Alliance Laundry Holdings Inc. (ALH) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to Alliance Laundry's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Earnings Conference Call. With us today are Mike Schoeb, Chief Executive Officer; Dean Nolden, Chief Financial Officer; and Bob Calver, Vice President of Investor Relations. [Operator Instructions] With that, it is my pleasure to turn the program over to the team. Bob, please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. Along with today's call, you can find our earnings press release and presentation on our Investor Relations website at ir.alliancelaundry.com. A replay will also be available on our website following the call. As a reminder, today's earnings release, presentation and statements made during this call include forward-looking statements under federal securities laws. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations and projections. Such risks and uncertainties include factors set forth in the earnings release and in our filings with the SEC, including the Risk Factors section of our IPO prospectus and subsequent 10-K filing. We assume no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, except as required by law. Additionally, during today's call, we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures outlined in our earnings presentation. We believe these measures are important indicators of our operations as they exclude items that may not be indicative of ongoing business performance. Reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measure can be found in our earnings release and presentation appendix. I'll now turn the call over to Mike.

Thanks, Bob, and thank you all for joining us this morning for our first full year earnings call as a public company. I'll discuss our strong full year performance, key drivers of our success and how we're well positioned for continued growth. Dean will then walk through our financial results in detail and introduce our 2026 guidance. We'll conclude with Q&A. But I want to start where I always begin, which is with appreciation for our employees around the world, our customers, distribution partners and our shareholders and analysts. We value your trust and engagement. 2025 was a landmark year for Alliance. Our results demonstrate what we have been talking about since becoming a public company that a resilient, replacement-driven, essential industry, a market-leading position and disciplined operational excellence delivers strong outcomes. And now before we get into our results, let me walk you through how I think about the business. First, our industry. Commercial laundry is a vibrant, growing and essential part of modern life. Laundry is not discretionary. It performs across all economic cycles, providing a level of growth, consistency and downside protection that is hard to find. And every time there's a macroeconomic event or noise in the world, we're reminded of how fortunate we are to be a part of this incredible industry. After all, as we said on our roadshow, every day is laundry day. And second, our leadership position. We are the #1 pure-play commercial laundry manufacturer in the world. And we have built striking advantages over any other competitor. Our scale, our global footprint and demonstrated manufacturing prowess exist to deliver what our customers want most and need to run their businesses efficiently. They are incredibly sophisticated, and they understand that long life, durability and reliability, combined with world-class aftermarket capabilities result in a favorable total cost of ownership. Initial price is always important. But what we hear again and again is please do not lower quality. That is what drives us and helps strengthen our leadership position. And in my nearly 20 years with Alliance, I've never been more confident about the opportunities ahead of us. Turning now to our Q4 and full year highlights on Slide 4. We finished strong in Q4 with revenue up 10% year-over-year, driven by strong volume growth alongside selective price realization. For the full year, we delivered total revenue of $1.7 billion, up 13% versus the prior year, and adjusted EBITDA grew 14% with a record full year adjusted EBITDA margin of 25.5%. Nearly all of our growth for the quarter and full year was organic in nature. So 2025 marks our second consecutive year of double-digit growth on both the top and bottom line, continuing our long track record of compounding above the market from a revenue base that is 25% larger than just 2 years ago. Full year growth was driven 70-30 by volume versus price with Q4 normalizing to a more historical even split. This is consistent with the dynamics we've seen in this industry over many cycles, where our diversification in product, geography and end markets provides multiple avenues for growth. We strengthened our balance sheet, reducing net leverage to 2.8x, a reduction of 2.2 turns, roughly equally from operational deleveraging and our successful IPO in October. And we continue to invest in the business. Capital expenditures of $54 million were invested in capacity expansion, automation and new product development with increased investment to further support our digital and engineering capabilities to enhance innovation and Alliance's competitive differentiation. So before we take you through our 2025 performance in more detail, let me step back and remind you why we are confident. Alliance stands alongside the very best industrial companies, not just in growth, profitability and free cash flow generation, but across every dimension that defines a great industrial business. On Slide 5, we believe there are 4 factors that define why Alliance wins and is able to create sustainable long-term value. First, we operate in a very attractive industry. Commercial laundry is essential to everyday life. It is not cyclical, offering downside protection and economic uncertainty and steady replacement-driven demand. Second, we believe Alliance has a sustainable competitive advantage. Our financial scale is more than twice that of our nearest competitor. We operate a global manufacturing and engineering platform across 3 continents that few, if any, competitors can replicate. That scale is both a barrier to entry and a growth enabler. Third, we have a proven team that has delivered across economic cycles, and 2025 was no exception. And fourth, we have a compelling growth algorithm supported by systemic tailwinds. Next, I want to spend some time clearly laying out what defines Alliance's culture, its leadership and consistent success. Slide 6 captures this well. First, we are a pure-play commercial laundry company. This means every investment dollar, every engineering hour, every strategic decision is focused on one thing, commercial laundry. Even our residential product is a commercial machine sold into the home through independent retailers and has minimal exposure to new construction housing cycles. Our commercial and home customers buy for many reasons, but it largely is because they, too, are searching for low total cost of ownership. They tend to be more affluent given our price point, or they are processing large volumes of laundry such as those with large families or blue-collar workers who work in fields such as agriculture, oil and gas or our mechanical. And let me emphasize again, we are replacement driven. Secondly, everything we do is built around delivering total cost of ownership. Our customers are clear, don't cheapen the product, don't cut corners, don't sacrifice quality. And this doesn't mean our teams are not focused on cost, but it does mean we are very methodical and test extensively to ensure we protect our TCO that customers value. Thirdly, our value proposition is supported by high-quality distributors who provide premier pre- and post-sales support and service that our end customer and operators demand. Over decades, we have intentionally built a global distribution network of over 600 partners. These are businesses whose economics are centered on capital-efficient, demand-driven ordering. They do not hold large inventories or over purchase ahead of demand. And our delivery capabilities mean there is no incentive to do so. The results we see clearly mirror end market demand with limited order pattern distortions that can affect other industrial businesses. And importantly, commercial laundry is mission-critical. laundromats, hospitals, hotels and communal laundry facilities need their machines to run regardless of the interest rate cycle, AI CapEx trends, construction activity or any single macro theme. We believe this genuine noncyclicality is underappreciated relative to other industrial businesses whose end markets are more driven by volatile or cyclical demand dynamics, and it is a distinction we think will increasingly differentiate Alliance. Now I'll highlight a few initiatives that made 2025 such an excellent year. On the innovation front, we launched multiple industry-leading products. We continue to expand ProCapture, our unique and patented lint filtration system across more of our product lines. We launched the T55 stack tumbler, the industry's largest stack dryer. We launched Scan-Pay-Wash, a first-of-its-kind cashless payment solution requiring no app download that has seen faster adoption than we have seen for any previous digital launch with more than 1/3 of 1 million transactions. I repeat, 1/3 of 1 million transactions processed to date. And we began selling Stax-X, a stacked washer and dryer for laundromats, developed entirely at our Thailand engineering center for Asian markets, and that has seen strong initial demand. Supporting our clear value proposition, our global test lab teams carried out over 5 million hours of physical product testing in 2025. This is the equivalent of more than 570 years of continuous testing conducted in a single year across our testing base worldwide, reflecting on our commitment to quality and durability, our testing hours will increase significantly in 2026 as our new facilities in Thailand and The Czech Republic are fully ramped up. We also expanded our direct business in Q4, acquiring one of our New York-based distributors, deepening our direct presence in one of North America's most attractive urban markets. And just last week, we closed on an additional acquisition to further consolidate our position in that same market. We invested $54 million to expand capacity, add automation and launch new product lines in all of our global facilities and enhanced our advanced testing capabilities worldwide. Alongside these investments, our cost-down initiatives, operational excellence programs and supply chain optimization delivered approximately 80 basis points of gross margin expansion, supporting our continued margin expansion trajectory and focus on investing in growth. And finally, we successfully established ourselves as a public company, which allowed us to significantly delever, strengthen our balance sheet and provide capital allocation flexibility to support growth as we move into 2026. We also strengthened our governance, reporting and Investor Relations functions to support our long-term growth. On Slide 8, let me turn to our 2026 strategic priorities. And we are fortunate to operate in a very stable market that grows consistently through economic cycles, and we see healthy demand into 2026 and beyond. This demand is broad-based across our key geographic markets with strength across our Vended, On-premise and Commercial-in-Home product offerings. Dean will walk you through our detailed guidance for 2026. But as it is every year, our first priority is to deliver profitable growth. And at a high level, we expect revenue growth of between 5% and 7%, split roughly evenly between volume and price and adjusted EBITDA growth of between 6% and 8%, implying continued margin expansion despite the increased costs of being a public company. And as we've shared previously, the global commercial laundry industry grows at approximately 5% per year. Our '26 guidance of 5% to 7% revenue growth means we expect to continue to compound above the market. The demand environment has not changed, and we believe Alliance will continue to outgrow the industry. Secondly, we will continue to invest in innovation and new product development. We have a robust pipeline planned across multiple categories with continued evolution of our physical products and digital platform to meet the growing demand for solutions across our end markets. Third, drive manufacturing and operational excellence. We will continue to invest approximately 3% of revenue in CapEx on top of the 2% of revenue we expect to spend annually on physical and digital product development and innovation. These investments will drive efficiency. They will add capacity, and they will allow us to accelerate profitable growth. Fourth is accelerate digital adoption. Our connected equipment base grew to 245,000 machines at year-end, up 25% year-over-year. And this matters because every connected machine provides valuable insights to operators, allowing them to increase revenue and improve efficiency. And we believe it makes us the obvious first choice when they buy, and if we do it right, we will be the preferred choice when time comes to replace their equipment. And finally, maintain our disciplined approach to capital allocation, continuing to delever organically by thoughtfully investing in long-term growth opportunities and maintaining flexibility to opportunistically return capital to shareholders. With that, I'll turn it over to Dean to walk through the financial details.

Thanks, Mike. Starting on Slide 9. I'll walk through our strong fourth quarter results and balance sheet position, then cover 2026 guidance and capital allocation. Fourth quarter net revenue was up 10% to $435 million versus the prior year. We saw real unit volume increases across our end markets, which contributed roughly half of the growth in the quarter with the balance from price. This reinforces what Mike said earlier, this is a demand-driven growth story supported by both volume and price that is consistent with the durable growth pattern we've seen in this industry over time. Q4 gross profit was up 16% to $161 million or 37% of revenue, with gross margin up 190 basis points versus the prior year. Margin expansion was driven by strong volume and successful cost-down initiatives in the quarter and supported by pricing actions that largely offset the approximate $5 million impact of tariffs in the quarter. Q4 operating expenses were $97 million or 22.4% of revenue, including a $16 million noncash charge for performance-based option vesting related to our IPO. Excluding this onetime item, operating expenses as a percentage of revenue were consistent with our expectations and reflect the full quarter impact of public company costs and our continued investments in commercial, engineering and digital capabilities. Adjusted EBITDA was up 17% to $107 million or 24.5% of revenue in the quarter, which was a 140 basis point improvement in profitability. We are proud of the quality of our growth with revenue up 10% and adjusted EBITDA up 17%. Alliance's ability to consistently drop more to the bottom line than add at the top is a function of our scale advantage and operating discipline, plus strong incremental margins on higher volumes. Q4 adjusted net income was up 18% year-over-year to $49 million, which excludes the previously referenced vesting of stock options at IPO and other nonoperating or nonrecurring items. The improvement was driven by strong operating performance and significantly lower interest expense following our debt reduction actions. Our Q4 effective tax rate was 35.6%, resulting in a full year effective tax rate of 26.3%. This is elevated versus the prior year due to approximately $4 million in discrete noncash charges, primarily related to our transition to public company status and the valuation allowance increase against certain foreign tax credits. Excluding those items, our Q4 and full year rates would have been 21.4% and 23.5%, respectively. We ended the year with total debt of $1.4 billion, down from $2.1 billion at the start of the year and cash of $123 million. Net debt of $1.2 billion represents a net leverage ratio of 2.8x adjusted EBITDA, a reduction of 2.2 turns in a single year. Approximately 1 turn of that deleveraging was funded by cash from operations, which increased 46% versus the prior year and from adjusted EBITDA expansion, with the balance funded by IPO proceeds, our strong operational cash generation demonstrates our capability to continue deleveraging going forward. Turning to Slide 10 and drilling into the segments for Q4. North America revenue was up 9% to $317 million, with adjusted EBITDA up 15% to $88 million and margin increasing to 27.9%. This margin level is consistent with our historical performance in the segment and reinforces our ability to expand adjusted EBITDA margins as we scale on our existing manufacturing footprint. Growth in Q4 was broad-based across all 3 end markets. Our Vended markets, both retail laundromats and communal laundry and multi-housing locations, delivered strong growth driven by new store development and existing operators modernizing their fleets with higher capacity digitally connected equipment. On-premise delivered solid results driven by predictable replacement demand that characterizes their end market. And Commercial-in-Home home continued to outpace the industry. International Q4 revenue was up 12% to $118 million, with adjusted EBITDA up 25% to $29 million. Our margin of 24.8% represents 260 basis points of expansion year-over-year. This margin expansion reflects both the mix benefit from a growing European business and improving operating leverage as we scale our international business on our existing manufacturing platform. Europe continued its strong momentum. Our total cost of ownership value proposition resonates strongly in this market as it has an operator base that is actively investing in fleet upgrades and energy efficiency. The margin profile of our European business is accretive to the overall International segment. And as Alliance continues to scale in this, it has a meaningful positive impact on segment level profitability. In Asia Pacific, the launch of our Stax-X stacked washer dryer has been well received. We've been encouraged with the early customer adoption and the meaningful long-term growth platform that represents heading into 2026 and beyond. For full year 2025, North America delivered revenue of $1.3 billion and adjusted EBITDA of $361 million, both up 14% year-over-year. EBITDA margin remained strong at 28.5%, which speaks to the quality of growth we're generating in this segment. Again, growth was broad-based across all of our end markets with attractive underlying volume growth complemented by continued price realization. Commercial-in-Home significantly outpaced the industry as consumers continue to choose our brand for durability and reliability. Vended market growth was solid and supported by new store development and fleet modernization. And our On-premise laundry delivered steady growth in structural replacement cycles complemented by new locations. International delivered revenue up 10% to $440 million, with adjusted EBITDA up 17% to $121 million. Adjusted EBITDA margin of 27.4% was up 160 basis points and reflected strong performance while continuing to make investments in emerging market expansion and sales infrastructure. Europe was a standout performer throughout the year, driven by our Speed Queen licensed store strategy. We saw ongoing growth in our licensed store model as well as strong results across our direct sales offices in this region with our licensed store model continuing to gain momentum and establish Speed Queen as the premium choice in European vended laundry. Growth in APAC was solid with strong performance in our priority emerging markets where population and urbanization drive laundry demand. We're establishing market leadership positions across the region and are leveraging our first-mover advantage as the Vended laundry concept gains adoption and the On-premise laundry end market continues to develop. Our long-standing local-for-local manufacturing strategy with plants in the U.S., Europe and 2 in Asia, each primarily serving their home markets, provided significant structural tariff protection relative to foreign competitors who are more exposed to duties on imported products. We experienced modest tariff impact from certain imported components, which we largely offset on both a dollar and margin basis through selective pricing actions in 2025. Turning to Slide 12 and initiating our 2026 full year guidance. We expect revenue growth of approximately 5% to 7%, driven by balanced contributions from volume and price and expect adjusted EBITDA growth of approximately 6% to 8%, continuing our long track record of profitable growth and strong margins. This above-market revenue growth reflects the strong tailwinds we have discussed and also takes into consideration normalization of benefits from customers who have returned following our 2022 to 2023 profitability initiatives, the outperformance of Commercial-in-Home and the moderation of tariff-related pricing, each of which supported double-digit growth over the past couple of years. As we considered our guidance, we anticipate year-over-year revenue growth to be stronger in the first half of 2026, driven by pricing carryover from actions taken in 2025, with volume growth more consistent across the entire year. We expect adjusted EBITDA growth to be driven by gross margin expansion from pricing, cost-down initiatives and manufacturing leverage, partially offset by strategic investments in international markets, continued digital and engineering investments and approximately $8 million in incremental public company costs. Public company cost impact is more heavily weighted to the first half of next year due to the second half prior year ramp-up. And therefore, we anticipate margin expansion in 2026 to be weighted toward the back half of the year. We remain confident in our ability to generate free cash flow and expect to reduce leverage by approximately 0.75 of a turn in 2026, bringing us to the low 2x net debt leverage range by year-end. In addition, to assist with modeling in 2026, we expect CapEx as a percentage of revenue to be approximately 3% and anticipate an effective tax rate of approximately 23.5%, total interest expense of approximately $85 million and diluted share count of approximately 205 million shares. Turning to Slide 13. Before I wrap up, I'll briefly touch on how we are continuing to prioritize capital allocation with the overarching goal of maximizing long-term shareholder value. First and foremost, deleveraging continues to be our top capital allocation priority. As I outlined earlier, we have a strong track record of reducing leverage by 0.75 to a full turn per year through free cash flow generation and EBITDA expansion alone. We are targeting net leverage in the low 2x range by year-end 2026. We also plan to continue investing behind high-return growth opportunities, new products, capacity expansion, digital capabilities and potentially selective tuck-in M&A that enhances our platform. These are the investments that should help sustain our competitive advantage and drive above-market growth, and we will continue to invest in these areas. And finally, we will maintain the flexibility to return capital to shareholders in the future when appropriate through share repurchases in the near term and considering a potential dividend policy over the longer term. With that, let me turn it back to Mike.

Thanks, Dean. Before we open up for Q&A, I want to emphasize a few key points. One, we hold a leading market position as the only scaled pure-play operator in a noncyclical recession-resistant and essential industry. Two, we have a proven team and business model that have delivered strong results through every economic cycle and the strategic clarity to continue doing so. Three, we are committed to creating long-term shareholder value through our disciplined growth, operational excellence and balanced capital allocation. And over the past 2 decades, I have seen this business successfully navigate recessions, a global pandemic and shifts in the competitive landscape. The fundamentals that have carried us through all of it are stronger today than they have ever been, and that is the foundation for our next chapter. I'll close by thanking our employees, distribution partners, customers and shareholders for your continued support. We look forward to driving Alliance's story and long-term value forward together. And with that, let's open up the line for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question will come from Tomo Sano with JPMorgan.

Congrats on the quarter.

Thanks, Tomo.

Thank you.

And my first question is, given the trends you saw in Q4, do you expect any notable differences in demand strength between North America and your international business across your key segments as you target 5% to 7% top line growth for 2026? Are there particular areas where you see more robust or softer demand, please?

Yes. I would say, Tomo -- this is Mike, that, again, we see really strong demand across all parts of the business. I do think given some of the volatility in the Middle East at the moment, that's likely to be a little bit weaker, and that will take some time to see how that ends. But I would say across the board, we really do see strong, strong opportunities, and that is across the business. There's none that I could think of, honestly, that would give me pause or concern. And then we've talked about sort of over-indexing a little bit on the laundromat piece in particular, right, both in emerging markets as well as in more mature markets such as Europe and the U.S. and select Asian countries, but very strong across the board.

A follow-up on, again, 2026 guidance. How are you factoring in outlook for steel cost, pricing power and potential changes in tariff policy? Could you elaborate on the assumptions you're making for each of these drivers and how sensitive your guidance is to movements in these areas, please?

Yes. So in steel, we're locked, right? And we have more than offset those cost increases, both on steel as well as tariffs with some pricing actions that we took last year. So they are both margin and dollar accretive. So that is straight up. And what was the second part of the question? I don't recall. I'm not sure if I answer that, Tomo.

Tariff policy.

Tariff policy.

Sorry. Yes, who knows. You can mean. But we expect no change. And again, you guys are reading the news like we are. If something does change, hey, we're ready to react. But we expect that the administration will continue to find ways to keep those barriers in place. And we do see Tomo competitors beginning to take action. And so that is something that we thought would happen, and it's playing out exactly that way.

And Tomo, I would add that the steel and aluminum tariff duties that have been put in place were not part of the Supreme Court ruling. So those are still in place and a competitive advantage for us as foreign competition and manufacturing in international locations imports into the U.S. We'll keep watching that, to Mike's point, from their pricing actions and react accordingly. But we still think that's a tailwind for us in 2026.

Our next question comes from Kyle Menges with Citigroup.

Maybe, Mike, following up on your last comment. Just what are you seeing from competitors that are facing more tariff impact versus you guys? And just how do you see that relative tailwind unfolding as we progress throughout 2026?

Yes. So again, we know where their costs up, again, given the tariffs on steel, which I'll remind people is 50% for any non-U.S. steel and aluminum content. And remember, that is our primary and their primary input material. So we've seen not enough to fully offset where their costs are. And if I were them, I think what I would be doing is looking that over slowly over time to try to offset those premiums. But it is significant, Kyle. And again, we are seeing action. Sometimes it's very hard to get real information. But again, we know from the cost base. And given their financial profile, it is not a hit that they can sustain and they must pass on those cost increases.

That's helpful. And then you guys had mentioned that international capacity. I think you had said kind of fully ramped or something along those lines. I'm curious just at what point in international markets would you need to potentially expand capacity in Czech and Thailand?

Yes. So the expansion that we did was really more on the engineering front in the laboratories, right, to get that 24/7 global engineering accelerated product development and innovation. So in terms of those facilities, and remember, we have a Czech facility, a facility in Thailand as well as one in China. And those locations and the core ones are really Czech and Thailand. They've got plenty of capacity and plenty of room to continue to grow without any real material significant investments of any kind, right? So we might have to add additional bodies, but there is no real, again, CapEx and they can run for a while.

Our next question will come from Mike Halloran with Baird.

So maybe just a little more help with the guidance here. I know, Dean, you laid out a little stronger revenue growth in the front half of the year versus back and the margin expansion later on through the year. But maybe just help a little bit more with the cadencing. How does this compare with normal seasonality as you look at the core business, particularly from a volume perspective? Any particular weighting we should put to the revenue or the EBITDA front half versus back half? I mean just help us get dialed a little bit more so on where the front half should be versus back half or even first quarter.

Yes. So thanks, Mike. We're not giving quarterly guidance, but to your point, and to help you understand how the year will unfold. From a revenue perspective, first of all, I would say we expect volume growth to be consistent throughout the year. So underlying our guidance is consistent volume growth quarter-over-quarter, '26 versus '25. In the first half of the year, though, we have a meaningful amount of carryover of pricing actions taken mostly in North America to offset the tariff costs in 2025. So those pricing actions will really ramp up the top line from a pricing perspective in the first half of the year. Also impacts international, but to a lesser extent, all of that really evening out as the full year completes to about 50-50 price versus volume. Having said that, we do have some pricing actions in our forecast, primarily internationally weighted toward the first half of the year. So those will continue to benefit us, but those are in the low single-digit types of increases. Our guidance does not assume any additional pricing actions in North America in 2026. So that's something we'll continuously watch and an opportunity for us as markets and competition evolves. Regarding the EBITDA side, we expect continued EBITDA expansion sequentially as well as year-over-year. But it's a little bit muted in the first half of the year, primarily because those public company costs are rolling over. We have annually now about $15 million in public company costs. $8 million incremental in 2026, and those are really evident in the first half of the year. So the price increases and margin expansion that we're going to experience throughout the year from the underlying business will be slightly muted by those rollover of public company costs, but those are well known, and we think that's the maximum amount as we go forward. Hopefully, that's helpful. And if you have a follow-up there?

Yes. No. So maybe just a question on the distribution side of things, a couple in the New York area lately. Is the opportunity -- maybe just -- I know we've talked about this through the process, but do you see a different opportunity today than, say, a couple of years ago? Was the fact that you had a couple in the same region more a function of what the go-to-market strategy was in that region versus a broader opportunity in other regions? And maybe just what's the funnel look like as far as bringing on more of your own distribution in the United States?

Yes. So I'll say, Mike, it was really a strategy we mapped out 7 or 8 years ago as we really embarked on it. And we identified certain specific markets that we wanted to really make sure that we were present in a more meaningful way, and we had people that we could partner with. The last piece of that puzzle, and that's really what it was, is putting together, identifying the markets and then getting in a position when we had the partnership with distribution, that sort of New York metro area in particular, was an area where we just felt there was a lot that we could do. We had good partners, and we are incredibly excited about that -- those 2 recent acquisitions. We think there's more to do. But again, we are being very selective. And as those opportunities come up, they will be opportunistic. And as I think I've said to you, hey, you should think of us as very capable of doing these acquisitions, but it is not something that is needed in order to continue to grow at an above-market rate.