Bid Corporation Limited (BID) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All the technology works. We're all participating in this update virtually. It's very nice to be able to talk to you again and maybe give you some news that it is slightly better or a lot better than what we've experienced over the last 2 years. We've put out a pretty comprehensive trading update today, which gives a lot of detail about the business. I'm not necessarily going to go through all in detail. There will be an opportunity for Q&A at the end in the normal fashion. Please send the questions to the detail provided, which will then come through to me, and I'll address them at the end. As always, please try to keep the questions to questions I can answer. I can't say exactly what the inflation rate is across all our businesses as we sit here at the moment and all those other wonderful numbers that you crave. What I can do is give you a feel for where the business is, where the economies in the geographies we're trading and not tracking and what our best guess on the short to medium future looks like. We definitely look in interesting times, and there's no doubt that, yes, that's not normal. I'm not sure what normal means. Yes, I just think that times are different to what they have been in the last 2 years. We're not addressing COVID issues in most geographies anymore. But we are addressing and facing a different set of issues, which raise greater the term unique sets of opportunities and challenges that the business responds to accordingly. The overwhelming theme that is coming out of trading at the moment is it is very, very strong. It's bounced back exceptionally strong after the Omicron wave sort of [indiscernible] was found to be not all that lethal, I suppose is the correct word, that people just got on the business and started opening up and economies opened up and things started getting back to pre-pandemic sorts of levels and a lot of pent-up demand, something like to fruition. And things snapped back probably quicker than most people had anticipated. That's been compounded by some challenges that we will talk about. But overall, we are seeing demand as very, very robust. It definitely is pent-up demand. People are almost probably fed up have been told what they can and can't bid out over the last few years. And I'm now going to go out and do what they want to do. And we're seeing most industries in which we operate, most markets, most segments, bouncing back exceptionally stronger. Obviously, there are a few that will take a little bit longer. But even though when they continue to bounce back, they're coming back with a vengeance with the positive vengeance. And that's been good for our business. I think the most telling in numbers is, if you look at the March, April, May revenue statistics and don't compare it to last year because last year was COVID-impacted to various differing degrees in different geographies, but we're somewhere up between 116 trending towards -- I mean, 20% up in real currency basis compared to 2019, which is the last comparable period that we had that was not impacted. Now obviously, that's impacted by inflation. And we actually can't tell you what the inflation of branches between '19 and '22, we take a guess in various different geographies. But we actually can't tell you exactly what it is. But there is volume growth and there is inflationary growth in the selling price as well. COVID is not finished in all the geographies we operate in, as much as we'd like to say it is. Our Greater China business, which comprises Hong Kong, China and Macau are still very much in the middle of it. I'm sure you're all aware of what's going on in China with the lockdown. It's now spread from Shanghai to Beijing. And who knows when that will end, how that will end, but it's certainly not following the playbook of any other country in the world so far. Hong Kong has been through a tough time, but they are reopening quite quickly. I think they're being held back a little bit, but they are trying to open up relatively quickly. So as we will see, at least the Hong Kong business that was back. Just to cover up on the COVID impact that we're still feeling, it relates more to a start in this year, where you still have quite a high degree, and it's at various different belts and different geographies of starting pressures, which are brought to bear by COVID isolation rules. So you still have elements where if someone has COVID, they can't come to work for 7 days if they're in close contact. In certain geographies, they can't come to work for 7 days, and that is having an impact on not only us, but our customers as well. So compounding the labor shortages are the COVID-related labor shortages, which fortunately we can see in places like the U.K. with a further down across of normalization have less of an impact. So one of the major issues we're seeing at the moment. So from a top line point of view, we've seen very, very strong demand. And we see strong demand across almost all sectors. What we are seeing to a degree is a shift of consumption away from those elements that market done particularly well during lockdown. And we're talking about those that are purely focused on takeaway home delivery, probably the pizza segment to a degree, the fast food segment, they probably aren't experiencing the same degree of growth that we're seeing elsewhere. So I think people are just cycling through this. I'm going to say how to get that delivered do we're actually going to go out and experience an entertainment option and out-of-home option. So almost all segments are growing strongly, other than those that were impacted -- that were positively impacted to a large degree previously, there's some correction going on there. In the areas that we deal in retail, we're also seeing some difficulty in the retail space that the retails definitely are seeing a stronger way for retail and they've had a glorious 2 years while people were stuck at home. And there's no doubt that the out-of-home market is benefiting from that or the growth in the out-of-home market is negatively impacting the retailers. And so the retailers, I think for the double whammy of this is demand and they're facing the same inflationary challenges that we are. So on the demand side, we're seeing a relatively strong. And on a gross margin basis, we are seeing our margins hold up relatively steady, which obviously is indicative of the strong demand side and being able to pass price increases through as they come through. There's a fair amount of inflation to greater different extents to different parts of the world, but it is a general theme. And it's across the board. That's included in energy, it's in labor, it's fuel, that's in packaging. That's in everything. So that obviously has an impact both at the sales line, the gross margin line and also the expense base. On the expense base, we are working in this inflationary pressures, as is everybody. I'm sure nothing I'm telling you today is your revolutionary. We're feeling the cost pressures, compounded by labor shortages that we've spoken about for that just seems to be fewer people willing to work in the workforce or there's this demand price demand than there was before. All people are dislocated in terms of where they are in the world and they need to get put into their correct position again to ease that dislocation. So we are seeing wage pressures. I guess the slight silver lining, which isn't a real silver lining, is ever hard we try, we actually can't control all the vacancies we have. So although there's cost pressure, we're actually unable to for the labor line the staff complement as much as we'd like to because it's just on people available, they're not even trained many others necessarily that's the problem. So that's not sustainable because that does put a whole lot of pressure on the existing workforce, and there's a limit to how much you can expect from that before something gives. So if you take all of those into account, we've got a very strong revenue line, we've got margins be kept consistent. You've got inflationary pressure that's being able to manage. Obviously, that translates to a pleasing bottom line. And we have mentioned that we are trading at a -- as at the end of April, our earnings metrics are at an all-time high, notwithstanding the fact that many months of the year we're impacted very significantly in many geographies. Australia was in lockdown in July till about November. New Zealand was in lockdown from August till probably January, February this year, and already slightly opened up. We've got Greater China falling back to lockdown. And so it goes on. So the 10 months we're looking at are very much COVID-impacted. And even the last 2 or 3 months, are slightly COVID-impacted in certain geographies. By and large while it's a very positive story at this point in time, like I said, demand is very strong. We believe we're gaining market share, which is also -- you could speculate on why that is, and we think it's because we kept the muscle intact during the COVID time, didn't capture [indiscernible] bounced back. We always said we thought our markets have remained fundamentally intact, and that's pretty correct. So we haven't cut back. We could bounce back relatively quickly, had the financial factor to do that. And our businesses have bounced back very, very quickly. And I also think we put the downturn of COVID to good use. And we believe the business is generally across the board in a better shape than it was in 2019 and were in pretty good shape in 2019. So we've absolutely taken the opportunity of refining processes of gaining efficiencies of introduced technology of maybe looking at underperformers or maybe asking a bit more probing questions on various aspects of the business. And where we sit today is in a better position than where we were last few years ago. In all the geographies we operate now, and I'm just going to put Greater China and Hong Kong aside because obviously, they are at different set of circumstances at this point in time. In all our other markets, our forward view is very optimistic. And our on-the-ground people's view is very, very optimistic. Now that's always couched in some negativity as to what would happen if and there are uncertainties in the world we can't answer. What will happen if inflation continues to run away? What would happen if the world gets into recession? What would happen if the Russian invasion of Ukraine has spread elsewhere and this contagion from that? We can't answer those questions. All we can answer is where we are at the moment and where we see the short-, medium-term profile of our business on an as-is basis, and we remain confident that notwithstanding these headwinds, tailwinds, pressure, sideways pressure, whatever they are, our business and our business philosophy and our business model puts us in a great position to take advantage of circumstances as they change, and we adapted them very, very quickly. We don't have major restructurings to that group. We're exceptionally proud of the fact that we didn't lose money through any of the tough years, and we continue to generate significant amounts of cash. We're very, very proud of that. We're very, very proud of the fact that our teams and store on the look to grow their businesses and to further the strategic initiatives that we've set about putting in place over the last many years. The one other factor I want to talk about is the strong revenue line and the lack of capacity that's available in the market. So obviously some capacity, some wholesale capacity was taken out during the pandemic and some people went out of business that didn't invest. And so there has been a bit of a shift and there's also great delays in getting infrastructure with it. You can't get a truck for 12 months to 18 months. You can't get a forklift. There's one lead time on rack. There's a long lead time on pure complementary. So all of these things are compounding the issue of riding out new capacity in the market in various different geographies we operate in. And what that has resulted in is we need some contracts to have come up for you. We've taken a view of unless we can get a correct outcome, now is the time to walk away from these on the one side of contracts. And if somebody is prepared to take it on at what we consider to be sub-economic rates, good luck to them. And yes, we're only too happy to see that happen if we can't reach a consensus as to what a mutually acceptable business relationship looks like. And we will see some reasonably significant legs of business exited. In Australia, in the end of October, we are exiting a large QSR chain, which accounts for roughly 5% or 6% of the revenue of Australia. In terms of its contribution, it absolutely does contribute, but at a much, much lower rate than the 5% or 6% revenue contribution. In Belgium, on the 1st of July, we [indiscernible] company with a contract caterer, who once again accounts for about 4%, I think it is, of our Belgium turnover. Yes, it does contribute, but if you can't make money out of the transaction rather move on, and that gives us the ability to fill that empty space with mutually beneficial business. That takes a little bit of time. It might take 6 months, it might take less. It might take a little bit more, but I think it further enhances our position of getting that customer base correct. And we do make the comment that our businesses that have the highest proportion of larger customers on long-term contracts have the most amount of difficulty in passing on the price increases, both in terms of time and in terms of quality. So there's no doubt that the diversification of the customer base and focusing on what we call the correct customer has yielded good dividends for us and we'll continue to do so and is the right model to follow. It's probably also fair to say that the rebound we think has been stronger in the smaller -- and I don't want to call it small, let's call it not large part of the customer base. It would appear they've been able to rebound quicker. They seized on opportunities much quicker. They're being more nimble and that's obviously been of benefit to us. Just running -- I don't even know if there's any point in running around the geographies because all of them are doing very well at the moment. I can't tell you anywhere where we think, well, we've got a big problem and we don't have a plan and it's not hitting the way we wanted. We speak about our common businesses, especially in the U.K. In our mind, that's fixed. Obviously, there's a long way to go into components being the meat and produce business, but that's upside for the next year or 2. The seafood business is doing fantastically. We've got a great seafood offering, which gives us the model to replicate to those other categories and we're confident we'll get success in that. Yes, it's restricting that it hasn't happened to the same extent to seafood, but that's large. You've got to take your learnings and adapt and move forward. The meat and produce category is not causing us any pain. They're just not giving us this huge benefit to the same way that -- in the same way that seafood is in that fresh U.K. business. Spain is well on its way to repair. It's a profitable business now. We've exited some parts of the business we shouldn't have been in. It's very focused on what it wants to do. And we've got some opportunities to look at that. And we've got a plan, and we think we can execute on that plan. The Portuguese business is doing fantastically, and it's one that's going to get significant more investment from us because it's going to be operating at much larger levels than it currently does. It's quite a small business at the moment, a very profitable small business in a market that we believe can sustain a much bigger business level. Our German business remains a little bit of a work-in-progress. It's a little bit slower. It's a little bit frustrating. It's not burning a hole in our pocket. But obviously, we're not going to stick around. It's not our intention to buy a business and stick around to make that a small return. We want to be successful at what we do and drive the business to be a meaningful player in the markets we operate in. We have done a few bolt-on acquisitions in the period. We'll continue to make bolt-on acquisitions as they become relevant. And there has been nothing large in terms of new geography M&A that's come up. I think there's a bit of an interesting dilemma going on in M&A world at the moment and PE exit, I think the tide has probably turned. You've got interest rates going up, you've got the stock markets coming down. And I think pricing expectations from a purchaser point of view are certainly trending down, it's not upwards, which is probably a good thing for us as potential purchasers. The CapEx program is running relatively strong at the moment and walk through another year or 2 or 3. As we say, it's real estate, the most of it is about infrastructure. That infrastructure doesn't have a 1 or a 2 or a 3-year payback. That's real quality assets that have a long-term value, but more importantly, have a strategic planning. And in our mind, we're absolutely convinced our strategy is being correct. Our focus on getting close to the customer last mile logistics, we spoke about it many, many years ago when people weren't talking about yet. And that seems to be played at the back, we are many years ahead of that. So we'll continue to invest and roll that out. And part of that investment also tied to ESG that this investment does enable us to improve on our ESG credentials. Our new warehouses basically operate with 0 initial refrigeration. They're almost self-power generating in terms of solar and we investigate in windmills on sites in certain sites, et cetera. So we're making that investment as necessary to enhance our ESG performance. Motor vehicles remains a challenge on the ESG front. It's very easy to say go electric. But unfortunately, the efficiency of electric trucks hasn't really come of ages, something will happen at some point in time. But at this point, there just aren't trucks available to carry the payload for the distances required to do our business that we're in. So that remains a bit of an elusive challenge to us that we'll continue to address as vigorously as we can. I'm going to hand over to David just to take me through the salient financial features that he wants to talk. And then I'm happy to take questions.

Thanks [indiscernible] other than one can see the kind of performance that we've achieved in the 10 months to April cost base and we measure it as a percentage of revenue or the cost of doing business has been a little elevated. But as, I guess, revenues are normalized, certainly increasingly, we've seen that start to track back to pre-COVID. So that's encouraging. Working capital is in line with what it was previously. But I think if one looks at the sales numbers versus compared to last year, typically levels are significantly higher, and we've also obviously seen significant inflation in products that we set [indiscernible] our perspective investing in our expectations. And in many cases, we are buying in inventory and holding stock and wanted to be able to fit the others and then obviously this first. Bernard spoke a bit about CapEx, acquisitions. Free cash flow has gone up, invested in working capital. So it is, as I said, tracking in line with our expectations, but still in absorption from our perspective at this point in the year, but especially in line with activity [indiscernible]. Liquidity, we've spoken a little bit about the refinancing exercise the group has been through, and we're pretty happy to manage to churn out of some debt that was running over at a pretty competitive rate, bearing in mind where interest rates have gone and continue to move to issues with our debt covenants and re-factored really grow nothing really there, it's in our process of pursuing the perpetrators, and that's obviously legal and criminal investigations and involving at least a medium parties. So that's going to take some time as well as insurance. So nothing really has changed other than just moving, but moving, but really relatively stable. So I think from my perspective, I think that's about it and ready to take questions, I guess.

Thanks, David. I see the questions aren't really coming in, which is good because clearly we have answered all the questions without the need to ask them. So if you do have any questions, please send them in. We've got one question, which asked about the split between, let me just see what the word is, the split between institutional, corporate and independent street. Look, it's actually a question that we can't answer, and it all depends on what the definition is. And we were just having a face internally previously about what the definition of the customer segments are because it actually doesn't mean anything, I mean, independent versus corporate. We've got some great corporate business. We've got some lousy independent business. And it's not just restaurant business. It goes across all categories. We've got the profit sector, the not-for-profit sector, the hospitals, nursing homes, governmental spending. So it's actually -- yes, it's a difficult question to answer because we don't measure it that way. And we'll come up with some wording as to how we actually think is the most meaningful way to measure this component of activities. And for us, it's really about how much input do we have into the buy and the sell decision of the customer. So when you're dealing with a QSR chain, you have to know input whatsoever is the other than buy or the sell. That's on one end of the spectrum. And when you deal with a very small cafe or restaurant or school canteen, maybe you've got total control of the purchasing decision of what product you put in and the spend decision as to what to sell them and at what price. And then there's a whole lot in between, where customers are of different size, different complexity, different levels on their journey and where that's being set. All of that, we want to, I guess, reinforce is we don't believe you can make a sustainable return in the long term. Now dealing with customers, we can't control the buy or the sell decision and all your I'd say, water wheels in the middle. That's not what we are. We're not -- we're really not a water wheels organization. We're not warehouse, warehouse and truckers. Obviously, we warehouse and we truck exceptionally well and exceptionally efficiently. But we only do that in order to complement the procurement and the sales function. And in order to make what we consider to be acceptable returns on our front, on the money that you give us to manage, you need to be very efficient at what we do in the middle, but you need to assign activities and procurement and selling in order to get the correct term, and that's where we're focusing on. And on the procurement side, on the purchasing side, we've spoken about the various activities that we've had to ensure that we participate in as much of the purchasing pie that's available as possible. And we've spoken about our import program, about our GPG, global procurement program, about our moving into low technology, low impact manufacturing conversion, repacking, slicing, dicing, marinating, pickling, bottling, making things that assist us on that procurement side, which also then is just on the selling side. So that was a very, very long answer to a very good question. So -- and I see I've got a few more. Have you given an idea of the volume of [indiscernible] given by regional overall? No, I can't. I actually cut close, that's very difficult to determine what volumes are. As that I now make a whole lot of the decision-making, it's difficult. I'm very, very sorry. In some of our businesses, they're talking about volume growth compared to 2019. Now bear in mind, we're not comparing to '21, we're not comparing to '20. We're comparing to 3 years ago. So there's been a lot of water under the bridge and we've got different customers and different products and there's a whole lot of things that have changed in the mix. But the underlying feeling is that volume prices is currently, and don't look at the 10 months because the 10 months impact the COVID in various degrees. If you just look at the last few months, a lot of our businesses are reporting that their estimate on volume growth from the good old days is somewhere in the 5% to 10% region. Now I know that's a big spread, but that's the best guess of it. And like I said, it is only the last few months that are actually indicative of where this thing is heading. We talk to market share gains, and I know it can be hard to say where it's coming from, but in the U.K. predominantly in the last 2 months, you're up double-digit whereas overall restaurant spend is just down double-digit, which is incredibly strong. Can you talk to the U.K. market, particularly in your experience there in recent months? But I have to say that our guys in the U.K. are doing a phenomenal job. So yes, I don't know what more I can say about that. I can't talk about the market. The statistics would lead you to believe that there's a consumer slowdown. But if you look at the numbers coming from our business, there's no sign of that. So I would have to infer from that, that it means that we're doing a good job. I say that a little bit time to achieve because we know we are winning market share from various of our competitors. And we're in a good space in the U.K. A lot of it is because we are able to, we believe, adapt to the customers' needs. We have an infrastructure in place. We haven't been through a major restructuring during these 3 years. The team that the people are dealing with now are the same team that they dealt with in 2019, by and large. And so we're just doing what we've been doing relatively well. So I don't want to be too smug about that, but I think, yes, full credit to our guys in the U.K. And it's a story that I can repeat through many other geographies. They're doing a good job, and they're seeing volume growth, and they're seeing revenue growth, and they've seen, yes, they're seeing intense pressure, absolutely, but they're managing that pretty well and positively to the outgrow of business. Are you able to provide a percentage of the greater business channel that is under restriction over the last quarter? That changes every day, quite honestly. And even when they are under restriction, we're still doing sales because as we've explained in the past, we're not only in the major cities, we're also in the smaller cities. The smaller cities aren't anywhere close to the same level of lockdown as the major cities. So when we talk about Shanghai, at Shanghai plus 6 or 7 or 8 satellite cities, Shanghai is there, but the satellite cities are doing okay. The biggest proportion of our business is in Southern China in the Shenzhen-Guangzhou belt, and that's the least lockdown-impacted at this point in time, it's still lockdown-impacted, but it's the mix. Just to put your minds at ease, we are still profitable. Even as we speak now, we are still profitable in China. So notwithstanding the fact that you put these incredible lockdowns, at this point in time, we actually are still profitable. Obviously, we weigh down in terms of profitability, but we're not bleeding. And once again, we are keeping -- we're not shedding staff or shedding cost where we are absolutely bearing the cost because you know when it comes back, it's going to come back at a million miles an hour, and we'd be in a position to take it. Okay. You mentioned all regional areas doing well. Does it in China and if not, what's your expectation regarding China? Like I said, up until December, our Greater China business was shooting the lights out. They had the best 6 months ever that we're doing well. Top line, we sprang strongly. Expenses were well-controlled. Bottom line was looking fantastic. Overall margins were great and everything was hunky-dory. We're significantly COVID-impacted. There's absolutely nothing we can do about it other than wait and see. I'm not optimistic that it's going to end any time soon, that the authorities, they seem to have a different view as to how to tackle the problem. It's not for me to comment whether a [ charter 1 ], it's just different. And I think we're in for a longer period of severe restrictions. But like I said, we're still profitable. Maybe we will look into a small loss at some point in time it gets worse, but it's certainly not course-affected. We have seen an increase in craft at some of the major sporting events. Could you talk to the opportunity -- talk to the opportunity seeing it's longer seasonality? Look, that's already in the numbers. So if you look at the U.K. and Europe, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, with their stadiums back to where they were, most of them don't have mass restrictions, they don't have social distancing. So we're seeing a bounce back that's actually strong, yes. And that's where we're seeing the March, April, May trend of a 116% trending upward to 120% on 2019, coming through the numbers, of which a big chunk of it's inflation, but it's also volume as well as that comes back. And various other segments are coming back as well. Air travel, international air travel is coming back, but it's coming back quite slowly. And if anyone's trying to get on a plane, you'll know that it costs you a lot of money and you don't have a whole lot of choice. An airline capacity, probably in some international airline capacity is only about 60% of what it was pre-pandemic. So there's still a long way to go on that, and that has a knock-on effect on conventions and incentive trips and business travel and leisure travel and all these other things, which to a degree is offset by local staycations and local conferences and local conventions, et cetera. So there are very few segments in the open economies, I'll talk about the U.K. or maybe Australia, et cetera, that aren't in a position to bounce back relatively strongly in the next few months. Cruise ships, for example, are coming back very, very quickly in most geographies. And that seems to have huge bookings. I think their problem is going to get -- is getting staff, transit back on ships and in the right place, the cost increases that they obviously have to face in terms of fuel and the like. But I don't think there's a shortage of demand for cruise ships, for example. But I just don't -- I think that the supply side is going to be what it was for quite a while. And that goes through quite a few of our other segments. So the work -- the CBDs are coming back relatively strongly. But as we speak of that, and you will know about it as I'm sure most of you have this duration where you continue to work from home, you've got some type of hybrid arrangement where you're not going to the office every day, which obviously has an impact on workplace catering and CBD activity levels. To some degree, that's offset by the fact that it's picked up in the suburbs because all of you are still going up for breakfast or lunch. Maybe you're just going into family instead of going with your work colleagues. So we've got through and roundabouts in all of these circumstances. Other than the U.K., which geographies are the main staff shortage challenges? The U.K., Netherlands, Belgium, Czech, Slovakia, Thailand, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Australia and New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, China, Hong Kong, South Africa doesn't -- the Middle East as Turkey doesn't really -- yes, that's pretty broad spread across the world, and it's pretty significant. That's generally in all the developed economies, you've got this real world pressure. And maybe in some of the more developing economies, we don't have that pressure, but you've got the wage cost pressure. So you might not have a staff shortage, but you still got inflationary cost pressure, notwithstanding the fact that you might have a 10% or 15% or a 40% unemployment rate. No more questions. David, anything else you want to talk about?

Not from my side. Thanks, Bernard.

Okay. Okay. So just to wrap up, we're exceptionally proud of what our teams have delivered around the world. I think we're in a good position. We certainly are seeing the fruits of our labors coming through now. There are challenges, make no mistake about it. Inflation is a big issue, but we don't have the answers as to where it's going to go. All we can do is be as nimble and react to it as appropriately as possible and make sure we get our fair share, whichever way it falls. The businesses are generally in good shape, are cash-generative. Yes, there's a bigger investment in working capital as revenues rebound strongly, which I'm sure you understand the pure logic of that. What we have found with supply chain disruptions, stock is not a bad thing, that's -- and an inflationary plans if you do have inventory. When you have supply chain disruption and inflation, it's an opportunistic environment for good truckers. So we're very pleased with where our business is. Pleased with our teams as to what they've done around the world. They really have done a fantastic job through tough times. And the time to store, although financially, they're producing good results, operationally they're very, very tough. Our teams are tight, our people are tight. They have big demand made on them for a few years now, and they continue to deliver on that. So full credit to that and to them, and we owe all of them thanks and gratitude because they're the ones who make it happen. It is David's last term, talk a little bit of strategic nonsense and big picture thinking. It actually happens down in warehouses every single month. It's very small units of measure, a carton of this and a carton of that. So thank you very much, everybody, for your attendance. Next time we talk to you will be towards the end of August when we release the full year results. Our plan is to do that in person again in Johannesburg. So who's ever there, I promise you we'll put on a good feed. It will be better than what we've done in the past. So if you've got any requests, please send them in. It's been a few years. It would be nice to see as many of you in person as possible and just to catch up. And everybody, thank you for your continued interest and support, and thank you very much.