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Operator
Good morning.
My name is LaTonya and I will be your conference operator today.
At this time I would like to welcome everyone to the 2007 Q4 Pentair earnings conference call.
All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise.
After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question and answer session.
(OPERATOR INSTRUCTIONS) Thank you.
Mr.
Gleason, you may begin the conference.
Todd Gleason - VP of IR
Thanks LaTonya, and welcome to Pentair's fourth quarter earnings release conference call.
We're glad you could join us.
I'm Todd Gleason, head of Investor Relations.
With me today is Randall Hogan, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer and John Stauch, our Chief Financial Officer.
On today's call we will provide details on our fourth quarter and full year 2007 results as well as update you on Pentair's outlook for 2008.
We also introduce first quarter 2008 guidance.
Before we begin let me remind you that any statements made about the company's anticipated financial results are forward-looking statements subject to future risks and uncertainties such as the risks outlined in Pentair's 10K as of December 31, 2006 and Pentair news releases.
Forward-looking statements included here in are made as of today and the company undertakes no obligation to update publicly such statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances.
Actual results could differ materially from anticipated results.
Today's Conference Call is accompanied by a presentation which can be found on the financial information section of Pentair's website at www.Pentair.com.
We will reference these slides throughout our prepared remarks.
Any references to non-GAAP financials are reconciled in the appendix of the presentation.
As is our custom we will reserve time for questions and answers after our prepared remarks.
I will now hand the call over to Randy who will take you through Pentair's fourth quarter and full year 2007 results and highlights, provide his perspective on these results of our businesses, and the markets they serve.
And provide an overview on how we're driving to deliver more results in 2008.
Then John will conclude our formal comments with additional information regarding 2007 financials, provide first quarter 2008 outlook and wrap up with some more color on full year 2008 guidance.
Randy?
Randall Hogan - Chairman & CEO
Thanks, Todd.
And thank you all for joining us today.
Let's begin by reviewing Pentair's fourth quarter highlights shown on Slide 2.
Overall, Pentair fourth quarter sales of $830 million were 12% above the $743 million generated last year.
Our organic growth was plus 7% in the quarter or up 4% in local currencies.
The diversity of our businesses and markets enabled us to grow despite softness in North American residential markets.
Fourth quarter sales in our water segment were up 13% versus last year or up 6% organically.
Water sales were led by success in our key growth initiative such as food service and industrial filtration and strong sales growth in pool equipment and water international.
Our technical products business grew 9% in the fourth quarter as sales in our electrical business were up double digits and our Asian Pacific region posted over 40% growth once again.
As the slide shows, Pentair expanded margins 330 basis points, both water and technical products contributed significantly towards this margin expansion.
Looking at total company margins year-over-year, the positive impact from volume and price coupled with solid productivity, foreign exchange and a nice contribution from acquisitions provided 600 basis points of margin growth.
This easily offset a negative 270 basis point impact from total inflation.
The Company delivered $0.48 per share of earnings from continuing operations on revenue growth of 12%.
The $0.48 of EPS includes a $0.01 benefit from a non- recurring tax item as well as a negative $0.04 impact from additional restructuring and a legal settlement we had in the fourth quarter.
Adjusted earnings per share were $0.51, up 65% versus the fourth quarter 2006 adjusted earnings per share of $0.31.
Also in the quarter the company significantly modified its long term defined benefit and retiree, medical plans.
The change provides greater flexibility and control to our employees while reducing the uncertainty regarding the company's long term liability.
The change triggering an immediate curtailment benefit that was partially offset by additional one-time cost actions we took in the quarter.
Then an impact of the curtailment benefits and costs provided a positive $0.02 of EPS which is included in our $0.51 adjusted earnings per share and is approximately 50 basis points of the margin in the quarter for the total company.
John will provide additional detail in the benefit plan changes a little later in the presentation.
Finally a great success in '07 was a tremendous free cash flow delivered in the quarter and the year.
Fourth quarter free cash flow equaled $96 million, and for the year we generated $285 million of free cash flow, an improvement of $104 million year-over-year and well above our goal of $250 million.
So those are the highlights for the fourth quarter.
Now let's turn to Slide three and review our water business in more detail.
In the fourth quarter, water grew sales $65 million to $566 million, up 13% versus last year's sales.
Organic sales were up 6%, or up 4% in local currencies.
The composition of our total water sales is shown on the top left section of Slide 3.
Let me give you some color on our sales by business and region.
In our international operations, we continue to see impressive results.
Our European water business was up 51% year-over-year, or up 12% after removing the impact from the Jung Pump acquisition.
Eastern European and Middle Eastern, sales each expanded approximately 20% in the quarter.
In Asia we continue to drive strong double digit growth in the fourth quarter.
Our Asian water sales were up 28% year-over-year driven by sales in China for filtration and pump systems and also in India led by sales of commercial pumps, food service solutions and rural water systems.
One of the most exciting developments here is the success we're beginning to have in selling systems by focusing on application based solutions.
Examples include the drinking water system for the new Beijing airport, and the drinking water and commercial pool solution at the Shanghai world financial center.
Pentair was selected as the partner of choice in Shanghai as we were the only Company that could provide both the drinking water solutions and the commercial pool solutions the customer was looking for.
Now let's shift to discussing our domestic water businesses.
First, we recently renamed our pump business, flow technologies.
The new name better are reflects our global growth strategies as exemplified by our system wins in China.
In our North American flow technology business, sales were flat as solid growth in commercial and municipal vertical markets, new products and pricing actions offset declines in residential Markets.
Commercial and industrial market sales remained robust with growth in the double digits, while we also continue to have double digit growth in our Fairbanks Morse municipal pump markets, where we finished with a record backlog of orders.
Our North American pool and spa sales were up 11% compared with Q4 of last year.
As we stated on last quarter's conference call, we expected to see solid sales growth in pool equipment in the fourth quarter as our order pace was good and year-over-year comparisons were less challenging.
Our leading energy efficient and noise reducing IntelliFlo pump and related products continue to yield double digit growth.
While the market remains down, our growth demonstrates the power of our distribution channel and the importance of our new products.
As you know the fourth quarter is also a period when we in the industry offer the early buy program to keep our factories level loaded during the normal off season of winter.
The result of this year's program exceeded our initial expectations and was significantly higher than 2006.
Despite this, we remain cautious with regard to the pool market.
We're aggressively managing our inventory levels and we maintain a laser focus on productivity and lien initiatives.
North American filtration sales were up 11% driven by the Porous Media acquisition.
Organic sales were down slightly as continued momentum in our commercial, food service and industrial markets could not offset declines in residential water treatment.
Let's review water margins.
You can see our water operating income walk, on the top right section of this slide.
As it shows water margins were up 450 basis points on an adjusted basis.
We had a strong impact from growth which contributed a positive 290 basis points, productivity added 450 basis points as our efforts to drive lien and reduce our variable and fixed cost structure yielded solid results.
Included in this productivity is a positive 80 basis points associated with the aforementioned change to our long term defined benefit and retiree medical plan net of cost actions.
In aggregate growth in productivity more than offset a negative 290 basis point impact from total inflation, and enabled us to achieve adjusted water margins of 12% for the quarter.
Before we transition to technical products I would point out that we had some modest restructuring charges in the quarter, and our flow technologies business we consolidated our product line associated with our residential pump business.
This will improve our cost position longer term.
We also settled a portion of the Horizon litigation by agreeing to pay the claim for legal fees from the original trial in 2000.
We will continue to update you on the status of this litigation in our SEC filings.
The restructuring charge and the legal settlement are included in the final component of our operating income walk and allow you to bridge adjusted to reported operating income.
So, in summary, we continue to make solid progress in our water business despite turbidity in the North American residential market.
We're working on the right things to move our margins higher while also investing for future growth in the most attractive vertical markets.
Now let's move to slide four, and review our technical products business.
In short, technical products had another great quarter.
We grew sales 9% and expanded adjusted margins 150 basis points to 15.7%.
Looking at technical products sales results our international business continued to grow nicely.
Technical products Asia grew 44% led by electronics growth in China and European sales grew 8%.
In North North American electronics our sales were down 3% because of the lingering effects of contraction and consolidation in the telecommunication market.
Our North American electrical business grew 10% versus last year as we continue to expand our vertical market presence and gain share in a strong market.
And we exited 2007 with double digit order rates in our electrical business which continues to see strong demand.
Technical products margins are highlighted at the top right section of Slide 4.
Together, growth and productivity contributed 360 basis points of margin expansion.
This easily offset the impact of a negative 210 basis points from total inflation.
Our lien driven productivity actions continue to produce solid results, as we had excellent conversion on the 9% sales growth.
As we announced in October we took action to exit our electronics factory outside Chicago.
The pre-tax charge associated with this action is shown on the walk, as a negative $2 million item that bridges adjusted and reporting operating income and margins.
This action will improve our North American electronics cost structure as we continue to right size this business given the drop in sales volume.
So, technical products delivered a strong top line and executed well by delivering another outstanding quarter.
We're carrying good momentum in 2008 and see continued strong electrical performance and strengthening in global electronic markets.
Please turn to slide five, our 2007 full year financial summary.
In a few minutes I am going to detail our observations on the full year key accomplishments, so let me quickly just touch on the financial highlights for 2007 on this slide.
Sales for the full year grew 8%.
Four points of growth came from Porous Media and Jung Pump acquisitions, which have been seamlessly integrated into our businesses and are exceeding expectations.
Sales in both water and technical products were up mid single digits on an organic basis as our key growth initiatives yielded tremendous results and the power of our brands and channels allowed us to get price in most businesses.
Total year growth was very good given the significant slowdown in the North American residential markets, which impacted water and the North American telecom and datacom markets, which impacted technical products, particularly in the first half of the year.
We made significant improvements in our water margins, ending the year at a little over 12% as our lien initiatives and cost actions on structure, G & A and supply chain are producing results.
Technical products maintain margins in the range of 15% as volume conversion and continued progress with lien and cost actions made a nice impact.
We were able to overcome escalating commodity costs, mainly stainless steel, early in the year and soft telecom and datacom markets in North America.
We improved our ongoing tax rate by approximately 100 basis points and we exited the year with a more efficient tax structure, driven by our European business structure and low cost China operations.
In the year we took action to reduce operating cost structure by closing three high cost manufacturing facilities in several distribution centers which in aggregate reduces headcount by over 450 people.
The benefits from both tax and restructuring will really play out in 2008 and beyond.
And finally we grew earnings per share at 21% on an adjusted basis to $2.08.
This increased income, along with better working capital management enabled us to generate $285 million in free cash flow, a record for the Company, and over 135% conversion of net income.
So, across the board we certainly feel we made significant progress and we'd say we had a very good year in 2007.
Let's move to slide number six, which is one of our standard earnings charts.
I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this one but I would like to point out some of our key performance metrics.
As I just mentioned we generated $285 million of free cash flow for the year.
Please note the areas highlighted in yellow.
The first highlight shows that we were much more efficient with regard to working capital.
That was one of our goals for the year.
You can see we had a year-over-year improvement of about $95 million in working capital usage from 2006-2007.
The second highlight is to point out that we continue to invest for growth and new products as demonstrated by the $62 million of Capital Expenditures in 2007 and $11 million increase year-over-year.
We take a look at the company -- take a look at the components of return on invested capital on the right side of the slide, you see our four quarter trailing net operating profit after-tax, or NOPAT, was $262 million.
Our average invested capital was $2.76 billion which gives us an after-tax ROIC of 9.5%, a 10 basis point improvement over last year.
We're on our path towards improving this metric as we aggressively drive our operating results and remain very prudent regarding our use of cash.
We finished the year with a 36% debt to total capital ratio and we're very comfortable with our current debt levels.
As a reminder the non-GAAP to GAAP reconciliation of these calculations and numbers are included in the appendix to this presentation.
Now, please turn to slide number seven.
I'd like to share my observations on a few of the key items we accomplished in 2007.
Rather than read them through, item by item, I'd summarize them in the following way.
We entered 2007 with a priority that we would make strong operational improvements.
This need was on the heels of a sudden and pronounced decline in the North American residential markets during the second half of 2006.
At the time we expected this market would decline another 10% to 15% in 2007.
That residential market forecast proved optimistic, as the market actually declined over 25% in the year.
Additionally we did not anticipate the commodities would escalate as much as they did early in the year, so versus our original outlook we were forced to weather even more negative headwinds.
Yet we were well positioned to overcome these hurdles and we did.
As you may recall we took immediate and aggressive actions in the second half of 2006 to better position our company for choppy economic conditions.
Also rather than rely on growth we centered our forecast on execution and productivity through lien initiatives, G&A reductions, and managed investments for focused growth opportunities.
This commitment to the fundamentals really paid off throughout the year.
We did grow sales in 2007 led by double digit growth from our key initiatives, industrial filtration, food service, desalination and commercial pool, and in global markets as well as our electrical business which grew high single digits.
However the bigger drivers of our earnings growth were productivity and our streamline cost structure.
Many of these accomplishments are areas we will continue to count on as we head into 2008.
For example, we continue to staff up in lien with 60 new positions dedicated to our business since the end of 2006 and now we have over 120 dedicated lien specialists in the Company.
As many of you know, lien is a journey.
We made measurable progress in 2007, yet we have much more room to eliminate waste, improve effectiveness and serve the customer better.
The accomplishments from lien sourcing and other productivity actions enable us to expand full year margins in the water by 140 basis points and helped us to maintain the 15% margins that we have in technical products.
Additionally our tax rate is a point lower as a result of the successful investment to structure our [Swiss Co.] organization in Europe and we have a good debt structure thanks to the tremendous free cash flow in 2007, that impressive $285 million I like talking about.
We also are proud of continued commitment to our dividend record.
About a month ago we announced a 13% increase in our dividend to $0.68 per share in 2008.
This is the 32nd consecutive year that Pentair has increased dividends.
So, in summary, we made substantial progress in 2007 and we have momentum in our key initiatives and productivity actions as we head into 2008.
Now, please turn to slide number eight.
We wanted to compare 2006 and 2007 snapshots of our geographic and vertical market mix to highlight the composition of our businesses and the success we're having in reshaping them.
As we've discussed our focus has been to flow our resources to our most attractive opportunities.
It's working.
We've been driving strong international growth and we acquired German based Jung Pump.
In 2007 for the first time, Pentair had over $1 billion in sales outside the U.S.
While sales in the U.S.
remain 68% of total Company revenues, that level is a reduction of 5 points versus 2006.
We continue to have a goal to achieve 60% U.S.
sales and 40% international sales in a few years.
The bottom half of the slide shows a similar story.
Residential Markets represented about 35% of Pentair sales in 2006.
As we exit the year we have a more balanced market portfolio and currently residential markets represent only 30% of our sales.
In 2007, municipal, commercial and industrial markets grew and we feel we grew in excess of the market-rates there.
The success of our key growth initiatives, which are focused on industrial, commercial municipal global opportunities collectively added approximately $50 million of sales and grew over 15% in their own right.
We're steadily transforming an already diverse set of businesses into a more attractive set of businesses.
We look forward to updating you next year and expect to show even more balance and diverse Pentair in 2008.
Similar to the previous three quarters I'd like to highlight one of our businesses.
This quarter we highlight Technical Products on slide number nine.
Technical Products is a $1.1 billion global business unit that combines two businesses, a $650 million electrical business and a $400 million electronics business.
Each business manufactures and distributes enclosures to a variety of markets, customers, applications and geographies.
These enclosures can vary widely from small, standard metal enclosures to sophisticated systems that provide thermal protection, shielding, or other performance features.
Electrical and electronics combined generate operating margins of about 15% and an after-tax return on invested capital of approximately 20%.
In electrical markets we have the premier North American enclosures brand, Hoffman.
This world class business is a leader in North American commercial and industrial markets and fast growing in the datacom field.
For the lien enterprise culture a deep knowledge of the various vertical markets it serves, this business has a strong position.
Distribution is via the commercial and industrial electrical channel while mainly leveraging a North American distribution network we're building the business globally.
The combination of electrical and electronics under the long time Hoffman leader Del Nickel, into one GBU, will enable these two businesses to better leverage international distribution, manufacturing facilities and vertical market knowledge.
Our electronics business sells predominantly direct to OEM's.
Electronics is slowly improving from our first half 2007 bottoming out of sales and margins.
We've become too big project centric and lost our focus on a few more attractive segments.
We were too tied to the big telecom/datacom market and when consolidation began to occur in that market, many of the large projects were delayed and cancelled.
We reinitiated more discipline in the business with focus on growing our presence in military, aerospace and medical applications.
We expect a combination of electrical and electronics will take advantage of excess capacity in the electronics business and we've already taken action to reduce capacity with the announced closure of our Chicago facility.
To summarize the foundation of technical products is strong.
We have a tremendous operating culture within electrical and we expect the combination of these two businesses under one technical products GBU, will continue to improve margins and keep growth heading in the right direction.
Now, please turn to slide number ten.
We just spent a few minutes discussing one of our global business units, Technical Products.
Early in my comments, I addressed water and we have also formed three global water businesses; flow technologies, pool equipment and filtration.
As you begin to consider Pentair's global position in these markets, we thought this overview might be helpful.
Each GBU has scale and real growth opportunities.
We continue to invest in new products, vertical market teams and sales and application coverage.
We look forward to updating you on the success each of these GBU's achieves going forward.
Now please turn to slide number 11, which is my last slide before I turn it over to John.
Back in October, on our Third Quarter earnings call we introduced full year 2008 guidance.
We also highlighted our view of the major markets we serve.
We're 100 days older and wiser and we maintain much of the same outlook.
Certainly the Markets haven't improved since we last spoke.
We also know that when markets do change, it can be sudden.
We see the North American residential market continuing to be negative and we're forecasting a moderating growth in commercial and industrial in North America.
John will provide more detail associated with 2008 financial guidance, but let me discuss the underlying Pentair drivers here.
Building on our performance in 2007, we're starting with a productivity first view.
In the second half of 2007 we took significant additional restructuring actions that we yield benefits in 2008.
We also are beginning to see more momentum from our sourcing initiatives in the fourth quarter 2007 run rate is a very encouraging tail wind.
In 2008 we'll continue to manage our G&A costs aggressively and we expect to benefit from lower interest expense, lower tax rates, fewer shares and the removal of step up charges associated with our Porous Media and Jung Pump acquisitions.
We're excited about many growth actions and investments too.
Our key growth initiatives are strong and getting stronger.
The telecom and datacom markets we serve in electronics are improving and that shows in our order rate.
The reorganization of our business to global business units will open doors for increased international opportunities.
Additionally we're prioritizing and investing in our best growth initiatives and in geographies by staffing them with our best talent.
So, while our current view includes modest assumptions for growth, we have significant opportunities, actions, and good momentum as we head into 2008.
I'll now turn it over to John and let him provide some additional color on 2007 financials, Q1 outlook for 08 and full year 08 financial outlook.
John Stauch - CFO
Thanks, Randy.
Please turn to Slide number 12.
Similar to last quarter, we designed this slide to help reconcile full year and quarterly reported or GAAP, earnings to adjusted earnings.
If you start at the top of the chart, you can see our reported EPS for the fourth quarter 2007 was $0.48.
This compares very favorably to the $0.39 we reported in the fourth quarter of 2006, which is noted in the bottom section.
Our 2007 adjusted EPS is found in the middle section of the chart.
We delivered $0.51 of earnings per share in the fourth quarter when you remove the $0.01 benefit from non-recurring tax items and add back the negative impact of $0.04 related to restructuring and a legal matter that Randy mentioned.
The $0.51 is up 65% versus 2006 adjusted EPS of $0.31.
In the middle of the chart, you can see we highlight the benefit associated with the change to our long term defined benefit and retiring medical plans.
Here are the details of that change.
In Q4, we announced a significant modification to these plans effective January 1, 2008.
New employees hired after January 1, will not participate in these legacy retirement plans.
Pentair employees participating in these plans before January 2008 will continue to accrue the exact same benefits for the next 10 years at which time, the plans will be frozen.
The change to these plans will dramatically improve the variability of the associated expense but more importantly, significantly reduce the overall pension liability driven by discount rates and investment returns.
For 2008, these changes coupled with the higher discount rate of 6.5% is expected to lower pension related expense and reduce our liability by about 50 million for year-end 2007.
The result of these curtailments was worth about which $0.05 per share, net of implementation costs, to the fourth quarter.
I would also highlight that we are increasing the company contribution to employee 401K plans, by one percentage point of additional matching dollars.
This gives our employees the portability and the retirement plan that they desire.
This increase will go into effect in 2008, so, qualified employees will have a higher company paid 401K contribution if they elect to participate.
Separately, we took additional action to prove our cost structure going forward.
These costs relate to non-severance related plant closure costs, and market related adjustments to reserves.
These actions cost $0.03 per share, therefore the net impact of these actions is $0.02 and is included in our adjusted earnings per share of $0.51.
The far right column of the chart shows the impact certain items had on our full year 2007 earnings per share versus 2006.
For the year, we generated $2.10 of EPS on a reported basis, up 16% versus 2006.
Removing the impact of non-recurring items our full year adjusted EPS was $2.08.
This was up 21% versus full year 2006 adjusted earnings per share.
This reconciles reported to adjusted earnings for the fourth quarter and full year 2007.
Please turn to slide number 13.
This slide provides another way to look at our performance in the fourth quarter.
We provide two columns.
The first column walks adjusted EPS year-over-year and the second column walks reported EPS.
You can see we had a $0.05 per share positive impact from volume and acquisitions.
Sales growth in technical products in pool and spa along with our acquisitions of Porous Media and Jung Pump, were the drivers of this performance.
Price and productivity more than offset inflation and investments and lead to a $0.12 EPS benefit.
We continue to make nice progress with productivity and in 2007 price increases help to offset escalating metal inflation.
The next item relates to the curtailment benefit of net of cost action.
Finally, our ongoing tax rate continues to improve as we have completed the work associated with migrating to a European Swiss Co.
structure and moved manufacturing to China and other more favorable tax regions.
This lower tax rate provided a $0.01 per share benefit.
That detail walks you to the $0.51 of adjusted earnings per share in the Fourth Quarter 2007 up 65% when compared to last year's $0.31.
You can see the same items apply to our reported earnings per share column.
Although the starting and ending points are different, this difference is highlighted in the restructuring, legal, and tax item detail provided toward the bottom of the walk.
As you can see, a net negative $0.03 is associated with restructuring and legal items in the fourth quarter 2007.
Also, removing non-recurring tax items from both years yields a negative $0.08 to reported earnings.
This bridges you to our $0.48 of reported earnings in the fourth quarter 2007, an increase of 23%.
Let's move to slide number 14 and review our outlook for the first quarter 2008.
We are forecasting sales to be up 3% to 6% with acquisitions expected to be approximately three points of this growth.
We continue to see solid mid single digit sales growth in technical products, international sales are forecasting continued growth, and our growth initiatives in water are expected to maintain double digit growth rates.
However, we have a difficult comparison in our pool and spa business as the first quarter 2007 was strong as timing associated with early buy programs in 2006 rolled over to first quarter of 2007.
This will provide a small headwind in 2007 for our water segment.
As we think about margins, the mid point of our income range has total company margin expansion of approximately 50 basis points.
We see water margins of about 11% and technical products maintaining 15% margins in the first quarter.
During the First Quarter of 2008, we'll transition to our global business unit structure and this investment will be behind us as we move into the second quarter.
We are forecasting on -- ongoing tax rate of approximately 34% in the first quarter and for the full year of 2008.
This is an improvement of over 100 basis points.
This benefit will be more than offset by higher interest expense which we expect to be up approximately $2 million year-over-year due to the Jung Pump and Porous Media acquisitions completed at the end of Q1 and beginning of Q2 2007 respectively.
As a result of these items, we expect earnings per share between $0.46 to $0.48 or up approximately 12% using the mid point of the range.
And finally, as is typically the case in the first quarter, we expect free cash flow to be negative for the period.
So, steady progress to start the year as we expect to improve margins and transition to our global business unit structure.
Let's move to slide 15.
We put this slide together to provide more perspective on our full year 2008 EPS guidance range.
The first columns are 2006-2007 full year EPS walk on an adjusted basis.
Rather than walk through all the detail, you can see the impact growth, productivity, inflation, and investments had on our full year.
You can also see the impact from interest expense and ongoing tax rate and shares.
Moving to the next two columns entitled 2008 low end and 2008 high end, you could see our assumptions.
This is designed to help you understand the factors that could push results in either direction within the guidance range.
Let me highlight a few things.
First, we expect to have the same year-over-year impacts in the following items in both scenarios.
2007 acquisitions should be $0.05 per share and this is really just a stub period when we didn't have these businesses in our portfolio in 2007, as well as the absence of step up charges.
We are forecasting price increases worth $.20 per share, this represents about 1% price appreciation versus 2007.
This is half the price increase we generate in 2007, so that I do not feel we are being too aggressive here.
G&A productivity is expected to yield $0.05 per share.
Finally, interest expense, tax rate, and share count in aggregate should yield $0.08 per share.
The variance between our low end guidance of $2.25 of earnings per share and our high end $2.40 is the following.
The low end assumes volume declines of $0.16 per share year-over-year.
This would be the equivalent of negative two to three points of sales volume or contraction.
If this transpires, we expect to see negative $0.10 per share of net manufacturing productivity as factory conversion and capacity would be negatively impacted.
You can see this is reflected in the $0.05 for sourcing manufacturing productivity.
However, if those market dynamics occur, we would manage our selling and marketing initiatives investments to a different rate, which would limit them to a negative $0.10 per share impact year-over-year or less if needed.
In the high end walk, the volume provides $0.04 per share of EPS growth.
The additional $0.20 of volume versus our low end guidance would allow for our net manufacturing productivity to fully offset inflation, thus sourcing and manufacturing would yield a positive $0.15 per share benefit in 2008.
We may then elect to more heavily invest in selling, marketing and R&D initiatives which is shown on the chart.
So, we will continue to monitor the markets, our volume growth, and then of course, manage our investments accordingly.
Either way, we continue to have a tremendous opportunity to improve sourcing, G&A cost structure, and our manufacturing operations, which is our primary focus in 2008.
Please turn to slide 16 which highlights our view for the full year 2008.
This is our last slide so I'll quickly walk through the details and then we'll open it up for questions.
You can see our sales growth of 3 % to 5% reflects annual sales of between $3.5 billion and $3.6 billion.
We expect to expand margins approximately 50 basis points for the total company, led by a 75-100 basis point expansion water margins.
We are forecasting technical product margin expansion of about 50 plus basis points.
Full year 2008 earnings per share will benefit from lower tax rate, share count, and interest expense.
In total, we see 2008 EPS growth of between 8% and 15% versus 2007 adjusted EPS.
Our targeted free cash flow is 100% of net income and we hope to do better by driving improvements in working capital, mainly inventory.
We also expect to end 2008 with an after-tax ROIC of 10.5%, up 100 basis points versus the end of 2007.
Our Board recently authorized a $50 million share repurchase program which we fully intend to utilize in 2008.
So, in summary, our 2008 guidance remains fundamentally unchanged versus last quarter when we introduced it and we are aggressively working to achieve our goals.
We hope the information on this call was helpful and we look forward to answering any questions you might have.
Operator?
We'll now open it up to your questions.
Operator
Thank you.
(OPERATOR INSTRUCTIONS)
Your first question comes from the line of Deane Dray of Goldman Sachs.
Deane Dray - Analyst
Good afternoon, gentleman.
Randall Hogan - Chairman & CEO
Hi, Deane.
Deane Dray - Analyst
First of all the level of detail in the slides and your assumptions is very, very helpful so I appreciate that and specifically regarding the '08 guidance, last quarter, when you introduced the guidance, you talked about a $0.25 coming from growth investments and contingency.
And maybe your wording has change a little bit, but does that contingency go away and how is that reflected in current guidance?
Randall Hogan - Chairman & CEO
No, Deane, you're right and we didn't mean to change it up on you too much.
We just thought we would provide further detail, but the contingency is really changed into investments and we've now got, I think a more conservative view of price.
Other than that, nothing's changed in that guidance.
We just thought the high end and the low end would provide everybody to be able to choose their assumptions based on their own view of the markets.
And the other thing is we had pricing growth last time.
Deane Dray - Analyst
Right.
I thought you split that out.
So, just for the fourth quarter, the volume price split for water and technical products.
So, for water, you had two percentage points.
How does that split between volume and price?
Randall Hogan - Chairman & CEO
Repeat the question, please?
Deane Dray - Analyst
For the fourth quarter?
You group together volume and price as two percentage points.
How does that split out?
And I'm going to ask the same question for technical products too.
Randall Hogan - Chairman & CEO
Okay.
Let me just grab this real quick.
If you go to water and take the volume in price component within water, about 1.5 points of that is price, 2.5 of volume, and the technical products, it's about -- I'd say about 2 points of price and 3 points of volume.
Deane Dray - Analyst
Okay, good and then over on the filtration side, what's the expectation regarding some of the CapEx spending of your customers?
There's a pretty high profile announcement from Starbucks cutting back CapEx, that's a big customer of yours.
Will that weigh at all in terms of the growth expectations for Everpure and your Ecolab joint venture?
Randall Hogan - Chairman & CEO
I would say not.
Obviously, we're intimately watching what our customers do, but the announcement of McDonalds and a number of other customers who are actually investing in coffee service, the penetration we're making in the restaurant space as well as the success in growing our other channels like Ecolab are much more important to us than what any one customer might do in their CapEx spending.
Plus, most of that business is replaceable cartridges once you get them placed, they have to replace the cartridges so that's one of the beauties of food service.
Deane Dray - Analyst
Okay and last question on the pool business, and the impact of the early buy in the fourth quarter, what was driving?
Was it just better terms?
Better price?
New products and then what was the EPS contribution?
Randall Hogan - Chairman & CEO
Yes, there were no, we didn't get any benefits in terms of terms being better this year versus last year.
As you may recall last year, we set our production rates at a low level, and in fact orders came in a little bit better so we ended up carrying more backlog from the early buy program into the first quarter, because we wanted to get stable production and we didn't allow the business to ramp up in the fourth quarter of 06.
That's the biggest difference year to year.
Actually this year we saw the orders a little bit earlier so we were able to hold our production rate to a little bit higher level.
And so it's about a $15 million swing year to year, so no economic difference.
John Stauch - CFO
Daene, as far as your question, I would say versus where we thought Q4 would line up, it was probably about $0.01 incremental contribution from a little bit more in the early buy.
And obviously as you know, we take a look at those programs and manage what the earlier -- try to understand what the early and standard buy is, so it's hard to tell at any given time when you get a little more early, how much impact it has on standard.
And so we're looking at sell-through data, we're working with our key distributors and customers and just monitoring that market every day.
Deane Dray - Analyst
All right, thank you.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Kirk Woodworth with JP Morgan.
Curt Woodworth - Analyst
Yes, hi, good afternoon.
Randall Hogan - Chairman & CEO
Hi.
John Stauch - CFO
Hi.
Curt Woodworth - Analyst
John, I think I may have missed this but in terms of the high end of your guidance, what was the organic growth assumption built into that?
John Stauch - CFO
We would say the high end is probably closer to 4%, all in organic growth.
Curt Woodworth - Analyst
Okay and that's basically the mid point of what you have in terms of what you're talking about on slide 16, the up 3 to 5?
John Stauch - CFO
Correct.
Curt Woodworth - Analyst
Okay.
And in terms of looking at the water --
John Stauch - CFO
No, I mean, Curt, not to -- we're trying to give a guide with goal posts here and I would say the mix of our businesses mean something.
If electrical continues to have significant growth that means a really lot to us, right?
Curt Woodworth - Analyst
Because the incrementals are much higher?
John Stauch - CFO
Exactly and if you get some shift in pool-spa business, or some are lower margin business, so, we're trying to give guidelines here, but to frame it, we still think organic growth for the company is closer to 3.5 4.5 somewhere in that range.
Curt Woodworth - Analyst
Right.
And then I guess within that in terms of thinking about the incremental margins on the business lines, can you give us a sense for what you're thinking about for growth for pump, pool, and filtration?
For 08?
Randall Hogan - Chairman & CEO
Sure.
We're expecting all three to grow but filtration is our most global business and next year, our global growth is really important, so I would say that global filtration and global flow technologies are the areas where we would expect to see the higher growth, less though in pool, it's the most North American thing.
One of the reasons we gave the chart that we did in terms of the GBU split on -- the data on there, once you get a chance to take a look at it, shows you the percent exposure to different markets by geography and it also gives you some rough targets of what we think ROS would be, but I'm expecting flow technologies and filtration growth international to be higher.
And I think electrical is no -- we see no evidence that electrical is going to slow.
They're doing really well in petrochem and a number of other segments and we read the same things everyone else does and we certainly are not on mission but right now, our momentum is good.
So, I would expect electrical to be stronger and I'm taking a cautious view of telecom.
They tell me telecom is come back and I'm waiting to see.
Curt Woodworth - Analyst
Right.
And you do expect the pool market to be up for you?
Randall Hogan - Chairman & CEO
No, no, flat, flattish to down a tad.
Curt Woodworth - Analyst
Okay.
And then just lastly looking at productivity in the fourth quarter for water, it's about a 450 basis point benefit on no volume leverage so I guess the question is looking out to 2008, if you assume that you get no volume leverage and I assume you still get the annualized benefit of the productivity that is stagger throughout this year, would it be fair to say under that assumption that your margins in water should still grow all else being equal?
John Stauch - CFO
Curt, I mean, when you take a look at Q4, it was the first quarter for both water and the company where sourcing outpaced inflation, so a significant piece of Q4 was finally starting to get ahead on the sourcing pipeline versus where we've been behind all year on the inflation, so nice overlap there.
Curt Woodworth - Analyst
Okay.
John Stauch - CFO
If you extrapolate that into Q1, 2, 3, and 4 next year, that's why we feel confidence we've made progress finally on the sourcing deck and also in 2007, and 2006, as Randy mentioned, we were doing some significant investment in lien and rearranging our factory footprint, and we're beginning to see some benefit of that in Q4 and we think we'll see further benefit of that in 2008.
Curt Woodworth - Analyst
Great, thank you very much.
John Stauch - CFO
Thank you.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Mike Schneider with Robert W.
Baird.
Mike Schneider - Analyst
Good morning, guys.
Randall Hogan - Chairman & CEO
Good morning.
Mike Schneider - Analyst
Maybe just sticking with the water group organic growth, so it looks like you're looking for 3% which is down just a hair from the 4% in 2007.
Which group are you actually expecting to decelerate more?
Is it the municipal businesses?
Randall Hogan - Chairman & CEO
Well year-over-year, it's pool.
If you take a look at pool and you think about that we carry $15 million of extra early buy from '06 to '07, that we got in the first quarter and then we had that and then we had -- we were up 11% or so in pool in the fourth quarter.
A lot of that's share, but a lot of that was just the timing of the early buy so if you think about that swing right there, '07 was higher in volume and that reads out in the organic growth so that difference is probably all of it.
I would say, wouldn't you?
John Stauch - CFO
Yeah, I would.
I think if you take a look at what we -- by business, I think we think North American residential pump experienced, as you're aware, a double hit in 2007.
Randall Hogan - Chairman & CEO
Yeah, actually in '07, residential filtration was worse than we thought, residential pump was worse than we thought, residential pool was better than we thought and as -- going into the year and not surprising.
We understand why the markets were worse than we thought they would be and we are still taking a pretty sober eye view of the North American residential market in 08.
Mike Schneider - Analyst
Okay , and then on the North American pool business then, because you benefited from a delayed buy in Q1 and a pre-buy in Q4, I guess give me your thoughts then just given the trajectory of housing and renovation spending why you believe pool could actually be flat in volumes and
Randall Hogan - Chairman & CEO
Well, let me call it a little bit down.
We'll just use that as the base expectation.
A couple things.
Our success with new products is extraordinary.
The IntelliFlow program, as long as with a lot of our other environmental focus programs are doing really, really well.
They are growing double digit.
In fact we take a look at what the markets did versus what we did, even factoring out the early buy.
We gained a lot of share.
We also had some major wins.
I'd rather not point out who they are yet, but we converted one of the largest distributors in the country to Pentair in '07 and we get the benefit in '08 and we converted one of the largest pool builders in the country.
And I don't think there's much overlap between those two, so that helps.
The other thing is we still have a lot of momentum in commercial pool and the content is going up.
In fact, I took this out of the -- as long as you asked about pool, I took this out of the script because it was a little long, but we launched a new solar guard control which basically integrates all of the efficient products along with this new control of which can control a solar heater for pools.
Which we think is pretty cool.
So, we continue to innovate there and 60% to 65% of the business is replacing to begin with, so --
Mike Schneider - Analyst
Okay, and then just on slide 15, on the walk through on the guidance, John maybe you could just address specifically the price mix line is $0.20 to the low end and to the high end.
In this environment I guess can you give us some sense of where the price would be coming from?
Because there's certainly a lot of volume pressure out in the marketplace today especially in residential.
It seems optimistic to get $0.20 additional in pricing on top of the 40 you got in '07 and maybe you could drill down as to specifically what business units drive that?
John Stauch - CFO
Yes.
I'd say I'd actually look at it the other way.
I think I felt we were being a little conservative because most of our price agreements right now are done and concluded, and I'd put in a little bit of cushion for if we have to go back and soften those reductions, which we have not had to do yet.
But where we are still getting price is raw material prices have eased as far as change, they have not softened or been reduced and we are still gaining materials push through in some of our markets and channels.
Certainly, the market you're aware of which I'd say is residential submersible pumps is not a price gaining market.
Randall Hogan - Chairman & CEO
Because, that would be a negative.
John Stauch - CFO
That would be a net negative but most of our other markets right now are holding in as far as our ability to gain price.
And we measure it, we have the systems to track it and we keep an eye on it.
Randall Hogan - Chairman & CEO
I think I'd mention before, one of the prima facia evidence that you're in a good market is what kind of pricing degrees of freedom you have and we actually track, as John, said, really closely what our business can do and we judge our businesses attractiveness in terms of investments, based on -- one of the things we look at is their ability to control our own destiny with price.
So, we think -- we don't think we are being aggressive as John said.
John Stauch - CFO
So, Mike I'll give you some quick ideas without putting our business at jeopardy here in the markets but we gain price in electrical, we're doing well.
We are giving up price in some of the electronics markets in which we serve.
We are experiencing pricing difficulty from our European based businesses competing against China sourcing and/or North America sourcing, but as you're aware, we also make a lot of those products that ship into Europe from North America and have in some cases, with some of our products duplicate product to offer from a lower source of the United States and we are benefiting from that on the other end.
And so we would say that we're probably experiencing similar to what the rest of the world is experiencing, that the high Euro is impacting our competitiveness from localized business in Europe, by given the fact that we can compete on the United States and China we're finding ultimate ways to win that product -- or those wins, so.
Mike Schneider - Analyst
Okay, and then just by contrast, and it seems like you're being conservative on the volume FX line on that same walk through, basically down $0.16 of four, if organic growth is going to come in at 3.5 to 4.5 for the total Company, why wouldn't there be more leverage on the volume?
John Stauch - CFO
I think you would see more leverage on the volume, and I think -- just trying to provide it -- you'd see it down in the sourcing and manufacturing line and I think what we tried to give you was identification of what we can see today and kind of what we can count on.
Randall Hogan - Chairman & CEO
The reason we added that was because since we gave our guidance, it's pretty clear that the markets aren't better as I mentioned in the script.
They may come out a little bit worse, so what we have been working on is to make sure that we have a plan that makes sense in the environment we see today.
And there's these numbers are what I would call, as John called them earlier, guide posts that make sense and it's not 100% mathematically pure.
So, there's a tuck here and there, so to Deane's question he asked earlier, "Where did the hedge go?" it's in there.
Mike Schneider - Analyst
Okay, thank you again.
Randall Hogan - Chairman & CEO
Thank you.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of John Quealy of Canaccord Adams.
John Quealy - Analyst
Good afternoon.
Randall Hogan - Chairman & CEO
Good afternoon.
John Quealy - Analyst
Going into Q4 just a quick question again in water.
North America residential water treatment, Randy I don't know if you talked about it, how much was it down in the quarter and then also what are your expectations for that piece of business in 08?
Randall Hogan - Chairman & CEO
Well, it was actually not down when you looked at commercial and residential.
Residential was down, commercial was up, so the residential again, it was weak and probably even single digits, 4% or 5% down residential.
John Quealy - Analyst
And I would assume that's sort of the outlook for that particular residential line in 08?
Randall Hogan - Chairman & CEO
Yes.
I mean, we are not, in our assumptions looking forward, we're not assuming any kind of market moves, moving the number.
They have to be based either on one of our global growth initiatives or on market-rates that are more positive, you know, like a Latin America or a Middle East.
John Quealy - Analyst
Great and my last question, on the buyback, you mentioned that it's going to be enabled throughout the year.
Any particular trigger points -- evaluation or timing you're looking at there?
Randall Hogan - Chairman & CEO
We intend to do it all.
We'll take the 50 million and we'll put it to work, but I don't think I'd give any guidance as to who, what, where, and when.
John Quealy - Analyst
Thanks, guys.
Randall Hogan - Chairman & CEO
Thank you.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Jim Lucas, Janney Montgomery Scott.
Jim Lucas - Analyst
Afternoon, guys.
Randall Hogan - Chairman & CEO
How you doing?
Jim Lucas - Analyst
A couple of questions here.
First, following up on something Mike had touched on, on Fairbanks, with the growth you've seen in the backlog, is that a share market dynamics?
Can you just give us a quick update on the municipal side and on the flow business, have you seen any signs of slowing in any pockets on the commercial side?
Randall Hogan - Chairman & CEO
I would say on the municipal side that we would count it as share but what I think we're doing is we're reaching into more segments that we might not have been competing in before, so for instance we've had nice wins on some water reuse programs out in California.
We've got more business that we're doing in the Middle East, so I would say that we have more at bat, which is really encouraging, and by the way, there's more at bats we need to go get.
I think that business is one that we can globalize, we've begun to globalize and our Fairbanks/Morris team has done a great job with that so I would say that I think we growing -- we have grown our backlog faster there, but I would not say it's a win rate.
I'd say it's a number of at bats, that's the way I think about bid businesses.
And then in terms of commercial, our commercial businesses remain strong because they're doing more and more export, and we have seen a moderating volume in North American commercial.
But at the same time, our export business has increased.
Jim Lucas - Analyst
Okay, and then switching gears on the acquisition site, two unrelated questions.
One, can you just -- you've talked with regards on the capital allocation about the share repurchase but if you could just give us the thought process of how you're approaching the M & A market going forward and secondly, with your commentary about the acquisitions being ahead of expectations, could you just talk briefly about where those expectations have been exceeded?
Randall Hogan - Chairman & CEO
Yes.
First -- your first question, acquisitions have always played a role in our strategy and they continue to and we continue to look in the places that support our strategy which we've talked about before, in particular, those areas are -- can they extend our reach globally and get us into new markets or do they extend our reach vertically in terms of vertical markets that we want to be in or technical capability we want to be in.
So, if you look at Young Pump it basically extended our flow technologies business globally with a great brand, a great franchise position in Germany with a window on Eastern Europe.
And then it the case of Porous Media, it expended us into industrial filtration, raised our technology profile, gave us nice windows in the oil and gas about strengthen us in industrial filtration, so you can expect more of the same around technology and around global expansion would be my priority areas I'd look at.
But anything that supports -- all four of the GBU's are investable so, anything that supports those four GBU strategies, like McClain did a number of years ago for technical products, would be something we'd look at as well.
The second part of your question was about --?
Jim Lucas - Analyst
Integration and --.
Randall Hogan - Chairman & CEO
Oh, the integration of the two businesses.
Right now I'd say Porous Media is beating on both bottom line and top line and in particular, there's a number of growth initiatives that have frankly exceeded plan, one of them we've talked about is the pre-filtration product that basically they have invented for desalination plants which we have in test right now.
That product is called Aqua Line and there's a number of other areas where their technology is applicable in food service and actually in some things in tech products that we're looking at right now which is kind of interesting but early on, more the experimental stage, but they've also achieved the growth we expected them to achieve in the core markets that they are in, which are oil and gas and medical.
So, in that case -- and then in the case of Young Pump, they've exceeded it -- they've about made it on the top line and they've beaten it on the bottom line so greater productivity, is the source there and we're just beginning to get after the Eastern European opportunities that Young presents to us.
So, that is why I am feeling really good about both of them.
Jim Lucas - Analyst
Okay, thank you very much.
Randall Hogan - Chairman & CEO
Thanks, Jim.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Francesca McCann with Stanford Financial
Francesca McCann - Analyst
Hi, good afternoon.
Randall Hogan - Chairman & CEO
Hello there.
Francesca McCann - Analyst
Good year.
Randall Hogan - Chairman & CEO
Thank you.
Francesca McCann - Analyst
Looking at Europe, quickly, and kind of a break down of your business in Western Europe versus Eastern Europe, versus the Middle East, and then also what do you see when you're looking at those different Markets?
Randall Hogan - Chairman & CEO
They're looking up the numbers specifically, while they're doing that just in terms of where we see it, for the Middle East, it's largely for us, the -- Turkey, down through Saudi Arabia, we saw, as I mentioned, 20% growth.
That business for us is growing very well in commercial markets and in what we would call municipal here but I would call them infrastructure there.
Food service is a big opportunity, and we continue to invest to grow there and I would be disappointed if we don't do another 20% plus in the coming year.
Eastern Europe, we're growing well but it's still too small a base, so one of the things that I'd like to see from our GBU 's is more resources deployed to grow Eastern Europe faster.
The business, if you look at it from a water standpoint -- from a technical product standpoint, it's probably 90% to 95% still in Western Europe so they have a big opportunity.
That's excluding Israel actually, they have a pretty good business in Israel, so it's probably closer to 90% and then for water, it's still probably about 80% Western Europe, with the Middle East being 5 -10 and Eastern Europe up about 5.
Francesca McCann - Analyst
Okay, and then if you can kind of go into detail on what you're seeing in Western Europe, and even country specific, what the outlook there is?
Randall Hogan - Chairman & CEO
Well I can't get into country specific but basically Western Europe, we had some of the best growth we've ever seen in Western Europe, in '07, but there's some moderating growth there and with the Euro where it is, you can be nothing but cautious.
I mean, they're losing their competitiveness globally, so when we talk about having a cautious outlook on volume I would say Western Europe is also one we're cautious about, not just North America.
Francesca McCann - Analyst
Okay and for both water and technical products then?
Randall Hogan - Chairman & CEO
Yes, although technical products did not have a great year of growth in Western Europe.
They actually had more problems in growth now than they have in '08 so my comment about the greatest year -- the great growth year was really a water comment.
Francesca McCann - Analyst
Okay.
So, overall then, again just to reiterate, the Western Europe growth perhaps flat or perhaps kind of minimal growth in water and flat or maybe declining in technical products?
Randall Hogan - Chairman & CEO
No.
I would expect them to be up in '08, because again, they didn't have a good growth in '07.
John Stauch - CFO
Electronics and technical products is more project specific, Francesca, and if you take a look at water, it's more market dependent, so I think where we see it, we know kind of where our program wins are on the electronics side in Western Europe.
Your comments about us being flat to modestly up in water are appropriate.
Francesca McCann - Analyst
Okay, great and what about India?
If you can tell us what you're seeing there and what growth opportunities and time frame you see looking at that market?
Randall Hogan - Chairman & CEO
Well, India is three things for us.
It's our largest engineering center, which we continue to grow in Dehli, and they're integrated into our global product development activities, and there's Go Off which is our factory and the base of our in India business, it's our global base for code line which is the vessels for reverse osmosis, and then its the base for the business that we're building in India.
Actually, both for technical products and for water right now.
Technical products is growing very nicely from a very, very small base and we're looking there think at what we need to do in order to expand our capability in country, but obviously, country is important in the communication space as India is a big technical products market opportunity for us.
And then water, we had very solid growth from a bigger base, in particular our focus is on commercial and we had good success with our rural water program that we put in place, so mostly the commercial arena and we're trying to get bigger in industrial.
We pulled back on our residential activities in India.
Francesca McCann - Analyst
Okay, great.
And then last question, just some update on the Franklin Electric Fairdene situation.
Randall Hogan - Chairman & CEO
It is what it is.
It continues to be a tough battle in a market that's down.
We have over 90% acceptance rate on our Pentech motor pump and we're out there doing hand to hand combat so it's going cording to hoyle and and it's not what I spend a lot of my time worrying about to tell you the truth.
Francesca McCann - Analyst
Okay, all right thank you so much.
Todd Gleason - VP of IR
Thank you.
LaTonya, this is Todd Gleason.
How many more people do we have in the queue?
Operator
Looks like we have two more questions in queue.
Todd Gleason - VP of IR
Okay let's try to answer those then.
Operator
Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of David Wong with Lehman Brothers.
Dan Wong - Analyst
Good afternoon.
Actually it's Dan.
Randall Hogan - Chairman & CEO
Yes, hi, Dan.
Dan Wong - Analyst
How are you?
Randall Hogan - Chairman & CEO
We knew that.
Dan Wong - Analyst
But thanks for taking my question here.
On Slide ten, you have the break down of the different business segments with the current margins, and I guess you have pool at 10% and flow and filtration at 14%.
So, as you expect 100 basis point improvement in margins in '08 where will we be seeing those margin improvements?
Is it primarily flow and the filtration with pull -- I guess volumes still expected to be flattish?
Randall Hogan - Chairman & CEO
Well, given that our businesses are listening we clearly expect it from everywhere but if you think about it externally when we take a look at it, I think the biggest opportunities we see are continuing to expand the flow and those are global margins, so clearly, we think we have significant upside there.
Pool and spa has been doing a lot of work on lien and manufacturing and sourcing enhancements, so despite our view of a flat market we think there's significant opportunity in pool and spa side and then filtration and water we're getting the operational improvements but to Randy's earlier question , it's also our most amount of investment on strategic marketing and R & D so we're probably in the 20-30 basis points in filtration.
And the other is we were
Dan Wong - Analyst
Okay, and so in terms of pool, where it is -- the margin GAAP between the other two segments, is there anything structurally different about that?
John Stauch - CFO
Yes, go ahead Randy.
Randall Hogan - Chairman & CEO
Yes, the pool business -- the pool and spa business is made up of basically pool equipment which is the thing we all think about, behind peoples homes and in hotels.
There's the spa business which is basically pumps and fittings for jetted tubs and jacuzzi type spas that everyone is familiar with and then there's national pool tile, which is our distribution business that sells tile and other related products in the pool industry.
The margins are very different between those three.
Pool equipment is really quite a bit higher than that 10% and the other two can't see 10% from where they are, so they have a mix issue.
John Stauch - CFO
Did that answer your question?
Dan Wong - Analyst
It certainly does.
Second and final question is, obviously we're seeing faster growth in Europe and Asia in both segments and I think particularly just honing in on water, I think historically you've had more favorable margins in the European business and just wanted to get a -- just get a better feel in terms of the relative margins, the North American water versus Europe, Asia, and currently and kind of the trends expected going forward?
Randall Hogan - Chairman & CEO
Well Asia is the lowest, just staying with water, Asia is lower margins, North America is the middle and Europe is indeed higher in margins, and well in the two biggest businesses, there in filtration and flow technology, and our focus there is we want to make sure that we grow, so we want to invest and I don't want to say we don't want margins to go up in Europe but I would like margins to go up in Europe but I really want to see us invest to grow -- I think our opportunity in the Middle East is vast.
And one that we could put and should put a lot more resources against and Eastern Europe as well, so I don't necessarily project the margins in Eastern Europe and the Middle East to be the same as in Western Europe.
John Stauch - CFO
And as we've mentioned, Dan, I mean we have access capacity in North America but quite frankly we're proud of the way our teams have moved to take the people out and we're keeping pace with margins despite the softer volume in North America , and I think we're going to be well positioned when the market returns with a much better cost position that we could continue to
Dan Wong - Analyst
Got it, thank you very much.
Randall Hogan - Chairman & CEO
Thank you.
Operator
Your last question comes from the line of Christopher Glen with Oppenheimer.
Christopher Glen - Analyst
Thank you.
Randall Hogan - Chairman & CEO
Thank you.
Christopher Glen - Analyst
Hi.
On the tech products electronics side to get a pretty nice ramp in the margins in the third quarter, maybe it the second, off kind of the trough quarters, how much variable and (inaudible) is there still there or do you feel you're kind of at a new sustain, kind of, stability even if it's well below the electrical side?
Randall Hogan - Chairman & CEO
There's still more margin improvement to get in electronics.
Right now, if you look at electronics actually our highest margins are Asia.
And our lowest margins are North America.
So, we still have a ways to go in terms of getting North American margins up.
The trend is good, but North America particularly isn't close to what we believe they should be running at.
So, and in Europe I wouldn't mind seeing more margin expansion there.
Asia, good margins.
Let's grow some more.
Christopher Glen - Analyst
So, you don't see much risk of market dynamics causing regression to those kind of trough quarters?
Randall Hogan - Chairman & CEO
No.
Christopher Glen - Analyst
Okay, and then just on the organic growth again, I think that someone asked a question about the 3% to 4% guidance versus this year and the delta was pointed to the interesting year with a strong first and fourth quarters for pool.
Just another delta sounds like I think you called for softening in the commercial industrial North America Markets.
Is that just something that's kind of factored, how is that factored in?
Randall Hogan - Chairman & CEO
You know, we have seen moderating growth but not significant downturns there.
And so I'm not even predicting a significant impact to us if that makes sense, but I don't think we're going to count on double digit growth in those spaces either.
Christopher Glen - Analyst
Okay.
John Stauch - CFO
I mean, just to summarize Randy's comments and Todd will certainly work this through with everyone, if you take a look at the growth by the three water businesses we're highlighting that pool had a fantastic year and that's what we're trying to identify that the they had a great year with energy efficiency, the programs Randy mentioned and really growing share.
I don't think it's prudent to expect that we can continue to do that in this type of marketplace, but we're not expecting significant downturn, just moderating.
Conversely, I think pumps going to have better year than we had in 2007, primarily because I think they had a dual impact of residential downturn and significant amounts of inventory out in the channel, and I think we would expect a little bit better North American flow year and filtration has anniversaried several customer issues that they had and are beginning to see momentum on their growth side as well.
It's just the residential water treatment in their business is a fairly large impact to them so, I would expect them to be a little bit better as well.
Christopher Glen - Analyst
Great.
That's helpful, thanks.
John Stauch - CFO
Thank you.
Randall Hogan - Chairman & CEO
Okay, thank you, all.
Operator, we'll close it out now if you could give the call back number if anyone wants to listen?
Operator
Thank you.
Bear with me one moment.
Thank you for participating in todays conference.
This call will be available for replace beginning 3:00 p.m.
Eastern Standard time today through 11 p.m.
Eastern Standard time on February 29, 2008.
The conference ID for the replay is 30447256.
Again, the conference ID number is 30447256, and the number to dial for the replay is 1-800-642-1687, or 706-645-9291.
This concludes todays conference call.
You may now disconnect.