Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. And welcome to the ARC Q3 2020 Earnings Report Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]..

I would now like to turn the call over to our host for today, Mr. David Stickney, VP, Corp. Communications and Investor Relations. Thank you. Please go ahead. .

Thank you, Camille, and welcome, everyone. On the call with me today are Suri, Suriyakumar, our Chairman and President and -- sorry, our Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer; our Chief Operating Officer, Dilo Wijesuriya; and Jorge Avalos, our Chief Financial Officer. .

Our third quarter results for 2020 were publicized earlier today in a press release. The press release and other company materials are available from our Investor Relations pages on ARC Document Solutions' website at ir.e-arc.com..

In today's earnings announcement, ARC offered expanded supplemental disclosures to provide shareholders and analysts with additional information in advance of our quarterly conference call. The disclosures are largely historical and will not be read on today's call.

Please note that today's call will contain forward-looking statements that fall within the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

Such statements are only predictions based on information as of today, November 4, 2020, and actual results may differ materially as a result of risks and uncertainties that we highlight in our quarterly and annual SEC filings..

This call will also contain references to certain non-GAAP measures, which are reconciled in today's press release and in our Form 8-K filing..

I'll now turn the call over to our Chairman, President and CEO, Suri, Suriyakumar.

Suri?.

Thank you, David, and good afternoon, everybody. We are extremely pleased to announce a strong quarter in spite of the extraordinary circumstances we have been operating under with regard to the pandemic.

As you may recall, immediately after the COVID-19 was declared a pandemic and businesses were forced into a lockdown, we embarked on an ambitious strategy to reengineer the company for a new environment.

We made significant changes in our operations and our infrastructure to make sure that we could continue to remain relevant to our customers and the markets we serve. Not just in the near term, but for the long haul. .

Our third quarter results clearly show the strategy is working in our favor. Each of our primary business segments are on the right track, with color graphics and image -- and imaging, leading the way.

We have seen growing interest in environmental, retail and educational graphic imaging and of course, health and safety signage remain in a high demand..

We have also stretched these capabilities into new areas, creating products to fit our new environment like Cube Mate, our mobile desk screens for the education market..

The majority of our new business is coming from outside of the construction industry. That said, construction printing has remained a vital part of the mix as new and existing products continue to move forward. The environment for managed print services is changing and creating new opportunities despite continuing to work from home preferences.

And scanning and imaging has also proven resilient..

Working away from offices demands a mobile-first attitude to a document and information management. So our customers are looking at digital document conversion in a new light. The company also continues to make inroads into the facilities market. Our business was changing long before the pandemic started.

In some ways, our new focus and reconfiguration of our operations simply accelerated ARC's transformation into a new kind of company..

But at the heart of it, it's our ability to quickly recognize and respond to the needs of our customers, our business and our shareholders. This approach to our business has not only become second nature to us, but also has become a strategic necessary in our changing environment.

The pandemic shows no sign of diminishing soon, and we expect the challenging operating environment to persist. But as the economic and cultural landscape evolves in the face of the pandemic, we are adapting to the opportunities it presents for new business, refining our cost structure and opening up new markets..

Our third quarter results are impressive from almost any perspective, and I will turn over the call in a moment to Dilo and Jorge to explain more. But before I do, I also want to reiterate our long-term commitment to our shareholders.

A year ago, we made a commitment to begin returning shareholder value directly in the form of a dividend program and share repurchases. It was a modest beginning, and it felt like we were interrupted almost immediately.

With the onset of the pandemic in March, we were compelled to suspend both the programs to ensure the company and its cash flows were secure. In just two quarters, I think we have done both..

As such, we are already ready to recommence these activities, and we anticipate the resumption of our dividend program and share repurchases before the end of the year. How the pandemic ultimately affects our cultural and economic environment in the coming months remains to be seen. It's a fluid environment to say the least.

And I will be surprised if we weren't challenged along the way, but I won't be surprised to see our team rise to those challenges and overcome them..

Now, I'll turn the call over to Dilo and then Jorge to provide perspective on Q3.

Dilo?.

Thank you, Suri.

When we last spoke, most of our efforts were revolving around implementing systems to keep our employees safe, reorganizing the service centers to accommodate new levels of work, supporting customers by implementing good safety protocols such as curbside pickups, noncontact deliveries and restricted access to walk in traffic, reorganizing the MPS workflow to support customers working from home, strengthening our online and e-commerce platforms, improving and increasing investment in our web and social media marketing efforts and reorganizing expenses to keep the company fit and strong financially.

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All of this was a result of listening to our customers and staying focused on their immediate needs. We were able to pivot our production and selling methods to deliver what our customers required during the height of the pandemic. Much of our activity involved changing our approach to sales as well.

Entering new markets, as we have done, has required a sales force of hunters and a more aggressive approach to marketing, and our team has embraced this new mindset..

On the operations side, I'm very pleased with our staff, who worked tirelessly to reengineer the production centers and learn new processes and converted many of our plants to support immediate customer needs..

In the past several months, we continue to adapt our business and our offerings to produce environmental graphics for both interior and exterior environment, new PPE products, like our new Cube Mate the screens that not only serve students but also offices, public services and walk up counters, options for mitigating the spread of the coronavirus.

Safety distancing signs at school, exciting new graphic imaging for retail businesses, office, restaurant and public space graphics to help explain new processes or encourage new behavior.

Key safety signs in addition to our normal plan and graphics work for construction site and creating safety graphics plans for businesses and supporting the installation of graphics, wherever they are required..

We were also able to keep abreast of the numerous city and state guidelines and create environmental graphics in multiple languages for schools and businesses to use as they started to reopen.

We were successful in providing distancing signs, posters, decals and show graphics for over 1,000 educational institutes in the U.S., including signage for the entire Chicago Public Schools District, the third largest public school system in the U.S.

In this example, we produced and delivered nearly 1 million graphics for this job in less than 2 weeks, demonstrating unprecedented on-demand capacity and capability in the production of our digital graphics imaging..

As we move into Q4, we are continuing to listen to our customers, both our traditional customers and our new ones, and we are staying nimble in producing and delivering their immediate signage needs. We have invested and improved our first response customer care team as well.

During times of uncertainty, it is critical that we take care of our customers and make them comfortable with the way we are supporting their projects. We have received multiple commendations from customers thanking our staff for going above and beyond for helping our customers during the pandemic..

As a part of our reconfiguration activities, we closed 15 locations that weren't adding value to our overall operation. A significant portion of sales from these locations were moved to larger service centers and our online e-commerce platform. While the pandemic disrupted our business, it has also brought in new opportunities.

Our divisional leadership has done a tremendous job in improving our margins by improving efficiencies and delivering good value to our customers. For that, we are thankful to all our employees..

With a workforce cost structure and production network that can be leveraged in any number of directions, we are well positioned for whatever kind of work may come our way..

With that, I hand over to Jorge for a financial update.

Jorge?.

Thank you, Dilo. In light of the ongoing trends in the overall economy and the markets we serve, I think it is best to impress upon our investors the strength and staying power of ARC, under its new configuration.

Not only have our sales and operational changes created opportunities in the market, but with our financial strength, our potential for long-term success is just as great. .

Our capital structure and liquidity are rock solid, as evidenced by a year-to-date increase in our cash balance of more than $20 million, driven solely by the operations of the business. Our leverage ratio, net of cash, has reduced to less than 1.5x, and our cost structure has decreased approximately 30% from where we stood just a year ago.

These metrics are the source of our confidence in recommencing the dividend program after a brief hiatus and to begin repurchasing stock at our earliest opportunity..

In addition to the strength of our capital structure, our operating performance is also providing resources to us through these uncertain times. As impressive as $72.4 million may be in quarterly revenue in such an environment, the opportunity to grow market share and new customers still remains high.

These sales are producing impressive quarterly earnings of $0.07 as compared to last year's third quarter earnings per share of $0.04 on sales that were $20 million higher and pre-pandemic conditions..

At $12.5 million, our EBITDA performance is also higher than last year despite the lower level of sales. And cash flow from operations is $13 million for the quarter and $39 million year-to-date, both of which are significantly higher than prior year cash flow performance.

I want to emphasize these numbers to our investors to help them understand that we are working from a position of strength, even as we continue to operate in an uncertain environment..

The fourth quarter has begun with a global increase in COVID-19 cases, even as the flu season looms in front of us. And worldwide economies are still experimenting with the best ways to keep national economies from collapsing. These are just a few of the challenges that confront all of us.

But at ARC, we started our turnaround by assisting government, health care and businesses of all kinds in managing through these difficult times. In doing so, we discovered new ways to keep our business healthy, and today's results demonstrate that clearly..

We are here for the long haul, and we are grateful for our investor support. At this point, I'll turn the call back to Suri.

Suri?.

Thank you, Jorge. Operator, we are now available for our listeners' questions. .

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Ben Andrews with Andrews Capital. .

Can I understand MPS a little bit more in what you're seeing, Suri? Are those printing jobs just going away? Or are they sending them to your centers? And how does -- do you think that evolves that MPS unit? Do you think it comes back slowly? Or is it just a unit that you have a lot less equipment in a year from now?.

So I'll get Dilo to give a little more color on that, Ben. But from an overall perspective, from 10,000 feet or 30,000 feet perspective, the entire MPS business is going to significantly evolve. It's going to change, depending on how things are falling off in terms of our customers getting back to offices, having MPS installations in offices.

So we are -- basically, what we are doing is reconfiguring and redistributing equipment fleets, right? That's what we are doing because we are recognizing the customers are not going back to offices and doing the same thing they did before. So the customer venue itself is changing.

Like, for example, there are a lot of people who are actually working from home, but has print needs. When there are other companies, like if you take the utility companies and companies of that nature, they are still looking to outsource their work. They used to have big print rooms.

They are traditionally, they try to do all the work within their own environment, they are actually outsourcing that work. And then there is another group of customers who basically had these huge installations, who are saying we are not returning to office.

The same way we did before, therefore, there are -- there is excess equipment coming out of that place. So this entire space is completely changing. So what we are doing is reconfiguring and redistributing those equipment [indiscernible] and creating new opportunities, right, with equipment, which we refurbish and certify.

So the equipment which we get back, some of them have a lot of life left, but we can recertify them and place them and use them also for outsource printing. So there's a variety of new opportunities popping up. The key is to be on the lookout for them and be creative about how we are servicing those customers.

Because if we go to the old traditional method of just buying equipment, obviously, something we don't want to do when we already have a fair amount of equipment, which is actually in our fleet. .

Dilo, would you like to add anything to that?.

And maybe before we go to Dilo, real quick, Ben, just to answer your -- the part of your question there. Any revenue that's recorded under MPS is revenue that's generated at our customer site, be it office setting or project sites. So that is the revenue that is in that line item. With that, Dilo, go ahead. .

So as Suri mentioned, there are a couple of challenges and opportunities that are opening up. The challenges are, skills, the customers are -- a large percentage of customers are working from home. Some of our larger customers, we have seen only about 10% to 15% of their staff has returned to office and rest of them working from home.

So therefore, the amount of printing that we do on-site has reduced drastically. So that's where the MPS numbers have got affected. .

However, we have the opportunities that we have seen and we have opened up, and we are continuing to focus is helping the customers who are working from home to print to our service centers. Because customers, we have provided them technology tools to directly print to our service center and get it distributed anywhere in the country.

So there's the new opportunities. While it may not print their office, it's going to print in our office. We also have opportunities, new opportunities, where lots of construction sites and temporary offices are looking for short-term rentals, they are not willing to, unlike in the past, sign up a 3-year lease with a equipment manufacturer.

So we have that opportunity to use some of the machines that we are reconfiguring, recertifying and putting it back. So that's another opportunity that we are seeing as well.

And many of the customers, when they come back to us, we feel that in the -- over the next 2, 3 quarters, different customers and different percentages will come back, we will get our MPS program started, and it will continue to evolve as the time goes by. .

Yes, I figured that some of those, I mean, the -- there's no possible way that they could turn off that much printing. So some of it is going to CDIM. Do you guys have any handle on how much is going there? I mean, revenues were down $13 million year-over-year.

Do you think, like maybe, $5 million went there? Or do you have any numbers on that?.

So we are not going back and looking at the past numbers we had, Ben, because it's very hard to compare year-over-year because the business has changed so much. It's -- so we are not tracking that. So that's why we are taking this view. Look, we have reengineered the company.

The water level is at a different mark now, and we are looking at that business as business opportunities which come from any place. So we are not looking at as a MPS segment and driving that. There used to be a time we would create this separate, as a separate category and drive it hard.

And that belong to a group of customers who are large global customers, who had equipment in their offices. All that's gone. It's very hard to keep track of that. .

So like Dilo said, it comes in different forms, but we are just keenly aware of these opportunities. When customers say, "We are having 3 sites now, but it's construction sites. We're not going to get anything on 3-years or 5-year lease. We want short-term rentals. Do you have equipment?" Absolutely. No problem. Where do you want it? Bang.

We deliver that equipment and we've been placing equipment really, really fast. And customers like it. Because they are not ordering and waiting. That it's -- one of the things, which Dilo has done is the response time we have. We immediately react to opportunities like that.

So similarly, if there are other customers who want equipment, we can be price competitive. We also have the equipment immediately. So we are constantly having our team recertify this equipment, which comes in, just to make sure they're in good working order, and we place them back.

So what happens is, we are mitigating the expense there because we already have these assets in hand. And we are also putting them to use. So again, when the market comes back, because remember, we have not returned to normalcy. When the markets come back, there are the people wanting services.

But we just can't -- we don't know how they're going to have. Is the full office going to come back, do they need half the capacity, what -- it's hard to predict that. But what we are doing is we're just being opportunistic in looking out for those business opportunities, which come out and then capitalizing on that.

And in doing so, what happens is, whenever the market comes back, when customers have future needs, they'll reach out to us. .

Now I guess, you have some new categories and such of sign printing and such going to CDIM. And you have -- okay, pretty good gross margins.

Will those gross margins, in your opinion, be a struggle to keep, going forward? Or do you think this might be a new level of gross margin, going forward?.

The gross margin is not something -- one of the reasons we create that kind of gross margin, we create, is because we have an established network of branches, locations, equipment, people. We know what we are doing. We are good at what we are doing.

It's a question of putting the revenue, right? So we're like Dilo said, we have new ways of going after that business. Because we know we have established branches and locations. Therefore, we do. So we are price competitive. We have to be out in the market. I don't think it will be a struggle to keep the gross margins up.

We'll continue to drive them the same way we have been doing. And I don't think -- Jorge, would you have any comments on the gross margin part. .

I mean, in regards to the gross margins, I mean, we talked about this in the last quarter, and I added a little bit in my commentary. I mean, we restructured the company. It's a new company. We took out 30-plus percent of our cost structure.

So we established us to be a very strong 30-plus percent gross margin company, at $65 million-ish in revenue per quarter. We came up at $70 million. What does that mean? I get to leverage our labor more, our overhead more, and you're going to see a blip in our gross margin.

So part of the story with gross margins is predicated on how much revenue we get. But while we feel strongly and very confident about that, we can maintain a gross margin level of a strong 30-plus gross margin regardless of kind of what the revenue is.

Does that answer your question, Ben?.

Yes, it does. And Suri, if you wouldn't mind, you had 1 sentence in there, kind of, on the AIM business on some of the scanning and a little bit on the facilities. Could you elaborate a little bit on facilities? I know during this period of time, most people probably not even thinking of switching over their business to something like that.

But could you give me a little more color and your thoughts on that piece?.

Sure, sure. So we -- obviously, times are very difficult. We are challenged with trying to keep this business intact and building this new configuration. So we've been super focused on that, Ben. But what -- what we have done on the facilities side is we still haven't taken the foot off the gas there.

We still have a team working on the facilities, and we have been making inroads. Customers do want to have access to their information for the facilities maintenance side. Right, on our [ current ] site facilities management site, that is a business which we have a lot of depth of knowledge, which others don't have.

We also have technology, which others don't have. And that business is continuing to make inroads. Granted, we are not having 15 salespeople there and a huge team do that right now. We have been judicious about where we are investing during times like this.

We are in an environment where we have to be very careful about where we're investing and why we are investing. But the business is healthy, and we are continuing to have these days, growth. Customers are using us. They use our software. And the software is working very well. And we have really, really happy customers.

So again, in that space, we are making inroads, it's not material enough to talk about it at this point in time, given that we have not invested a whole lot of capital in that, but it's healthy, and it's going very well. .

Are you still doing new customers and new trials? Or are you pretty much just with the ones you've been with for the past year or so?.

No, we are getting new customers. Granted, growth is not fast, but we are getting new customers. We have a lot of trials. We have marketing programs. If you go to the ARC facilities website, which is a separate website altogether. You will see a lot of customer references, you'll see customer stories, you'll get a sense for what we are doing there. .

Camille, I'm not sure if we have anybody else in the queue at the moment.

Can you let us know?.

We do have a question from the line of Glenn Primack with Primestor Asset. .

Just a quick 1 on the customer mix, how you see that kind of evolving in this the non EAC customer growing, while the EAC one just given the pandemic shrinking?.

Yes. So obviously, we have great relationships with the AEC customers, right? That is architectural, engineering and construction, Glenn, we have a great relationship with them, so general contractor, subcontractors, engineers, architects. Those are existing relationships. We still have that.

But what we are doing is, we are instead of being so industry-focused, or specifically going after that space, which is what we used to do because of our history and the legacy, we are now just open the doors to all the other verticals.

So with AEC education, K-12, colleges, universities, property management, retail, advertising, marketing, media companies, hospitals, health care facilities is also getting involved now, big time owners, developers, utilities are very interested. So we've just said anywhere there is business.

So this is what, Dilo kind of touched on it, that we are telling our sales team, there is business everywhere. You just have to look hard enough, and you'll find. So there is in the entertainment space, nonprofit, cities and counties. In the legal side, it doesn't matter where it is.

But in all these areas, every different vertical, there is signage business, there's print-related business. There is health and safety signage, there is environmental graphics. So that's what we are doing. And in doing so, because the AEC business has been restrictive during this period and construction related.

Our non AEC business has done very well during this period of time, and there is no reason to believe that business is going to go away. In fact, there will be more activity when we return to normalcy. .

And so internally, within your sales, do you have that the growing mix outside EAC is that handed out by industry or is it more geography, right? So you can call on hospital campuses in Texas or schools and universities in Michigan. Is that --.

Yes. I mean, it's geography basically because you're going to literally, we can literally find work, and this is what we are finding, in every vertical. It doesn't matter whether you are in Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, Denver, Colorado, wherever it is, I mean, there is -- there are schools and colleges and universities.

There are property management companies. There are retail opportunities. And there is advertising, health care facilities all over the place. So what Dilo does is, he has the weekly call, we are keeping our salespeople engaged. He touched on it in his segment as well. We, on a weekly basis, discuss, talk about all the opportunities which are popping up.

So somebody would say, "Hey, in Denver, I did this." And somebody will say, "Hey, in Washington, D.C., I did this." And so we share ideas, we identify those customers.

And then we also supplement that with marketing, whether it is in the social media or whether it is Google advertising or whether it is what we call web advertising, we do direct e-mail campaigns. We have significant amount of campaigns going on literally on a weekly basis, putting our name out there saying that we can serve our customers.

And all that is actually helping us. So in many ways, we are operating as a different company now. .

Unfortunately, I missed that beginning of the call, so I'll listen to that on the replay. But it's -- that's kind of exciting because you must feel like you have a little bit of legs on that side of the market to continue to pound out decent revenue and cash flow. .

Totally. I think there will be lag, as the market comes back, I mean, if this is what we can do during times like this. Obviously, when things change and markets open up -- I mean, many of these markets are shut down. I mean, our primary markets are mostly shut down, and yet, we are able to do this.

So we think we -- we have more opportunities going forward. .

We do have a question from the line of Ben Andrews with Andrews Capital. .

I'm trying to get my $0.50 in. Dilo made mention that of the E&C guys that only 15% of their employees are going into the office.

Do you -- from just talking to them, do you guys think it kind of stays like this, one? And then two, do they think that's affecting their productivity at all? Or can they see anything into their productivity?.

So I'll let Dilo answer his -- what his perspective. He's not sitting in the same room with us, so I'll let him answer. But Bill, my perspective is, nobody really knows how this is going to evolve, obviously, as this pandemic plays out, whether we get vaccines or whether we get herd immunity, who knows what.

But we just don't know how it's going to play out. But what we know is the customer behavior has changed. Lots of the technology companies have already made a call saying how they are going to operate. Many companies have said, over the next 2, 3 years, they're giving up office spaces.

For example, a company like Twitter has already said, they will never go back to offices. They're going to operate off. I think companies like Dropbox has said, all of next year, they don't even have to be in the office. So they're making announcements towards not really staffing the offices full and having alternative ways of working.

We are seeing that ourselves, how we can operate without having to have all of our -- just in our corporate office of 100 people, is it really necessary to have 100 people in the office. So I think the behavior is changing. And I think it's going to evolve. It's very hard to predict how it's going to come. .

As for the productivity, I don't think -- I'll speak for myself, ourselves, here in ARC, we don't feel like our productivity has gone down. We feel like we don't have the same opportunities because the markets are not fully opened up.

But I think we are operating at the same levels of efficiency, if not no, in certain instances, even though we are not in offices. And I think that applies to lots of other technology companies as well. I think they are all operating their own way.

I think certain businesses like restaurants and others might be a different story, but that's my perspective..

Dilo, would you -- do you have anything to add to that?.

Yes. So I think I mentioned quite a bit, but one of the things that we see with the top 50 of our enterprise customers, we regularly communicate with them. We have reviews just to make sure that we are in sync with their plans and so forth. So most of the customers are little by little, adding staff into their offices as we speak.

So on average, about 15% to 25% of their staff has returned already. And they feel by early January or so, they'll get up to about 50%. And then by summer, if all go -- if things -- all go -- if things go well, they should have most of their employees back in their offices by middle of next year.

So we are planning with them, with the changes that they are making to bring their staff back. We are changing along with them, as well, to support them. And I think by early in the year, we will see the MPS work slightly picking up, as those employees get back to office. .

And for them to do that kind of planning Dilo, and kind of say, by mid next year, they're back to whatever you said 75% or 90% or whatever, then they think that everyone is going to take a vaccine, and that's kind of -- that's their thought process that kind of makes things go away, is that what they're kind of planning for?.

I think a lot of people are like hoping that by next year that there will be less restrictions for people to be in one office. I think that's how they're thinking through that. Certainly, everybody is learning every month, how this pandemic is shaping up and how they need to change.

So we are just paying attention to the customers, a lot better than before, just understanding their plans and making -- changing our ways of doing business with them just to support them. .

And then Suri and Jorge, may I follow-up just on kind of possible thoughts on the share buyback.

If I can remember, right, your bucket under your indenture allowed you for $10 million of stock repurchases per year, correct?.

Yes, that is correct. In regards to our debt agreement, our shareholders have moved this up to $15 million, but per our debt agreement, we could do up to $10 million a year in total restricted payments, dividends and shares. .

And I guess, what we've seen in the last couple of quarters, when it was kind of showing that you got your hands around it last quarter, and it's showing that you've got your hands around it, definitely more so this quarter. And you threw off a fair amount of cash flow.

Do you think you -- and I guess, the stock responded last quarter, and I'm sure it will respond again tomorrow, but it -- this doesn't seem to have any legs after that.

And I guess if you are feeling more comfortable over the next quarter or 2 and throwing off a fair amount of cash flow, do you try to expand that a little bit and maybe take out 5 million or 10 million shares here? What's your thought? Or can you expand that? Or it's too tough of a negotiation?.

So on that subject, then, it's purely going to be opportunistic, right? We just have to see how the markets are evolving. Obviously, our commitment is to return shareholder value. So we wanted to do what we said we are going to do, first, that is paying the dividends.

And then with regard to buying shares, it's a question of what -- where is the share price at the time we are trying to buy, is this the right thing to do? And then, is that the best return.

And then also, we are restricted, although our cash position is very strong, we have limited ability to buy shares in the open market, right? So we to have a measured approach, depending on the price at any given time, market conditions, et cetera. So we might look at expanding that. We certainly are feeling very good about it.

And if this trend continues, we'll certainly consider that.

Will you agree, Jorge?.

Yes. No, definitely. I mean, it's predicated on the things that Suri just said, right? I mean, we feel good with our liquidity and our capital structure, but we also need to make sure that we keep a strong liquidity and capital structure to run the operations confidently, as we move forward.

So based on how those dynamics interact with the stock price, then we'll reconsider how aggressive or how modest we go in regards to that -- to the repurchase program.

Does that answer your question?.

Yes, somewhat. I very well understand that, Jorge, but keeping a strong balance sheet. But I mean, I think you guys are sophisticated investors as well, especially you Suri. And you realize when these things are out of favor. They stay out of favor for a long time.

And then I guess, you've had a couple of kind of false starts over the last 2, 3 years, where CDIM has gotten some legs, and then the legs have kind of faltered. AIM has gotten now a little bit of legs and then it hasn't really gone anywhere.

But if you feel you're on a better track now, and I guess, you never 100% know until you get more quarters under your belt, but I mean, even spending $5 million on buying back stock, if you could get the bucket expanded, we'll have very significant valuations looking a year or 2 down the road, if you have the wind back in your sails.

You guys understand that. And I just -- I guess I'm just trying to reiterate it a little bit. .

Sure. Sure. I mean, I don't think you are -- I mean, you are accurate in saying that and agree, and it's a question of just -- we'll see how things evolve, and we are doing first things first, and it's coming along nicely. We are happy about where we are Ben, and we'll keep an eye on it.

And when the time becomes -- when the time comes right, we'll be opportunistic about it. .

There are no other questions in queue. .

Camille, it does -- yes, it does look like we have anything else in the queue.

Is that correct?.

That is correct. .

All right. Thank you. Well, everybody, thank you very much for your attention this evening. It's been a busy day for all of us, and I'm sure we'll have more to talk about here on the next quarter's call. Thanks for your interest, as always, and we look forward to talking to you again soon. Take care. .

This does conclude today's conference call. You may now disconnect..