IDEX Corporation (NYSE:IEX) is looking for M&A. Eric Ashleman, Chief Executive Officer said, "I would say from an innings call, we're probably about halfway through it. I do think life for us kind of moves in 10-year increments, and we're probably about the midpoint. And we've got some other things we want to do to kind of perfect the source code, if you will, and further exploit some of the markets where we've got some good positioning now.
And we'll continue -- we'll be doing some M&A along the way to flesh it out. Sean Gillen, CFO said, "So I think first, kind of in the near term here, it will probably look pretty similar to last year where there'll be some bolt-on M&A. And last year, the company acquired Micro-LAM, which is a pretty good proxy, plus or minus for bolt-on M&A. And as you mentioned, stepped up the share repurchase activity, because to your point, if you go back the past few years, some pretty significant capital deployment across a few acquisitions to help build these platforms and scale them. And last year and near term will be kind of execution, integration on those, some bolt-on M&A and then the increase in share repurchase activity.
Longer term, we're not here to just be a share repurchase machine. We do generate a lot of cash flow, but I think that will more naturally go towards M&A, bolt-on in nature, maybe a little bit bigger. And I do think that the repo, they'll probably -- most likely be a consistent level that occurs, maybe not at the level that happens in this fiscal year.
But that's kind of the lever depending on what M&A materializes, given the cash flow generation and the leverage position of the company, we can dial the repo up or down, as maybe bigger M&A once you get through this year starts to come in focus".
