Moody's Corporation (MCO) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon. We can get going here. It's good afternoon, almost good evening for some of you. I kicked off this conference, I think, for a lot of you at 7:30 in the morning on Monday morning. And now we are hopefully wrapping it up for, I think, everybody at 4:40 on Wednesday afternoon, but thanks for joining us. I'm Patrick O'Shaughnessy, capital markets analyst at Raymond James. Up next, we have Moody's. And on their behalf, we have CEO, Rob Fauber. Format, like most of these, is just going to be a fireside Q&A. There is the functionality to submit your questions online. And if you do so, I will do my best to try to integrate them into the conversation. And with that, let's go ahead and get started. So Rob, thanks for joining us.

Yes. Thanks for being here, Patrick. And I guess, no pressure. We got to keep it interesting. This is the last spot in the conference, but thanks for having me.

Yes. Lots of interesting topics to talk about. So as we kick it off here, you guys had a slide in your fourth quarter earnings presentation, walking investors through the evolution of Moody's business model into the integrated risk assessment business that it is today. What are the implications of this evolution on the company's long-term growth outlook?

Yes. So I guess, Patrick, I'd start by saying we're evolving as the needs of our customers are evolving. And there's probably more demand for identifying and measuring and managing a wider range of risks than ever before. And because of the capabilities we've been building and acquiring, I think we, as a company, are better positioned than ever to serve those customer needs and capture these opportunities. You're seeing that particularly with the MA business as we expand our offerings and we move into some of these new risk markets, and that's going to provide a very solid foundation and, I think, kind of confidence interval around our long-term targets. And we've talked about high single-digit percent revenue growth, operating margin in the high-40s percent range, low-teens percent EPS growth. And while we may not be meaningfully changing those long-term targets, our evolution is really designed to support our ability to achieve what I think is a very compelling growth profile. And I'd also add that as we invest in some of these opportunities in the MA space, I think we're going to see a greater mix of recurring revenue across the entire Moody's portfolio. The MA businesses are just much more oriented towards subscriptions and recurring revenue growth than MIS, which has a more transaction-based revenue model.

Got you. So kind of a similar long-term growth outlook, maybe it extends a time horizon. It certainly adds more stability to that growth from a year-to-year basis?

I think that's fair, Patrick.

Okay. Good. So the barriers to entry for your ratings business are obviously pretty well known. As you broaden the set of risk assessment capabilities that Moody's provides, how does Moody's differentiate itself and create durable competitive advantages in those other areas?

Yes. You're right. Our ratings business is one of those very durable businesses. And by the way, one we're going to keep investing in to ensure that it remains an essential part of the fixed income capital markets for many years to come. Our customers tell us that they really value the combination of data analytics and insights and access to our domain expertise. And then with solutions that are enabled by technology, I hear this all the time, that, that actually is a competitive differentiator. We're not just a data company. We're not just a software company. And that's why we've been talking about this integrated risk assessment. You add to that a trusted brand, tremendous customer access, and you've got a source of real competitive advantage in some of these risk assessment markets. And maybe let me give you an example of how we think we are building a very durable business. So we've been building out our data sets and capabilities to serve a wide range of use cases. We talked about that on our earnings call. One is our Orbis database, and that is around company data, what we think of as the world's -- I'm now using this term, world's most useful and usable database on companies. Something close to 400 million public and private entities in that database. And we aggregate and curate data, that's an important term, curate data from many, many different sources. That includes historical data. Much of that is deleted after 5 years from a public database. So it's actually pretty hard to replicate all of this data. And we've seen that, that is supporting a wide range of risk assessment use cases. Know-your-customer, which we've talked about a lot, is the largest and fastest-growing use case for this data. But it also includes areas like supply chain risk, we're seeing more interest in that. SME credit, transfer pricing and so on. And so we've then built out that core Orbis data set, and it has grown substantially since we bought it back in 2017. And we've also added an enormous database on risk-relevant people through our acquisition of RDC last year. We've added AI-driven news monitoring through Acquire Media. And then most recently, deeper data on North American small businesses, including proprietary trade credit data through our acquisition of Cortera. And as a result, and you can see it here on this slide, we've built a company data business that's doing $525 million in sales this past year. We have a real leadership position in the high-growth KYC market. As I said, a specialized use case for that data. And we think that, that sales in that area, we expect to grow at something like 25% in 2021. I would also say the same thing really for our enterprise risk solutions business. There, we've got SaaS solutions that are embedded in the mission-critical workflows at financial institutions, whether it's supporting things like making loans, reporting to regulators, balance sheet management. And that has translated into high levels of recurring revenue, very high retention rates. So enormous scale of data assets and analytics, increasing integration across them, embedded into customer workflows, makes our products very sticky and hard to replicate. And we think that is a source of long-term durable value.

Very interesting. Know your everything, I think I've heard you guys refer to in the past.

It's getting there, Patrick. It's getting there.

Yes. Maybe to dig into the know-your-customer/know-your-everything end market. So you did speak to that 25%-plus growth rate for that opportunity. Why is that such a fast-growing opportunity? Is it a function of there's just better data and that creates better client solutions and that creates demand and just a reinforcing positive cycle there?

Yes. So there are really 2 things going on. Obviously, there's a lot of demand in the end market, and we have a very compelling set of solutions that's allowing us to grow faster than that growth rate in the end market. Let me pull the lens back for a second, Patrick, and talk about kind of what's driving the demand for the data and the solutions. And in general, we're seeing customers want to have a more holistic 360-degree view of risk, who they're lending to, who they're investing in, who they're connecting to, who their suppliers are. And they really do have to make better, faster and cheaper decisions about a wider range of risks. That's what our customers are dealing with. And the consequences for making bad decisions are actually increasing, right, with your regulators, but also with customers and employees. And it's being amplified in the media if you're doing business with the wrong company. COVID has also accelerated the digital transformation in the know-your-customer space. There's just lots of manual work. So our AI-driven solutions give just more efficiency to our customers than what they're doing in-house. So it's not just faster, but it's also more accurate. And know-your-customer is really I think an important part of that 360-degree view of risk that I'm talking about. It's -- as I said, it's been a very fragmented and manual market. Think about our customers dealing with multiple vendors, patching all this stuff together, it's cumbersome and time consuming. So we believe that we have put together the premier set of assets to meet our customers' needs in this space. We've integrated the capabilities of the Orbis database through Bureau van Dijk, RDC, Acquire Media and recently, Cortera. That is giving our customers much more of a one-stop shop. As I said, the pain point is around fragmented and manual and cumbersome and time-consuming. We just completed the first commercial release, where we're bringing together all of our Orbis corporate hierarchy data with the data on people risk profiles in RDC, all in one kind of simple, easy-to-use interface and screening tool, and that's pretty powerful for our customers. We think it's one of a kind in the market, and that really was the promise of the investment that we made in RDC. We wanted to be able to pull this together for our customers. We're also leveraging a big global sales force here. So the content can reach a -- we're able to reach more customers. A great example is Cortera. We bought them. They had something like 5 to 10 salespeople. Now that content can be pushed out through a much broader sales force. So Patrick, really, the other thing I would add is we're seeing just demand emerging for understanding entities beyond these know your -- the requirements for know-your-customer, that goes to this idea of 360-degree view of risk, reputational risk, sustainability, data security and so on. So it's really a combination of strong demand drivers in this market plus what we think is a very comprehensive offering for our customers that's allowing us to grow, I think, ultimately, faster than what we see in the underlying market.

Very interesting. And you mentioned how Moody's has been pretty active on the M&A front to build out some of those capabilities. Do there continue to be a lot of potential acquisitions on your radar? Or do you think you're getting close to having that full set of capabilities that you kind of envision as the end state?

Well, the world keeps changing, right? And risk keep emerging. We do have a very -- I think we feel very good about our position today. But we're always looking at how can we enhance our capabilities and offerings to our customers both organically. And we do a lot organically through product development, and inorganically. And we're going to keep doing that. We -- I just touched on what we're doing in the KYC space. We've done some bolt-ons there to add to our media monitoring, to add to our private company data. I think in KYC, in private company data, you'll see us broaden beyond just kind of KYC, starting to think more broadly around financial crime. It's a natural evolution for us. I think you'll also see us extend in areas like supply chain risk. So there are gaps in our overall data sets around supply chain and who's doing business with whom, but we're seeing demand for that as customers want to really understand the resiliency of their supply chains. We'll build out our commercial real estate capabilities to continue to flesh out our offering there. You saw us do that with Catalyst recently to continue to augment our listings information and information on properties. Climate risk, Patrick, another area I'd cite. There's just a lot of demand for that across our risk management solutions. We've been integrating that into a wide range of solutions. And I think we also may see more disclosure on the horizon. So an opportunity there. So the last thing I'd say is in acquisitions, we just -- we want to be the natural owner, right? We want -- for us to be a buyer, we should be the natural owner. That's going to translate into real synergies and help our ability to pay and get the returns we're expecting and what it is right now, a pretty frothy market.

Got it. You touched on climate a little bit, and ESG as the broader kind of concept. This is obviously an area of substantial investor interest right now. How would you describe Moody's sets of assets in the ESG space? And how are you thinking about the revenue opportunity over time?

Yes. So we're embedding ESG across kind of almost every offering we've got. There's just -- there's a ton going on. Shivani reminded me that we had to add a section to our investor deck to talk about ESG. There's a lot of interest. Maybe, Patrick, you're thinking about what the market wants. Investors want ESG scores to be able to help with portfolio construction and monitoring. So they need a lot of coverage. Fixed income investors really want to know how ESG is impacting creditworthiness, and specifically, how it's impacting ratings. And then our financial institutions and corporate customers, they want integration of ESG and climate risk data and analytics into kind of the whole gamut of solutions that we've got from commercial lending and commercial real estate and bank risk management. And we're also hearing companies themselves that want to be able to highlight their ESG and sustainability profile for stakeholders and increasingly tap into the sustainable finance market. So we're addressing that in a few ways through MIS, and specifically for investors, integrating ESG considerations into our credit ratings and our research. We've now got ESG and climate content on our flagship CreditView product. We're also rolling out a set of scores to identify the impact of E, S and G on the credit rating. We've been publishing heat maps that highlight the risks within sectors. All of that focused on helping investors understand the impact of ESG and specifically climate on credit risk. For fixed income and corporates across MA, like I said, we're integrating ESG and climate across our offerings. We've integrated our climate data into our commercial real estate platform. I think it's easy to understand how that's relevant to commercial real estate investors and to lenders. And we're integrating our -- another example, integrating our climate data into our economic scenario modeling that's used by banks and insurance companies to help meet stress testing and other regulatory requirements. We've put all this ESG and climate data up on our data hub platform so that customers can put it alongside their data and play with it and use it, using some very advanced data science tools. And the last thing I'd say is just in regards to sustainable finance. We've got sustainability ratings that give companies and issuers a chance to engage with analysts just like they do in the credit rating market. We provide second-party opinions on green and social and sustainable bonds. So we've got a lot going on in 2000 -- really in the fourth quarter, we pulled some of this together under what we call our ESG Solutions group. That's where we've got our -- some of our Vigeo Eiris and Four Twenty Seven content and making sure that we're really coordinating across all of Moody's to be able to meet the needs of our various customers around this stuff.

You used the word integration a couple of times, if I can follow up real quickly on that. So is the opportunity to monetize ESG through just bolstering your existing set of products and services and having better client relationships? Or are there stand-alone monetization opportunities as you're kind of building out this franchise?

It's both. And a good example of where we've got stand-alone monetization opportunities are in that sustainable finance area that I touched on, Patrick. So increasingly, companies want to engage with somebody like us around a sustainability rating. It's no longer good enough to have that kind of outsourced to a third party, and you don't know what the methodology is. So that's in its early days, but we're seeing demand from our customers -- our issuer customers who want to get a sustainability rating. They also want to issue in the sustainable finance market. And so we provide second-party opinions. So you think about it, that allows us to have a credit rating. It allows us to have a sustainability rating and allows us to provide second-party opinions on green and labeled bond issuance. That's a good example of where I think early days, but there are monetization opportunities in a stand-alone basis.

Got it. Very interesting. Where do you see the margins of Moody's Analytics heading over the long term? In the near term, there are some headwinds from acquisitions. There's internal capability investments. But business model-wise, there does seem to be improved scalability and operating leverage over time.

Yes. There -- I think that's right, Patrick, there is. And I guess, maybe first and foremost, I'd say that in MA, we're really focused on capitalizing on these market opportunities in these various risk assessment spaces that we've talked about. There's -- as I said earlier, there's just a lot of demand for better risk management solutions, and we're really well positioned to meet that demand. So we want to be investing in that. We're making some investments around interoperability and data access to be able to meet that demand. But you're right. I mean, over time, as we scale these solutions, I think there will be an opportunity for us to continue to see some margin improvement. Two things. The incremental margin on sales in these subscription businesses is attractive. So as we scale those businesses, that will be helpful on the margin. And then when we look at the ERS business, as that continues to move more and more towards really a purely SaaS business and less and less of that onetime, that's going to help the margin as well. I think the last thing I would say is we're going to invest where we've got opportunities. So it could be a quarter or a year where it may not be a straight line in terms of margin growth. But over time, I think you've got it right. And look, over the last 3 years, we've done a pretty darn good job of expanding the margin, something like 480 basis points of margin expansion. And I think that's a road map for us over the medium term.

Certainly. Maybe a higher-level question for you here. Moody's has generally favored smaller acquisitions rather than large complex deals. Has that been a conscious philosophy? Or does it reflect the scarcity of attractive opportunities in that bigger deal space?

Yes. So Patrick, I'll just say, I don't need to be big for the sake of being big. I mean, I guess there are -- I understand there's some benefits of scale. We're pretty big already. What's really driving us in terms of our acquisition road map is industrial logic. That's how we kind of think of it. We're looking for businesses that are really on strategy, where -- as I said earlier, we're the natural owner, where we -- an acquisition like a Cortera is really interesting because you take one content set and you monetize it across multiple end markets. And that's very attractive for us. On the rating side, look, I would love to continue to be able to invest in the ratings business. It's mostly going to be organic. We have done some small international investments that extends our presence in some of these local markets around the world. They're not big, but they are important to the long term for the rating business. A good example of that is our investment in a Malaysian rating business last year. But I think you're going to see us continue to make a number of bolt-on acquisitions. I think of that as kind of outsourced product development. I would say, Bureau van Dijk was a great size acquisition for us. It moved the needle. It opened meaningful market opportunities for us, and we executed really well in it. There just aren't that many companies the size of Bureau van Dijk out there.

Got it. That makes sense. And then as you think about the company's capital allocation philosophy, how do you evaluate balancing M&A against capital returns to shareholders as well as internal investments?

Yes. So really no change from our historical approach. I think we've been pretty consistent in talking about the fact that we want to reinvest in it a bit. We have a great business, and we want to reinvest in that when we see opportunities to do that organically or inorganically. And then we're going to return capital to shareholders in the form of dividends and share repurchases, share repo. We've been very good about that in the past, and I think you can expect our historical philosophy to continue on that.

Got it. Well, I made it 20 minutes without asking about MIS, but it's probably time that I...

Bring it on, Patrick.

So let's turn to your outlook for the ratings business. You guys currently expect MIS to generate flattish revenue in 2021 as compared to 2020 despite expectations for high single-digit percentage decline in global issuance. Can you help us parse through the anticipated outperformance of revenue related to issuance?

Yes. And we get this question a lot. So maybe just in regards to issuance, maybe just to start there. And I know that we've guided towards high single-digit percent decline. It's still a pretty robust issuance number that we're looking at. We've got favorable market conditions, low rates, tight spreads. There's lots of M&A activity. But we're just coming off some very strong issuance years in 2020, in particular, just some tough comps. So amidst that backdrop of kind of the high single-digit decline in issuance, let's start with -- if you think about the MIS revenue, start with the fact that roughly 1/3 of the business is recurring revenue. And in 2020, MIS grew recurring revenue at something like 4%. So you've got that right there. Then when we move to transactional revenue, starting with that kind of high single-digit decline in issuance, the revenue is supported by a few things. One, growth in first-time mandates. We had something like 700 first-time mandates in 2020. We expect that to grow in 2021. That continues to build the book of monitored credits and recurring revenue. Then we've got pricing initiatives. We've talked about, on average, across the entire Moody's portfolio, pricing being kind of that 3% to 4% range, and I think that continues to be the case. And then issuance mix, and we talk about this a lot on the earnings calls and -- but we do think that the mix will be supportive in 2021. So favorable given the growth in kind of leveraged finance, leveraged loans, parts of structured finance. We see investment-grade being down, but in investment-grade, that's where we typically got a higher percentage of customers on these kind of frequent issuer programs and different commercial arrangements. So that's how you can get from kind of high single-digit decline in issuance to the revenue guide that we put out.

Got it. That makes sense. And then as we think about the different components of your MIS revenue and then we think about PPIF, how does that business typically perform coming out of recessionary periods that do weigh on municipalities' finances? And maybe they need to raise more debt in order to finance their operating activities.

Yes. It's a good question, a very timely question. We've actually seen it rebound over the last couple of recessions and issuance really recover. And maybe I'll speak about U.S. public finance specifically. We had obviously a very strong year for issuance last year. We expect the supply to remain elevated in kind of level similar to last year. Municipal issuance, I think you're going to see public agencies and state and local governments kind of using debt as ways to plug some of these budget gaps supported by -- continuing to be supported by government programs. If there are infrastructure programs, that could provide some further upside to issuance in the space. And Patrick, I'd just add one thing from a mix standpoint. When we see lots of sovereign and sub-sovereign issuance internationally, that tends to provide more of a headwind to revenue in terms of mix than a tailwind. So just something for people to keep in mind.

Got it. That makes sense. And then as you think about the longer-term outlook for MIS, the business has been remarkably resilient over the past decade under a variety of market conditions. Now I think the current expectation is, hey, inflation expectations are rising. Interest rates have moved up a little bit. How do you think about that impacting the market dynamics going forward?

Yes. The sky is not falling. Look, we've always said that economic recovery -- economic growth is a very important driver of issuance over the medium and long term. And so we're certainly entering a period of economic growth. And of course, that's why we're starting to see potentially an increase in rates. We've seen benchmark rates tick up a little bit recently. I would note that spreads have actually tightened over that period of time. Overall financing rates are pretty consistent with where they were at the beginning of the year, certainly in the leveraged finance market. And if you look at where rates are right now versus where they've been in the last 5 years, still a very attractive environment for issuance. And in regards to rate increases, maybe just 2 things to keep in mind. I'm kind of back to the, well, why are rates increasing. If it's because of improving economic growth, ultimately, then that is going to be a good thing for us over the medium and long term and -- but second, whether the rates increases are anticipated or not. So maybe think back to the taper tantrum back in 2013. That was a negative surprise in the market, and the market shut down for a little while in terms of issuance. So a gradual and anticipated increase in interest rates while spreads remain tight amidst the economic recovery, that ultimately, I think, is going to be a good thing for us over the medium term for issuance.

Got it. And to follow up on that, it's maybe too early to know, but with the move-up in rates over the last few weeks, can you tell if there's been any increased interest in leveraged loans? I think, historically, those are assets that people want to own in a rising rate environment.

That's exactly right. So I guess I would characterize leveraged loans as it was a very subdued environment for issuance last year. So the market for leveraged loans is improving. And you're exactly right, Patrick. As you see rates start to tick up, there is investor preference for cycling into leverage loans. So sometimes I think about leveraged finance issuance and rotation in or out of high-yield bonds and leveraged loans.

Think about them collectively.

Exactly.

Yes. Makes sense.

Yes.

So speaking of MIS resilience in a variety of different conditions. The business model is actually -- has also emerged relatively unscathed from various reviews and legislative efforts in both the U.S. and Europe. Now you have the Biden administration and the Democratic-controlled Congress in D.C. In general, I think there's a sense that they have a more proactive policy agenda. Yesterday, during his confirmation hearing, Gary Gensler expressed, I'd maybe characterize it as an openness to exploring competition in the credit rating business. Where do you think things currently stand in terms of the regulatory/political environment? And I think probably most importantly, do you think the issuer pays model is going to continue to stand the test of time?

I do. I guess, Patrick, I'd say, the business model has been studied pretty darn carefully for well over the last decade, coming out of the financial crisis and most recently by an SMC advisory group in 2020. The conclusion has continued to remain the same, that allowing for a range of business models allows -- is good for the market in terms of functioning efficiently and effectively. The industry is much more regulated than it was a decade ago in a number of very important ways. And we've supported those efforts. It includes things like more robust measures to manage conflicts of interest, strengthening of controls around our methodological processes, enhanced disclosures. And the reason that we support that stuff is it all serves to increase public confidence in our industry. And I think you see that. The other thing, Patrick, that I would say, and this is important, is that I think our credit ratings have performed very well under the -- kind of the ultimate stress test, right, which was COVID. It affected every region and virtually every industry in some way. And we took a very thoughtful and measured and systematic approach to managing our ratings both early on and throughout the pandemic. And we communicated that approach very clearly and frequently with the market. And I think -- I've had a lot of conversations with investors and issuers and policymakers, and I think that approach has been appreciated. And so I just -- Patrick, I don't think that CRA -- yes, it got mentioned. I don't think they're high on the overall policy or regulatory agenda. I mean, the question is, what problem are we trying to solve? And I think ratings -- the ratings industry acquitted itself very well throughout the COVID pandemic. That said, I think the SEC is going to focus on things like ESG and climate disclosures, and that's going to have relevance for our industry in different ways.

ESG, climate exposures and GameStop, I think is their...

Yes. That's right, yes.

Now an area where there actually is more ratings competition and a variety of go-to-market strategies is Chinese credit ratings. Moody's has minority ownership in CCXI, which is the current industry leader, but also had some regulatory hiccups recently. When you compare and contrast your strategy in China with those of S&P Global and Fitch, what do you like about your approach in the long-term upside for Moody's?

Yes. And maybe just let me level set for those who aren't as familiar, we approached the Chinese rating market really in 2 ways. There's the cross-border market. We've operated in that market with global scale ratings for years and years. We have a very strong position in that market through MIS. The domestic local currency market is one in which we operate essentially through a 30% stake in a company called CCXI, really the market leader in -- for the domestic CRA industry. You're right, Patrick. We -- CCXI recently had an issue there, and they've had a brief license suspension that will end towards the end of March of -- the end of this month. And I guess what I would say, though, is if you step back and think about the kind of ongoing atmospherics in U.S.-China relations, you have to think about what is the most successful route to success in a strategically important Chinese industry. Is it as a wholly owned subsidiary of a U.S. company? And it's hard to find many examples where U.S. companies have ended up being the leaders in important Chinese industries. So we have continued to take the view that we want to work through the leading Chinese institution in the rating industry. So we're supporting CCXI, collaborating with them on commercial engagement and really offering customers the best of Chinese ratings through CCXI and cross-border ratings through MIS. The other thing I would say, though, is that we're also thinking about how we can grow in new areas and really capitalize on the demand that we're seeing for things like green finance, SME solutions, know-your-customer. All of those are important focus areas for policymakers in China. And so in October of this past year, we formed a dedicated product development group in Shenzhen to develop data and analytics tools for the domestic Chinese markets as opposed to kind of the global products that we've been selling in that market. In November, we acquired a minority stake in a company called NEO Tech, and they provide solutions around unstructured data for ESG and KYC in Greater China. We also made an investment a year or 2 back in a company called SynTao Green Finance. And they're small but early leader in that sustainability and green finance space in China, and we're working very actively with them. And we see that market continuing to evolve. So we're going to continue to be invested in the market leader in domestic ratings. We've got a very strong position in the cross-border market through MIS and investing in some areas of increasing relevance to the domestic Chinese markets. And as things evolve, we will continue to evaluate that strategy and that approach.

Got it. And maybe to follow up on that then. Certainly, the Chinese regulators and officials want the Chinese capital markets to be more opened up. They want global investors to invest in Chinese companies. And I think global investors want to as well. What is CCXI doing to gain confidence and relevance with those global investors?

Well, Patrick, I think, actually, the more interesting question is, what is the entire domestic CRA industry in China doing to support the needs of international investors? Because international investors tell us that one of the things that they really want is to be able to compare credits on a global scale, right? And they also want to really understand the rank ordering of credit. So they want to be able to see the kind of full credit scale. And I think the domestic industry in China I don't think has been providing what international investors need. It's obviously been serving the needs of the domestic market. So we've been asking ourselves, how can we serve the needs of international investors in ways that they're not necessarily getting from the domestic industry? An example of that is we're building out a credit portal with our -- we're looking to pull in content from CCXI, pulling content from MIS and be able to better help with credit differentiation because that -- ultimately, that's what international investors are grappling with.

Got it. Well, that makes sense. And I think on that note, we can probably wrap it up. But thank you very much for joining us. I think we covered a lot of ground, and I think there's a lot of interesting things to learn. So I appreciate the time.

Patrick, thank you very much for having me. I hope I held up my end of the bargain with the very last slot in this conference. I appreciate it.

Very much so. And thanks again. And thank you, everybody, for joining us. Take care.