Somero Enterprises, Inc. (SOM) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to the Somero Enterprises interim results webinar. [Operator Instructions] This webinar is being recorded. I now hand over to Jack Cooney, President and CEO; and Enzo LiCausi, CFO. Jack, over to you.

Thank you, [ Jamison ]. Hello, everyone. Thank you for taking the time to join us today. Before we get into the results presentation, I'd just like to talk to you about an announcement that we made earlier that John Yuncza has stepped down as President of Somero. And I just want to assure you that the company is in excellent financial condition. And we have a very talented team of senior managers, many of them who have been here from 15 to 25 years, and have been an integral part of the extraordinary growth that we've had with the company. I will begin a search, both internally and externally, immediately. And the last thing is, it's company policy that we do not discuss anything about an employee that departs. And therefore, I'm going to be unable to take any questions about the hows and the whys of the departure. It's just a -- it's an internal policy that we've had forever, and it's also a pretty standard policy for companies in United States. So with that, we'll go on and take a look at the highlights for 2023. Non-residential construction market remains consistent and healthy. It still has project delays and customer supply chain problems, but still, our customers are all very confident about the continued trajectory that we are on for the rest of the year. Growth in Europe and Australia was very good. We have a flexible cost structure that allowed us to make some cost adjustments at the end of H1 when we talk to you about lowering the sales forecast that we had for the entire year. We are going ahead in executing international growth strategies, which require more investment in Europe and Australia. We're moving into a larger facility in Australia. And our product development activity remains very strong and very consistent. We do that with a lot of direct engagement through our customers. We have what we call innovation councils where we bring them in with a moderator, and work at finding things that are their pain points that we can make products for them that would make their jobs easier to use, lower cost and give them better results in terms of flatness, which the contractor is required to meet by the building owner. And also, you're going to see that we've had a healthy profit and cash generation. And so, we've declared a dividend of $0.10 for the interim. And with that, I'll turn it over to Enzo to give you some of the financial highlights.

This is a snapshot of our financial highlights. As you see, from a revenue standpoint, our revenues declined year-over-year by approximately 14%, which was mostly attributable to lower demand for the large-line screeds in North America for certain factors that we called out in the trading update, and Jack will actually take us through in more detail the sales results in the coming slide. That change in revenue had a commensurate, and consistent impact across the other financial metrics, all declining roughly around 30%. From a margin standpoint, I'd like to call out that in H1, 2022, the company was still operating quite leanly. We experienced a surge in demand, as you all are aware, which led our ability to hire personnel to support that base of business. In the second half of 2022 and in the first half of 2023, we added personnel to catch up with that business as well as make investments towards future growth. And therefore, H1, 2023 EBITDA margin is more reflective of our normal margin of approximately 30%. Relative to the dividend that Jack mentioned, it will be paid on October 20 to shareholders as of September 22. I will take us through the rest of the financials, but first, Jack will walk us through the sales results. Jack?

Enzo. North America results were lower than H2 in 2022, but also 2022 was an extraordinary high H1. And so, there is a lot of leveling off that's necessary to get a really good look at that. Plus as Enzo mentioned, we started the S-22 back in January. We had eliminated it at the prior year, because we came out with the S-28. And then due to requests from our customers, we put it back in the product line, starting in the beginning of this year. But due to supply chain problems in ramping up the production of it, we did not get to full production until June of this year. So there is a shortfall that will be picked up in the second half of the year on additional 22s. I mentioned before that both Europe and Australia were very strong. You can see that Europe grew by 46% and Australia by 32%. Rest of the world is -- remains very consistent as it has year-in and year-out. When you look at sales by product, one of the things to remember by products is, that the products that the customer buys is driven by the jobs that he has won on bid. So you may have a customer that's in need of a large line machine in the beginning of the year, because he has a large amount of large buildings that he's working on. And then in the second half of the year, we may be working on a lot smaller projects, so his needs switch to small line machines. So you're going to see ups and downs in these categories from half-to-half and year-to-year, and it's not driven by the sales force. It's driven by the needs of the customer. And as you go through, the Ride-on screeds are pretty flat, the remanufactured machines are really important part of our sales process, because they are generated by people that are trading in their machine, which may be 5 to 10 years old to buy a new machine, like you do when you have a car. And you trade-in a car, typically, depending upon how many miles you have on it, well the screed is the same way. It depends upon how many hours of usage they have will determine when a customer wants to trade them in. Or if there's a new technology that's come out and a newer screed that they would desire. The 3-D Profiler is used for screeding outside parking lots, which is very, very common in the United States and growing significantly in Europe, because it's able to screed contours where the regular laser screed is screeding flat floors. So this is a software system that's added to the machine. The Sky Screed is a very disruptive piece of equipment that we've been introducing to our customers. It has not moved very quickly, but that doesn't mean that we're not working very hard at it. We do a great number of demonstrations, and we're very confident that over time that this is going to become an important product in our line. And the other category has remained relatively constant. And with that, I'll turn it back over to Enzo for operating results.

Thanks, Jack. Picking up from our gross profit, we maintain a healthy gross margin of 57%, albeit slightly below last year. We did put through a price increase this year to offset some of the customary inflationary cost increases, both of which were within our normal range. As Jack alluded to earlier, at the end of H1, 2023, we did reduce our headcount in our operational workforce, commensurate with the decrease in our revenue forecast for the whole year. Moving down to operating expenses. We continue to execute on our growth strategy by adding customer-facing resources and product development resources. Year-over-year our operating expenses were slightly up. There were some puts and takes, but the net increase really is attributable to those additional resources that we brought on in the first half of this year. That takes us down to our net income roughly of $12.4 million, decrease of approximately $5 million or 29%, again, commensurate with the decrease in our volume from trading. Moving on to our balance sheet. We maintain a very good and healthy balance sheet with no debt and a strong cash position. We ended the period with over $25 million in cash. The decrease compared to the end of 2022, there was approximately $17 million of cash outflows outside of operations, primarily driven by the dividend payment that we made in the first half. We offset those cash outflows with cash generated from operations of approximately $9 million. Our accounts receivable remain modest given the level of trading that we do attributable to strong collection efforts. Inventory remains slightly high for a couple of reasons. Partly to support our business outside of the U.S., it's important to ensure we have adequate stock at each of our 4 locations. The logistical time to get our products there, takes a while. We want to make sure that we have inventory on hand when the orders come up. However, as we move forward, we expect our inventory to come down by the end of the year. Some of the long lead times, we were experiencing in the past, requiring us to maintain excess safety stock have improved. And consequently, we should see an improvement in our inventory by the end of this year. Moving down to our current liabilities. You'll note a significant decrease compared to the end of last year, but that's mostly all attributable to timing. There was a bolus of inventory, other goods and services that we received at the end of 2022 for which we were invoiced at the beginning of 2023 and paid for at that time, including the final settlement for our Houghton expansion project that was -- the construction of which was completed at the end of last year and settled in the first half of this year. Moving on to our cash flow. As mentioned, we generated approximately $9 million. We had a slight improvement in our working capital due to better collections and receivables. Again, we expect that to improve in the second half even further. From an investing standpoint, we did complete the construction of the Houghton facility at the end of last year, had that final payment, and we don't have any other major projects in the pipeline. Our typical run rate is between $1.5 million to $2 million. So I think that's what you can expect going forward. I alluded to the significant dividend that we made at the beginning of this year, and the interim dividend that we will make in October as well. Overall, the cash -- the company remains highly cash generative, which allows us to continue to make investments towards future growth. And with that, I'll hand it back to Jack for our strategy update and outlook.

Great. Thank you, Enzo. We'll take a look at our long-term growth. First of all, we're very focused on international markets. You've seen the growth that we have there. We continue to want to develop new customers, relationships, and penetration with new products. We've added 4 positions to Europe and Australia in the process and expanded our facility in Melbourne. And you can see parts and service revenues have grown significantly by a combination of 40%. New product innovation has been the driving force in our company since the beginning. And as I mentioned, we have innovation councils and we spend a great deal of time talking with our customers. Because of our direct sales and service to our customers, we're able to spend a lot of time with them, helping them find solutions to problems that they have in their business that we can provide patented equipment that will make their jobs more efficient, make the laser screeding more accurate and minimize the problems that they have finding labor. The construction industry has notoriously had a problem with a shortage of labor for many, many years, and there's not going to be any changes in that in the future. And you'll see as we go on with the product development, we've had a number of new products released every year. We have a number that are in process at all times. And we -- generally, when we finish doing all the testing with our customers, and going through all of our developments, we'll then release them to the marketplace for sale. Going on to the international growth in Europe, a little bit more detail. Revenue growing by 46% in the first half of the year, new customers by 26%, volume increased about the same amount, and we continue to invest in personnel over there. We now have additional 2 more people, which brings us up to 50 with additions in Italy and Germany. In Australia, the revenue grew 32%. New customers were up 67%, and we saw a unit volume increase of 50%, along with spare parts revenue being up 40%. And we've also added 2 more people in Australia, and we've secured a larger facility. You can see it there in the picture. This allows us to do not only more inventory, like Enzo mentioned, but we'll start to do some repairs -- minor repairs to our customers' equipment. There's a growing demand for us to reutilize our services for our customers to repair some of their machines, and do some overhauls and things of that nature. When we look ahead to the remaining part of '23, the fundamentals remain very, very healthy. Our customers are all reporting good backlogs of business, and they're reporting good quoting from their building owners. The thing that's holding them back is there's still a number of supply chain problems, most common are truck drivers, so that our customers are not able to get enough of concrete to keep their crews busy 100% of the time. Therefore, they're doing less work in a given year. And what's happening is the work that's there, is getting pushed out to the future due to these supply chain issues -- I mean, supply chain issues and permitting issues that exist, that slowdown projects being built. We'll also see full production of the S-22 in the second half of the year, which will add to our sales of boom line machines. And we also plan on seeing continued growth in Europe and Australia. We're going to continue our investment in long-term growth areas like product development in Australia and Europe. We'll be putting in much more customer support people in the international markets, more people in the product development areas. And with that, the Board remains very confident that our 2023 results will be in line with the expectations, which we've stated, which is sales of $120 million, EBITDA of $36 million and cash of $32 million. And with that, we'll turn it over to answering some of the questions that you have.

[Operator Instructions] First question, you talk about bottlenecks in concrete supply in North America. How will these be resolved, and what time frame do you expect for resolution? And how are these delays to projects starting affecting your customers?

I'll take them one at a time. The concrete delays in the United States are due to a labor shortage, and it's a very broad labor shortage for mostly all industries in the United States. The best example to give of it is, there's a huge shortage of truck drivers for all different types of truck driving. As it relates to the construction industry, it relates to the people that bring the stone, the aggregate, the sand to the ready-mix company to be able to make the concrete. And you see this when it comes to delivering the concrete to the job sites, they don't have enough of drivers to deliver the concrete. So a typical example that would happen to one of our customers is, they would be going to have to build a 40,000 square foot slab, and they would call the ready-mix company and say, I need enough of concrete for 40,000 square feet, here's the mix, here's the delivery times and everything. And they would say, sorry, we just don't have enough of drivers to be able to get there or we don't have enough of concrete. So, I can only give you enough to do 10,000 square feet. Well, you need to do a 40,000 square foot slab all in one core. So that means that you have to find some other work for your crews to do that day, and try and work with the ready-mix company to find a day where they can give you enough of concrete to do the whole 40,000 square feet. So, this is common throughout the industry, and it doesn't look to be getting better very quickly. The shortage of drivers everywhere is common. You have it going on in London right now. You have it with cab drivers, you have it with the drivers that drive us around on these road shows. So it's one of those labor shortage things that nobody seems to have a solution to. So as a result, we do the best we can to live with it and our customers do that also. And there was a second half to that question, I'm sorry. Can you repeat it?

Yes. So you're saying that really, there's no timeframe for resolution. It will just be when its results, so to speak. The question went on to ask, are the delays to project starts affecting your customers?

Well, yes, it affects our customers, because he's not doing 100% of the work that he has orders for in a given year. He's doing something less than that. So it means that in general, his sales are down. But it also means by his customer that the buildings aren't getting built fast enough. And there is definitely a strong pipeline of buildings that want to be built, but they can't get built, because of the supply issues that are there. And in a lot of cases, the buildings are being held up by permitting so the buildings can't start. And the permitting is being held up, because in the cities and towns, they don't have enough of people to process.

But is that critical for your customers?

Yes, it is because unless the building can start, our customer can't start work on it. So therefore, he doesn't end up having the work to do or it gets delayed to the future.

And is that critical for them? I mean, will they survive?

Well, from a critical standpoint, yes, they'll survive. It's, like I said earlier, instead of doing 100% of the work they could, they may do 90% or 80%. They're not going to go out of business with it. They're just not performing at the peak that they would like to be performing at.

Right. And you've mentioned that the inventory should improve by being lower by the year-end. Could you be more specific as to your expectation?

I'll take that.

Yes, take that Enzo.

I'll take that one. So yes, certainly, we expect an improvement in our inventory by the end of the year. With the addition of the S-22 that's going to create a little bit of an uplift naturally, and as we introduce any new products. I would expect that inventory would improve to the neighborhood of $2 million to $3 million by the end of this year.

Great. And you've maintained the dividend for half 1. Do you expect to maintain the dividend for the full year?

Yes. We expect to maintain our dividend policy, as it's stated, and that is 50% of adjusted net income will be an ordinary dividend, and 50% of excess cash, over $25 million, will be a supplemental dividend. So no change to our stated dividend policy.

Great. Can you give a specific case example of the payback on investment on a machine for a customer?

Yes.

It can vary -- I'm sorry, go ahead, Jack. Sorry. It varies from -- between our large line and our small line. And generally, it's 2 to 3-year payback, and it's driven by utilization. So to the extent it's used more, obviously, that will be improved or accelerated. But rule of thumb, our customers are able to recoup the cost of the machinery within 2 to 3 years.

And are the research and development efforts effective in producing a good flow of profitable new products?

Yes. You can look at our track record, when we started out here, we had on patented machine and now we have 20. So it's had an excellent record of producing very, very good equipment that is patented, that has made significant improvements in our customers' capabilities to do their work, and also in their profitability. And I'm confident that, that will continue into the future.

Great. And a follow-on question. Why are the new products released within the past 5 years yet to contribute meaningfully? For example, the Sky Screed, why are people not ordering it?

When we introduce new products, because they're brand new to the marketplace, and they are inventions, it's always difficult to know what the acceptance rates of things are going to be. Some are accepted very quickly, and some take an awful lot of work and time. And the Sky Screed is an example of that. The product itself does an excellent job of screeding -- these are in high-rise buildings now of screeding the floor in the high-rise building, getting the flatness requirements that are there and also reducing labor, which is a problem for our customers, because they always have a shortage of labor to do the jobs. The problems we're running into with the Sky Screed is the process that works around the Sky Screed that also has to change in order for the Sky Screed to create the value that the customer wants. So that's something that we're constantly working with our customers on. It is not unusual in this business to have an invention that comes out that is a little bit ahead of the acceptance in the marketplace. When Somero started out in 1986, it took them 7 or 8 years to get broad acceptance of changing from manual labor to the laser screed machine. So, we know that, that's a pattern in our industry.

And to what extent has increased competition caused lower sales in half 1 '23?

To the best of our knowledge, it hasn't impacted our sales at all. We've always had competitors. The first ones came in 1987. They've been around for a long time. They will continue to be around for a long time, and we work hard every day to do a better job than we did the day before and to be a better competitor.

And what is Somero doing that the competitors aren't doing yet? So if Somero machines vanish tomorrow, what would your customers miss about them?

They'd miss the accuracy of our machines. They would miss the incredible service that we provide to our customers, and they would miss the consulting we give to our customers. We sell and service direct to our customers. So, they rely on us for an awful lot of consulting information about the variabilities in slabs that are put down, the locations they are put down, the concrete that's there, the ground that's below it, the sand differs from all different parts of the world. There's an awful lot that goes into pouring a concrete floor and meeting the flatness tolerances that are there. And none of our competitors have those capabilities to the level that we do.

And some European competitors at trade shows are continuing to describe electric vehicle technology as a key driver of sales. Somero still doesn't have any electrically powered screeds. How soon can we expect a product to fill that gap?

They're absolutely right. The future is in electric screeds, and we will be producing those very, very shortly for the market.

And there's been reports of one or more Chinese companies mastering concrete leveling laser techniques. To what extent does management feel Somero's technological competitive advantage is threatened by the competition?

We've been in China for many years, probably going on well over 15 years. We're well aware of the Chinese competitors. We're also aware that their equipment is not very good at meeting flatness standards like they are in Europe and Australia, and the United States. And therefore, it's not really a competitor of us. It's much more of a labor reduction machine rather than something that can produce the flatness standards that are required.

And why do we need $32 million of cash at the year-end when maintenance CapEx is less than $2 million a year?

Good question. And so our policy, I think, I alluded to earlier is to pay out dividends over 50% of anything over $25 million. And that number was really derived from our historical results, and our ability to be able to weather a downturn, and give us the flexibility to continue to support the business in those instances. However, it's important to remember that we are -- we have a highly variable cost model. Outside of the material cost, people are predominantly our expenses. And therefore, we have leverage, and flexibility to adjust when needed. That $25 million really was just established to give the company flexibility to retain the folks that we have, that we feel will contribute to future revenue growth.

Right. And a couple of questions on the patent infringement case. One says it's been resolved. One thinks it's still in the process of running. Could you comment on the current state of affairs of the patent infringement case, and the current state of competition and Somero's intellectual property? Are others catching up and if so, is this likely to result in a future decrease in margins?

We have over 100 patents right now. We have had patent infringement cases through the years. In the 25, 30 years that -- Somero has been around 35 years now, I think it is, we probably had 5 or 6 patent infringement cases. We take our patents very seriously. We're extremely aggressive about pursuing any violations we have of our patents. And we don't comment on any specific cases. But I can tell you we've been highly successful in the ones that we've been involved in. And no, we don't see that as an impediment to our gross margins.

And could you give some recent examples of incremental innovation in your core boom screeds products?

We've had -- with this constant changes that go on, a lot of it has to do with the software that's in the system, and the laser technologies. A lot of that gets improved as time goes on, a lot of it comes from our vendors, because we do not produce any products for an assembly operation. And so, therefore, as we get innovations from our suppliers, we're able to apply it to our machines. But we do have our own software to operate our machines, which is different from all of our competitors. So there are certain things on the software side of things that we can do, that we can offer to our customers that our competitors cannot.

And what's the new unit in the North of America adding to the company, both in terms of orders and ongoing costs, and are both in the forecast?

So the S-22 is a relaunch, we previously had the S that was our largest boom screed.

Sorry -- I think this is referring to the new building, the new building unit rather than the…

I'm sorry, I apologize. I thought you're referring to the new machine. So the new building in Australia or so I'll speak about…

No in America -- in America?

We had the expansion of the Houghton facility completed at the end of last year for 2 reasons -- actually 3 reasons. One is to provide additional capacity to grow into in the future, and we feel that it will support a business that could do approximately $200 million, but there is room to grow into that space. We also have brought in-house certain activities that were previously outsourced. For example, a pay booth and sand blasting booth, really to give us more control of our workflow. And then thirdly, we also introduced a pilot area for our R&D folks, where historically, a lot of the testing was occurring outdoors. And given the location of the facility that gets almost 200 inches of snow a year, that at times pose some challenges. So we are able now to bring that under controlled conditions indoors. And from an expense standpoint, we own all of the land out in Houghton. And so, the incremental cost, which was approximately $9.5 million was just for the construction, which will be depreciated over 30 years, and that is included in our forecast.

And you mentioned higher interest rates and bank lending requirements as one of the cause of project delays in the U.S. Can you expand on the impacts these are having?

Sure. So it's really an impact on the developer. To a lesser extent, our customers. Our customers do not have any issues getting financing, and their purchase pattern is based on need. From a developer standpoint, the increase in interest rate has really caused them to pause, and put projects out to rebid to identify cost savings to mitigate some of the increase in interest rates. And some of the bank lending tightening has slowed things down as well. But that impacts the developer more so, which ultimately does impact our customer and being able to commence the project, and go ahead and put into purchase order for us. But at this juncture, it's all delays, and we're not carrying any cancellations.

Right. And are your major competitors in the U.S. experiencing the same issues? Or do they serve different parts of the overall market, which have a greater influence on the supply of concrete or do they have their own driver teams? How are they faring?

No. Our competitors have the same situation. They do not produce concrete. They're in the same position that we are. Their customers purchase the concrete and bring it to the -- and the ready-mix company brings it to the job site. So, I'm sure that our competitors are experiencing the same issues that we are.

And will either the CHIPS and Science Act or separately, the Inflation Reduction Act have any impact on the business?

No, long-term, these kind of government programs do have an impact. One of the things that's very unusual about this point in time is, that the various CHIPS Act and battery-powered cars, and battery factories, what we refer to as reshoring, bringing them -- products back to the United States is something that we've never experienced before. So it's going to have a very meaningful impact on the construction activities in the states for many, many years. Some of the recent ones from the chip companies, they announced a $100 billion program to be put in place over 10 years in Upstate New York. That's a massive amount of money, and it represents a significant amount of work going forward for the construction industry.

And your brokers always used to produce forecasts for the forward financial year. Why have you asked them not to produce 2024 forecast?

Right at this moment, given the supply chain issues that are going on, our customers are not quite sure what things are going to look like when we get out to 2024. We get all our feedback from our customers. And right now, it's a little too soon for them to have a real comfortable feeling about what the entire year of 2024 is going to look for. And so that's what we really need to do. What we -- what they're looking for is for us to put out a forecast now that covers the next 20 months of business, and the information is just not available for us to do that yet. But I'm sure as time goes on, that we're going to be able to produce a meaningful forecast for next year.

And has Somero made any provision should China invade Taiwan, and the knock-on effect to chip production? So how long could Somero production continue if the chip supply dried up completely?

So, we buy our components to make our machines from other manufacturers. And a great many of those manufacturers get chips from different parts of the world. But I'm -- we're not specifically sure of which components from Taiwan, whether they go into what parts of our machines, that's not information that we have at the moment.

And given, as I understand it, Somero products last on average 5 to 7 years, and our bought as a medium to long-term investment aimed at improving job quality and productivity. Why is the order book so reactive to short-term issues such as concrete supply and job delays, et cetera?

Well, the reason that they react to short-term changes is, because our customers buy machines depending upon the job -- type of -- size of jobs that they get. And so think of it, as if you're doing a job that requires 20,000 square feet, and you have a crew -- the crew is usually about 8 or 9 people that would do those jobs. Well, if you had to do 2 or 3 of those jobs in a month that means you have to hire more people, and buy more machines. So a lot of it has to do with the mix of the size of buildings that our customers are quoting, and being awarded. And therefore, the sales and the volume fluctuate depending upon what they have for inventory to do the work they have, and what additional machines they need to do to maybe get different types of jobs.

Right. And interest income has barely changed year-on-year. Is the $25 million cash on the balance sheet, working as hard as it might, given the rise in interest rates?

So historically, the company's position has been to preserve the principal back when interest rates were extremely low. We have since shifted some of the cash into an interest-bearing account, but still remain highly liquid to be able to generate some additional interest income. But primarily, we're out to preserve principal and maintain the liquidity so that we can pay out dividends to shareholders.

Great. And if customers are asking for repair services, is there scope to develop recurring revenues through service contracts?

We do have service contracts now. As I mentioned earlier, there's changes going on in the marketplace where our customers used to do the majority of the work to their machines themselves. And now there's more of a trend towards having us repair equipment. And so, yes, there will be, over time, a growing need to be able to provide more services to our customers, both in where their location is. And by having it come to our facilities, depending upon the need to repair their equipment. So that will be some of the investments we continue to make on a worldwide basis to make sure that we can meet those opportunities that the customers provide us with.

And regarding staff, do you have your desired staff complement or are you struggling to recruit or even retain staff or what's the situation with staff?

On staff it's very good. We work very hard at retaining our people. We've had a tremendous track record of many, many employees with over 10, 15 years' time with the company. When you do have to go out and hire new people, it's very difficult, because we are such a unique company that when we put out an ad for somebody that is -- can train people on using a laser screed, virtually nobody applies. Because we're such a dominant company that we have to go out and hire somebody, and then train him on how to operate our equipment, how to repair our equipment. So we work very hard at maintaining the very talented people that we have.

And what are your typical order to delivery times?

Generally, it's very fast, because in general, our customers do not get the purchase order to do the job, they get a lot of verbal commitments, but they're not willing to spend money until they actually get the purchase order from the builder. And generally, they need the machine delivered in 2 to 3 weeks. So, we build to inventory, and try and anticipate the needs of our customers, but we're very, very good at making sure that they have the right piece of equipment to do the job when the job starts.

Great. And Somero has an excellent return on capital employed. Does management think peers are in a similar range? And if not, what gives you the ability to generate such high returns sustainably?

I mean, clearly, our track record has demonstrated that our investments, which are generally in the form of internal organic growth, and we're able to generate, and convert that into profitable cash-generating results, we've done so historically. We do look at potential M&A acquisitions, but being such a dominant player in this market, there aren't a whole lot of other folks that make sense for us to acquire. Our customers purchase beyond our equipment, hand tools, things of that nature, items of -- that are low-margin commodity type products. So it doesn't make sense to dilute our earnings. And therefore, our formula has been working, and we expect it to continue to do so and return significant capital to our shareholders. And you've seen our dividend yield is 6%, 7%. We don't anticipate that changing going forward.

Great. And roughly, how many customers do you have?

We have over 6,000 customers, and we sell and service in over 90 countries in the world.

And it seems to be a good proportion of Somero's intrinsic value is attributed to specific knowledge around concrete dynamics, panel laying regulations, for example. Has Somero considered utilizing this high-value asset to add a source of revenue where maybe looking for knowledge as opposed to machinery?

I'm not quite sure about the knowledge part of it, in concrete development. We have a great deal of knowledge on laser screeding of concrete, but we do not get involved in the mixed designs of the concrete itself. And I think that's where the question is targeted to, is our knowledge of the concrete mix designs. So no, we wouldn't be interested at the moment of putting any of that into books or any kind of knowledge base.

Or a consultancy type service?

Right.

So a couple of questions or a few questions on the valuation. Someone says, why should I continue holding Somero given the poor performance in the past few years? And somebody else asking, what do investors underappreciate about Somero?

Well, I think the value is there, and we've demonstrated it through the years that this is a very dominant company that will consistently over time grow and we certainly have. And we will continue to have very, very good margins, which generate a great deal of cash, which is returned to shareholders also. In terms of what do shareholders undervalue? I would say that the -- one of the things that sticks out to me is the fact that I mentioned that we have 6,000-plus customers. We sell and service direct with them. And I don't think people realize that we're not in the business of selling machines. We're in the business of making people successful. If our customers are not successful, if our 6,000-plus customers aren't successful. We're not going to be successful. So, we work very hard with them every single day to make their business more profitable and allow them to grow more. And I think that, that gets a little bit lost. We're seen more as just a sales company, so to speak.

And a related question. Have you been approached for a bid to be taken over in recent years given the low valuation?

No, we have not.

Great. And going back to the usage case of the Sky Screed, why has the adoption been slow? And what will increase usage? And how big can product sales get with this product?

Well, product sales can get big, because we all see the high-rise buildings that are being built all around the world. And there's 2 predominant types of high-rise buildings. One is structural steel, which you see mostly in downtown London. But the Sky Screed works on buildings that are being constructed one floor at a time. So when you build one floor, you build the -- you put up shores and you build the columns. And you pour the concrete on basically plywood, you pour the floor on it, and then you start to build the columns and the walls of the building going up. That's where the Sky Screed is effective, because it can be brought in with a crane to screed the floors. It's going to take a change in the processes around that. I can give you one quick example. When you put a concrete floor in a building like that, there's what they call StubHubs, which is pipes in the floor. So if you've got a 6-inch floor, you've got a pipe that's sticking through the floor, so that they can bring in electricity, cable, plumbing in all of the utilities that go into a building. So there's a process that's needed to be added there, because if those StubHubs are sticking up above where the floor is supposed to be screeded, the screed isn't effective. So, we're working with the developers, and the builders to find solutions so that when they get there to pour the floor, there are no StubHubs sticking up and therefore, the laser screeding process can go very quickly. But these are things that we're constantly working with the customers, and potential customers. The crane picking can be a problem in some locations, because cranes are in great demand on construction sites. So, if you have to wait for the crane to move it from one side of the floor. So, there are process problems rather than the design or the build of the specific machine.

Great. And someone's asking, although it's strange that we're asking you about driver supply and concrete availability. It seems that these are critical to the shortfall in Somero's performance and your customers' rather than demand for building in the U.S., which it seems is buoyant. Do I have the right picture?

Yes, the supply of concrete, and the ability for our customers to work at 100% is definitely slowing down the whole selling process for everybody. There is buoyant demand, and everybody's anxious to fulfill it, but we have to find a solution to these shortages that exist today.

And I know you don't want to talk specifics, but do you think about succession planning? Is there a plan in place for developing people, and thinking about the future in terms of management?

Yes. We've had succession planning in place since we went public in 2007. The Board reviews it frequently. We do have various training programs that people attend. And yes, it's an ongoing part of our business.

Right. And what percentage of the screed market does Somero have?

There are no statistics out, because none of our competitors are public companies like we are, so there's no way to get financial information on them. But I think it's pretty clear to say that we have whatever, 80% or 90% of the marketplace.

And given the performance outside the USA has been so great, would you be more aggressive in investing for growth there?

Yes, we have been and we will continue to be. We will -- as we mentioned, we added 4 people this year. We launched our building in Australia. We have many plans for the second half of this year, and into next year to add people, and facilities between Australia and in Europe.

Would you use distributors instead of being the primary direct sales and services?

We don't use distributors, because they can sell the machine, but they can't teach the customer how to use the machine. They could do that with a long extensive training program. But the -- most of the people that are very, very talented at teaching a customer how to use one of our 20 products already works for us. So a distributor basically only brings you a lead. And in a few cases, because of language issues, we might use, what you'd call a mini distributor to help us get a lead, and maybe do some translations for us. But no, they're not effective in selling the products for us.

Great. And what's the importance of the S-22EZ?

The difference in the 22 versus the 28, we brought out the 28 last year, and we stopped production of 22, because the 28 has a longer boom on it, 5 feet longer and therefore, it's more productive, and it creates better flatness on the floor, because of the longer boom. And that's a very popular machine, and remains that way. What some of our customers found out was that it takes a slightly larger truck to transport the 28 than it does to 22. And some customers have the larger trucks. Others that have multiple 22s don't have a large truck to have the 28, so they would rather have more 22s and that way, they don't have to go out and buy a different truck.

Great. We've had loads of questions. I hope we've got through most of them, but we're really grateful for the time that you've given to us. Do you have any closing remarks?

Yes, I want to thank everybody for taking the time. We greatly appreciate your interest. And certainly, if you have any questions that we didn't get around and answer it, you can send them in, and we will be more than happy to answer them for you. And hope that we'll get to see you in-person sometime in the future. Thank you very, very much.

Great. Many thanks, indeed, Jack and Enzo, and to you all who are listening, you'll now be taken to a webpage to give feedback on today's presentation. If you can't complete it now, you'll receive a follow-up e-mail. We'd be really grateful if you could take a few minutes to complete. Many thanks for joining. This is the end of the webinar.