Q2 2025 ReposiTrak Inc Earnings Call

Speaker Change: Doug Andrews, Amy Bates, Robert Strough, Bob Morgan, Joe Garcia, Edrenda Sanad Sehby, Mohamed Oualarymani, Harry Lamb, Deric Martin

Speaker Change: Greetings and welcome to the RiposyTRAC fiscal second quarter earnings call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation.

Speaker Change: If you would like to ask a question at that time, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Rob Fink with FNK-IR. Mr. Fink, you may begin.

Speaker Change: Thank you, Operator, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today for the RepositTrack Fiscal Second Quarter Earnings Call.

Speaker Change: Hosting the call today are Randy Fields, Repositrax Chairman and CEO, John Merrill, Repositrax CFO.

Speaker Change: Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that this call could contain forward-looking statements about repository act within the meanings of the Private Security Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

Speaker Change: Forward-looking statements are statements that are not subject to historical facts.

Speaker Change: Composite tracks remarks are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially.

Speaker Change: Such risks and uncertainties are discussed in the company's filings with the Security and Exchange Commission. The information set forth herein should be considered in light of such risks.

Positrack does not assume.

Any obligation to update information contained in this conference call.

Speaker Change: Shortly after the market closed today, the company issued a press release overviewing the financial results that will be discussed on today's call. Investors can visit the investor relations section of the company's website at repositrust.com to access this press release.

Speaker Change: With all that said, I'd now like to turn the call over to John. John, the call is yours.

John Merrill: Thanks Robin, good afternoon everyone. The second fiscal quarter represented another successful period of execution against our strategy.

John Merrill: The growth in all lines of business, including traceability, continues to deliver increases in top-line revenue, profitability, and earnings per share, and it's just beginning.

John Merrill: Again, our financial strategy is quite simple. Take great care of the customer. Execute perfectly. Grow recurring revenue. Increase profitability. Use cash to buy back common stock. Redeem the preferred and do it with no bank debt.

John Merrill: At the same time, return capital to shareholders through an increase in cash dividend.

John Merrill: Meanwhile, we continue to build cash on the balance sheet, now $28 million.

John Merrill: Yes, it's really that simple, and traceability results are just getting started.

John Merrill: Traceability continues to accelerate understandably as the January 2026 deadline looms. But more importantly, we are experiencing growth in all lines of business. Traceability, compliance, and supply chain. This is evident in our total revenue growth and increases in the deferred revenue line item on our balance sheet.

John Merrill: I don't want to get into the weeds, but obviously deferred revenue is an indicator for future revenues recognized in the next 12 months, particularly in a SaaS company.

John Merrill: Since June 2024, our deferred revenue has grown 70% from $2.4 million to $4.2 million. If that doesn't raise your investor eyebrow, it should.

John Merrill: These are signed customers, fully implemented, and who have paid in full.

John Merrill: These customers will add $1.7 million of incremental subscription revenue over the next 12 months.

John Merrill: That means our quarterly revenue run rate increases from $5.5 million to roughly $6 million per quarter, assuming no additional sales opportunities, which is highly unlikely.

John Merrill: I'm not providing a forecast, it's just math. The conversion of this deferred revenue to recognized revenue over the next few quarters not only will provide double-digit quarterly growth, but fiscal 2025 as a whole. Again, not a forecast, it's just math.

Speaker Change: While the revenue growth is coming along as anticipated, Randy and I are simultaneously focused on the contribution margin, profitability, EPS, and cash flow.

Speaker Change: While a current 64% revenue contribution margin above fixed costs is a good start, our goal is to get closer to 80%.

Speaker Change: Meaning, for every dollar above the $12 million in cash cost to run this place, as I have said time and time again, our goal is to deliver 80 plus cents profit on every dollar of incremental revenue. That is our goal.

Speaker Change: Many of you have asked if the current administration is good or bad for us. Meaning, what if they delay the traceability law?

Speaker Change: As we have said before, a ladder delay would be good for us.

Speaker Change: Instead of rushing to onboard thousands upon thousands of last-minute holdouts, it will allow us to administer an orderly onboarding, not at a hurried pace.

Speaker Change: The complexity is enormous, and time helps us ensure success. The government did the same thing with Sarbanes-Oxley some years ago. We hope they adopt the same laddered compliance for small, medium, and large companies for traceability.

Speaker Change: Like a financial strategy, our operational philosophy remains very simple. Provide customers with superior solutions, deliver our service at a reasonable price, and execute perfectly.

Speaker Change: We solve complex business problems and our customers expect us to fix the issue and not complicate their business in the interim.

Speaker Change: This drives higher levels of customer success and satisfaction. As we have adopted internally, when our customers are successful, they buy more from us.

Let's get to the quarterly numbers.

Speaker Change: For the second quarter of fiscal 2025, total revenue was up 7%, $5.5 million versus $5.1 million.

Recurring revenue increased 5% to $5.4 million.

Speaker Change: Given the amount of one-time setup fees earned during the quarter, the percentage recurring to total revenue declined from 99% of total revenue to 98%.

Speaker Change: Operating expenses increased 7% from $3.9 million to $4.1 million, reflecting our ongoing investment in RTN, higher commissions due to higher revenue, and increases in insurance and other benefit costs for employees.

Speaker Change: Sales and marketing expenses increased 15% as we continue to invest in marketing awareness of our solution suite of traceability, supply chain, and compliance, and increased commissions and payroll taxes.

Speaker Change: G&A increased 2%. This increase reflects higher benefit costs and other insurance increases that occurred during the quarter.

Speaker Change: Depreciation and amortization increased 2% reflecting purchases of technology equipment for our newest data center that is located at Switch in Reno, Nevada, a Tier 5 data center.

Speaker Change: For the quarter ended December 31, 2024, Gap in Income increased from $1.5 million to $1.6 million, up 7%.

Speaker Change: Gap in income to shareholders increased from $1.3 million to $1.5 million, up 12%.

Speaker Change: Earnings per share basic and diluted was $0.08 per common share and $0.08 per diluted share.

Speaker Change: This compares to the same quarter last year of $0.07 earnings per share, both basic and diluted, an increase of 14%.

Let's turn to the fiscal year-to-date numbers.

Speaker Change: For the six months ended December 31, 2024, total revenue increased 7.3% from $10 million to $11 million.

Recurring revenue increased 6% to just under $11 million.

Speaker Change: Total operating expenses year-to-date were up 5% due to investment in RTN, increased employee benefit costs, and investment in development of onboarding tools.

Speaker Change: SG&A costs were up $225,000 or 4% due to investments in RTN, higher commissions, and higher employee benefit costs.

Net income increased 14% from $2.8 million to $3.2 million.

Speaker Change: Net income to common shareholders increased from $2.5 million to over $3 million, an increase of 19%.

Speaker Change: Earnings per share for the fiscal year to date increased 21%.

Speaker Change: Basic earnings per share was $0.17 per share and $0.16 diluted.

Speaker Change: This compares to $0.14 basic and $0.13 diluted in the prior year.

Turning now to cash flow and cash balances.

Speaker Change: Cash on the balance sheet at December 31, 2024 was $28 million, a 12% increase from June 30, 2024.

Speaker Change: Fast from Operations year-to-date was $5.3 million, an increase of 117% from the same period in 2023.

Speaker Change: The $28 million cash on the balance sheet of December 31, 2024 is after we redeemed $1.5 million in preferred, paid out $700,000 in common stock dividends, and bought back $100,000 in common shares during the six months ended December 31, 2024.

And we have no bank debt.

Speaker Change: Since inception, we have redeemed 362,000 preferred shares for a total of $3.9 million.

The remaining amount available for Preferred Redemption is $5.1 million.

Speaker Change: At our current pace of redemption, we are confident in redeeming all of the preferred outstanding on or before September 2027.

Speaker Change: That's all I have today. Thanks everyone for your time. At this point I'll turn the call over to Randy.

Randy Fields: Thanks, John. The grocery industry is continuing to adopt end-to-end traceability. As we've been saying for some time, the forces driving adoption of traceability are no longer just the FDA mandates, but also market forces.

In other words, competition is taking over.

Randy Fields: Retailers are embracing traceability as a solution to address risk, improve recalls, and as a marketing tool to retain customers.

Randy Fields: While some retailers are going to continue to focus on the FDA regulatory issues, many retailers recognize that traceability is ultimately inevitable.

Randy Fields: As evidenced by Kroger, Albertsons, Walmart, and Target, over time we're also convinced retailers in the long run are not going to trace just a limited list, but they're going to trace it all.

Randy Fields: These two different forces are working their way through the system. Certainly, it's true that many retailers are hesitant to commit to traceability until they know what the current administration is going to do. But the sense of inevitability of traceability is sinking into our industry bit by bit.

Randy Fields: We would be surprised if there isn't some delay in terms of the FDA enforcement.

Randy Fields: We've spent the last two years advocating for some delay, and we fully expect it.

Randy Fields: That delay does not, however, mean that traceability is going to go by the wayside. It's simply a recognition of the fact that the industry is still not as prepared as it needs to be at this point in time.

Randy Fields: This timing is lined up exactly as we expected, and we've positioned ourselves as the go-to solution to meet both the FDA demands and the market forces for tracing everything.

Randy Fields: We are already by far the largest operating traceability network in the world. It's pretty amazing if you actually think about it.

Randy Fields: Our scale is drawing the attention of the industry and of additional players that want to partner with us, but there'll be more about that later.

Randy Fields: For Repositrak, it's driving a growing base of recurring and deferred revenue.

Randy Fields: Given what we have in hand we're anticipating accelerating to double digit revenue growth in the second half of our current fiscal year.

Randy Fields: bringing the whole Europe to our desired 10-20% growth of top-line range.

Randy Fields: It's significant to note, though, that it's not just traceability driving our growth. Our core business and traceability are both growing.

Randy Fields: Think of what we do as having multiple doors of entry, and traceability is simply one of those doors.

Randy Fields: We continue to improve our automation and onboarding process. The percentage of customers who are now onboarding through the Automated Wizard is continuing to increase, but we have a lot more work to do.

Randy Fields: Specifically, we have around 5,500 facilities that are being actively enrolled by our retail and wholesale customers. It'll take 18 to 24 months to onboard these suppliers.

Randy Fields: And those 5,500 facilities that we have in hand today that are being required to enroll by their hubs represents nearly $10 million in incremental annualized revenue over the next 24 months or so.

Randy Fields: Simultaneously, the addressable market continues to grow and we continue to strengthen our competitive position. Let me give you an example. Last quarter I spoke about the opportunity to help suppliers connect with non-customer retailers.

Randy Fields: Kroger, Albertson, Target, Walmart, for example, have mandated that suppliers trace all food products and they're implementing this mandate well ahead of the FDA's deadline.

Randy Fields: These large retailers handle traceability internally, as you'd expect, but they work with thousands of suppliers, many of whom are currently in or planning to join the Repositrak traceability network.

Randy Fields: This creates an opportunity because of our technical capabilities to help them connect to retailers and wholesalers that may not themselves be using us as their exclusive traceability portal.

Randy Fields: Once again, we're data agnostic. We are positioned as the universal translator for the industry, connecting key data elements to nearly any traceability platform automatically and seamlessly. This gives us a powerful advantage and opens up a very large additional market for us.

Randy Fields: We're positioning ourselves to take advantage of the fact that we are by far the largest database in the world for traceability data. This doesn't just give us a competitive advantage. It actually makes us attractive for others to partner with us.

Randy Fields: For example, we recently partnered with Upshop, one of the leading providers of store-level receiving solutions and in-store solutions.

Randy Fields: Every grocery store has some process to scan deliveries as they arrive, inputting the data into the store's systems.

Randy Fields: Upshop is one of the leaders in this space, along with a handful of others.

Randy Fields: Retailers are requesting assistance from Upshop and others to gather traceability-oriented data as part of their own process.

Randy Fields: This is something beyond the normal scope for these companies, and therefore partnering with a deposit track was an obvious solution.

Randy Fields: We expect additional partnerships as we expand, as well as additional retailers and wholesalers signing up with us as a result of these partnerships.

Randy Fields: Because we are the largest database of supplier and other traceability information, it's making us attractive to others who want to be part of our growing network.

Randy Fields: This is the classic network effect, where the size of the network itself attracts even more players who want to participate.

Randy Fields: As more retailers recognize that traceability is an inevitable part of being in the grocery business.

Randy Fields: the FDA's role in driving timing will continue to diminish. So the likely pushback of the enforcement deadline by the FDA would actually be welcome news for us.

Randy Fields: As for Repositrak, our focus has always been, and always will be, on meeting the needs of our customers. For our retail customers, this means putting a solution in place that enables them to meet their internal and external requirements without creating a burden or impacting their P&L.

Randy Fields: For distributors, this means deploying a solution that, as much as possible, works within their existing processes.

Randy Fields: For suppliers, this means creating the solution that's workable for smaller entities that may not even have an IT department.

Randy Fields: rolling it out with as few headaches as possible and pricing it affordably. So far, the Repository Traceability Network, or RTN, is checking all of these boxes. As we've always said, when our customers do better, we do better. But...

Randy Fields: As excited as we are about traceability, our core business is continuing to do well also. Our growth in the second fiscal quarter was due to growth in all parts of our business.

Randy Fields: We anticipate our accelerated growth in the second half of the year will also be a combination of growth in our core business as well as traceability. By design, we anticipate that our profitability will continue to outpace our revenue growth.

Randy Fields: Our business inherently drives cross-selling. Let me give you an example.

Randy Fields: One of our larger customers started with us doing compliance for a limited number of their suppliers.

Randy Fields: The success we had in compliance positioned us to be the ideal solution for their traceability problem. So they're doing traceability with us. Now this customer has come back with a significant expansion of their compliance scope.

They're effectively doubling their compliance business with us.

Randy Fields: and this will inevitably lead to an expansion again of the traceability business.

Randy Fields: The two business lines are inherently connected in the eyes of the customer.

Randy Fields: And the result of that is that each time we do an expansion, it leads to additional expansions down the line.

Randy Fields: Importantly, we should all remember that we're not simply a traceability company.

Randy Fields: Our business model is simple. It enables consistent, growing profitability, simultaneously delivering the results that our customers expect.

Randy Fields: This allows us to continue to return more and more capital to shareholders.

Randy Fields: As we continue with our capital allocation strategy, we've redeemed preferred, we've redeemed common, we've paid off all our bank debt, we've increased the common dividend every year, and we still have $28 million of cash in the bank, up from just a few million not too many years ago.

Randy Fields: In fact, it's important to keep in mind that our five-year CAGR is 30% compounded for net income and earnings per share, 43% compounded. Pretty impressive. We know that.

Randy Fields: We have lots more work to do, but I'm certainly proud of what the team has accomplished so far. I'm sure you can hear how confident we are about our future, so with that I'd like to open it up now for questions.

operator.

Speaker Change: Thank you. We will now 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. You may press star two to remove yourself from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up the handset before pressing the star keys.

One moment please while we poll for questions.

Speaker Change: And our first question comes from the line of Thomas Forte with Maxim Group. Please proceed with your question.

Thomas Forte: Great, thanks. So first off, Randy and John, congrats on the quarter. I have several questions. I'll go one at a time. But I have more questions than normal, so maybe...

Thomas Forte: I'm going to answer them a little more succinctly. The first one is, Randy, I think you've given data points the last couple of calls that quantify your ability to onboard customers faster.

Can you provide an update on that?

Thomas Forte: Yeah, that was really the comment that I made about the wizard.

Thomas Forte: which is what we call it. I think, objectively, we've made huge progress in that.

Thomas Forte: meaning that a higher and higher percentage of our onboards are actually going through the wizard end-to-end.

Thomas Forte: What we do is just keep looking at where people get stuck and fixing it, seeing if we can determine what the problem really is.

and then making adjustments as needed.

Thomas Forte: But it's right where we hoped it would be. And honestly, I'm guessing that a year from now, it'll be so much a part of the business that...

Thomas Forte: 60 to 70 percent of the users come through, get connected, and need no assistance whatsoever.

Thomas Forte: A lot of the assistance that's important to remember is a result of the fact that traceability is a new idea.

In other words, it isn't that our wizard is new.

Thomas Forte: it's that everything about traceability is new. So we're doing still a fair amount of education work as people attempt to go through the process of getting connected to our network.

Thomas Forte: So we're right on track, maybe even a little ahead of where I expected a year ago. I'm guessing a year from now, there'll be no need for questions about it, because it'll be such a dominant part of how people get into the network.

Thomas Forte: OK, thank you for that. John, can you help us? How should we think about your fixed cost versus your variable cost?

Sorry, Tom, I was on mute.

I mean, I think that you could...

Thomas Forte: Look at the fixed costs where you know, and I'm these aren't accounting So we're not talking about bad debt and all of that

Thomas Forte: It's cash costs, that's about $12 million. So if you were to look at the incremental dollar, you're only talking about a de minimis amount of costs that go along with that, primarily being commissions and the related taxes associated with that.

Thomas Forte: That's pretty much it. It's not any more complicated than that. So I've always said it takes $12 million in cash to run this place.

Thomas Forte: stock, comp, bad debt, whatnot, but on the incremental side, it's not like if we add another 500 suppliers or another $2 million worth of revenue that, you know, there's more

Thomas Forte: you know, sales costs or, I mean, there's sales costs, but there's no development costs in, you know, IT or admin, we're not adding anything. In fact, if you look at how many people we have today, 67, we've roughly had the same amount of people for the last three years. Does that answer your question?

Speaker Change: Yes. And then, I feel like this quarter and last quarter, you've talked about the success in all three business lines. Can you give a quick refresher on the relative contribution margin of the three business lines?

Speaker Change: Pretty much the same. I mean, you know, it's plus or minus three percent, you know, for the different ones. But supply chain compliance and traceability all generate basically the same margin. And it comes from the framework of how this company is built. It's not about all sorts of people and mid-level managers and what we call administrivia. It is one

Speaker Change: Dr. John Merrill, Dr. Rob Fink, Randall Fields, John Merrill, Rob Fink, Randall Fields, Dr.

I've got what I need.

Randy Fields: So it comes from the culture, too. I don't know if Randy wants to give any more color to that, but that's where it starts. So you're not going to see this rapid rise.

Randy Fields: In expenses, sure, we're investing in the wizard, we're investing in marketing, but you're not going to see this rapid rise in expenses as we increase the top line. It doesn't matter where the revenue comes from. Randy calls them doors. You come in through compliance door, leads to traceability. Coming through a supply chain, that leads to traceability or compliance.

and we're seeing it.

Randy Fields: Yeah, let me add a small amount of color to that.

Randy Fields: When we say that we're investing in now fill in the blank the wizard or some other piece of automation

Randy Fields: That doesn't mean that we've added people to do it. What it really means is we take our development team and we focus them on that area.

Randy Fields: What we've done that's uniquely powerful, and very few software companies can say this, is we have one large application.

for everything that we do.

Randy Fields: Literally it's one piece of technology. It's not four, five, or ten by application. It's one.

Randy Fields: which means that all we're really doing is if you think of it as a car, we're saying okay well now let's tune the engine a little bit. Okay, got that done. Now let's do something with the transmission.

Randy Fields: So, that's why we have a fixed number of people in the business, it tends not to go up very much at all, and our costs tend, therefore, to be relatively flat. There'll be small increments each year on the cash cost side of the business, but we're really a fixed cost business for the most part.

Speaker Change: Okay and then my second group of questions are a little more industry related. So I know historically you've helped food retailers with their efforts to be in stock. Is there anything you can help them do today to manage the current shortage in eggs?

Speaker Change: Likely nothing, because that's being driven by a phenomenon over which people have little if any control. What you're reading is true.

Speaker Change: It's driven by whole flocks of animals having to be euthanized because one of the animals ends up getting sick.

Speaker Change: The bird flu problem is, it's been here now for years.

Speaker Change: and it's ubiquitous, it's almost everywhere. So people, you know, end up running around with chickens in hazmat suits and washing their vehicles with disinfectant to try and prevent the disease.

Speaker Change: It's a very, very difficult problem, not easily solved, and in truth, there's not much we can do about it. In fact, there's essentially nothing.

Speaker Change: because you can have a flock that's just fine today, producing a million eggs a day, and tomorrow one of the birds is sick, and they end up destroying, euthanizing the entire flock.

It's a catastrophe for people in the business.

Speaker Change: So what I'd do is probably see if I could get some quail.

I'm sorry, that was...

Speaker Change: I was just kidding. There is no workaround to this. There really isn't.

Speaker Change: Okay, so that helped me understand that very well and I appreciate that. All right, so you talked a little in your prepared remarks about the implications of the second Trump term. I had a related question on that.

Speaker Change: So, for the second Trump term, is there an opportunity for you to help retailers navigate tariffs?

Speaker Change: Well, the answer to that is, yes, in many cases we're dealing with

Speaker Change: the supply chain, the whole supply chain for a retailer and for their suppliers.

So where we get connected to the whole of it

Speaker Change: It makes it easier for us to do forecasting and ordering and that kind of thing, which is really the best protection. So you're seeing, not in the case of food yet, but in many other commodities, people are forward buying to avoid tariffs.

Speaker Change: That's great. What's going to happen in a few months is you get that slowdown, and that slowdown reflects itself in prices, independent of the tariffs.

and that in some number of months...

The pain that's being inflicted in confusion will be over.

Thank you all.

Speaker Change: You know, it's just going to be unpleasant for the next few months, probably through June.

Some number of

from

some month like that, June or July.

All right. Thank you.

Speaker Change: So two of my next questions should be my most fun ones. So how should we think about the implications of RFK Jr. leading Health and Human Services and his efforts to reform food and what that means for you?

Speaker Change: Well, you know, there's no way of knowing. All we can do is to have a position, which is this.

Speaker Change: His primary interest appears to be what I would call, generally speaking, safety. Oh my God, how would you find a company?

Speaker Change: that's more centered on this whole issue of food safety than us, we're it. Now, will he see, let me start with some facts. So the first fact is, from what he says, safety is his primary concern. Okay, we're that.

Speaker Change: Now let's go on to, do people know that? That's really more the key. And it turns out we've talked to lots of people in Congress, dozens of congressional offices to find out kind of what they're thinking about food safety.

Speaker Change: And here it is. They all think that food is already tracked and traced.

Speaker Change: There's a stunning level of ignorance around the state of the industry. Almost everyone we talked to said, well, yeah, don't we do that already? And we go, no, not even in the slightest. And they go, my God.

Speaker Change: So, it's going to take, let's talk about what could happen.

Speaker Change: It would take an act of Congress, a piece of legislation, to stop and end traceability. Because it is the law. It's already the law, and it's already in the regulatory base.

Speaker Change: So it would take literally a change in our legal structure. Somebody would have to propose legislation and that would have to get through Congress to stop traceability.

more likely would be a change in the appropriation process.

Speaker Change: where somebody says, well, let's tell the FDA they need to slow down enforcement of traceability.

Speaker Change: We think that's the most likely course, that Congress will signal or actually tell the FDA, slow this down.

Speaker Change: It doesn't change the legal structure of traceability. People are still on the hook for it.

Speaker Change: It just changes the enforcement date that the FDA will apply to Rule 204. We've said for two years. That won't matter in a few years because more and more companies have accepted traceability as inevitable.

Speaker Change: And they're just going to go ahead and do it. So it creates a market force rather than a regulatory force.

Speaker Change: So, I think, you know, as we look at this, RFK could be a big thing for us. We doubt that it'll be hurtful to us.

It could, in fact, be helpful to us.

talking about food safety, talking about it.

Speaker Change: is beneficial to us because it's the space in which we live.

Speaker Change: We've all seen an enormous number of recalls over the last year, that's true, food isn't becoming safer, and if you look at the last Gallup poll, Americans think of food safety about the same way they think of approval of Congress.

Speaker Change: They really are worried about the safety of the food that they eat.

https://www.youtube.com or the link in the video description.

Speaker Change: It's like, oh my God, is it just safe from the get-go?

Speaker Change: So I think bringing attention to the problem of food safety is for us a good thing.

Hopefully, hopefully they will slow this down.

Speaker Change: because you can't go from doing hundreds to thousands in days.

Speaker Change: It's not good for us. It's not good for our customers. We would much rather see the whole thing spread out over a larger number of years. So we're expecting a two, maybe even a three-year relief, and that would be terribly beneficial for us.

and our customers for that matter.

Speaker Change: Okay, boring one. So, current thoughts on Kappa allocation, dividends buybacks, and strategic M&A. It looks like in the quarter, you both redeemed preferred shares and bought back common shares in the same quarter.

and increased dividend.

We did all of it.

and put more cash on the balance sheet.

Speaker Change: There's no change to our capital allocation strategy, and as John has said, we're sort of opportunistic about it.

Speaker Change: to go on the balance sheet and ultimately the free cash to go on the balance sheet and then the rest somewhere between dividend and stock buyback.

No change.

Speaker Change: All right, this is the question I've started as my favorite and then I have one more after this unless you inspire me to ask more.

Speaker Change: So, alright, I'm 99.9% sure this has no impact on Repositraq, but Randy, I'd appreciate your thoughts on DeepSeek and any AI-related implications for Repositraq, including if you're ramping your own CapEx to do more with AI.

Speaker Change: Yeah, no impact at all. We've been doing AI things for years. The fact that everybody in the world is talking about it pretty much makes us want to shut up because

We're not a follower.

Speaker Change: So, AI is part of what we do. It'll be an increasing part of what we do.

Speaker Change: But we tend to do it relatively inexpensively. We don't do funny bots. That's not where we put our AI dollars. It has nothing to do with our CapEx. It all falls within, as we've said, our CapEx year-to-year will typically be less than a million dollars.

Thank you.

So this will not change CAPEX for us whatsoever.

Speaker Change: Excellent. Last question then. All right, so where are we today in your efforts to work with restaurants addicted to heightened interest from E. coli breakout or outbreak at McDonald's rather?

Speaker Change: Yeah, remember they're not as lucrative for us as the grocery business because they have fewer suppliers.

Speaker Change: So, I think we're close to having our first few food distributors come on board that work with the restaurant and food industry as you would think about it, fast food, QSR, etc.

Speaker Change: So we're closer to bringing a few of those on. I'm not as bullish about that part of the business as I am the rest of what we do just because of our business model.

Thank you.

Speaker Change: All right, so point of clarification there. So it's not about the number of locations times the number of suppliers, meaning if you had... No. Okay, so it is truly... the hub and spoke is truly the number of suppliers. It's hub... yeah, exactly. So a large-scale food retailer has a...

Speaker Change: A typical grocery store, when you look through all of how they get their product, has at least 1,000 suppliers. The corner grocery store ultimately has 1,000 suppliers.

Speaker Change: If you look at a large chain, let's say one of the largest pizza chain, 200.

200

And they have, you know, 6,000 locations.

Speaker Change: So the fact of the matter is, for how we do what we do, where we are is a more lucrative place.

Speaker Change: for now. Okay. Thank you for indulging me and congrats again. Of course.

Of course.

Speaker Change: Thank you. As a reminder, if anyone has any questions, you may press star 1 on your telephone keypad to go ahead and join the queue to ask your question.

Speaker Change: And ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's conference Q&A session. Therefore, I'd like to turn the call back over to Chairman and CEO, Randy Fields, for closing remarks.

Randy Fields: Well, thanks everybody for joining us, taking the time. I think if you said what's the most important takeaway, it's that the book of business we have, the contracts we've got in our hot little hands.

Randy Fields: that will move through the revenue account in the second half of our year. We'll pull the full year up to something between 10 and 20 percent year-over-year. So we're kind of in the groove we like to be in.

We feel really good about where we are. So, hopefully...

All of us will have an opportunity to enjoy.

Enjoy the stock benefit.

Randy Fields: that. So thank you all. Thanks for spending the time. Talk to you soon.

Randy Fields: Thank you, and this concludes today's conference, and you may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.