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Well, thanks everyone for being here bright and early and welcome to DA Davidson's 21st Annual Diversified Industrials and Services Conference. Appreciate you guys all kicking off the day here with DICOM and welcome everyone on the webcast as well. I'm Kurt Yinger. I cover building products and infrastructure services here at DA Davidson. I'm joined by Dan Pajovic, the CEO of DICom. Dan, thanks so much for being hier. Thanks for having me, Kurt. Maybe just to start for investors who aren't as familiar with DICOM and what you do, just talk a little bit about the company, provide a quick overview. If I could just briefly start with, I might make forward-looking statements today, so if everybody could just please reference the Safe Harbor statement on our website, that would be appreciated. And jumping in, if you think about DICom today, the best way to think about us is really end-to-end solutions to solve the growing data needs. Right? Data consumption has grown for the last three decades. For a long, long time, DICOM provided all of the fiber, all of the HFC infrastructure around the country to connect people, to connect homes, to connect businesses. And we've extended that recently to get inside the data centers. So whether it's data being computed, data being stored, data being processed, and then now the entirety of the transmission from that data center out ultimately to the end user, that's where DICom comes into play. So end-to-end solutions, Kurt, and we're pretty excited about the setting the demand drivers okay maybe big picture you know you've been in the CEO seat for almost two years you've done a great job kind of expanding the platform into building systems you know improve the overall financial profile some of those growth opportunities can you just talk a bit about kind of the strategy since you've come in and how that positions DICOM going forward the strategy centered around growth you know there is a ton of opportunity and infrastructure needs for the reasons I talked about right there's many that say that we will create more data in the next three years and is being created today from the dawn of time so all of that is going to need infrastructure and what we've really done is over time all of the work we've been doing on the telecommunication side has got closer and closer and closer to the data center we started spending a lot more time Kurt with the hyperscalers making sure that we could get the fiber ultimately to their data centers the work that we call inside the fence and as those relationships started to grow we saw a continued need and again it's all centered around the skilled workforce all centered on skilled workforce we have about 21,000 employees nationwide today we saw growing need to also be able to lean into the data center itself so we're right outside the four walls you know bringing fiber to the meet me room the conversation said maybe we just take that next step go to the other side of the wall pick up electrical which was the first move we made in our building system segment expanded the breadth of the business added national technology integrators recently so now we're doing all the structured cabling inside those facilities and you know we have we have a very nice chart that shows this this end-to-end step right that we can move through and have these conversations cross sell opportunities we're having tons of conversations across platforms even though they come through different contracting ultimately you know what everybody's looking for is who's gonna meet this need right who's going to make sure that they have certainty of execution that they have certainty delivery in the kind of growth that's happening out there today and everybody you know certainly sees the headlines you see headlines around electricians you see the headlines around data center spend and you see on the telecommunications I have a lot of headlines making sure that our customers you know the carriers are gonna have enough fiber to meet the needs in the coming year so all of that is coming together and die comes entire platform is we want to be an excellent partner we want to lean into our customers and make sure that we can deliver success with So the conversations, Kurt, that we're having today with all of our customers, they're three years out, they are four years out there, five years out to make sure that we are setting up our workforce. And I'm sure we'll talk more about our workforce today. We're setting up a workforce to be able to meet that demand and meet that growth. Got it. Okay. And more recently, you guys reported strong Q2 results, really strong backlog growth kind of continuing there. but maybe a little bit of dislocation related to the outlook. I mean, what are you hearing from customers? I mean is there any fundamental change in kind of their messaging to you, their outlooks, anything like that, that you could kind of communicate to the investment community? There were some things that we talked about related to the second half of the year that didn't resonate with the investment community, but I would bring it back to you talked about the backlog. If you look at the entire year and you look at the revenue for RF fiscal 2027, we're looking at 10 to 12 percent organic growth, which is all coming through the telecommunications business. DICOM has never been a quarterly business. It's never been quarterly business, the way that the projects come through, whether you're on our communications sector or segment, you've got tens of thousands of work orders that are stacking at any given point in time. Those projects, those big build programs from the different customers, they move around all the time. they ebb, they flow. You might have permanent challenges at one point in time. You might have a huge influx of needs and passings that you're trying to push through. So they're always moving and so you do get some irregularities between the quarters that has nothing to do with the overall demand. What investors should really be thinking about is that 10 to 12 percent organic growth. That is a huge number coming off of a 5.4 billion dollar communications year last year and that's really a much better indicator of where this is going as we talk further into the demand drivers and then again you know as you look at the entirety of the business part of the reason that we're diversifying look at The Consolidated results right we got very strong very strong margins coming out of the building system segment fantastic growth there as well to meet the needs that we talked about before in the data center space and if you bring all that together you know it was a great quarter for DICOM from an overall margin perspective great quarter from a backlog you know we're 1.4 times booked to bill in the year and again I think that's another really good indicator of what the future looks like and what that demand is yeah okay and i mean it's good segue you know the communication business has these kind of three large fiber deployment opportunity sets you got fiber to the home long haul and middle mile infrastructure you know a lot of that's data centers and bead i mean where are we in terms of the phasing of those opportunities maybe what you've already experienced and timeline thinking about when some of those might hit yeah and i'm happy to talk about them in detail but what you'll hear us start to talk uh going forward is we have service and maintenance which everybody you know we we really highlighted how large a part of our business that was i think about a year ago so that's about half of dicom's revenue so rough rough numbers on communications it's around three billion dollars plus or minus um you know that has growth that really comes more with the overall footprint as we expand but it's a completely different growth curve than the program work so if you think about that you know i talked about being kind of the bottom of the iceberg continuing over time right that's a highly recurrent nature to it a lot of infrastructure to maintain and then you have the other half which is program work collectively which is the demand drivers that you talked about if you thinking about that program work you see a huge amount of growth coming through there our fiber to the home in the first half of the year grew 60 year over year that's very big number if you look at the actual number of passings that increased year over year industry reports have put it more like 10 you know maybe 12 maybe 15 so you know a huge opportunity for dicom to lean further into that but we look at it across all of those growth drivers all of the demand drivers so service and maintenance and then you have program work what we see for a very long trajectory today is that program work providing a lot of growth opportunity for daikon today fiber to the home obviously you know you heard the 60 plus 60 percent a lot of growth opportunity in that we still have several years of significant growth opportunity and then at some point you know we will see some taper that's starting to happen but on the other side you have the long haul and middle mile work right that is we talked about hundreds of millions of dollars of work that we put in place over the last couple of years we talked about over a billion dollars of and when I talk about pure backlog I want to make sure we're not confusing it with anything else this is literally just fiber connecting data centers nationwide that's the only thing that's in that over a billion dollars and that's after we're already burning so you can see that starting to ramp up over a year ago we talked about 20 billion of addressable market over the next five years so that's gonna really start to feather in nicely and then you throw a bead on top of that taking a long time to get to where we are but you know we are starting to see those green shoots and things getting through financing or excuse me funding getting through permitting and so we're gonna see that start to move as well what that means is when you get to calendar 2028 you know you're gonna have fiber to the home go completely hot and heavy like it is today you're gonna have these other demand drivers really coming on strong what Dicom is doing today is making sure that we're investing we are leaning into our customers very deeply you actually see that in our backlog to make sure that we can build the workforce ahead of that need because you're going to have this huge balloon of all this activity starting in 2028 that the industry has got to get ready for and what we believe is there's going to be too much industry-wide and ultimately that's going to push a lot of these builds out for a much longer time horizon so again you can see evidence of that in our customers the partnerships that they have with Corning you know for fiber making sure that they have the fiber that they're gonna need for these big builds you can imagine they're doing the same thing you know with the services folks like DICOM to make sure that we have the labor force and you just talked about making those investments ahead of time I mean how do you think about that in the context of margins right we get into 2028 the latter part of this decade you know do you start to leverage those much more meaningfully in the context of margins or you know do you have to continue to invest like is there a cycle element in there yeah so we had significant investments specifically on the communication side this quarter for the reasons I just talked about I would say that's that's a that's big part of it the other part is is you know there's times we're investing in our customers we have customers that call us up and say you know we want you to go as fast as you can through these different markets in fiber to the home right we want you to as fast you can on this long-haul work and we're gonna we're going to rise to that challenge and go do everything we can to meet that need that's the kind of partner that we want to be for our customers it's not as efficient up front but everything we're doing is with a long-term lens right the more that we can do that the more than we can really lean into the customers and deliver success for them the better we know it's going to be in the longer term so you have those kind of investments coming through and we talked about where the margin profile in the communications business is, you know, is for this year, which is kind of that plus or minus 13% range. And I'll remind folks, last year, 13.3% adjusted EBITDA for really what ended up being the communications businesses. That's a really good range for us. That is a great return on our people. That was a great return for what we do. You know, we feel really good with how that compares, you look across the landscape. And it's really important that management as we do continue to grow absolutely there's opportunities for operating leverage you know as we grow you can bring some of these efficiencies up as we go but we really want people to center around that plus or minus 13. again very strong return because we need to make sure that we can reinvest for the long term when we need and then another time sure it'll drop through to the bottom line okay and then if i can just quickly touch on margins for the building system segment uh you know really really really proud of the team and the integration that's has happened there. A lot of people working really, really hard. Very quickly growing business. We wanted to make sure we bottomed in right. We're able to really lever them up into all of that. And so you've seen the margins kind of go up and up. And then now what we're saying is over the longer term, we believe that high teens to low 20s, adjusted EBITDA for that segment of the business, which again, accretive for the overall position for DICOM, goes to our diversification strategy. That's a good range to be looking forward. Okay. Yep. And I mean, that's still very healthy relative to a lot of the peer set, too, in terms of the margin profile of that business. Yeah. And again, we're looking on the returns, right? What are the returns on our people? What are returns on investment? And how does that come through the business? And again we think that's a great profile for us to continue to lean into as we continue to grow. Okay. And on a lot of discussion around bottlenecks, you know, kind of across the construction space, is there, is it 2028? Is there a specific point in time where it's either labor or equipment that you think can get particularly tight? And I mean, what are you doing today to make sure, you're in a position to address that? Sure. It would surprise nobody on the building system segment that electricians are in short, right? They are absolutely a bottleneck there. You have power and you have electricians, and that is keeping the flow of the data center builds. It's definitely going fast and faster than it was, but it is keeping that flow restrained, and that's not going to go anywhere anytime soon, right. There are limitations on how quickly you can grow that labor force, but we've obviously shown that we can grow and grow well even in spite of that, I think you hear that from a lot of our peers as well. On the communication side, today, labor is not a constraining factor for us. Really the constraint today on the communication site comes down to permitting. We think that's going to continue overall and DICOM, what we're leaning into is making sure that our labor force continues not to be what hinders our customers from meeting their programs. That's why we're having these longer term conversations. That's what most of my time is looking in that three to five year range today, right? It's not looking in the one- to two-year range to make sure that we are set up well to be able to deliver on that. Now, that said, we do think that industry-wide, yes, as you start to get to 2028, you are going to have labor constraints. Again, you see the customers talking about making sure that they have fiber secured. What that would say is that there could be fiber shortages for people that haven't done that. Excuse me. And then from an equipment perspective, we know we do feel good about the landscape today being able to meet that need. Okay. And when we think kind of big picture around, you know, some of those constraints, and maybe this goes back to Fiber to the Home growing 60% this year, like, how do you prioritize those opportunities? You know, what are some of the different factors you're looking at in selecting which of these you want to pursue, which offer the best returns? Sure. First, just to say, don't expect Fiber home to always be growing 60%, year over year, right? That's not how it works. that goes back to the quarterly conversation that we had, but continued strong growth for Fiber to the Home for several years in front of us. And that's been fantastic work. We've got a great footprint that overlays our service and maintenance. And let me just talk a little bit about service and maintenance and how it sets us up for these other programs. You know, when we're across 50 states, we're not in every community and every zip code, but we're in a whole lot of them. We know how to build there. We know the municipalities. We know that we're going to be able to in traffic control requirements. We have relationships in those markets. We know how to hire in those markets. So when things like Fiber to the Home come, when things Like Long Haul, Middle Mile come, even when opportunities like Bede come, we have this knowledge, years of experience on how we can leverage into those. Years of experience on what those cost dynamics should look like that we can make sure we price in for success for us and for success for our customers. And so that's really how we're leaning into it. And then we're thinking about the portfolio approach. So Fiber to the Homes has been great work. We're going to continue to lean into that because we have such a great footprint a lot of great relationships there and a ton of growth but we're also going to be balancing that with long haul and middle mile you know we are investing in that space there is a huge amount of training there's a big difference between fiber to the home training and long haul middle mile training and because there hasn't been a lot the long haul metal mile work actually put in place to date even though we've been doing it for two years, and we've learned a lot of those lessons. But remember, for the entire industry, there was three decades of quiet, right? There was three of quiet in doing the long-haul work, and now it's different technology. You know, how you handle these fiber bundles that are extremely large, 864 fiber count, 1,728 fiber count is completely different than how you are doing something in the community, feeding homes or housing developments. How you're splicing that and what the testing requirements are, the industry's never seen that kind of rigor. So you're talking about a vast difference. So we're leaning into that. We're training into that today. We've been working on that work today. And we think that really positions us incredibly well to meet the customer's needs. Because as everybody knows, there is a lot of fiber that needs to get connected around the country. I think that 20 billion is just gonna be the starting point. And we see that being a very long arc curve. Okay. And that sort of ties into maybe the discussion around complexity. And whether it's maybe some of the more rural areas of fiber to the home, the less easy passings, or the long haul and middle mile. I mean, how does that differ from maybe the work you've been doing for the last decade? How does that ultimately impact sort of the competitor set when you're going to bid these jobs or looking at those opportunities? sure complexity has gone up just in general if you think about the skilled workforce when I started the skilled workforce with many decades ago many decades ago very different today all of our folks are using technology right they're using technology and everything they do the pace of deployment and this doesn't matter what industry you're in the pace and deployment is way faster today probably twice as fast today as it was a few decades ago all of those things come together to add complexity then you throw let's take fiber the home in fiber to the home you have our customers the carriers making commitments on how many passings that they're going to do in a given year they have build programs that they are trying to hit for internal metrics that means that that you cannot fail right you have to meet those commitments and and that's a different that's just a different arena with a huge huge ramp into the projects and then a huge expectation that happens month after month after a month where we've really excelled again is leaning into that training up front leaning into using DICOM as a whole bringing in services like program management to really partner with our customers to make sure that across their portfolio that we're delivering success month after month after a month and we're planning well ahead but I think that complexity what we saw was created a lot of challenges in the industry I think there were a lot people that really struggled with that opportunity and it was a differentiator for DICom it sets us up really well for the work that's coming bead is going to have a lot pressure behind it when it comes out you know again you're gonna have time based pressure cost based pressure you're also gonna have a very very busy industry on top of that but the one really to look at is this long haul a middle mile you know the complexity if if you look at fiber to the home which incredibly complex but if you are gonna miss a few passings in one neighborhood you might be able to pick them up somewhere else on fiber to home it's it's a straight shot right and if you miss 200 feet it's not connected if you missed 200 feet you cannot test it if you splice poorly and you're back digging up splices you could be delayed for a very long time all of those things come together to mean that you really have to know and really be able to plan out what that looks like and then your workforce you're talking you know at least six months of training if you're gonna take somebody from fiber to the home to bring them over to long haul middle-mile six months a training to get them ready for the difference in that environment simple things like traffic control right people don't think a lot about traffic control we drive past it every day the difference of traffic traffic control requirements if you're in one municipality or another and in a lot of cases it could be just across one bridge you go from one county to the next the difference in how you price a price that think about that how it interrupts your flow of work your speed of work can be completely night and day I mean it can be two three four times five times the cost to do it one municipalities compared to the other and if you haven't spent time in those municipalities you don't have those relationships I think that's gonna be a really big challenge for folks and again I think That's where DICOM is just incredibly well-positioned to continue to lead into complexity. Kurt, one of my favorite sayings, complexity favors DICom. Okay. I like that. It's got a good ring. And maybe tying it back to kind of fundamentals, like when I think of complexity, I think better pricing, better economics. Like, is that what you see in practice, and maybe how does that 50% maintenance and service, you know, blend together with maybe some of the opportunity on the program side? Sure. Yeah, I think if you look back historically, you Know, pick a period with DICOM, you'd see that 13% is a very strong, especially if you're looking at over time, it's a very strong return. So we are very pleased with that. And as I said, are there opportunities as we go forward where you could see more margin opportunity come through where you could see the complexities programs maybe change some of that profile that could happen that absolutely could happen and we will find opportunities where that is going to come through and then there's other times we're gonna make sure we continue to invest it in our workforce continue to investigate to make sure that we can meet the growing needs okay okay that's great maybe just shifting to building systems I mean it's performed extremely well since you've acquired it what are you hearing or seeing from customers in regards to kind of that more comprehensive dicom service offering uh really good reception conversations again cross sell this is not a cost out type of synergy right this is this is a complementary platform synergy where we can go be having conversations with customers on more of end-to-end solutions and there's a lot of receptivity there why is that because they want certainty right they want proven execution and they would rather have one relationship across many different you know whether it's many different parts of the business or many different geographies then they would have 40 or 50 that they have to manage when they're also moving so fast so we've seen great reception there we're working on you know multiple things on the same sites today we do believe that that will continue uh over time so so very pleased in how that's coming together and to your point with the acquisitions um power solutions was a big acquisition for Dicom right that was a two billion dollar acquisition let's see getting close to a year now since we closed it in a lot of planning that went into that from a strategy perspective but what's really really important you know how people should think about how Dicomm is approaching that M&A landscape is fit is the absolute most important thing right we're looking for cultures that just like Dicomp our frontline first right when I get up every day my most important job is to make sure that I'm driving value driving value to the folks that are out working with their tools that's my job that's the job of everybody in the business that is not out there working with our tools and if we drive value to them they're gonna drive value our customers and they're gonna ultimately drive value toward investors and that really is how we operate the business right we we have a team-based business we sit down with large groups and we plan out how we're going to make that we continue to grow how we have profitability and all those things it's It's not a top-down structure. So when we meet with different companies and different prospects, it's really important that they have that same belief, right? That they're really looking at their skilled workforce as the lifeblood and what really drives it. And that filters out a lot of opportunities. So we have a ton of discipline there. We're not just growing for growth's sake. We're just trying to diversify for diversification's sake, this is about really, really leaning into the overall platform. And then as we talked about, complementary services. So bringing all those together, when we find teams that have a growth mindset, and that means they've proven they can grow, but when we talk to them, they get really excited about how if you bring DICOM together with their business that may be 10, 20, 30, 40 years old, maybe even 100 years old, when you bring those together that you can have this inflection, that you're going to have this growth opportunity that maybe wasn't there before. And that's what we've been looking for. That's what found in the acquisitions that we've done of late. And we're really excited and pleased to have them as part of the team. incredibly strong leadership teams uh and you know we we do expect to continue to be active over time you know where it makes sense looking to continue add certainly both organically but also looking for more M&A in the billing system statement okay and and on the M&a point you know you also acquired national technology integrators like for a lay person can you help us understand you know how that's working with power solutions did they historically work together and what does that opportunity look like sure that's a great story because that comes from a relationship so power solutions after after we did the acquisition after they spent some time with us they've been working and know and working with and know the leadership at National Technology integrators for a long time they said hey why don't you guys should talk to die comp right there could be something interesting here and that's really the best case scenario right that's that's somebody that's just come into the business saying you know that this is working so well we want to recommend it to somebody else and then And the first time we met the leadership team at National Technology Integrators, we had that immediate connection. And again, another growth mindset. So they have been working together for a long time. In the data center, you have power solutions doing all the electrical connections, ultimately powering racks. National Technology integrators is doing all of the cabling in there, all of fiber and bringing it back to that same meet me room that other DICOM operating companies are connecting out back to ultimately to the long haul. So now we can sell not just electrical but in structure cabling inside, but we can also say, hey, let's pick up the inside defense work. Hey, we're going to be working with the carrier, bringing it to the right of way. There's a lot of synergies and a lot opportunity there that make us stronger as a platform. How do you think about saving a contractor time bringing these together? How important is that in the synergy opportunity? there you know any examples you've already seen with that uh well first pre-fabrication you know and folks have talked about that quite a bit the the data center builds they're so fast the first data center i worked on in the late 90s in total was 30 million dollars right you know that's like the paint today i mean it's just you know these have gotten so big and so fast um and so you have a lot of trade stacking where you have a lot people you know the electricians could be 100 to 300 electricians at a time and you have a lot of other people in the building at the same time so anything you can do off-site is going to save that anything that you can essentially pre-build and then bring in you're going to do it much much more efficiently effectively and and be able to add to that so that's the first part and then the other is when you do have all that trade stacking and this is a former general contractor talking when you have all the trade stacking you need the trades to get along right when they're going gonna be on top of each other you need them to be able to work well together and that's part of the pitch right if we have two businesses that have proven that that's just another sigh of relief that you're going to get from that general contractor another sigh relief you're gonna get from the hyperscaler that means certainty of execution okay um and maybe just one more on kind of this topic how important is your financial strength what dicom can bring in terms of you know funding some of that growth opportunity for these companies that you acquired like is that something you know that make you a compelling partner um how do you think about that relative to the acquisitions you've done and maybe any future opportunities in that area it's a very good question we talked about it from risk private companies often get to a place with incredibly strong leadership teams incredibly strong proven growth but still you know owners operators they get to a place where they start to think about risk not putting capital back into a business not growing too fast and you know maybe breaking what they've built creating opportunities for their people to continue to grow while doing that and that's where DICOM comes in of course you have the balance sheet of course you have bonding but it's more than that right it's how you lean and have those conversations it's you sit down with the teams and give confidence I like to say you know private companies and I work for a private company in general contractor side for over a decade before we were acquired in my past life private companies typically operate operate in a minus one mentality so if you think about back office staff one less a a little bit leaner than what you need. Think about going and taking work, one less, to make sure that you don't break everything you've built. And what we do is we go and partner with them. We talk about, how do we go from minus 1 to plus 1? We can bring the resources to give that confidence and make sure we really have that wrapped around risk covered, so we can go from a minus 1 mentality to a plus 1 mentality. And that's where you really start to unlock significant growth. OK. Clearly a lot of noise around NIMBYism, moratoriums. I guess, what are you hearing from your customers and your footprint? Any direct impacts or just what are kind of hearing more generally? A couple of key points to start. What we're hearing on the ground every day is recently, as two days ago was the last time I personally checked in, absolutely no change, right? Still massive demand, still massive velocity that needs to get done. There are challenges that are getting worked through, and that's going to take time for some of these things to get worked through. You definitely see the hyperscalers leaning into that conversation more and more, which I think is going to help over time. But the impact on the ground really is not happening today. The other part is, you know, we do need to differentiate. Not all data centers are AI data centers. There are many, many cloud-competed data centers that are being built today. And if you think about DICOM's focus, we're not trying to just play AI. AI upside, for sure. Are we getting revenue? Are we building AI data centers today? For sure. But the basis for it, again, goes back to data creation and consumption. As long as we're creating more data, you need more cloud compute storage, right? As long As we're all pushing more to the cloud and enterprises are pushing more to the Cloud, and all of that data I talked about is getting created, it's got to go somewhere. You need that infrastructure. infrastructure. So that's where we're playing with AI upside. We're not playing the AI race specifically. And in that space, again, those data centers have been getting built. I think the CAGR is over 15% going back a long time, if I have that number right. That had nothing to do with AI itself. So, you know, growth opportunity there. And that's our starting point. Look for that AI upside, that's your starting point So I think it's going to take time to play out. You know, like I said, we're not seeing any direct impacts. And a lot of what you're hearing about um you know moratoriums and other things remember those are projects that haven't even got to permitting yet and those are those are years out right those are yours out from today so there is time to work through this and it's great to see good conversations happening to try to do that okay and within building systems can you just touch on the backlog and maybe more importantly any visibility you have beyond that just customer conversations i don't know you don't have to say a specific How far these discussions are stretching out and maybe how real you think some of those opportunities are. So that is always going to be an understated number and even if you look at the correlation between our building systems backlog and their next 12 months, they're very tightly correlated and in fact those are even under the numbers that we're saying that we are going to deliver this year. That's purely just an industry mechanic. The way that those are contracted is basically just in time by phases. So even though you know you're 99.9% likely to build the whole data center, you're still only going to get that first phase and that first award. Even though you might build multiple buildings on that campus, you'll still only get the first phase of the first building when you start. The conversations that we're having today at the earliest are two years out, but more like three and four years out. And then remember, these are typically multi-year builds. these data centers take a couple years to build at least but if you're doing you know a new set of data centers you could be talking about five six eight years of total build cycle those are the conversations we're having today if you were to look at that we call it awarded but not contracted backlog so that's the whole data center for example if you are just starting that first phase that would be multiples of what we would report as that contracted backlog today Okay. Okay. And going back to the M&A discussion and acquisitions, I mean, is there interest in acquiring similar businesses that may not offer kind of that same synergy or overlap between communications and power solutions with the data centers? How do you think about, you know, maybe some different adjacency from an inorganic growth perspective? First, let me just touch on capital allocation, if I could, Kurt. So we are always going to prioritize organic growth, and you can see that we have considerable organic growth. We're going to make sure that we're feeding that first. And then we do balance M&A with share repurchases. And you can over time, we've bought back nearly half of the outstanding shares of Dicom over time. So we're always looking at the different mechanics around that. It's not just all systems go for M&As, I want to be really clear there. are being thoughtful on the m a side um you know right now our focus is in that space right geographic expansion would be our priority and we think over time again there's highly unconsolidated space lots of opportunities out there we believe that over time you know where and when it makes sense that there will be other opportunities to continue to grow that platform okay i mean you touched on your background a little bit just given that i'm curious kind of what you see as core competencies or strengths of dicom that you know gives you the confidence you have the right to win within that electrical or low voltage space or, you know, that core competency that would maybe be the North Star as you look at other M&A type of opportunities? First is proven execution, right? If you look at the companies that we brought into the family that stood up in that segment, these are folks that for a very long time have proven that level of certainty, that level of quality. We're looking for partners that customers say, if I get to pick anybody, I to pick those folks right that's that that's really how we believe we've become known on the communication side and it's the same thing here that is first and foremost you know that that right to win park curve and i talk a lot about you know if if if you're out there in the space competing for work you know what is it that differentiates you right what is that thing that customers look to to to differentiate and for us level of service is number one right our our customers know across the enterprise that if we say we're gonna do it, it's gonna get done. And we're not perfect, we're perfect, but in those instances where we fall a little bit behind, they know that we're going to bring the entire horsepower of the enterprise to make sure that we deliver on their success time and time and again. Same thing in the building system segment. And then I do talk about for folks that aren't differentiating that way, then the only thing you have to compete on is price. And that's not what we wanna play. we want to differentiate excuse me by the level of service are there opportunities you're seeing as you know maybe other competitors you know haven't delivering that delivered that proven execution you know taking on projects whether it's on the communications building system sides getting a little bit over their skis where you're getting asked to come in and and you know fix the problem so to speak more often or i guess broadly speaking are you seeing that yeah that's part of being a solutions partner, right? That they're looking to us to say, what can you do to help us? On the fiber to the home builds that we've been doing for years now, very, very common for us to get a call near the end of a quarter from a customer saying, you know, we've had some challenges with some other folks. Can you find another 3,000 passings? Can you fine another 5,000 passing? And by the way, you have a week to do it. That happens. If you look at our growth in fiber to the home, a lot of that is because of the challenges that we talked about in the complexity and our proven ability to deliver, where I think some other folks had some challenges coming through. Those projects are very fast and very complex. The first one for anybody is going to be incredibly painful, so the barriers to entry are high. And being in locality, that regionalization of that business, really gives you a solid footprint. Okay, perfect. You know, I think building systems can be a little bit over 20% of kind of the mix this year. Is there a loose mixed target longer term for the business? How do you think about that going forward? First, on the communication side, you have a lot of growth that's going to continue to happen that we talked about before. On the building system side, a lot organic growth opportunity there. But as we talked about, you know, doing some M&A selectively over time, we do believe that that 20% will grow larger in comparison to the 80-20 it is today. Okay. Diversification is a positive thing. Yeah. Yep. That makes sense. All right. Perfect. Maybe lastly, just to close, I mean, what do you kind of want to leave investors with? Better understand the story, kind of the opportunity set, anything you want to emphasize that we've already touched on? Yeah, DICOM differentiates through our skilled workforce, right, that really is where it starts and ends. And the investments that we've been making, you know, the investments we've done from a benefit perspective, giving people, giving skilled workforce time off that equals people that have desk jobs, right. Two weeks when somebody starts with DICM up to five weeks, no different if you're sitting behind a desk or out working in the field. Ten holidays, right? No different if your sitting behind a desks or working out in the fields. Bringing up their medical benefits in a very difficult rising cost environment to give them better coverage, better peace of mind. Providing them life insurance coverage. A lot of these things that folks that are sitting in the office are used to, the skilled workforce has really been lagging behind. So we've been investing there and we absolutely believe that when you can do that and when you can really start to impact the hearts and minds of our employees, that you're going to produce phenomenal long-term results. Leaning into your workforce means that they're going to lean right back into you, right? They're going have that pride of delivering, pride of being part of DICOM. I talk about, to me, the perfect picture for DICom is a world where anybody can come out of high school, maybe they didn't even graduate high school. They can start at any level of the company. We're going provide them the opportunity. How do we do that? Through growth, right. We're gonna provide them with the opportunity and we're gonna to provide them all of the training at every level. Too often that we assume that somebody's good at one role can automatically be promoted to the next. step in and provide that training to make sure that they're ready for that next role so that they can move to any level of our organization and if you looked at our leadership across so much of the organization you would see that that's exactly how many of us started and have come through that that to us is what we're leaning into that to use is what really differentiates us and that's what sets us up to continue to deliver for our customers in an absolute generational growth deployment of infrastructure got okay well dan thank you for the time this is great appreciate it Thank you.