Q1 2022 Exponent Inc Earnings Call
Please standby good day and welcome to the exponent, Inc. First quarter of fiscal year 2022 financial results Conference call. Today's conference is being recorded at this time I'd like to turn the conference over to Joni Cultist Allen. Please go ahead ma'am.
Thank you operator, good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us on exponents first quarter 2022 final financial results Conference call.
Please note that this call will be simultaneously webcast on the Investor Relations section of the company's corporate website at Www Dot exponent Dot Com Backslash investors. This conference call is the property of exponent and any taping or other reproduction is expressly prohibited without prior written consent.
Joining me on the call today are Dr. Catherine Corrigan, President and Chief Executive Officer, enriched Schlenker Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.
Before we start I would like to remind you that the following discussion contains forward looking statements, including but not limited to excellent as market opportunities and future financial results that involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed here.
All information that could cause actual results to differ from forward looking statements can be found an excellent it's periodic SEC filings, including those factors discussed under the caption risk factor in exponents. Most recent Form 10-Q the.
The forward looking statements and risks in this conference call are based on current expectations as of today and exponent assumes no obligation to update or revise them, whether as a result of new developments or otherwise and now I will turn the call over to Dr. Catherine Corrigan Chief Executive Officer Catherine.
Thank you Tony and thank you everyone for joining us today.
I'll start off by reviewing our first quarter 2020 to business performance Rich will then provide a more detailed review of our financial results and outlook and we will then open the call for questions.
We had a solid start to the year achieving year over year growth in revenue and EBITDA, while continuing to advance our long term goals are.
Our business model persists in demonstrating our resiliency against the challenging macroeconomic environment as evidenced by the strong demand, we're seeing for our services across the business during the quarter.
We used that clients are increasingly relying on exponent for our scientific and engineering expertise to help solve their most complex problems.
Growth in the first quarter was driven largely by work related to the consumer electronics utilities chemicals and life sciences sectors on the proactive side demand was driven by clients seeking optimization of their product designs and performance as well as risk mitigating data analytics on the reactive side.
We saw a continued rebound in our litigation related work as well as increased activity related to product recalls we are excited about the evolving opportunities related to digital health as we are continuing to see positive momentum in life Sciences, driven by increased work with medical devices and pharmaceuticals looking.
[noise] ahead, our expertise will be increasingly sought after as the world places greater emphasis on safety health and environmental issues, we are well positioned to capitalize on this trend as we help our clients build safer and more sustainable products and processes.
Turning to our engagements in more detail within our proactive business. We continue to see elevated demand for machine learning data studies and user experience research across a range of end markets momentum continued with our consumer products and electronics clients as demand for virtual and augmented reality work continues to <unk>.
Increase.
Within the automotive end market, we are seeing an increasing it in engagements in the electric vehicle space, particularly around the performance and safety of battery packs of the future.
Since we're coming to exponent to understand the performance reliability and safety of their next generation designs.
Our risk and vulnerability work with utilities continue to increase as a result of the broadened scope of our risk models and we expect further growth in this area International arbitration work was also robust during the quarter further amplifying our brand recognition in this arena.
Across the business exponent is well positioned to capitalize on macro trends, including escalation and safety health and environmental concerns.
I have a substantial effect on our overall business over the next several years.
We are excited about the evolving opportunities related to energy storage vehicle electrification and automation consumer electronics, and digital health, which we expect will deliver increasing impacts over time as we continue to execute on our long term strategy further as the energy sector decreases dependence on foreign oil.
We expect that the secular trend towards renewables will drive future engagements with exponent.
On the recruiting front, we remain focused on building upon our differentiated position by growing and developing our world class engineering and scientific team to meet the evolving needs of our clients and the market. Although the job market remains highly competitive our hiring pipeline remains robust and we continue to rely on.
Our strong reputation and targeted outreach to add exceptional talent, we are confident in our ability to attract and retain talent to support the future of exponent.
Turning to our segments ex bonus engineering into other scientific segment represented 81% of our net revenues in the first quarter, increasing 9% as compared to the prior year period with continued strong demand for exponent services across the utilities consumer electronics and life Sciences sectors.
Exponent is environmental and health segment represented 19% of the company's net revenues in the first quarter net revenues in this segment increased 4% compared to the same period in the prior year growth. In this segment was primarily driven by exponents work evaluating the impacts of chemicals on the environment.
As we Mark our 55th anniversary. This month, we are encouraged to see exponent growing in new emerging verticals and constantly evolving to meet the needs and challenges of our clients, while maintaining our reputation for technical excellence objectivity and disciplinary diversity.
Our standards and regulations evolve around environmental social and governance issues clients will increasingly reach for exponent trusted advice to help them improve the safety and performance of their products and processes.
Our first quarter results exemplify the strength of our adaptable business model unique market position and strong client relationships, which will continue to drive enhanced profitability and long term value for our shareholders.
I'll now turn the call over to rich to provide more detail on our first quarter results as well as to discuss our outlook for the second quarter and the full year 2022 rich.
Thank you Catherine and good afternoon, everyone. Let me start by saying all comparisons will be on a year over year basis, unless otherwise noted.
For the first quarter of 2022 total revenues increased 10, 3% to $128 $5 million and revenues before reimbursements or net revenues as I will.
I'll refer to them from here on increased seven 6% to $117 $9 million as compared to the same period in 2021 net income for the quarter decreased to 29 $6 million or 56 cents per diluted share as compared to 38.
We're 58 cents per diluted share in the prior year period.
Excluding the realized tax benefits for share based awards earnings per share would have been up three cents.
In the first quarter of 2022, the realized tax benefit for share based awards was $6 million or 11 cents per diluted share as compared to $8.8 million or 16 cents per diluted share in the first quarter of 2021.
Excluding the tax benefit explain its consolidated tax rate was 28, 2% in the quarter as compared to $26 eight for the same period in 2021.
EBITDA for the quarter increased eight 6% to $34 $5 million producing a margin of 29, 2% of net revenues as compared to 29.0% in the first quarter of 'twenty 2020 one.
Billable hours in the quarter were 374000, an increase of four 8% year over year utilization in the quarter was 76, 5% up from 75, 7% in the same quarter of 2021, which was at an end.
All time high.
We averaged 939 full time equivalent employees in the quarter, which is an increase of three 6% over the first quarter of 2021.
And up 1.9% sequentially from the fourth quarter of 2021.
Adding more top talent to our world class team of experts remains a top priority.
The realized rate increase was approximately 3% for the first quarter as compared to a year ago.
In the first quarter compensation expense after adjusting for gains and losses in deferred compensation increased six 5%.
Included in total compensation expense is a deferred compensation loss of $4 $7 million as compared to a gain of $5 6 million in the same period of 2021.
Stock based compensation expense in the quarter was $6 $9 million as compared to $6 3 million in the prior year period.
Other operating expenses in the quarter were five 9%, where I'm sorry, we're up five 9% to $8 $2 million driven primarily by increased activity at our offices as employees continue to gradually return <unk>.
Included in other operating expenses as a depreciation expense of $1 $7 million for the quarter.
G&A expenses were up 29, 2% to $4 2 million for the quarter.
The increase was primarily due to higher business development and recruiting activities as in person activities increased.
Interest income was 21000 for the quarter miscellaneous income net of deferred compensation.
It was approximately 768000 for the quarter.
Moving to our cash flows during the quarter capital expenditures were $2 $6 million in.
In the quarter, we distributed $12 5 million to shareholders through dividend payments and repurchased it repurchased $48 $6 million of common stock at an average price of $87.87.
At quarter end, the company had $215 million in cash and short term investments.
Turning to our outlook.
Our full year 2022 outlook is unchanged for the second quarter, we will have a challenging comparison to the prior year when utilization was 79% a record high level.
Additionally, our employees and in Shanghai based on uncertainty as to when they will be permitted to leave their residents and returned to work in our laboratories.
The COVID-19, lockdown in Shanghai and or is it the seventh week.
Our Shanghai office represents two to two 5% of our net revenues.
For the second quarter of 2022, we expect revenues before reimbursements to grow in the mid single digits and EBITDA margin to increase 250 to 300 did decrease 250 to 325 basis points as compared to the prior year.
For the full year 2022, we expect revenues before reimbursements to grow in the mid to high single digits and EBITDA margin to decrease 200 to 250 basis points as compared to 2021.
We continue to benefit from the success of our recruiting efforts as a result, we expect year over year FTE growth in the second quarter and the full year to be 4% to 6%.
We expect utilization in the second quarter to be 75% to 77% as compared to 79% in the same quarter last year.
Utilization in the second quarter will be tempered by the increased head count as well as seasonally higher vacation and holiday time during the summer months.
We expect the full year utilization to be 73% to 74% as compared to 75% in 2021, we continue to believe that as we build critical mass in our offices and practices and increase our proactive work our average utilization will be.
Sustained in the mid seventies.
We expect 2022 year over year realized rate increase to be approximately 3%.
For the second quarter 2022, and each of the remaining quarters, we expect stock based compensation expense to be four four to $4 $9 million for.
For the full year 2022, we expect stock based compensation to be $20 million to $21 million.
For the second quarter, we expect other operating expenses to be eight three to $8 $6 million for the full year, we expect other operating expenses to be $34 million to $35 million.
As we return to the office on a regular basis.
We believe working in the in person at our office locations supports collaboration for our in interdisciplinary teams and staff development, resulting in higher value for our clients and retention of our employees.
G&A expenses will also gradually scale as recruiting business development and travel activities increase.
The second quarter of 2022, we expect G&A expenses to be 5 million to $5 $3 million.
For the full year 2022, we expect G&A expenses to be 22.2 to $22 $8 million.
As a reminder, these expenses include an in person managers meeting at the end of September while this meeting cost approximately $1 $5 million. We believe it is valuable to bring our team together, especially after such a long period of physical separation.
We expect interest income to be approximately 50000 per quarter. In addition, we anticipate miscellaneous income to be approximately 700000 per quarter.
For the remainder of 2022, we do not anticipate any additional tax benefit associated with share based awards. So the full year tax benefit is estimated to be $6 million.
As a reminder, we had $10 million of tax benefit from share based awards in 2020 . One. So this difference will reduce net income by $4 million and earnings per share by eight cents.
The tax benefit from share based awards is determined based on the change in value of the share based awards between grant and issuance dates.
For the remaining quarters of 2022, we expect our tax rate to be approximately 28% for the full year 2022. The tax rate is expected to be 23, 2% as compared to 19, 6%.
In 2021.
Capex for the full year 2022 is expected to be approximately $10 million.
Our stock repurchase program has a $169 $9 million remaining available.
In close we delivered yet another solid quarter and remain well positioned to continue our profitable growth.
I will now turn the call back to Catherine for closing remarks.
Thank you rich.
For 55 years exponent has been committed to the advancement of science and has leveraged its expertise to advise clients on the causes of failures as well as how they produce safer healthier more sustainable and more reliable products and processes as our clients' needs continue to evolve and increase in complexity our team events.
Generics and scientists positions itself ahead of the curve utilizing deep knowledge in multidisciplinary capabilities to deliver unique solutions as we've done throughout our history. We will continue to leverage our core competencies as we deepen our client relationships expand our reputation and to bring new talent to the firm.
With strong market drivers and a world class team of experts exponent is primed to deliver growth in 2022 and beyond.
Operator, we are now ready for questions.
Thank you.
If you would like to ask a question. Please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad.
You're using a speaker phone. Please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment.
Again, Please press star one to ask a question.
Pause for just a moment to allow you to signal for questions.
We will take our first question from Andrew Nicholas with William Blair.
Hi, good afternoon, thanks for taking my questions.
First one I had was just on kind of the competitiveness of some of the new markets that you're entering or are ones, where your businesses are a little bit less scaled at this point is there any meaningful difference in kind of the competitive dynamics or number of competitors or size of competitors in in kind of those new and emerging verticals relative to where you have.
As you know.
Bigger more or legacy businesses or or is it comparable in terms of you kind of being.
The largest most scaled multi disciplinary player in those areas.
Yeah. Thanks, Andrew.
One example of these new verticals that I think really applies to your question is going to be over in the life Sciences, and particularly in the pharma space and so what we're looking to do in that market place is.
Really to ensure that we maintain our differentiation there are aspects of consulting in pharma that are quite crowded.
If you think about you know clinical research organizations. If you think about our real world evidence platform type of companies et cetera, but what we're looking to do is to specifically bring our multi disciplinary value proposition to that marketplace in a new way.
We're looking for those areas, where we have an offering that is truly unique and brings in for example, our data sciences expertise as well as our human factors expertise in a variety of other things and so it.
Well, we are seeing it in a similar way in the sense that the overlap between us and competitors in the space is relatively small there's not going to be a single competitor who is going to have that sort of multidisciplinary approach to what we do but you know as we are.
These new verticals I think it is incredibly important for us to be maintaining our discipline around premium services and our multidisciplinary approach so that our value proposition really really can shine in that way.
And is the talent market in those verticals any any different or meaningfully different I would imagine you know life Sciences sticking with that example is still still quite a bit of.
Interest in that space highly attractive talent sources, just wondering if if recruiting is any more difficult there than than it's been in in other previous areas of expertise.
Yeah, Yeah. Thanks for that follow up there's no doubt that the competitive landscape for talent in those spaces is.
I would characterize it is equally competitive with our traditional engineering disciplines. That's always I mean, that's part of our value proposition right that we're trying to bring in the best and the brightest kind of Peel off that top layer of folks. If you will whether that's at the junior level, the mid level as well as at the senior level.
But what we're finding as we go out to recruit in these new areas is that folks are getting very excited about the novelty and the new and fresh thinking that we're bringing to the industry in terms of what we're offering and so that's that's how we're able to get them excited about.
What it is that we're doing because we're bringing this new sort of multidisciplinary approach, bringing the wearable technology approach into the life Sciences area, bringing our traditional strength in measurement and real world data and thinking about that in unique ways and so that's really the leverage we have.
Have in getting that top layer of talent really excited about joining exponent.
Great. Thank you and then just one more follow up if you don't mind for Rich I think you mentioned in your prepared remarks you.
You made a comment about the Shanghai office and it being two 2.5% of net revenues is I apologize if I missed it but is the implication there that that that is effectively at zero for that seven week lockdown period or just some some portion of that that typical run rate that's not coming through given the lockdowns.
Thank you.
Thanks, Andrew Yes look it's not no it's not zero.
Our staff there are able to do some work from home you know our teams here globally are trying to leverage those people to do things that can be that are can be done outside of the laboratory although that local.
Patient in particular is very laboratory intensive in the work that they do Additionally, we are hopeful.
That and expecting that.
Our staff will be able to return to work in the office.
Some time during the quarter and Ah Yeah, we.
We expect that that may even be.
Fractions of them.
As it appears that.
The Chinese government may be moving towards a allowing particular residents residential areas.
To come back into the community and go to work.
If there is no cases within their residential location.
So.
Hopefully those things begin to move forward.
And we can gradually get people in so that's our expectation.
As we move forward in the quarter.
Yes.
Great. Thanks for the clarification I appreciate it.
Thank you and we'll move on next to Alexandra <unk> with their remember capital markets.
Hi, Thanks for taking my question.
I was just wondering on margins why margins performed a little bit better than you guided to.
For the quarter or was it just utilization of stronger than expected and if so what was driving that.
Oh, It was just less of a ton of travel and marketing expenses and then you guys expected I mentioned the return to workplace progressed as abnormal.
Yeah.
So all of the above contributed.
We ended up.
Sort of at the higher end of the range that we expected on on utilization.
So utilization had a positive contribution to that in addition to that our expense profile ended up slightly lower than the bottom end of our range.
So we got a good combination of the two where.
Where the.
Where we ended up on the revenue generation and leverage of the compensation out of that you have strong utilization and then just performing just at the bottom or slightly below on the G&A and other operating expenses, so but all of those.
Contributed to us being able to be a beat on the margin side.
Okay, great. Thanks, and just as a follow up to that.
Full year guidance for margins remain unchanged is that given the fact that you've outperformed so margins in Q1 is that just.
Could it be balanced.
Balanced out by an acceleration in hiring through the next few quarters.
Look I think it is a balance of <unk>.
Phil at this point in time in the year not feeling that we had.
Enough information to move out of that range of let's say the utilization being in the 73% to 74% range.
You know or that the expenses are marginally we're going to be much different.
You know the expenses might be a little bit higher.
In a later quarter.
You only have one quarter of data that provides there so clearly gives us a little bit more support.
To confidently be in the range.
But when we sat down and penciled it out.
It wasn't really at a point that we could move the range much at this point in time it ended up still fitting within that so.
That's where we are.
Okay, great and if I could just fit one more in can we get an updated proportion of litigation work that's come back from pre Covid I think he said it was around 90% to 95% last quarter do.
Do you have the same stuff that you can give us.
Yeah. So I'll go ahead and sort of comment on that so we are finding our litigation activity to be quite strong in the quarter and in fact, we have exceeded 2019 levels.
You know for the first time since the start of the pandemic. When we look at just the litigation part of the business, which is about 40.
40% of the business.
This has been pretty broad based so we know whether it's the product liability arena, we're seeing strength around advanced driver assistance systems, we're seeing strength around chemical and toxic tort and environmental litigation the international arbitration side as well so it's broad based across the markets.
That we've got and what we're seeing just in terms of the actual cases of what's going through the court system. You know there is there is there a little.
There arent that many delays as they were let's say a year ago, we're really seeing those in person jury trials go forward.
We're not seeing the deadlines get pushed because of COVID-19 related restrictions of course, they always get pushed because of delays that happen typically in the legal environment.
But I'm very pleased to see that we really seem to be back at the kind of rate you know well ahead of 2019 levels, where we would like to be of course, we don't have perfect perfect Crystal ball on the future we could still have more waves around COVID-19 , but I think you know those transients are definitely working their way.
Out of the system and we seem to be in a much better.
Sort of more predictable pace of growth on that side.
Okay, great. Thanks, and look forward to hosting you guys at our conference in a few weeks from Chas.
Thanks, Amit.
Thank you and once again, ladies and gentlemen, I just wonder.
One if you'd like to ask a question.
And we'll take our next question from Tobey Sommer with Truth Securities.
Thanks, a follow up on the China in Shanghai.
The information.
How much of the company's total revenues in China because.
Based on the approach.
In that country, it's possible that other cities could have similar experiences.
Thanks.
Yes, so tobey.
As far as our.
Staff, we only have one office in mainland which is.
They're in in Shanghai.
As Ive commented, we do have another office in Hong Kong.
And that office Ah represents another one to one 5% of our revenues. So a total of somewhere between three and a half and 4% of our revenues are in the Hong Kong Shanghai locations.
Yeah, and so that is the represents the revenues produced by those employees that are in those two offices.
Okay.
Okay. Thank you.
And then I wanted to ask a question that we get from investors periodically.
And it goes to the the success over a long period of time that exponent has.
That's sort of been in existence.
In a public company and thrived so so significantly.
Why is it.
That.
There haven't been.
Sort of.
Success successful.
Kind of copycat businesses.
You know there are a lot of smart people out there and some of them are private equity players and have a pile of money. So what is it about that smarts and pile of money that couldn't.
Kind of create a smaller version of Expo.
Over the years, how do you see that.
Yeah. Thanks, Tobey for that question I, I don't necessarily want to be giving away. All my secrets here, but I think there are certainly elements you know that that I, having spent my entire career at exponent that I think I can personally speak to.
The emphasis that we have on professional development of our teams from day one.
I think that is something that's relatively unusual and the amount of investment that we put into that so that we can have long term not only long term succession to replace our talent as they retire but we're you know we're growing into new areas as part of that development program, but it's also the.
The integration.
We have been able to achieve over time and when I say integration. This is this is the integration across disciplines.
Exponent is so much more than the sum of its parts, we do divide ourselves into technical practices. So that we can be organized and do our recruiting and do our financials and things like that but the reality is that our teams engage seamlessly across those disciplines and as a company, we facilitate that and we.
Incentivize that.
Through our various programs that we have related to compensation and otherwise and so you know we havent been perfect on all of this from day, one, but as we've grown as a company we have strengthened across these these paradigms and I think that that's a big part of the secret to why we've been able to grow what we're growing in.
Are you able to work on the most fascinating and interesting and high scale sorts of endeavors.
Thank you very much that's helpful.
And.
We talk often about new areas that you are growing into and sort of hiring into.
And I was curious if on the other side of the ledger.
There are historically with your with your vantage point and experience at the firm.
The areas of practices that for whatever reason either changes in that industry indoor.
Changes in pricing that the company has sort of sunset it or deemphasize overtime. So that we can understand sort of the lifecycle of the company's involvement in different industries.
Yeah, Yeah. Thanks Tobey.
Look we've got a paradigm of being ahead of the curve and evolving our portfolio of work to meet the most acute needs of our clients right and so when I look back at the portfolio of the company. When I first started 26 years ago. It was much smaller than.
And then but it also was very different you know when I think about how we've grown over that 26 years in terms of our work in consumer electronics. You know this is an industry 26 years ago, where we werent doing a whole lot, but as the innovation began to accelerate.
And as the technologies become more and more complicated we were able to grow and expand such that now you know. This is this is a significant part of a much larger business that we have today and we continue to push at being being ahead of that curve and sort of around the corner.
So but at the same time.
We're also doing work related to utility infrastructure, that's 100 years old and we have been looking at those sorts of issues from a structural engineering perspective, and a risk perspective, we've been in that area for for decades, but we've evolved the methodologies and the sophistication with which we're looking at that.
Right now there certainly are areas that we have grown into an sunset. It over the course of time, you know what engagement in our technology development work for the military that was done rich may have the dates better it's sort of in the late Ninety's early two thousands sort of timeframe I'm you know we had taken advantage.
So the opportunity with the U S military and and other military around the world for the technology development side, but it came a point where that was.
We didn't see the future of that end and we decided that we needed to focus on other areas right now.
Around life Sciences, we've been in medical devices for many years and we've grown that but now we're looking at this whole new vertical of pharmaceuticals, where we believe there's lots of opportunities. So it's really our overall overall model and our vision that we're going to be continuing to evolve the portfolio, which involves the sunsetting of things on the back.
And as well as the movement into new areas on the on the leading edge.
Yeah, I would add to that that.
There are.
Areas are even when you in look at different industries and technologies that that industry has applied that if.
If we didn't evolve or move to the next technology that they were going into we would be commoditized through the work that we did you know catharine its probably in a better place to talk about it but I'll I'll briefly just say the auto industry is a good example of that.
The pounding.
Back in the seventies, absolutely the firm was working on automobile accidents and focused on on injuries that occur in the automobile, but it was all focused around the performance of your of a lap belt and then a shoulder belt and then then.
And then we moved Oh, it's not that we don't get a little bit of that and then it moved to airbags.
And in the seats and the performance of all of that and those things all evolved over time.
Into much more dynamic robust Oh systems in the vehicle to the point that you know maybe some of the sled test thin and active Oh crash tests that we might have done at a higher volume in those days that now.
Our better it with more knowledge or better stimulated by software or the issues have moved on in that environment.
As Youre, probably aware, we had a tremendous amount of work on a vehicle rollovers.
Suvs became a very popular vehicle, then and the challenges around that are across the vehicle fleet.
Well with <unk>.
Now with automated steering and Adas systems and things, we're seeing a substantial reduction in that but the next issue comes along.
The challenges that industry.
More than ever before in an automated vehicles and electric vehicle systems.
And then when we look at it we are we have more opportunity over the next decade and that industry than we've ever had.
Yeah on an annual basis so it's.
It's very interesting too if you move along and you and I always tell people.
How do we get there we get there absolutely by our existing employees evolving, but we are doing their research and doing their development, but we also have the benefit of that we're hiring in a 150 or 200, new people into the firm and most of them have come out of the top.
Research.
The patients are in the world studying the next unsolved problem.
Technology, there that might not come into commercialization for several years, but they are they're bringing that into our organization and evolving our knowledge together by bringing their knowledge into the system.
Thank you very much for that answer I, just a couple of numbers questions. Good refreshment relating to guidance, what's the targeted range for our FTE growth in the year.
And.
The expected realized.
The price increase I know, what you had for the quarter, but I can't remember how to frame it for you.
Yeah. So on me on the head count.
Front, we're expecting a year over year head count growth from a 2021 to be somewhere in the 4% to 6%.
The average full time equivalent employee growth through that but we're expecting that.
The net head count growth.
From the end of 2021 to the end of 2022 to be in.
50 to 70.
Net head count growth range, and <unk> and such and then on the rate side, we are expecting net realized rate increase of approximately 3%.
As a reminder, you know that.
That the increases that we put through for our existing staff as far as bill rate increases were six plus percent as of January one.
We are in addition to that you've got turnover in the middle of the organization naturally.
And at the top and you bring in more at the bottom and that's what creates a realized price increase of approximately 3% for the year.
Thank you very much.
Thank you and we will take that.
A follow up from Alexander leads Bahrenburg capital market.
You just one more for me.
Just on capital allocation on sort of what are your priorities for the remainder of the year. What are you gonna put your cash.
Yeah.
So.
We we've obviously as we announced are going to be continuing with our dividend program.
As a reminder, that dividend is up 20%.
From what it was in 2021 so.
So we've stepped up the dividend.
Significantly in addition to that we continue do X plus.
Plan on being active with our stock repurchase program.
Yeah, we were fortunate.
And are able to use that program on the stock pullback in the first quarter when that occurred there in that February .
<unk> frame, we were able to acquire a $48 $6 million of of stock in the repurchases at $87.87.
We will continue to be looking for opportunities, where those things are out of balance and and we can come in and be opportunistic.
With that repurchase program.
Although we haven't done an acquisition.
In Oh, no my over 20 years.
We continue to evaluate those opportunities I wouldn't expect something short term, but it is where we continue to look for strategic opportunities.
Provide seeds for growth in these areas, where we might not be as an established player in the market or unique geographic region.
They play out in but ultimately the goal is still remains to bring our cash balance down into that $50 million to $70 million range over the next two.
Three to five years.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Thank you.
It appears there are no further question.
Ladies and gentlemen that will conclude today's conference. We do appreciate your participation you may now disconnect.
Okay.
[music].