Highlights From Oppenheimer's Industrial Growth Conference

Oppenheimer held its 10th annual Industrial Growth Conference this week. Here are some of the notable highlights.

's Chief Investment Officer and Senior Vice President Jamie Miller noted Information Technology is the "key enable" for 50 basis points of guided gross margin expansion in 2015, through ERP consolidations, shifting workload from data centers into cloud and factory optimization.

's Senior Director of Investor Relations Susan Conway demonstrated the company's growing interest in 3D vision and the possibility of doing M&A around that technology. Extending capabilities to the area seems "natural," according to the analyst who further suggested that the company has demonstrated a bias towards internal creation. Nevertheless, an "aggressive" expansion of addressable market has always been a "hallmark" of the compay management team.

's VP of Strategy and Commercial Excellence at Honeywell's Performance Materials and Technologies (PMT) business unit Patrick Hogan discussed the company's growth inflection, ongoing investments, and impact from lower oil prices. Hogan noted the Solstice low global warming potential product family has seen $2.6 billion in wins and could boost Fluorines' operating margin by six percentage points. In oil and gas, the company is mitigating upstream project delays by leveraging mid and downstream opportunities. The executive also noted avenues that could yield $200 million to $400 million incremental profit potential through leveraging UOP's business model and capabilities to serve different sectors from traditional markets.

's Chief Financial Officer Heath Mitts stated that the company is committed at least $250 million towards acquisitions from its proprietary funnel this year. The executive reiterated that the company's management team has an agnostic view between FMT and HST for deals.