers, in a form that is much more integrated for them.
We're still developing what that exactly means. But when you think about what we've done in Food & Beverage, well, we've demonstrated that it works really well, bringing hygiene and water together. So that's a little bit the direction that we're taking in Institutional as well, kind of using a playbook that has been really successful in the company in other types of businesses.
The next question is from the line of Patrick Cunningham with Citi.
Maybe just coming back to Global High-Tech. I think you already alluded to some of the differences in the sales cycle there. But in terms of initial equipment sale versus recurring margin profile and perhaps the amount of customization, how much does that differ between massive hyperscaler deployments, multi-tenant facilities and next-generation fabs?
Christophe Beck
President & CEO
So 2 different industries. Obviously, here, in both cases, we're trying to really evolve these businesses much more into a recurring type of business. Interestingly enough, the market evolution helps us do that.
If I just unpack the 2. First, with data centers, the chip generations are shifting to the next generation much quicker than they used to. A few years back was, a few years, you could use the same chip and then you change to the next generation.
Now we're talking about less than a year and you get the next chip generation, which means that when you change the chips within an existing data center, well, you need to change the whole cooling system, being cold plates, being coolants, being control systems, being CDUs as well. And then you become a much more recurring business, which is much more an Ecolab type of business as well, which is the core reason why we like that business beyond the growth opportunity, obviously. It's a model that we're very used to it.
And that's why we integrate all those components, where it's cooling as a service, fully integrated. We're not the provider of individual pieces of equipment. We are a provider of cooling end-to-end committing to performance, committing to a cost and committing to reliability as well by providing the best service.
So very naturally, this business becomes a much more Ecolab-like type of business. When you shift to microelectronics, it's a bit similar actually. So you have a little bit of a larger part of infrastructure built at the beginning of a new fab.
But once the fab is built, well, you need to provide all the 3D TRASAR technology, all the service that we have on site as well, adjusting to the new chip evolution/generation as well at the same time. And you get into a new recurring model as well at the same time. But yes, the cycles of the 2 businesses are different.
Data center is kind of month, quarters, and the fabs, microelectronics business, is more quarters and years. But I kind of like as well to that balance, which provides stability and predictability in what we do.
Our next question is from the line of Eric Boyes with Evercore ISI.
You highlighted that Ecolab Digital grew 34%. How much of that acceleration is software versus kind of enabling hardware? And maybe how does that mix affect kind of recurring revenue growth and margins going forward?
Christophe Beck
President & CEO
So good story in Digital. Honestly, I think that we could do much better going forward. Interestingly enough, it's more software than hardware today.
I think that it will have to be more balanced going forward. But what I really like is that our Digital business has been built on our industrial businesses with 3D TRASAR, as you know, and in other businesses, more legacy Ecolab, we had much less. Today, the highest growth we have is in Institutional & Services and in Pest Intelligence as well, which is a very good news because we rebalance across all the various segments that we have.
And when I think about it today, we connect less than 100,000 locations out there with all the services that we can provide. And when you know that we have close to 3 million locations around the world, that shows the type of runway that we have ahead of us. So it will be a combination of hardware, but with recurring rent or lease, as we would do in dish machines in restaurants, for instance, and software and data consumption as well at the same time.
Where it's exactly going to land in terms of share, I don't know, but it will be pretty equal going forward.
The next question is from the line of John Roberts from Mizuho.
I think of Pest Elimination as the leading indicator for your Digital deployment. When should we expect revenues to accelerate there and for margins to start improving?
Christophe Beck
President & CEO
So first, we've had some acceleration in Pest Elimination, from 7% in the second quarter to 8% in the third quarter. So I like what I'm seeing here. It's early on that journey.
We've deployed 800,000 devices out there, as mentioned in my open. Well, that's the beginning of the story. It's not the end of the story, and we have millions of devices out there in tens of thousands of locations that we need to deploy.
So this will drive growth, ultimately, and it will drive much better margins because the model is going to change over time. As I've shared with you in past conferences or at Investor Day as well, today, well, 95% of the devices or the traps that we check are empty and 5% have activity, as we call it. Well, with the connection to the cloud, we will go only to the devices that have an activity, which means we will have a much better operating performance, which will help us serve the customer better, hence, the 94% pest-free location to 99% pest-free location.
And at the same time, that will unlock a lot of margin that we can reinvest in sales, in innovation and obviously, so in bottom line margin as well. So I expect to take it 1 year or 2 to get fully deployed around the world with Pest Intelligence that will require the upfront investments that we are doing right now. But I feel really good about the top line accelerating and the margin expectations to rise as well because of the model evolution that we're making.
But it's going to take 1 year or 2 to get to the steady place.
The next question is from the line of Jeff Zekauskas with JPMorgan.
I think you said your organic sales growth in your Global High-Tech business was 63%. And maybe the base is $100 million. So that would be $63 million in growth, which is 1.5% on your previous year's consolidated sales.
And in your Global Life Sciences business, it looks like you grew -- I don't know, maybe you grew your volume 10%, which is maybe another 70 basis points. So it seems that all of the volume growth that Ecolab achieved this quarter came from the Global High-Tech group and the Life Sciences group. Is that fair?
And is that a function of some contraction in the Institutional business and a little bit better growth in water in volume terms?
Christophe Beck
President & CEO
I'm not sure I totally followed all your math, Jeff, but I'll take the time to do it. But the bottom line is that, yes, in Institutional, you have a slight volume decline, which is not totally surprising in a market that is in decline. But that's why I like the overall view on I&S, in Institutional & Services, so to get to the 3%.
All the other businesses are actually saw having positive volume growth and pricing. So it's been quite broad-based, the volume growth, which is what I really like. That's why I mentioned it as well in my open.
It's not 1 or 2 businesses being High-Tech and/or Life Sciences. The other one in water are doing really well. F&B is doing well as well.
And on top of it, one thing that we need to mention is -- something I'm not spending too much time explaining but we spent quite a bit of time managing, is the impact of the Middle East. That is roughly 1 point as well of growth, which is obviously a headwind in what we deliver. So when you look at it, overall, the 2% volume growth, net of what's happening in the Middle East, is pretty good, especially the fact that it's so broad-based with one exception of being in Institutional that's slightly declining.
The next question is from the line of Matthew DeYoe with Bank of America.
I wanted to just ask, with CoolIT closed, what do you think a reasonable revenue per gigawatt hour of compute installed capture rate do you think is targetable for the pro forma business? And we've seen a few reports now about poor coolant management at some of your competitors. Does this too small of a sample size?
Does this just strengthen your pitch? Or do you think ultimately there's an opportunity to extract more value from TRASAR deployment? Because it feels like it's a pretty dynamic backdrop, obviously, with a lot of growth and yield management, could be more than maybe just a token revenue opportunity.
So how do you think about pricing that effectively?
Christophe Beck
President & CEO
So there's a few elements in your question, Matt. First, the dollar per megawatt installed, it's still something that we're trying to figure out as a total number when we bring the whole Ecolab for data centers. So I don't have a final number for you.
But as I mentioned when we announced CoolIT, and closed CoolIT, by the way. So CoolIT is multiplying by 3 to 5x the dollar potential we had as a legacy business. But that was directional, so the 3 to 5x, I want to have a number that's much more solid.
And we'll keep working on it and share it with you once we have something that is more fine-tuned. As mentioned, we're early on that journey, the 3 months that we've been together with CoolIT. So I don't have the most detailed number that I'd like to have, but we will have it.
Now back to the other question of the reliability of the service. I can't talk about what our competition is doing out there. But almost all, if not all, of our competitors are providing or selling individual piece of equipment or a coolant, as you mentioned it as well, and someone has to put it together.
Someone has to make sure that it works well together. And someone has to maintain it, because things obviously are evolving on a day-to-day basis in that industry. So we position ourselves in a very Ecolab manner where we say, we're not a provider of individual piece of equipment.
We are a provider of end-to-end solutions in cooling when we talk about data center today. And that's very different. And that's why we brought the whole 3D TRASAR technology, not just for the coolant, but also for the CDU.
We'll think about how does it connect the cold plate, everything in between as well. And ultimately, so to be in a place where we can commit to performance, the cost and an environmental impact, which is the way Ecolab has always been selling as well to customers. We're doing it the same in that industry today.
It's an industry that's not used to such an approach, but we've experienced that before in other industries. But that is showing a very high interest in our approach here because it's removing one of their concerns because we will be providing, well, a cooling performance that's integrated not just short term, but long term as well, at a predictable cost, which is exactly what they're looking for. So we're the only one doing it that way, and I think that's a huge competitive advantage we have here because it's a huge moat as well at the same time.
Our next question is from the line of Josh Spector with UBS.
I wanted to ask 2 things kind of together. One just on pricing. I think in prior quarters, you talked about getting to a 5% to 6% run rate.
I'm wondering, do you still see pricing accelerating into the fourth quarter? Because your top line guidance is pretty similar. And then related with that, how do you see the incremental margins in water developing?
You had very strong volume growth or organic growth, but the incrementals were kind of below our expectations. Is there a catch-up in the fourth quarter linked with pricing?
Christophe Beck
President & CEO
So 2 different questions, they're related, obviously, Josh. First, when I think about the volume and price, so very short term, Q3, Q4. As I said, it's kind of volume 1% to 2% net of Middle East, obviously.
And then this pricing, it's 5% to 6%. I think Q4 is going to be kind of similar to what we've seen in Q3. At the same time, we're working on operational performance or productivity to take a different term as well at the same time.
So I like how we're managing margin as an organization. As I mentioned a few months ago as we published our second quarter, well, it took us in the past 2 years to get our margins back to where they used to be when inflation was hitting out there. It was the first year to capture the dollar, and then second year to capture the margin back.
Well, we've done that in 1 quarter, in the second quarter. We've done it again in the third quarter in an inflationary environment that was higher than what we had in Q2. I think it's going to be slightly higher in Q4 as well.
But all in all, it's going to be a very similar story than what we've seen in Q3. Now if I look at the water margin, it's been a nice improvement in Q3. It's going to keep improving.
But as we know, it's a business that's more impacted by DPC fluctuations than other businesses like High-Tech that has almost no DPC because there's almost no chemistry in that business, or Life Sciences or Pest Intelligence. Every business is a little bit different. Water is more impacted by it, but has demonstrated it can manage that very well short term.
So it's going to keep improving. Nobody knows exactly where the market is going from an inflation perspective. So we'll adjust.
If it keeps going higher, we will manage it. My assumption right now is that it's at a high level today, it's going to stay at that high level till the end of next year. That's the base assumption I'm taking here.
And we know how to manage it. We've demonstrated it in Q2. We've demonstrated in Q3.
We keep demonstrating that in the next few quarters. And if it goes up and down, we'll adjust as well accordingly. And we know that at some point, well, DPC is going to go down, and we're going to maintain our value/price because it's anchored on the performance that we're delivering to customers, and that's going to help us improve our base margin for all the businesses as we've demonstrated all the time as well at the same time.
So kind of 3 advantages here. One is that we can control our margins within a quarter. Second, we can improve our net margin after the cycle, as we've demonstrated as well in the past.
And third, it's going to help earnings obviously at the moment that the cycle is going to go the other way. Those are all positive news ultimately for us and for investors.
The next question is from the line of Mike Harrison with Seaport Research Partners.
I wanted to see if we could revisit a couple of the assumptions that you've told us to think about in our models. First of all, the CoolIT $0.20 per quarter EPS headwind, is that more or less where it was in the third quarter? And how should we think about that $0.20 of headwind tracking over time?
And then the second piece is the Life Sciences margin. I think you told us to assume high teens margin and you did about 23%. So should we update our view there and assume that maybe instead of high teens, it's low 20s in the near term?
Christophe Beck
President & CEO
Great questions, Mike, and our CFO, Scott, was dying to get the question. So I'm just going to pass it to him for this one.
Yes. I'll give Christophe a break, Mike. So as we said in the release, if you look at the impact of CoolIT, the interest amortization, it was about a 10% headwind in Q3.
So Q4 will be a little bit more about 12% because you have an extra month because of the lag of the international business. So you'll have about a 12% drag in Q4. And then as you think going forward, as Christophe talked for next year, his math there was that, hey, this EPS for the full year at this mid-teens level, but because of the now -- of the CoolIT amortization interest annualization in the first half, partially offset by the Nalco amortization, you have this minus 5% and then this plus 5% in the second half.
So that's how to think about it through 2027. And then as you think about the Life Sciences, as Christophe talked about, that business is doing really well. The margins are really strong, especially given the growth in the bioprocessing businesses, but all those businesses performing very well.
Our expectation on this business right now is because we're continuing to invest in this business. So the underlying margins are higher more similar to what you saw in Q3. But expect Q4 margins to be in this mid-teens -- mid- to high teens level.
Christophe Beck
President & CEO
This business is going to be a 30% margin business down the road, and not so many years down the road as we've committed. I know that it's not been an easy buildup over the last few years. And I'm really pleased to see that we are back to the trajectory that we had planned initially in our investment thesis.
So ultimately that we can return to shareholders what we promised when we acquired Purolite, and I will not budge from that.
Our next question is from the line of Andrew Wittmann with Baird.
I just wanted to have you expand a little bit on some of the comments you made earlier on the High-Tech business. I think Christophe, you're talking, obviously, 63% organic growth. That was good.
You mentioned that going forward, don't expect 63%. I think you said not all quarters are created equally, and that makes sense. As I understand it, some of this business is that -- you mentioned it as services, where you're doing like professional services, consulting, helping your customers manage the heat, manage the water.
It's not all just product sales like I think a lot of people assume. Is that a lumpier part of the business, those consulting services? Are they more in demand maybe when you're opening a new data center than they would be on an O&M basis, if you were to say?
I'm just kind of curious as to what can drive a quarter like this and maybe what was unusual about it? And if you could just talk about how services might play into that.
Christophe Beck
President & CEO
So a few things, Andy. When we talk about consulting, there's nothing new. That's not the way we positioned it.
Obviously, when we do a plant assessment in a brewery that we've done for a very long time, I've been 20 years in the company, we did it when I started here, is really to understand what we've got. So how much water is being used, how much energy is being used, how much waste is created, what the quality of the food and so on, really to understand what's the starting base, how does it compare to the best plants out there and developing a plan for the customers to reach the next level of performance. We did the same in hotels.
We did the same in hospitals. We do the same in every industry that we serve. So that's the very traditional approach to customers in the company, as you know.
You've been following us for a very long time. And data centers are not different. It's just that they are usually new when we serve them.
It's not an existing data center. There's some of those, obviously, but for the most part, those are new data centers. So we sit together with the builder, with the developer, being a co-locator or being a high-tech hyperscaler company, a little bit of a different approach.
But in the end, it's more or less the same thing, where we get together and try to understand what are they trying to accomplish. What can we provide in order to get the right heat extraction at the right cost, at the right level of reliability, while minimizing the impact on the environment. And in the case of water, to get to water-neutral, I call it water-neutral because it's not that you have no water in the system, it's just a circular system that you have within the data center.
So that's kind of the consulting piece that you're talking about, which, by the way, is part of the overall program. So it's not a big driver of revenue. Afterwards, it's an evolving proposition.
Today, it's being sold a little bit the old-fashioned way, where it's 3D TRASAR technologies for cooling towers or coolant depending on the technology that's being used, the coolant that's based on 3D TRASAR technology and what we do for CDUs and for cold plates and every technology that you have in between. But ultimately, it's to sell that cooling as a service, ideally that we can charge much more like a subscription versus an individual piece-by-piece type of equipment. But that's a journey that we need to get through, as we've done in other businesses, and I feel really good for the path that we're on, on this one.
Now to your point of the higher growth in some quarters, well, it depends on the deliveries that we have since we're still on that journey of making sure that it gets invoiced as an integrated proposition. Well, if you have more data centers that are getting started to operate in 1 quarter, you get higher sales. And if you have a little bit less the next quarter, you're going to have less of those sales as well.
But the 30% overall Global High-Tech trajectory of growth that we've talked about, this is the baseline as I have expressed over the last 12 months. And that's the baseline. So I think that from here, it's just going to get better when we take year after year.
And I don't really care if every quarter it's the same or not because they will be different for the reasons I just mentioned.
Our next question is from the line of Jason Haas with Wells Fargo.
This is Keegan Antico on for Jason. On the pricing discussions you're beginning to have for 2027, can you just outline how those are going? And if clients are generally receptive for additional price increases, obviously, alongside the surcharge.
Are you seeing any pushback that could lead you to be more at the lower end of the 2% to 3% annual range, obviously, outside of the surcharge?
Christophe Beck
President & CEO
Thanks, Keegan. The 2% to 3% that's in steady state. Honestly, I'm not totally sure when the steady state is going to come back.
Right now, we're much more in this 5% to 6%, as mentioned a little bit earlier. That was true for the third quarter, and that's going to be true for the fourth quarter, and it's probably going to be true for the first half of next year and probably even a little bit more than that as well. When it's going to come back to the 2% to 3%?
I don't know, and I don't really care, honestly, here. We'll adjust as we need to while providing incremental value to our customers in order to make sure that we can get the value price that we deserve while doing it the right way for our customers that, net-net, they get a positive outcome of the financial equation that they have set together with us. Do they like pricing?
No, they would prefer, obviously, having 100% of the upside without having to pay for it. Well, that's not exactly the way life works. But at the end of the day, when I talk to customers, I'm really pleased with what I'm hearing in the sense of saying, you guys are very high touch in what we're doing, being in Life Sciences, in Food & Beverage, in the restaurants, in High-Tech, wherever that is, you're not a big share of our spend, usually a few percentage points.
So we're okay. We need to pay more premium for a service that ultimately is not only helping us keep operating, but driving better operational performance in our operations as well at the same time. And that's why our value/price approach has been so steady, sticky and so reliable for the past few years, and nothing is going to change in the years to come.
Our next question is from the line of Kevin McCarthy with Vertical Research Partners.
Christophe, in listening to your remarks today, you seem quite pleased with all of the significant acquisitions that you've done in recent years: Purolite, Ovivo, CoolIT. And so I'm tempted to ask, as you look at M&A opportunities in the private market today, are there additional high-growth, high-margin properties that you think might fit quite well under the GHT umbrella? Or should we expect deleveraging to be squarely in focus over the next, call it, a year or so as you digest CoolIT?
Christophe Beck
President & CEO
It's the latter, Kevin. It's really -- so it's 2 things. First of all, it's really to integrate those 2 companies, Ovivo and CoolIT, extremely well.
This is something that we've done over and over again over the years. We're really good at it. But we need absolutely to have the right focus, dedication, resourcing in order to make sure that it happens as we have planned and committed.
So this is priority one, making sure that Ovivo, CoolIT are perfectly well integrated, that we have those 2 businesses, data centers and microelectronics really keeping growing and accelerating as we've discussed today and over the past few calls. This is priority one. And obviously, that's leading the deleveraging by getting so closer to this 2x that we talked about.
This is my 1b priority that I have in front of me. Now to your question of opportunities out there in our key businesses, we keep nurturing them. We're very active on the market, building those relationships, understanding what's out there, what are the good, what are the ones that are less good.
We've been really good at it for a very long time. That's how we ended up with those 2, by the way, as well. So I like the pipeline, but there's nothing imminent that's going to happen because I'm going to focus on the 2 priorities I mentioned before.
Our final question is from the line of Scott Schneeberger with Oppenheimer.
Christophe, for the past few quarters, Heavy Water and Paper have been areas of softness, but both inflected to revenue growth, organic revenue growth in the quarter. So kudos there. How sustainable is that looking?
And just curious, outside of Middle East, are there any other areas of the business now that you would cite under pressure? Or are you looking pretty good across the portfolio?
Christophe Beck
President & CEO
I feel pretty good, but I'm always a little bit paranoiac. I'm paid for that. This is my role.
It's to thinking ahead, to look around the corners, to be ready for things that we didn't plan for, and I've had plenty of practice in the last 6 years. I don't know if it's a good thing or an unfortunate thing. I really like it, and we've done really well as a company navigating a difficult environment while delivering exceptional performance.
So what I like the most in our company today is really this breadth of performance. We have a very strong portfolio, some are growing faster, much faster than others, but we have no business that's really in a troubled situation. All of them have upside potential.
That can be true in High-Tech, that can be true in Institutional, as we talked before, which is the magic of this company that I really like because, ultimately, you have a real strong portfolio. You have a company with a lot of key growth opportunities in front of us, like High-Tech, like Life Sciences, like Pest Intelligence, but also in our core businesses like Food & Beverage, bringing hygiene and water together. We talked about Institutional as well at the same time.
And the third component that I really like is the fact that we're less facing risk of market disruptions out there being in tech areas or in different areas because of the very well-balanced portfolio that we have, our ability as a team as well to react to external factors, being inflation, being supply disruption. We've demonstrated we can do that. So ultimately, we are exactly in the place I wanted to be.
And that's why I'm talking about this inflection point as a company. We have strong, consistent base performance as a company. We have very good growth opportunities and even bigger than we thought in front of us.
And third, we are very resilient. We know how to manage things that nobody planned for, including us. And we deliver net performance that keep getting better.
And that's why I feel that '27 is going to be an even better year than 2026. And our future is going to be at a very different level of performance than what we've seen in the past. A pretty good story.
Great. That wraps up our third quarter conference call. This conference call and the associated discussion slides will be available for replay on our website.
Thank you for your time and participation. I hope everyone has a great rest of your day.
This will conclude today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.
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