XPEL, Inc. (XPEL) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Texas Business Minds, a presentation of the Texas Business Journals, brought to you by Texas Mutual Insurance Company, a worker's comp provider committed to helping companies build a stronger, safer Texas. In this episode, San Antonio Business Journal Editor-in-Chief Tony Quesada welcomes Ryan Pape, the Chairman, President and CEO of XPEL. Pape has led the company from the brink of bankruptcy to become the industry leader in automotive paint protection film and window tint through a network of dealers around the world.

Well, thanks, Ryan Pape, for joining us for this first podcast at the San Antonio Business Journal. So Ryan, tell our listeners who your company is and what your company does and who your customers are? How do you compete in the marketplace?

Sure, it's great to be with you, Tony. I'm Ryan Pape, President and CEO of XPEL, and we're a leading provider of protective films, mainly in the automotive space, paint protection film, and window tint. And paint protection film is really our first product and our core product, and this is a clear self-adhesive film, goes on the front of cars, principally to protect them from rock chips and other damage. And we're really the leader in that space and have since brought on other products, but that's really what we're known for.

And how do you sell this?

We go to market through professional installers. So this isn't a do-it-yourself business. This is a business with a big B2B channel, mostly through independent shops in the aftermarket. So these are the mom-and-pop businesses on the street corner, window tint shops, auto detailing shops, those type of businesses are our product dealer. And then many times, they're working with car dealerships, and car dealerships may be selling the product, sometimes dealerships are selling it by purchasing it directly from us, but a lot of times they're using our independent dealer network as an outsourced labor source to actually do the labor. But it's really mostly a new car product.

So I'm going to get later to talking about what's up ahead for this company. But before I go there, I want to go back a little bit.

Sure.

Because you had left the company at one time. You had been with the company, you left it. And then you came back as President and CEO. Can you tell listeners like why did you leave and what drew you back?

Sure. Well, a long story with the company. So my involvement was really even with the predecessor company at XPEL, which had a different name. And at that time, the company was going to be a technology company. It was a software company. And I had a background in software. Then I was working for another company that was hired as a consultant for XPEL's predecessor company at that time. And after doing that for a year or 2, kind of off and on as a client, I joined the company full time in 2004. And people ask a software company, you just said you're in the automotive business, but a key aspect of our business today is that in order to get our products on the car, they're precut using a cutter and a software and patterns to make the precision fit pieces that make the installation of the products easy. And the original business model of the company was just to be a software company just doing that. And so that's what actually drew me to the company first. And that was -- I think I became employee #12 in 2004. And that was fun. It was a great idea, and it's part of what still makes us great today and has contributed to our success. But it took a while to realize that, that -- being that software company as a stand-alone business model was not a very good business. It took -- it's a different management. It wasn't me. Before me, in around 2008, to say, "Hey, this concept of paint protection film has a lot of legs. It's a really good product. But it needs more than software and patterns. It needs a brand, it needs training, it needs consumer awareness. It needs all of these other things." And so I came into the business, very much attracted to it because it was a software business, because that's what I was interested in. And then over a few years, that really morphed into something else.

And so you left -- and what brought you back?

Yes. So I left in 2008, there was a management change at that time, and it ended up a really tough time to be in the automotive space as it was a tough time to be in a lot of businesses. And there were a couple of other changes that had happened and around the summer of 2008, I said, yes, I'm just not -- wasn't fully bought into the direction where the management was going at the time.

Wasn't feeling it?

Yes. I mean it was -- it had been a tough time, some self-induced things that happened at the company, but then just sort of the overall macro situation. So I left and did some other things briefly, but kept in touch with everyone. It was a passion project and something I cared very much for even then. So even in spite of that, it wasn't easy to step away, but it seems like the right thing to do at the time.

And then how did they bring you back?

The CEO at the time was running -- came from a subsidiary that the company had in another country. And he wanted to move back and that really left the company without a CEO. And the company was a little bit -- it was rather troubled, was sort of probably technically insolvent at that point, had a series of losses, had relied on raising capital to survive and that became a really tough thing to do in 2008. But I believed in the idea and the Board called me and said, "Hey, do you want to be the CEO? We think you'd do a great job." And I said, "Sure, why not." I still believed in the company, believed in what it could be, it was horrible timing but it sounded like something I needed to do.

And so it wasn't like a soul searching process. As soon -- when you heard the offer, you're like, "I want to do this."

Yes. No, I think there probably should have been a soul searching process. But no, you just say yes. When you believe in something and you know what it can be, and you see mistakes made that you think, "Hey, maybe I wouldn't have done that. Maybe I could do better, maybe I could have avoided that." And then you get that chance, you say, okay, if you're going to complain about what other people do, fine. But if given the opportunity to do it yourself, you better stand up and do it. So that's what I did.

Right. And we're going to get to that thought in just a second. But before I do ask, I want to ask you, describe the condition of the company when you rejoined it as CEO?

Yes. So that was February 2009. It was -- it very easily could have been put through bankruptcy at that point. We would -- and I say we, it was really our CFO at the time, who's now our Controller, still to this day here. He would manage cash on a daily basis to make payroll. We had vendors that would not supply us in bulk. We were piecemealing out, sending wire transfers every day, one order at a time based on the cash that we had in. And it was a really tough time. We, I think, went down, we reduced the team probably by about 50%, within a few months after and around that 2008, 2009. And so it's very much hand to mouth, just trying to keep the lights on and stabilize the company. And I think we were doing maybe, at that time, $3 million or $4 million a year in revenue. The company had never made a profit of any kind up to that point. And I think we owed sort of $1 million plus that was not current. So it was a really tough situation.

Was it a small cap public company at that time? Or was it still...

It was, yes. The company had been a public company at that point since 2003. So yes, it was, at that time, for sure.

Right. Okay. So given those conditions, I do want to go to a story you've told me before, I think it's an interesting story, about a CEO's belief in the company itself. There came a time when you really had to put your own money behind what you believe. Can you talk about that story?

Yes. Well, so as we were talking about in, I think, February, maybe March 2009, right after I came back and took the CEO job, the company had done -- the previous management had done a sponsorship and it was really much bigger in terms of financial commitment than what the company could ever possibly commit to at that time. And the group was ultimately bought by a much bigger company. And I think a few weeks in after I was there, they just turned around and sued us for what was unpaid on this.

This was like a racing sponsorship.

Yes, it was racing sponsorship. And I think we owed him $250,000 at that time and which was a huge number for us back then. It was a number that you just couldn't even comprehend.

It was a sickening number.

There were a lot of sickening numbers. So that was a sickening number on top of a lot of sickening numbers. But they sued us, and look, we owed him the money, fair and square. There was no question. They did everything that they should -- that they should have done. But I had just taken this job, and we were already dealing with the issues that we knew we had to confront. And they just turned around and sued us. And I called them and said, look, I just became the CEO of this company. I don't own any shares of the company, which was true at the time. Thankfully, not true today, but absolutely true at that time. And I said, look, we don't have the money. You're not going to get anything. And if you push this, it maybe what pushes us into bankruptcy, because we just -- we -- there's nothing we could do. I said, look, I have a -- it was a Continental Airlines credit card that I don't use. And I said it's got a $25,000 limit on it. So I suggest that you accept that in lieu of the $250,000 that we owe you and call it a day and I'll get paid back when I get paid back. And they said, we couldn't possibly do that. I said, well, otherwise, I don't own any of the company, this will probably put it in bankruptcy. I probably still have my job. But that's all I can offer you at this point. So they say, well, that's -- we're not going to be able to do that. I said, okay, but I'm here if you change your mind. And it was probably a week later that they called back and said, "Yes, we'll take your offer." So it was a $25,000 on the credit card. I got maybe a one-way trip somewhere in America, and said, fine, we'll do the deal. And I figured -- I knew at that point that I'd eventually get paid back by the company. I knew we could do it. It would just take time. And we ultimately did things like that several times over that next year just to try and bridge the gap and avoid something far worse for everybody involved.

Right, because you often hear about people who start their own businesses on credit cards and stuff like that. Here, you're coming into a business, but it almost becomes like your entrepreneurial effort, because you're putting your own skin in the game.

Oh, absolutely. And I think that's one of the things that I think is so great about our company, is I think there's a lot of people that feel that way. Thankfully, we don't ask them to use their credit card to float the business. But I think there's a lot of people here they would, if we needed to. And that's a great part of our culture.

And I do want to talk about -- fast forward to today where things are going much better. For the listeners' sake, XPEL is 1 of 10 finalists for San Antonio Business of the Year. You've had a tremendous year. What are the big growth opportunities -- what have been the source of growth in the last year or 2? And what are the growth opportunities going forward for XPEL?

Well, our core business of paint protection film, which still comprises the vast majority of our revenue is a growing space. So we talk about the attach rate of paint protection film to new cars, and that's just simply how many cars made and sold each year worldwide have some amount of film on them? And the numbers are hard to come by. But what we know, for sure, is that really in all regions of the world, that is growing. That attach rate is growing. And so all things equal, if more cars want paint protection film or need paint protection film, and we're the leading provider of that film and can serve our customers the best, we're set up to have good growth from that alone. And I think then, at the same time, even while that paint protection film business is growing, we've continued to add more products. We've got automotive window tint, which many of your listeners are probably more familiar with, that's a much more established product. Ceramic coating products for automotive and then some window tint products for commercial and residential applications. So we really got 2 key drivers of growth. It's the core business of which we're the leader, the paint protection film growing on a global basis and then the added products that we can put into our channel that are separate from that paint protection film.

It's a global market for this type of product. Obviously, cars are sold all over the world. But where are the big opportunities geographically around the world?

It is a global opportunity. And we see areas with higher penetration all over the world, and some of them makes sense. You say, parts of Canada have great penetration. We're trying to protect the paint. They have horrible winter weather driving conditions. So Canada is a great market. We -- China is a great market for us with -- there's a lot of pollution that can damage paint and an acid rain and things like that. So that's a great market. But then you also see areas that do particularly well just because they are early adopter markets. There's more awareness. This is a technical product. It's installed by professionals. It's sold by car dealerships and people in the aftermarket. So you need a certain critical mass in any area to really develop the market and create those sales. For us, we've always been an internationally focused company. We've hovered with revenue outside the U.S., plus or minus 50% of our revenue in different quarters and over the years. And now we've got employees in 10 countries, operations, physical operations in many of those. And so we're very much internationally focused company. And we think that for every product we sell in the U.S., in most markets, that opportunity exists. And it might be slightly greater, slightly less in one country to another, the type of vehicles might be different. There's all sorts of factors, but it's truly global opportunity. And I think that's true probably for a lot more companies than recognize it, too. We've been fortunate to always have a lot of global interest. So it's taken us around the world. But I think that exists across a lot of products as well.

So are there any particular areas of the world that are kind of top of mind for, say, the next 2 to 5 years of growth?

When you look at where we do well, we do well in Canada, we do well in China, we've put a lot of effort into growing the business in Europe. Europe has a great car culture, yet adoption of these products as a whole, as an industry is many years behind the U.S. So we see tremendous opportunity in Europe. But really, I would count almost every place is somewhere on that list. We'll cater our offering, we'll cater our go-to-market country by country. But there's very few countries in the world where there aren't opportunities for these products, and it's just a matter of how we prioritize them and how we go-to-market.

How do you -- so I'll just throw up an example. Sub-Saharan Africa, a lot of countries is very hot, very austere conditions for a vehicle. Is that a market you're in? And if it wasn't -- if it's not, how would you approach that?

Well, so we're in with some presence, which is at least a handful of customers in many countries. So while I forget the particular city, I know there's a very high line Porsche dealer in an area you're talking about, that's at least one customer of ours that I can remember off hand. So I think is Sub-Saharan Africa a market we're going to put a lot of our own resources to go in-country ourselves? No, it's not. But it's a market where we will either have or develop distribution relationships with someone who can really own that market and help develop it. An example, we just had our dealer conference here in San Antonio. We had 300 of our best customers come in. About 40% of those were from outside the U.S. We had a dealer from the island of Mauritius travel 11,000 miles to come to that conference. So there really is opportunity everywhere. Now part of our strategy is we want to go set up in-country. So it's one thing to say, "Hey, I'm going to appoint a distributor to represent us in the country." We do that in a lot of places, and we'll always do that in a lot of places. But our preference with our brand proposition, our value proposition to the customers and how we want to go to market, just to go set up as many places in the world as you can. So that took us to Mexico. We have our own distribution and sales operation based out of Guadalajara, an amazing business. And what we're doing in Mexico, if we weren't the ones that are doing it, it would be impossible for us. Now we can't do that everywhere, but we want to do that in ever more places.

XPEL Chairman, President and CEO; Ryan Pape, joining San Antonio Business Journal, Editor-in-Chief Tony Quesada. In our next segment, Pape shares key insight on how we turned the company around when Texas Business Minds continues. [Presentation]

Continuing our conversation on Texas Business Minds as San Antonio Business Journal Editor-in-Chief Tony Quesada features Ryan Pape, Chairman, President and CEO of XPEL, the automotive industry leader in paint protection film and window tint. However, a decade ago, it was a different story. The company was struggling to survive and Pape started to rebuild by focusing on the basics.

So for people who are listening to this and kind of comprehend how austere things were when you came onboard, what would you tell them where some of the key things that you focused on right away to get it turned around?

Well, I think some of them are probably universal and then some were specific to our situation.

Yes. We'll start with the universal things.

I think. I mean, the universal lesson is just a focus on cash and cash flow, and particularly in a small business in one that was that small. If you can't manage that even down to the penny, you don't have a chance. And when we were really focused on that, and our CFO at the time who was excellent with it. I mean, you're down to budgeting weekly cash flow, basically just to survive, make sure your teams paid, your vendors are paid and whatever arrangements you've honored. And I think that many people don't focus enough on cash flow. And when you look at a growing business, especially one that's a product business versus a service business, you can consume all of your cash just with your growth. You need to grow, you need more receivables, you have more receivables. If you're in a B2B trade business like we were, you've got more inventory that you need just to satisfy increased revenue. So I think that -- the universal lesson out of that is the importance of cash and importance of understanding cash flow. I think in the case of XPEL, XPEL had no sales organization. I mean that was what was apparent to me prior to coming in as a CEO, but certainly after. And even the success that it had in terms of being recognized for the software, really all came organically. It came by referral, but there was no sales organization. So that was one of the first things that we did was start to build that. And literally, that sounds -- it sounds like we did something special, but it was really, hey, we need to hire one salesperson, and then one became 2, and 2 became 4, and 4 became 8, over time. But I think that was the #1 thing. And I say salespeople, it's even sort of disrespectful of what they do. We've got customers that buy from us every month. And so these are relationships to be nurtured and managed. These are friendships that develop between them. But we're looking for people who will represent our brand and carry it forward. And then if they grow their business over time, we'll grow as a result. So that's very powerful. And I think that was probably the #1 most important thing that we needed to do in 2009 other than just sort of stabilizing the ship, so to speak.

And how does a company like XPEL, that's B2B, but it also is something that consumers have some visibility towards -- how do you approach marketing this company to build that brand?

Yes, absolutely. It's a great question, and it's very complicated because we're selling to other businesses. And what those businesses care about might be different than what their customers care about. So if you look at the customer who buys our products and they buy our paint protection film. They care about how does it look. Does it look clear? Is it invisible like we say it should be? How is it going to perform? Is it durable? Will it last 10 years, like we give a 10-year warranty. And then to a lesser extent, they care about what is the cost? But if you're a dealer, a product dealer or a dealership selling it, you have a whole other set of concerns, right? You care about all those things your customer cares about in terms of the product. But you care about things like, hey, what's the warranty support behind this product? What's the marketing support? If I put XPEL on my door, is my phone going to ring? Are they going to bring me customers? How can XPEL make my business more profitable? And for us, that's managing installation time and things like that, that only someone in the business can care about. So we really had 2 kind of simultaneous approaches. One is we want to market the product to the consumers because we want them to know about it. And we would target really enthusiasts in the auto space as our consumer customer we're marketing to. But then we also need to target that B2B customer, the dealer or the dealership at the same time, because without their ability to sell and install the product, there's no sales that can be made. So I think even to this day, managing both of those channels, it requires 2 different sets of messages and they're related.

Different ways of delivering them.

Yes, absolutely, but totally different ways of delivering them.

Because one might be a mass approach, and the other one might be a targeted dealer-by-dealer approach.

No, for sure. That's true. And they've got to go in, in concert. We need to make sure that we have the B2B, the dealer capacity in a given area to be able to serve whatever consumer interest we generate. And then on the other hand, where we have plenty of dealers, we want to make sure we're helping to create enough demand locally that they say, wow, what I get from XPEL in terms of lead generation, the value I get by carrying the XPEL brand in terms of who's calling me, who's walking into my store is unmatched. So we've got to balance it both ways.

On the marketing side, you told us the story about how you paid off a debt that the company owed that was related to a sponsorship package that, ultimately, the company couldn't afford. And now recently, the company has entered into a major high-profile sponsorship of an IndyCar racing champion, Josef Newgarden...

Newgarden, yes.

Who is the reigning -- was it NTT?

Yes. IndyCar champ.

IndyCar championship. So what drove that? What made you think that was something we needed to do and something that you could afford to do because those sponsorships are not cheap.

Sure. Well, I think for us, when you look at -- talk about the consumer marketing, our consumer marketing really is targeted towards enthusiasts. And people think of enthusiasts in the auto space as just ones buying very expensive high line or exotic cars. And there are a lot of people like that. I mean, no question, that's a big component of our customer base. But there are enthusiasts at every price point. There's -- there are Toyota enthusiasts, there are Subaru enthusiasts. There are Tesla enthusiasts, which I'm sure is -- all Tesla buyers may be Tesla enthusiasts at this point. We love Tesla buyers. But we are always looking for ways to carry that brand message forward and still try and orient that towards enthusiasts. And so racing and racing sponsorship is, obviously, a natural one for us. It's natural now just like it was for the previous management team 12 years ago. And when we look to do that, there's nobody better to do it than a Penske Racing, which is Newgarden's team. And when that relationship really has developed over the past 9 months, we really came to love everything about the Penske organization and Penske Racing, the way they dealt with us, the way they deal with their other sponsors and partners is really unique. It's a class act organization, and we really felt at home that as a way to get back into and to really get into racing sponsorship as it ties to that core enthusiast demographic we go after. There's no one better to do that than with Penske Racing. So we're really excited. We have a 3-year agreement with them, but we expect that to continue as most partners of Penske Racing do, we anticipate that will continue for a long time.

And what does it actually physically look like on race day?

So it will be a primary XPEL car for 2 races next year in IndyCar Series and then 3 in the years after that. So you'll see the XPEL brand well represented on that IndyCar for all the world to see. And then at the races where we're not primary, we have other activation and other presence of our logo and branding. And then, obviously, we're going to activate at a number of races. So the opportunities for our dealers and our customers to bring them together for them to bring some of their customers together at the right races and really use it to benefit the entire network that we have.

And so one of those races, I understand will be in Indianapolis. And the other one will be in Texas, right?

Yes, we'll be up in Fort Worth.

Fort Worth Motor Speedway?

Yes, we'll be in Fort Worth this spring in early summer. We'll have a big activation there and really, really excited about that.

That's going to be probably a lot of fun for the whole team.

It will. And we have a huge customer base in Texas. Obviously, Texas has been a really big market for us. And so being able to activate there and open that up to a lot of our dealers and dealerships we work with in the state. It will be a lot of fun.

Yes. So that's obviously a big initiative. You're going to be watching to see how successful that is in terms of actual customer acquisition long term. And there was another major initiative for XPEL this year that, obviously, kind of transformed the way the world sees XPEL. And that was when you took your publicly-traded stock listing from the Toronto Stock Exchange to the NASDAQ. Talk about what drove that? What sub decisions you had to make? And how do you go about executing that?

Sure, sure. Yes. No, that was a huge project, really a multiyear project that came together this year. we've been publicly-traded, I think, as we just said, since 2003 in Toronto on the Toronto Venture Exchange. And that worked well for the company...

Why did that start out on the Toronto Exchange? There's a reason for that, right?

Yes. Well, Canada was always a -- was the early adopter market for these products. Even back when being a software company was the goal. Canada was the #1 international market. And that came from the winter weather conditions, and just how well the products did in that environment. And so I believe that, that was the impetus, obviously, before my time to look to Canada to raise that early capital to become the software company. There were people that knew the products that knew the idea that just got it, because it was sort of the most penetrated market that there was. So that led, really, I would say, 90% of all the equity capital of the company ever raised came out of Canada. And in 2009 and the years after that, we kept a very low profile as a public company, really to the frustration of some shareholders who started watching what we were doing in the years after that. But it was important to right the ship and worry about the company and I'll worry about the stock. So that meant we just kept doing what we were doing, didn't worry about the fact that we were a company based in Texas, traded in Toronto. But we always knew that we needed to change that. And we just wanted to get to both the time where we have the time -- to make capital time to devote to changing it and also where we were at a certain critical mass that we would really get the benefit of it. And so while we listed on NASDAQ in July this past July of 2019, the work to go into that really to move from Canada to the U.S. really goes back almost 2 years prior to that, doing that while still growing at a high rate and trying to run the business. So we were really glad to get that done. It really helps solidify the company's identity. And I think that for our customers, for our dealers around the world, they'll get asked, well, who is XPEL? Who owns XPEL? Who's standing behind the product and to have now a much simpler explanation that says, "Hey, XPEL is publicly traded on NASDAQ, has been in business over 20 years."

Right. And NASDAQ is called the stock market of the future.

Yes. And that's a real simple explanation and one that should create a lot of confidence in that end consumer. So I think it's a real benefit to have the simplified, easy-to-understand story, and that's true whether you're on our team and you work here, whether you're one of our dealers or you're an end consumer that's deciding should I buy XPEL products?

And now with the switch over to that exchange, did it increase or decrease your reporting requirements? Was that a consideration?

Well, it's different. I think the net effect is that the U.S. requirements, PCA will be audit, the requirements are tougher, but not distinctly different. Just the trading in Canada being a reporting issuer in Canada, we have full audited financials from a fully recognized firm. So while it's incrementally more, it's more than it's different than it is sort of in order of magnitude, more work or more complexity.

Right. And even before you switched over to that exchange, under your tenure, and I want to say maybe 18 months ago, tell me if I'm wrong, you actually started doing investor calls with your quarterly financial reports...

Yes, I think it's actually been longer than that.

Has it?

It's been a couple of years. That's sort of interesting part of the story is, after 2009, and I couldn't tell you when, but maybe it was around 2012, 2013, we started to post some profits and get some attention. And we would have people call and I had shareholders at that time and the stock was probably trading at $0.10, $0.12, $0.05. And they would be irate that we just weren't spending time, talking to them or doing calls. We would put out our quarterly results and not really say a whole lot else. But we did that on purpose. And it was really to say that rather than talk about what we're going to do, let's focus on doing it. And that was great, and there were a lot of really smart people that started paying attention in those days, who hopefully have made a lot of money now. And then that really developed. And then again, sort of reaching more of a critical mass in terms of number of shareholders and just where we were. And we changed our posture and doing all those things that are the right thing to do now.

And just so people have an idea about how dramatic this has been at XPEL. When you switched from the Toronto Exchange to the NASDAQ, what was the stock trading at?

Yes. So in 2019, we started the year on the Toronto, I think, at around USD 1.50 a share. And then we ended 2019 close to $15 plus or minus. So it was a massive year. It was..

So we're talking multiples of 100% growth of your stock price.

It was a tremendous year.

That's tremendous. Given all that you have been through, what is the one thing that you have learned -- that stands out as something you have learned as CEO of this company that you had no appreciation of before you became CEO of this company, as it pertains to running a company?

Well, I think I underestimated at that time, how important the people are, I mean, it sounds so trite because everyone will tell you always how important your team is. But I don't think I knew that at that time. And I think it took me a while to learn that. But we have such an amazing team now. And I think we have such an amazing culture that we've been able to do what we've been able to do. And I think that our culture has developed in part by being a public company and in a way that's been positive. It's very common to see small businesses where the decisions and the capital allocation decisions of the business are really made in the image of the owner. And you say, "Hey, we need to double our marketing next year." And the owner would say, "Oh, yes, I don't think we're going to be able to do that." And then you find out there was a luxury purchase or something else personally. And that's just a demoralizing thing, and I say that as someone who's been an employee. But when you look at who we are, we've always had this shared identity and a shared cause. I just work here like everyone else. And I have to do a good job just like everyone else. And so we're all in it together. And I think that, that culture and how that's helped us develop and attract more like-minded people, I would have never anticipated that when I came in, in 2009 in that ensuing year or 2, I think I was pretty [ listening ] about all of the problems that the public market created. Of course, it didn't create them, the company created them. But over time, I realized that it's really helped shape our culture for the better. And I think having that culture means we deal with our customers the right way, more often than not. And so I'm now very thankful for that. And I'm thankful for sort of a democratized process and for what it's done for our company, and I think it will serve us very well going forward.

Very good. Well, Ryan Pape, thank you so much for joining us on this initial podcast. And good luck to you in all your endeavors, and we're going to continue to watch what your company does.

Great. Thank you, Tony.