Richard J. Tobin
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer at Dover
Thanks, Brad. I'm on Slide 8. It was a busy quarter with the portfolio moves, discontinued ops and some countercyclicality within the portfolio. As a result of that, we thought it prudent to lay the groundwork for 2025 earlier to provide some hopefully helpful views.
Let's start with the portfolio. We articulated throughout the year that underlying demand across many of our end markets, end markets is solid and that remains the case as we look forward into 2025. With a diverse portfolio such as ours, we enter each planning cycle constructing a view of the overall macro, the individual business cycles and our competitive position. In 2024, we had a familiar challenge, much like we did in the post-COVID period navigating the biopharma demand cycle. In 2024, we managed a down cycle on the portion of our high backlog long-cycle portfolio as well as the regulatory and stocking, idiosyncrasies, Jesus, in heat exchangers as shown on the right side of the page.
As you can see on the slide, we managed to offset the significant cycle headwind with mixing up our consolidated margin on broader short-cycle improvement, augmented by our growth platforms, which we invested in both organically and inorganically. As we complete 2024 and begin forming our view for 2025, we do not foresee the same countercyclicality in the portfolio. Bookings and customer forecasts indicate that our growth platforms are in a multi-period demand cycle. We are particularly pleased with the growth rates in biopharma components, thermal connectors, precision components and CO2 systems, all with margin accretion attributes to the portfolio. We expect heat exchangers to return to growth in 2025 on the recovery in heat pumps and large format demand, district heating and demand and data center applications for which we are expanding production capacity today.
Let's move to Slide 9. Organic investment, inorganic growth and shareholder friendly capital return remain front and center to our strategy, and we have done all three so-far in 2024. We have been more active on portfolio pruning this year at attractive valuations as we've methodically reshaped the portfolio to higher secular growth and less cyclical end market exposures. As mentioned earlier, we will exit '24 with significant optionality for capital deployment and/or capital return, which is reflected on the balance sheet capacity bar on the right.
Let's finish up with Slide 10. I've already covered the adjusted EPS guidance to accommodate the discontinued operations earlier in the deck, which is summarized on the left. At the time of the ESG announcement, we are often asked about the assumptions needed to offset the lost earnings from divestitures in 2025. We prepared the bridge on the slide to provide some direction on the moving pieces on a pro-forma basis.
Let's not get too excited. We will, as always provide formal '25 guidance after the close of the year, but I thought it would, I thought, but I hope that you find it to be a reasonable pro forma view that provides clarity on the moving parts. Left to right. We start with pre-disposal EPS from our previous guide. We treat retrospectively the disposals on a full-year basis. We treat the cash balance prospectively as if we're held for the full-year in the short-term in highly liquid positions where it is presently, which includes the retirement of commercial paper costs in 2024 and we roll forward the 2024 acquisitions earnings benefit.
We get to a rebased 2025 EPS of $8.60 to $8.75 on a base model that assumes zero organic growth in 2025. If we model a 3% to 5% organic growth at a 40% conversion rate next year, which includes $25 million in restructuring roll forward that is already completed or underway this year, we get an additional $0.55 to $0.90 of EPS. As I mentioned earlier, we are accelerating our synergy capture from recent acquisitions, including footprint consolidation, so I would expect the restructuring contribution to be higher in 2025.
Considering what was covered in the growth, platform's growth trajectory, margin mix and long cycle comparable performance that we discussed on Slide 8, the top line and incremental margin assumptions seem reasonable. Now, I certainly doubt that we'll sit on that amount of liquidity unless there is a drastic negative change in the macro and then in that case, it is nice to have an insurance policy. Clearly, this model can be flexed for share repurchases and M&A, but the model timing is problematic. So this is a simplified view.
Our preference is to be active in, on the M&A front. And at present, that environment is getting better. We have an interesting opportunity pipeline, but rest assured, we will proceed with the capital discipline that we have demonstrated in the past.
With that, let's go to Q&A. And I won't say idiosyncrasies [Phonetic] or whatever that is. Okay, let's go.
