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Operator
Good morning, and welcome to the STERIS plc Fourth Quarter 2018 Conference Call. (Operator Instructions) Please note, this event is being recorded.
I would now like to turn the conference over to Julie Winter, Senior Director, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Julie Winter
Thank you, Austin, and good morning, everyone. As usual on today's call, we have Walt Rosebrough, our President and CEO; and Mike Tokich, our Senior Vice President and CFO.
I do have just a few words of caution before we open for comments from management. This webcast contains time-sensitive information that is accurate only as of today. Any redistribution, retransmission or rebroadcast of this call without the expressed written consent of STERIS is strictly prohibited. Some of these statements made during this review are or may be considered forward-looking statements. Many important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, those risk factors described in STERIS's security filings. The company does not undertake to revise any forward-looking statements as a result of new information or future events or developments. STERIS's SEC filings are available through the company and on our website.
In addition, on today's call, non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted earnings per diluted share, segment operating income, constant currency organic revenue growth and free cash flow will be used. Additional information regarding these measures, including definitions, is available on today's release, including reconciliations between GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. Non-GAAP financial measures are presented during this call with the intent of providing greater transparency through supplemental financial information used by management and the Board of Directors and their financial analysis and operational decision-making.
With those cautions, I will hand the call over to Mike.
Michael Tokich - Senior VP, CFO & Treasurer
Thank you, Julie. Good morning, everyone. It is my pleasure to be with you this morning to review the highlights of our fourth quarter performance.
For the quarter, constant currency organic revenue growth was 5.2%, driven by volume and 30 basis points of price. Gross margin as a percentage of revenue for the quarter increased 70 basis points to 42%. Gross margin was impacted favorably by product mix and price, along with a 60 basis point improvement from divestitures. Currency had an unfavorable impact on gross margin of 60 basis points.
EBIT margin at 20.5% of revenue for the quarter represents a 20 basis point improvement. EBIT margin expansion was limited somewhat by a 12% increase in R&D spending, a hiring ramp in our North American IMS business and higher corporate costs, which are partially attributable to a higher bonus attainment percentage year-over-year.
The adjusted effective tax rate in the quarter was 21.4%, somewhat lower than we had anticipated due to favorable discrete item adjustments, mostly relating to U.S. tax reform.
Net income in the quarter grew 12% to $105.8 million or $1.24 per diluted share, benefiting from organic revenue growth and the lower effective tax rate. Segment growth has been detailed in the press release in both the tables and the copy.
In terms of the balance sheet, we ended March with just over $200 million of cash, $1.3 billion in total debt and a debt-to-EBITDA leverage ratio of just under 2.1x. As we forecasted last quarter, we took the opportunity to repatriate approximately $83 million of cash during the fourth quarter, primarily from Canada and the U.K., which was used to pay down debt.
Free cash flow for the year was $294.3 million, a 15% improvement year-over-year, mainly due to higher net income and lower requirements to fund operating assets and liabilities.
During the fourth quarter, capital expenditures totaled $51.9 million, which was the highest we had in any quarter this year, while depreciation and amortization was $44.5 million.
With that, I will now turn the call over to Walt for his remarks.
Walter Rosebrough - CEO, President and Director
Thanks, Mike, and good morning, everyone. It is my pleasure to review another year -- record year with you today. Our results for the full fiscal year were in line with the high end of our expectations as constant currency organic revenue grew 5% while adjusted earnings per diluted share increased 10% to $4.15. As-reported revenue growth was better than we expected, even though it's about flat, as organic revenue growth and approximately $20 million of favorable currency offset the impact of the divested businesses from last year.
At the segment level, our full year results largely mirror the first 9 months, so I will be brief in my remaining remarks about the year.
The majority of our business grew at or above our expectations on a constant currency organic revenue basis. The 2 fastest growing segments, HSS and Life Science, both exceeded our expectations for the year as each grew revenue 9%. The trends driving these 2 businesses are anticipated to carry into our new fiscal year, although year-over-year comparisons will be more difficult on top of this past year's success.
AST continues to deliver strong results, with 7% constant currency organic revenue growth for the year. Remember, this includes about a 1% reduction in our growth rate due to the Sterilmed contract moving into the segment. AST profitability actually improved faster than we anticipated in fiscal 2018, reflecting the better-than-expected use of our capacity, including that which came online during this past fiscal year.
While we continue to expect improvements in profit in FY '19, the year-over-year change is now expected to be more modest than we thought originally due to the earlier-than-anticipated success in FY '18.
With regard to Healthcare Products, we continue to experience solid organic growth in recurring revenues. I remind you of the divestiture of Synergy U.K. consumables business in Q3, which will have an impact on our comparisons until November of this fiscal year.
Total segment revenue grew 2% on a constant currency organic basis, driven by meaningful growth in both consumables and service, which was offset by a modest decline in capital equipment shipments. As I mentioned last quarter, we've launched about 30 new products in our Healthcare Products segment this past year, many of which are consumables.
Looking ahead to fiscal '19, we expect to continue a similar pace of product introductions but will shift a bit more to capital equipment.
Just one example, we recently launched our newest hydrogen peroxide sterilizer, V-PRO maX 2, which offers a fast 16-minute cycle time for non-lumen devices in addition to other new features. With new products, solid year-end backlog and continued expectations for a stable hospital capital equipment spending environment, we anticipate capital equipment revenue growth returning to more normal low to mid-single-digit growth in fiscal 2019.
Shifting to our balance sheet, we committed to reducing debt back to our historic levels after the completion of the Synergy combinations some 2.5 years ago. We accomplished that goal in fiscal 2018. From a capital allocation perspective, we will revert to our normal long-term priorities.
Our first priority is dividend growth in line with growth of earnings. Our second is investment in our current businesses for organic growth in revenue and profitability. For fiscal '19, we will be making substantial investments in our HSS segment to grow our outsourced reprocessing business in the U.S. We have several projects in the pipeline for these services and are planning to invest not only capital to build out the facilities but also substantial hiring during the year to run them. We remain optimistic that this business model will succeed in the U.S. over the longer term.
In addition, we will continue to invest in AST expansions around the globe to meet increasing demand. These 2 areas of investment alone will total more than $60 million in growth capital out of our total capital spending of approximately $190 million in fiscal 2019.
Our third priority is acquisitions, which we continue to find available in the marketplace. We prefer tuck-ins to enhance our current businesses, but we'll also consider deals that will broaden our portfolio. We've not planned for any acquisitions in fiscal 2019 as the timing of deals is unreliable as you know. We will modify our outlook during the year if we complete material transactions.
Lastly, our outlook contemplates share repurchases to continue at the level to offset dilution from our equity compensation programs.
Turning to the specifics of our 2019 outlook. As you saw in the release, we expect total company revenue growth to be in the range of 4% to 5% on both an as reported and constant currency organic basis. Based on forward rates at the end of March, we would anticipate approximately $30 million in benefit from currency year-over-year, which will be offset almost entirely by the negative impact of divestitures.
As I mentioned earlier, in addition to Northwell, we have several new projects in the pipeline for outsourced reprocessing centers in the U.S. Our outlook includes approximately $10 million in revenue for Northwell and the new projects combined in FY '19, which translates into approximately $50 million on a full year run rate basis in 2, 3 years. However, with substantial start-up costs this year, the revenue is not anticipated to drop through to earnings. In fact, we expect to lose $2 million to $3 million during fiscal 2019 for all these facilities combined due to the startup costs of the facilities.
As we discussed last quarter, given the timing of our fiscal year, we had a partial benefit from U.S. Tax Reform in our full fiscal year 2018 of approximately 150 basis points. And we expect another 150-or-so basis points of additional improvement in fiscal 2019. As a result, the adjusted effective tax rate in our guidance is in the range of 21% to 22%. I will add, as I did last quarter, that there's still moving parts in the details of the new Tax Act, but we are comfortable in this range for fiscal year '19.
We will be making substantial investments in our business this year, which we think is prudent, given the additional dollars available to us from the U.S. Tax Reform. We will be spending approximately $10 million on growing our HSS outsourced reprocessing business and increasing R&D spending in all 4 of our segments. Despite these investments, we anticipate operating profit to grow faster than revenue on a year-over-year basis, including about a $5 million benefit from currency.
With share count about neutral, we anticipate adjusted earnings per diluted share to be in the range of $4.63 to $4.75 for fiscal 2019, which would be a 12% to 14% growth over fiscal 2018.
For your modeling purposes, we anticipate that our quarterly distribution of earnings, which has been quite consistent the past 3 years, will be similar to fiscal 2018.
Reflecting the growth in earnings and reduced spending in acquisition and integration-related charges, free cash flow is anticipated to be approximately $340 million in FY '19. Of course, this will change if we're successful on the acquisition front.
We are excited to start our new fiscal year with solid momentum, new products and services and the team to create record years in fiscal 2019 and beyond.
In that regard, I would like to say a few words about the changes to our Board of Directors also announced this morning. Jack Wareham, who has served on our Board since 2000, and as Chairman since 2005, has announced that he will retire when his current term expires at our Annual General Meeting this summer.
Jack has played a vital role in shaping our Board and our company the past 2 decades. I didn't work with Jack before coming to STERIS, but knew him from our industry association, AdvaMed. The fact he was Chairman when I was recruited to STERIS a decade ago made my decision to come very simple. I speak on behalf of the entire Board when I say that we were very, very fortunate to have his leadership as Chairman for over a decade. And we certainly wish him and his wife well in their retirement.
The board intends to appoint long-standing board member, Dr. Mohsen Sohi, to the role of Chairman after the Annual General Meeting. I'm extremely pleased that Mohsen has agreed to take on this responsibility.
Lastly, we are also pleased to welcome a new board member, Dr. Nirav Shah, who we appointed as a member of the Board last week.
With that, I will turn the call back over to Julie to open for Q&A.
Julie Winter
Thank you, Mike and Walt, for your comments. Austin, if you would give the instructions for Q&A, we can get started.
Operator
(Operator Instructions) And our first question/will come from Dave Turkaly with JMP Securities.
David Louis Turkaly - MD and Senior Research Analyst
I understand the spending, the investments and thanks for all that detail, but I got to ask you a question I really never get to ask, so given your capital allocation priority, why not we increase in the dividend?
Walter Rosebrough - CEO, President and Director
Well, we would argue, all things being equal, we haven't made that decision. We do look at it each in each board meeting and make decisions in each board meeting. But we would expect to raise our dividends in line with earnings growth over time.
Michael Tokich - Senior VP, CFO & Treasurer
And Dave, we have consecutively -- 12 years of consecutive dividend growth and obviously, as Walt said, we'd be looking forward to possibly 13th year of consecutive dividend growth.
David Louis Turkaly - MD and Senior Research Analyst
Good to hear and it is noteworthy that, yes, you're one of the few that I cover that actually has that component. So I guess as a follow-up, just looking at gross margin specifically in the quarter, and then as we're looking to kind of to the year ahead, we're a little below we thought. And I'm curious in terms of your outlook for '19, are you assuming some improvement in that kind of 42% range, should we be looking for maybe some basis points of improvement as the year progresses? Any thoughts there.
Michael Tokich - Senior VP, CFO & Treasurer
Dave, this year, we actually had some -- especially in the quarter, was a little bit lower than we anticipated as we did have about 60 basis points of unfavorable FX impact in the gross margin, which got us down to 42%. And as we talked about, we did see nice improvement all year, part of that was because of the divested businesses and we actually had a 42.2%. And as we normally do, we strive to improve not only gross margin but we also strive to improve the leverage we have in our business from an SG&A standpoint. So in total, our thought process continues to be that we will continue to expand EBIT margin as we have stated in the past in our normal 50 to 75 basis points in that range going forward. So yes, we would expect to continue the margin improvement.
Operator
Your next question comes from John Hsu with Raymond James.
John Hsu
First, maybe we could start with the guidance. The top line guidance you provided, organic constant currency growth, 4% to 5%, you performed nicely in fiscal '18, coming in at the high end of that range. So with -- I'm just trying to understand with $10 million in new projects baked in for the HSS segment, for outsourcing, and it sounds like some new products driving improvement in capital equipment, why is 4% to 5% still the right range for this year?
Walter Rosebrough - CEO, President and Director
Yes, I think a cat on a hot tin roof once burned is a little cautious. And so if you go back 2 years ago, we moved to a 6% as the top end of our guidance range and we didn't perform at that level. So I think we're going to watch this a little bit, but we're very pleased to be 5-ish this year and of course, we'll strive to be 5-ish or as much as we can above that next year -- or this coming year I should say. But at this point, we think 4% to 5% is probably a prudent place to sit.
John Hsu
Okay, great. And then on HSS, it sounds like the projects that you have slated for this year at a full run rate will be around $50 million at some point. So I guess how fast can you get there? And how do you think about the margin profile? You obviously are investing in that business. But kind of at a full run rate basis, the question is really the time that you can get there is -- and how should we think about the margin profile?
Walter Rosebrough - CEO, President and Director
Yes, I mean, obviously, if we're giving $10 million this year and $50 million over the long term, it's a little bit of time before we get there. So you should be thinking about months and years, not days and weeks in terms of that timing. That's the first point. The second point is, again as we said, we will be losing money actually in that space this year, in these new projects, not in total, but in these new projects, we'll be losing money this year. And that's normal for us when we're starting things up in any of the business where we have significant expenditures, AST or HSS-type businesses. But we do expect to get to be -- to reasonable margins relatively soon, and in the long run to nicer margins.
John Hsu
Okay, great. And if I may just...
Walter Rosebrough - CEO, President and Director
A trick -- the trick for both us and you in forecasting that is how many new ones come on as the other ones grow. You may remember if you go back in time in AST, when we were much smaller in AST, every time we had a new plant, it had an impact on the margin rate. Now that we have 60 plants, we can add 4 or 5 without hardly noticing, if you will, because some are maturing as others are coming in. We'll have some of that phenomena if you look only at the U.S. business, if you look at on a global basis, it will even out, much like it does in AST.
John Hsu
Excellent. And then just maybe the last one, your leverage ratio down nicely towards 2x. Obviously, you got your comments on the renewed focus for capital allocation priorities. But just related to M&A, how do we think about size, maybe some timing and then also maybe just -- if you can talk about the complexion of the pipeline, where do you see opportunities by segment.
Walter Rosebrough - CEO, President and Director
Sure. I've given up on timing. So if you would take any timing you want to pick and you're likely to be as good as me. But if you step away from the timing question, we do have a pipeline of things that we're working on. I wouldn't characterize any of the segments as radically different in terms of their possibilities. And just when I think one has no possibility, something pops up in that segment. So I don't feel radically different about any of the segments. It is clear, that we now have a much broader portfolio, and we're putting that portfolio together in different ways, and we have weighed opportunities, if you will, sometimes between those segments. And so that creates more opportunity. And we've also, as I mentioned, broadened our horizon a bit to look not just the tuck-ins, which we pretty much had gone to inclusive tuck-ins post the Synergy deal and moving more to thinking about extensions, if you will, as opposed to what I'll call clean tuck-ins.
John Hsu
Okay, great. And if I could just maybe follow up on that one quickly, Walt, how do we think about the complexion of what you're looking at, just from a capital versus consumable and service perspective?
Walter Rosebrough - CEO, President and Director
Yes. We're 75-25 recurring revenue, if you will, versus capital now. I don't know of any reason to suspect that we would be radically different in particularly the tuck-in side of the equation. If there's a newer opportunity, then it will depend on the nature of that business obviously. But -- and we do not have a gross bias for or against any of those segments. In my view, capital, which does tend to have maybe a little bias in the marketplace, but capital is a consumable, it just takes a little longer. And in some sense, there's more opportunity there because if you can reduce the life of the product, you actually have more opportunity. If you're a consumable, the life is one use pretty much. And so we do not have a strong bias here. And the other thing I would add is -- our service business, which has a very nice recurring revenue business in both Life Sciences and Healthcare, is there because we have, in large part because we have, this capital business. so if you don't have the capital, you can get to the consumable side of that as well. So we don't have a strong bias.
Operator
Your next question comes from Matthew Mishan with KeyBanc.
Matthew Ian Mishan - VP and Senior Equity Research Analyst
Well, I just want to start off with the 4% to 5% guidance. And just to generally understand kind of the moving pieces as far as the segment goes. What -- with Healthcare cap equipment recovering to a low to mid-single-digit range, what is growing below the company average, that 4% to 5% to kind of like to keep it at that range? Because I think AST, Healthcare Specialty Services, Life Sciences are all potentially growing at 5% plus the consumable businesses as well.
Walter Rosebrough - CEO, President and Director
Yes, I mean, the statement is correct. And if you take our capital business last year, which was slightly below flat and move it into the higher range, the math, if you take last year's math, the math would suggest something higher, no question. Now we did mention we had a couple of segments who were just on fire last year. And as much as we would like to believe that, that fire will continue raging at the same speed, we are a little cautious about that reoccurring. And there's a couple of places where we know that there was a little, I'll call it just a little more than normal growth. But generally speaking, I would put it on the side of caution of going over the top of that 5% level very much.
Matthew Ian Mishan - VP and Senior Equity Research Analyst
Okay, got it. And then, can you talk a little bit more about the growth that you're seeing in Life Sciences in particular, like what's driving the equipment purchases? And also, whether or not you have consumables that are attached to that and to the point where we'll start seeing some stronger consumable growth as that installed base increases.
Walter Rosebrough - CEO, President and Director
Sure. On the capital side, it's really a twofold issue. There's what's going on in the market and what we're doing about it. The first is we had a long period where there was very little capital equipment spend in the Pharma business. And since the bulk of our business really is related to the Pharma side, for that matter, the derth of the research too, which is just a smaller component. And research is not dissimilar but Pharma has clearly increased our spending and we happen to be in the spaces where it's pretty attractive to do that. There was a lot of consolidation going on and people weren't adding plant capacity, they're now increasing capacity and/or replacing equipment because of, for lack of better terms, pent-up demand from not having done that for a long time. So we're seeing kind of a double positive going on there as it relates to the Biologics and vaccine-type businesses that we support. So that's really the driver from the market side and clearly, we've seen that in the marketplace in general. In addition, our guys have done a really nice job in product development and specifically around the vaporized hydrogen peroxide space, and that has really played well for us as they're building that capacity because a lot of the new space does require a VHP-type application. We've done a nice job in the other, the washing and the steam sterilization as well, but I would say, in general, that's the driver.
Matthew Ian Mishan - VP and Senior Equity Research Analyst
And on that V-PRO, the hydrogen peroxide space in Life Sciences, J&J is potentially going to be divesting their advanced sterilization business, so that's (inaudible) sterilization business and that's where you compete with them. Are you seeing competition in Life Sciences on that V-PRO side? Or is that a market where you're kind of -- you're alone in advancing that?
Walter Rosebrough - CEO, President and Director
We have never had the good fortune to be walking in the wilderness by ourselves in many of our product lines. So we have good competitors in literally every space we work in. We do tend to be one of, if not the largest player in most of the spaces we work in, not all of them but most of them. So but yes, there's plenty of competition. And you have to remember that pharmaceutical business is a global business. In general and more for us than some of our other spaces. And so there are multiple competitors around the globe, too.
Matthew Ian Mishan - VP and Senior Equity Research Analyst
Okay. And then lastly, if -- like, I understand the investments that you're making in Healthcare Specialty Services and I'm really excited to see some of the growth over the next couple of years. But what are -- like how should we be thinking about the long-term margin profile of that business over the next couple of years and are we still looking at mid-to high-single digits or can you potentially get that over the long run into like low doubles? And then the new deals you're doing in that space, are they also JVs or structured differently?
Walter Rosebrough - CEO, President and Director
Yes. I think if you look at mature components of the business, those mid-single digits -- or mid-to double digits are appropriate numbers to consider at the business unit level. And so that's really clear. So I do think that is the case. However, in the short run, you have to work your way up to that, particularly in this HSS business or the outsourced reprocessing Center business. It will take a little bit longer because we have the capital infusion and the people infusion. And we do rely on getting productivity over the course of time to improve those margins as well. So it will take a bit longer to get to maturity. And as I mentioned earlier, so that really will depend on how quickly it grows, it's the kind of good news, bad news story. The faster growth, the longer it will take us to see "ultimate margins" but the flip side is the greater the long-term potential is.
Michael Tokich - Senior VP, CFO & Treasurer
And Matt, just to answer your question about the capital investment, the ones Walt is talking about and referring to, those would be 100% owned, operated, our capital going into that business and then we would sell the service associated with that. So no joint ventures at this point in time other than obviously, Northwell -- is a joint venture and remains a joint venture.
Julie Winter
And then I'll add -- I'm sorry I'll add one more thing, that mid-teens margin is obviously not reflected as corporate allocation.
Operator
Your next question is from Isaac Ro with Goldman Sachs.
Isaac Ro - VP
Walt, just a question on FY '19 guidance and that 4% to 5%, obviously, that's a relatively consistent growth rate with prior years. And at the same time, there's probably some dynamics in the underlying end markets that are evolving. And what I was most interested in was the nature of just where surgical volumes are taking place in the health care system. And the reason I ask is if you look at what's going on with hospitals, seeing slightly lower inpatient days but yet the device companies are seeing pretty good growth, help us think through where you're trying to find marginal growth? Is it the for primary care centers or is it more tertiary? Just kind of curious where you're trying to access at or above market growth rates as you move to this calendar -- this fiscal year?
Walter Rosebrough - CEO, President and Director
Sure. Great question. And particularly capital, it's always a game of moving parts. The -- I would say first in general, inpatient, everyone is working to reduce the length of stay or the patient days on the same amount of surgery. So the procedure volume and patient day volume actually over the last 30 years hasn't matched up because we have shrunken the number of patient rooms over the last 30 years by 20%, 25%. At the same time, we've grown procedures significantly. So it is indeed clear that when hospitals report patient days, that's very different from when they report procedures. The second issue you raised is in terms of where those procedures are going, clearly, we are seeing more and more of those procedures going into an outpatient setting, whether that be a hospital-based outpatient setting or whether it be an ambulatory surgery center or other procedural center, like a GI Center, that may or may not be on the hospital campus. And in very recent time, the last year, 1.5 years, we've clearly seen significant expansion in that ambulatory setting. Again, it seems it's going cycles a bit, if you kind of look back over the last 20, 30 years, there have been 2 or 3 cycles where ambulatory surgery centers grew very rapidly relative to hospital operating rooms. And that seems to kind of be going on right now. But in the long run, it tends to sort of work its way through as hospitals put their own "outpatient centers" either in the building or in another building so they can capture their Customers. So, but we do see ambulatory growing relative to inpatient, if you will. And then what happens as you'll see a phenomenon where you get 2 or 3 significant procedures, like when you start seeing heart-lung transplants, where even though it's only one procedure, that procedure takes 6 hours, that's very different from one that takes 30 minutes. And so it's not just procedures but volume of procedures. And we watch those phenomenon.
Isaac Ro - VP
That's helpful. And then maybe just a follow-up on capital allocation, it's kind of tied to the prior question which is can you talk a little bit about wanting to both invest organically as well through M&A. Can you help us frame some of the types of businesses where it would makes sense to be adding 2 distinct product lines versus getting into totally new categories where you can either leverage your expertise or your channel, to tap into a new vein of growth I'm just kind of trying to balance going into something that's sort of directly adjacent versus kind of new product category altogether.
Walter Rosebrough - CEO, President and Director
Yes. We don't get into that level of granularity, I'll call it. But I will say, all things being equal, we prefer to bring new products and services into businesses where we have channel and where we have expertise. So that would dominate our thinking in each of the major segments. And then moving, I'll call it, another half step out, as we did with U.S. endoscopy 5 years ago is, I'll call it the secondary in our thinking. but clearly, we've done that a couple of times in significant ways when we moved to the IMS business or HSS business, instrument repair business, that was clearly a next step adjacent move. We liked the move because it is very -- a big piece of that business is very much in the central sterile department where we're already strong. Even though we feel that it's best to have separate sales forces and separate service forces for that right now, it was still a Customer set that we highly understood and had a great deal of presence in. So that's the kind of thinking we will look at. Same with G.I., obviously, we're in GI, in the cleaning and care side of G.I. for a long time, 20, 30 years, and we moved more into this specialty -- specialty procedure products to assist the GI procedure. So that would be the kind of thing we would be looking at.
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Our next question is from David Stratton with Great Lakes Review.
David Michael Stratton - Research Analyst
Really quick, I was wondering if you could remind us of your input cost, and especially given the backdrop of commodity volatility. And how much of part sales or your margins that is and what you see it trending as going forward into the new year?
Walter Rosebrough - CEO, President and Director
We -- on our manufactured product, which is I think the areas that you're really talking about here, 55% of our business now is service. So a lot of the input variables aren't as, what you want to call it, the inflation in those variables, it's all about labor more than materials. And so that, if you think about what labor cost or prices are likely to be doing the next couple of years, you would have a pretty good indication. On the product side of the business, there are significant inputs. And it's fairly typical I would guess of manufacturing type of it is in 50% to 60% of our cost is raw material. Depends on how much we're in-sourcing versus how much other people are making for us. And so it varies by product line. And we are seeing a little pickup of inflation, we're seeing a little bit on the nickel and steel side, obviously, the work going on right now, it's getting -- it's difficult to predict what is going to happen to steel prices the next little bit depending on how we handle trade. But we don't think that would be a significant number or barrier for us. So in general, we are seeing a little pickup but it's not something that we're losing sleep over at this point in time.
David Michael Stratton - Research Analyst
Great. And then, when you talk about the -- you're shifting in Healthcare Products segment to more of a capital equipment with your new products, I was wondering if you could give a little color to what you're seeing on the demand side. Is that being meeting Customer's needs? Or you're just coming out with new products to refresh old systems?
Walter Rosebrough - CEO, President and Director
Yes. Our product development function does look at 2 components. The first is, are there things that our Customers can use in current product suite we have? We have V-PRO, the new V-PRO is a great example of that. It is hydrogen peroxide sterilization, and they've had hydrogen peroxide sterilization for a while. But what we're giving them is a more rapid approach to sterilizing certain things, so instead of taking a half hour, it takes 15 minutes kind of thing. We are also giving them less aborts from some technology we put into the system, so they don't want a half cycle and waste hydrogen peroxide and have to redo it plus that to lose the time. So there's -- so the question is, is that -- we view that as meeting Customer demand and we think most of our products in the capital equipment side should have something like that happening with them in the 5 to 7-year timeframe. Because again, if you want to reduce the average life of the product, you have to give people a reason to do something different. That's a true value to them. Then there's the flip side where we have a product from nowhere, if you will, a new product to the universe. We have more of that in the U.S. endoscopy side of our business and in other places, but we have a number of products that are those kinds of products. But again in terms of, I'll call it, percentage basis, we're probably 2 or 3 to 1 toward the product improvement side, type of new product, to the kind of fresh to the universe product.
Operator
And this concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Julie Winter for any closing remarks.
Julie Winter
Thank you, everybody, for taking the time to join us this morning. And we look forward to seeing many of you out on the road in the next few weeks.
Operator
The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.