Q4 2022 FG Group Holdings Inc Earnings Call
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the <unk> Group Holdings, Inc. Fourth quarter, 2022, and full year earnings Conference call.
At this time all participants are in a listen only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation.
If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference. Please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note. This conference is being recorded I would now like to turn the call over the agenda <unk> of IMS Investor Relations. Thank you you may begin.
Good afternoon, and welcome to <unk> Group Holdings earnings Conference call for the fourth quarter and full year ended December 31, 2022 on the call today from Ft Group Holdings are Mark Roberson, Chief Executive Officer, Todd Major Chief Financial Officer, and Kyle Chairman era, Chairman of the board of directors.
Before we begin I'd like to remind everyone that some statements made on this call will be forward looking in nature. These statements are based on management's current views and expectations as of today and the company is under no obligation and expressly disclaims any obligation to update forward looking statements, except as required by law.
These statements are also subject to risks and uncertainties and may cause actual results to differ materially from those described on today's call risks and uncertainties are also described in the company's SEC filings today's presentation and discussion also contain references to non-GAAP financial measures definitions of non-GAAP terms and reconciliations to GAAP measures are available in the earnings.
Posted on the Investor Relations section of the website are non-GAAP measures.
Comparable to those used by other companies and we encourage you to review and understand all of our financial reporting before making any investment decision at this time I will turn the call over to Mark go ahead Mark.
Thanks, Jim and thanks, everyone for joining us today.
As we wrap up 2022, and we're now well into 2023 I thought it makes sense to start by just recapping some of the takeaways from the past year and more importantly, how we're starting to see things shake up entering the new year.
We finished 2022 with strong momentum in the fourth quarter.
And as we'll discuss we see that momentum continuing into 2023.
I will start in the deck on slides three and four if you're following along.
First we completed the name change in December .
Transitioning from Ballantyne strong to Ft Group Holdings.
It's a it's a small thing, but it's an important distinction is the new name better reflects our current and our future plans to operate as a holding company.
We currently have capital allocated the five primary holdings.
First our strong entertainment operating business, which.
Which is the largest supplier of premium large format screens and cinema services in North America, and where we launched our new studios business. This year.
We currently own 100% of strong entertainment.
Our intent as we've previously communicated is to separate the entertainment business and we will retain a majority, but less than 100% stake going forward at the holding company.
This is consistent with our holding company strategy.
Providing a more tangible measure of value in the future for that business.
And also allowing strong entertainment increased opportunity to capitalize on its growth potential and scale into a much larger company.
We also hold less than 100% equity positions and three operating companies.
Yep Chief financial.
Firefly and reinforced forest products.
And also in our digital ignition business, we all real estate with a 44000 square foot building and 11 acres in the Atlanta area.
Moving on to slide six.
And our strong entertainment operating business to start with we've seen customer demand and revenues bounce back strongly this year.
Annual revenues are up over 50%.
Notably Q4 revenue grew sequentially to come in at the highest level of any quarter since COVID-19.
On slide seven we signed new exclusive arrangements with many of the top exhibitors over the past several quarters.
Normalizing those already strong relationships.
We supply AMC cinemark markets in IMAX with all of their screens.
And we've invested in building, our sales and operations teams and increasing our market penetration and market share coming out of the pandemic.
This put strong entertainment in a much stronger position going forward.
Particularly as the industry continues to recover and exhibitors accelerate their investments to improve their properties in the theatrical experience.
And especially as the upgrade the laser projection are accelerating.
And driving capital spending in the industry for the next several years.
We're also expanding our global influence serving this growing industry.
In Europe for example, we established our finishing facility in Belgium recently.
Which enables expedited screen delivery and more streamlined import export for customers in Europe , and the middle East.
We also see the international markets Asia in Europe in particular really starting to improve in 2023 and going forward.
If you happen to listen to Imax's recent earnings call for instance, a large portion of their commentary and their call was centered around the recovery. They are now starting to see in the China market is that market is now more fully reopening.
And in other parts of China, and Asia, including New multi unit deals in Japan, and Indonesia, which is obviously great to see.
Moving on to slide nine.
During 2022, we all saw cinema attendance levels and the overall box office revenue rebound.
Box office revenues were up well over 60% from 2021.
And are now starting to trend much closer to pre COVID-19 levels looking into 2023 and 2024.
For 2023, specifically with film production now catching back up following the Covid related delays the studio release calendar is even stronger in 2023 than what we just saw in 2022.
Our largest customers are becoming more vocal invoicing that bullishness for strong 2023.
A few examples Cinemark for example sees new film releases, increasing by over 30% from 2022 driving their internal growth expectations.
AMC commented that they expect the number of movie titles in the theaters grossing over $100 million will increase by over 75% in 2023.
And of course, the IMAX is another example, that's performed exceptionally well and they are expecting their global box office in 2023 to more than exceed the 2019 levels in.
And Theyre also starting to ramp up expansion of new screens in our international markets once again.
Overall, the industry backdrop was certainly much better in 2022, then in 2021 and.
And we strengthened our position as an industry, which certainly helped propel our business to greater than 50% growth. This year and put strong entertainment on solid footing going forward.
Turning to slide 10, the upgrades that we've discussed through xenon to laser projection really started in earnest in the second half of this year.
We're seeing AMC and cinemark in particular are leading the charge upgrading their largest markets first.
This is a really big deal for the industry and it's expected to drive spending by cinema exhibitors for at least the next several years.
And particularly as the more as the regional and international exhibitors begin to commence their upgrade plans as well.
We spent several years in R&D optimizing our screens and optical coatings just for laser projection.
And we are now the preferred screen and service partner for city on it who is the leading manufacturer of laser projectors.
And as the market leader and exclusive provider to many of the alerts exhibitors. We believe we're well positioned as the upgrade cycle continues to accelerate.
Turning now to slide 11.
This upgrade cycle that we've discussed is also one of the drivers to the growth we're seeing in our technical services group, which grew 41% for the quarter.
We continue to see more demand from cinemas looking to outsource this part of their business as the volumes ramp up.
For example, we signed an exclusive multi year nationwide managed service agreement as Marcus theaters, and we're continuing to add new customers for both managed services contracts as well as for on demand work.
We've also continued to expand our service offerings to better serve our customers' needs.
With the laser upgrade demands increasing we've been expanding our service team as well as our service offerings.
Providing more project management services and staffing up to increase our bandwidth for installations of laser screens projection and audio equipment in the cinemas.
Moving over to slides 12 and 13.
In addition to the screen and services business, we launched our new strong studios business this year.
Adding an entirely new growth vertical to the entertainment business.
The studios team has been very busy over the past several months.
Inside the Black box completed production and began airing on the Crackle network in Q4.
This project also represents the first revenue producing project for our studios business.
We also wrapped production on safe Haven.
Which was a much larger project.
We're now deep into post production.
We expect episodes to be ready for delivery later this year.
We see tremendous upside and growth potential in the new studios business.
Organically and potentially through M&A.
Initially, we're taking a pretty conservative approach to the projects and will lean towards utilizing co production and providing production services, where we can generate revenue and minimize capital at risk while also creating the upside through the ownership of IP and participating in backend revenue streams.
Okay.
Transitioning now moving to our equity holdings on slides 15 through 17.
We're very excited about the value creation potential is good teams in those businesses continue to execute and position themselves for meaningful capital appreciation.
Ed <unk> Chief financial the merchant banking platform is launched this year the.
The reinsurance team completed seven loss cap reinsurance contracts.
<unk> integrity transactions were completed in <unk>.
Key merger Corp, recently announced business combination agreement with Ichor connect.
And the new merchant banking platform. The team has been busy announcing the creation of FG communities, which is focused in the manufactured housing.
Industry as well as the launch of crave worthy with the former CEO of Jimmy Johns is our multi brand restaurant franchise platform.
If you recall, we acquired our stake in Firefly, a private venture backed mobile media company. When we contributed our taxi top advertising business to invest alongside Google ventures, and FX two years ago.
Post pandemic Firefly has seen exceptional growth in their business.
And they are now in over 100 over 10 major markets.
This year they entered the European market with the acquisition of the Uk's, leading taxi advertising company.
One key element of Firefly strategy that we were especially excited about is as they convert non digital tops to digital that really multiplies the revenue potential as they continue to grow we're.
We're excited about the team and the potential value they are creating.
And the Green <unk> has evolved from a small Canadian shell.
Two one of the leading lumber producers in Canada following our investment.
Recently, they announced two transactions to monetize assets that we believe are very favorable to green first and to the ultimate value of our holdings.
In November they announced the sale of their private forest land for $49 million and then in December we announced the sale of their to stall mills in Quebec for $90 million.
Those transactions further strengthen their balance sheet and allows management to focus on the more valuable Ontario operations.
This industry continues to see quite a bit of M&A. So we're watching closely.
Overall, a really strong 2022 solid momentum coming to the end of the new year on all fronts.
Tied with that would you like to walk us through the financials sure. Thanks, Mark I'll start on slide 19, which has our consolidated results for the quarter.
Our results of operations continue to show meaningful improvements over the prior year with revenue up 17% gross profit up 52% and adjusted EBITDA up almost 180%.
On the revenue side strong entertainment delivered its strongest quarter in three years, surpassing the levels achieved in the final quarter of 2019.
Our services business was the primary driver of the revenue increase from the prior year as we increase the scope of our services to better support our customers and to increase market share and cinema services.
In addition, as Mark mentioned earlier strong studios delivered its first project since it was launched and recorded 900000 of revenue in the quarter.
We had a large digital equipment order in the fourth quarter of 2021 that didn't repeat in 2022, but that was more than offset by higher sales of our higher margin cinema screens.
Which led to the over 50% increase in gross profit and improved gross margin percentage.
Adjusted EBITDA of 600000 during the quarter from a negative 700000 in the prior year is another positive sign that we are benefiting from the continuing momentum in the industry.
Our year end balance sheet is on slide 20, our equity holdings represent almost half the assets on our balance sheet of $37 million as of the end of the year.
We ended the year with approximately $4 million in cash on our balance sheet.
And our balance sheet also reflects the assets of our strong entertainment operating business and the real estate and our digital ignition business.
We were able to slow working capital uses during the fourth quarter that occurred during the first nine months of the year.
And finally, our debt balance was approximately $8 million primarily related to the real estate in Atlanta and strong MDI in Quebec.
Yeah.
We amended our credit facility in Canada. Following the end of the year to $3 million term loan and $5 million revolving facility provide access to additional liquidity with increased limits based on the appreciated value of the Quebec real estate.
As Mark previously stated, we're seeing positive momentum and a strong entertainment business as the industry continues to rebound and meaningful value creation potential.
Our equity holdings as the teams continue to execute against this strategy, which we expect to develop into significant capital appreciation.
That wraps up the financial section I'll now flip the call over to Kyle for some closing remarks.
Thanks Todd.
The current economic environment presents numerous opportunities and challenges, but we're very pleased with how we've managed through the challenges over the last few years, while also being conservatively positioned to act on opportunities as they come across our desk.
We've taken many steps to transition to a holding company that we believe will create meaningful value for shareholders over the coming years.
We're working judiciously to extract that value for shareholders.
Forward to reporting back to you in the coming months and quarters on new developments.
We will now open it up for the Q&A section. Please ask any question, we'll do our best to answer it at this time, we will be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question. Please press star one on your telephone keypad, a confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue.
Press Star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue.
For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys, one moment, please while we poll for questions.
First question comes from Tyler Phillips with Alma Street capital. Please proceed.
Hey, guys. Thank you for taking my question.
So I was wondering how do you handle installation of your screens. After they're sold specifically do you outsource installation or do you handle that in house.
Thanks, Mark and thanks for the question.
Good question and we may not be everyone may not know this but traditionally we've not actually provided screen installation services, we sell the screens and we provide lots of other services into the cinemas, but we have not historically actually installed the screens are usually handled by the cinemas using outsourced.
Service providers however.
However, recently in particular.
We've had demand from customers.
Specifically in connection with the laser upgrades that they're embarking on to start providing they've asked us would.
Would you guys start providing those services. So it can be more of a one stop shop. So one thing that we've been doing and we started this midway through this year as we started providing screen.
Asian, and we're starting to staff up that group and it's one of the areas that we see as a real growth opportunity for the services business, particularly in 2023 and then on into 2024.
And interesting a good question and an interesting part of the business that.
There's other things like that but it represents an area of service that we can provide to our customers and expand our service offerings and provide better service to our customers and grow the business.
Yes.
Got it okay. Thank you that's it for me thanks, guys.
Sure. Thanks.
The next question comes from Brett.
Rick Weiss with Janney Montgomery please.
Please proceed with your Hey, Brett.
Hi, gentlemen.
Good results.
The.
Since the IPO window is closed if you did need cash what are the levers to raise cash.
Does the company have available.
Yes, Brett there number a number of levers I mean, obviously the.
Need for cash is largely driven by the pace of our growth.
To accelerate growth much more rapidly that may require even more capital, but we have a number of levers on our balance sheet and within our credit lines that we could utilize to provide additional capital.
Okay.
Right well.
You know the building in Georgia.
Where do you think its worth and its encumbered by what amount of mortgage is that a source of funding.
Yes, I mean, it could be.
Yeah.
There's a lot of different ways, we can access capital.
We have a built in Georgia.
With purchase for a little over $8 million.
It has.
Mark Correct me if this is wrong, but I believe it was about $5 million.
Give or take a few hundred thousand dollars of debt on it.
Yes, that's right.
And.
Yeah. So it has as you know.
At purchase prices that are a few million dollars of equity I think we gotta get good price on that.
Well it was there's a highway that is being developed.
Going literally a mic right for the backyard of the AR.
The building and.
By all measures, we believe asking that.
<unk> significantly increased the value of the building we have some we have in addition to devoting theres land that we own in addition to the building that could be subdivided.
And given the highway is going through its like Theres going to it's a it's not a highway like a major highway. It's a highway that he would have like a chick fil, a or a gas station or other things like that.
We're getting significant interest from developers to to build things like like like fast food restaurants or gas stations or other things like that on the on our property. So.
There may be.
And the next.
Few months to a year.
Interest in either selling all of the land or some of the land in subdividing it.
But I'd hate to put a number on it I would say yes.
If I was you know, it's definitely worth more than $8 million in my view.
Perhaps more than $10 million, but I'd be.
I'd be hesitant to say, it's worth exactly 12 million or it's worth exactly 11 million because it's real estate like it could be worth 10, it could be worth 11 or 12.
But.
It's worth it's worth somewhere in the $8 million to $12 million range is my guess.
And with that.
Okay.
We could be exploring selling that we could be.
Developing that into a bigger business with us or admission. There's all there's all kinds of things that we could be doing with that but I don't really think it's in our best interest to.
Really tough bar.
To really explain exactly what we're going to do with that building until.
And we made the decision because.
We have lots of things going on inside of that building. So.
That is obviously one source of liquidity if we wanted to we could sell the building and we would have five or $6 million of cash net of the net of the mortgage.
Beyond that.
We obviously have a very significant stake in green first forest products.
They reported today as well it looks like the stock didn't react well to it but we do.
Expect Green first horse products to.
To be monetized at some point in 2023, that's our thesis that's not me speaking with any information relative to that but I do think that now that they've sold their Quebec mills.
And.
We would think that.
That's something that could be.
Explored in the near term as a shareholder of <unk>.
First of all those products we would.
Expect the.
Forward of Green for us to be exploring all options like that and we would think that.
There should be some liquidity event in Green first in 2023 is our home and are not just hope we don't invest on hope so.
That's where we think we'll see some significant.
Liquidity.
At some point.
Absent that.
I mentioned that we do have access to.
Millions of dollars of credits.
Credit facilities and other other ways of accessing.
Liquidity, but.
We won't be issuing common equity.
Right right.
License for something really special now you mentioned that the IPO market is shut.
There have been a few ideas that have gotten done recently, we would only do something if it made sense.
But smaller ipos are starting to get done there is obviously the stock market.
Do have FTE financial Ware.
Yeah, no the spec market very well.
There are things that could be done and.
You should expect that we're creative people and we will be exploring all.
Alternatives for that business, but when I look at strong.
Global Entertainment there. The reason we want it to be a public company is not so that we can have a little small public companies.
That is a 30 40 $50 million market cap company. So that we can do what we did with clean power sports products, which is to merge.
With a much bigger.
Name and company and.
There's a lot of other entertainment companies that would be very interesting for us to combine with and have a substantial several hundred million dollars or larger public company. So that's that's the reason we wanted to explore.
Public listing is is that we think that a publicly traded entertainment company with hundreds of millions of dollars of value is interesting not so that we can have a little teeny.
Microcap Entertainment.
You know a company. So I think that's been somewhat misunderstood by people, we're not looking to have like a little Teeny Entertainment IPO.
We are we do at some point the purpose of the public listing is is to really have a currency.
Either to consolidate the industry, which we think is an opportunity or to potentially do a stock transaction, where maybe theres. Another entertainment company that could make sense. So we're looking at all options.
And whether it's an IPO or stack or or a merger with with a publicly traded entertainment company. There's a lot of things on the.
Out there that can be done and where we're only going to do things that make sense, though.
But I'm not concerned about that liquidity at all.
Right.
I appreciate that color.
Another one or two if I may the $900000.
First project with strong entertainment.
What what project was that and can we expect any recurring revenue from whatever that project was.
Yes, Brett this is mark.
So that project was inside the black box, which was our first revenue producing project for the new business.
So that project is going to be.
Different than probably a lot of the projects that we will do is strong studios it.
It represents a very limited half hour series that we did for chicken soup for the soul and we did that primarily on the services bases, where we manage the project on their behalf. It has a very limited series, it's not going to generate a lot of back in but we can provide that service we can generate some revenue generate a decent amount.
Profitability on it.
With no capital no risk so it's something that we will do periodically, but it's a little different than the other projects that we've talked more about.
Where we would have a significant back end participation on series have the attitude for that.
So I wouldn't expect to see it recur every quarter, but youll see that from time to time, because it will fill in projects like that with other larger projects to help cover overhead and cover expenses as we grow the business.
Right right.
Mark now that revenues are pass.
Steven pre COVID-19 levels.
Where do you think in the next year or two gross profit margins should settle in at.
I think we will see we saw gross margin gross profit margins improve in Q4 from earlier in the year.
Still a little bit below where it was in the pre COVID-19 levels and a lot of it has to do with product mix in terms of the mix of the business between our screen business, which.
It is a highly profitable business and has higher margins as compared to when we sell third party projector projection equipment audio equipment et cetera. So that mix is still skewed a little heavier towards projection in audio and third party product.
Versus screens, but it's improving significantly through the period and we see that continuing to improve as we look forward.
I can't give you an exact timing or percentage on when that will occur, but we definitely see the trend on that moving in the right direction. Then you probably saw that in the Q4 numbers.
Yes.
Okay, and just one last one.
If the macroeconomic wins.
Ah blowing towards a.
Severe.
Our recession.
I mean in the past.
People still go to the movies during a.
Are we in a business that's.
Quasi recession resistant or severe recession.
Would be a headwind for us.
I mean, if you look at the past.
Some metrics on the box office or in prior recessions and their well publicized out there there is plenty of charts and graphs. The kind of show the historical box office overlaid against recession years, you are at the box office generally has been quite recession resistant.
And we'd expect that to continue to be the case, although we certainly cant.
<unk> debt with accuracy.
I think when you look at entertainment and all the entertainment choices.
The cinema the movies are still a very affordable luxury entertainment item munis generally not affected as significantly in recessionary times.
And when you look I think the primary driver really of what we see going forward in.
If you listen to the AMC IMAX Cinemark and the other other exhibitors on their earnings calls.
We're really excited about the fact that the studio slate.
Is.
During COVID-19.
It only certain projects get moved to streaming versus the cinemas, which has now shifted back.
But the development of content was delayed because of Covid restrictions and Covid shutdowns. So that's really now just catching up to where the pipeline of studio releases is getting back closer to where it was pre COVID-19, probably still not quite there.
But they are expecting a much more favorable 2023 and 2024 from <unk>.
Availability of content to show in the theaters.
Great. Thank you for taking my questions and good show on the fourth quarter and year end results.
Okay. Thanks, Brett.
Once again, if you have a question or comment please indicate so by pressing star one on your Touchtone phone. The next question comes from Jim Merrick individual Investor. Please proceed.
Thank you for taking my call. This is kind of a comment or maybe a question for Kyle.
I know, it's got to come out wrong, but I'm not quite sure how to rephrase, what I was waiting for the meeting started I kind of look through some of the.
Messages on the message board and I'm looking.
Looking at some previous.
Earnings reports and since.
And there was a gang have taken control of the company.
The stock price has gone down there was over $25 million in cash around $25 million I guess in cash.
Don't want to building in Omaha.
The valuable.
I have like some friends that they hope to monetize on the fact that one time or another and one of them happens to be a widow now because their husband passed away.
Can you just talk to her with them in the last couple of weeks, what would you say to them to keep the faith I mean, I see that like Green first it doesn't look like it's doing that great.
Lumber prices I do see it did come down significantly so what kind of hope could you give me to relate to that.
Yeah, No. That's a great question like when we are we are.
Got involved with what.
What was originally called Ballantyne strong in 2015, we got involved because we were frustrated with the direction of the company and.
I actually joined the board.
And when I joined the board I was actually appalled by what was going on with a company called convergent at the previous board had acquired in 2013.
And my first.
Board meeting one that we were losing like several million dollars a quarter in convergent, while we were making several million dollars a quarter in our cinema business.
And.
That was what I basically said, hey, we need to take like very dramatic steps with this business to stay.
Stabilize it because we're going to start losing huge amounts of money in convergent.
If we don't and the previous board.
Yeah really didn't act as quickly as I wanted them to so we ran a proxy fight and we changed the board.
And.
Yes.
It took us a long time too.
Stop the bleeding a convergent we did stop the bleeding and we turned the business around but it took several years to turn convergent around and we ended up selling it for a nice.
Nice amount of cash, but convergent was an acquisition that the company made with the cash that it had generated and the cinema business back in 2013 prior to our involvement we inherited what I think was quite a mess that we had to.
And it took us several years too.
At the same time the cinema industry basically peaked in 2015, if you look at the three D industry.
Three D installations, where.
Growing dramatically through 2015.
And they sort of peaked in.
In 2015.
And we make the most money.
MDI in our screen sales.
On <unk>.
Sales and I think 2015 or 2016 was about sort of like on a record year in terms of profitability for that business and that was sort of right. When we got there and we were we were really focused on.
Fixing convergent and we basically when we got there we basically put every business up for sale. We felt like let's just saw this company as quickly as possible. We put every business up for sale.
Convergent was was not sellable like I can tell you like the bids that we've got for our convergent when we first got there where were negative like we had a building and we actually got bid for the business that were negative. We had we spent a lot of time because it was losing so much money.
A lot of time fixing that we ended up selling the building.
And getting cash for that too.
Sort of help us for some period of time.
And.
We try to.
He ran the sales process on the cinema business.
And we were we had fantastic prices on that and we got through.
Right right right right before Covid hit.
We are about to sell this item of business.
And.
Unfortunately.
Those those sales fell apart.
For for one reason or another and Covid hit and we decided it was not a good time to solve the business because as you know.
Basically the government shut every single cinema.
In the country.
And our business.
Was significantly impaired by that.
<unk>.
We did a very good job managing cost through that period of time.
Made some very good investments in clean first forest products. If you look at our cost incurred in the first part first products we.
Did a good job of.
Not only increase our source products, but also.
Harvesting what was a business that we had credit cards strong outdoor.
Right right at the beginning of Covid we.
We're able to monetize that business.
For equity in Firefly, which is now a very rapidly growing.
Private company.
And.
I think that we've.
No.
We've done our best through some really challenging situations. So.
If I could go back to 2015.
We have.
Gotten involved at all I'm not sure but.
We we did our best with what we had said we thought that we had a sale of the cinema business in like 2019, or 20 like right before Covid hit.
And that probably you know if we if that had that sale had gone through.
We'd probably be looking at a different stock price and we would be looking at a lot of a lot of happy shareholders. Unfortunately, COVID-19 hit and.
That was something that we couldnt.
We didn't we didn't plan for obviously.
And but we did the best with what we had.
So.
We're doing we're doing the best to monetize our current positions that we have.
And our goal is to get.
Get the stock price a lot higher but.
At the same time, we're not going to be promotional like we own a lot of stock.
Goal is to grow the assets of the company over time, we're not going to go out and like.
Higher like aggressive investor relations firms or or do things that sort of promote the stock just to get the stock higher so that people can sell it that's just not in our DNA to do things that our promotional so we will.
We will be as honest with you as possible, which I'm trying to do.
And your question will be as honest as we can but we can't.
We can't go out and just sort of deal with what I've seen other companies do which is be dishonest and pump their stock and get their stocks higher just to.
Just to reward shareholders in the short run and Thats just not in our DNA. So hopefully that answers your question, but if you have a follow up question.
I appreciate your take on that.
So you have a price in mind that you will not go below on a potential IPO.
I don't feel that we can answer that I don't know that we won't be able to.
To speak to that.
Yeah, I don't think were allowed to specifically answer questions and IPO valuation.
And under the rules.
Because youre going to have to probably hire some kind of an investment banker to go out there and try to sell that business I would assume.
And that what they've done in the past that but all the time.
Yes, we have an investment banker that's been hired to for the IPO.
Okay.
Thank you for taking my question I know, maybe it sounds kind of rude, but you know.
I know some people have said the husband.
We thought that was a great opportunity here in Omaha, and he passed away in ICL.
Yes.
The widow every now and then and actually still sitting on it and I know that she'd like to monetize it she's getting up in age. So thank you for taking my question and I'll have a great day.
I don't consider your question with it at all and I appreciate it. Thank you.
Yep.
We have reached the end of the question and answer session I will now turn the call over to Mark for closing remarks.
Thanks, and thanks, everyone for dialing in really good questions today, if you have.
Additional follow up questions don't hesitate to reach out.
Any of the three of us on the call here and look forward to speaking again soon.
Okay.
This concludes today's conference and you may disconnect. Your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.