Yet Another Value Podcast - 1 Main Capital's Yaron Naymark talks Limbach's evolution $LMB

Episode Date: June 12, 2023

Yaron Naymark, Founder of 1 Main Capital, is back for the third time on the Yet Another Value Podcast to discuss Limbach Holdings (NASDAQ: LMB), a mechanical systems solution engineering company that ...focuses on HVAC systems. Yaron talks about the evolution of the company since it went public via SPAC in 2016, transitioning towards the owner direct business and away from the older general contractor business, growth through acquisition strategy, equity raise in 2021 and why he finds $LMB interesting. For more information about Yaron Naymark and 1 Main Capital, please visit: https://www.1maincapital.com/ Chapters: [0:00] Introduction + Episode sponsor: Stream by Alphasense [1:57] What is Limbach Holdings $LMB and why is it interesting [10:28] Edge in transitioning towards the owner direct business and away from the older general contractor business [13:58] Growth through acquisition [20:38] Maintenance contracts [23:54] Market share for owners of infrastructure and critical infrastructure markets [25:49] How does macro recession or commercial real estate recession affect $LMB [30:24] $LMB's retention of employees post-acquisition [32:26] $LMB Valuation [37:32] Can $LMB do accretive M&A? [41:29] Recent insider purchases [43:25] Equity raise in 2021 - what happened and why did it receive the response that it did? [54:24] Final thoughts on $LMB: addition to the Russell 2000 and expiring warrants [55:37] Incorporating AI into investing and research process? Today's episode is sponsored by: Stream by Alphasense Are traditional expert calls in the investment world becoming obsolete? According to Stream, they are, and you can access primary research easily and efficiently through their platform. With Stream, you'll have the right insights at your fingertips to make the best investment decisions. They offer a vast library of over 26,000 expert transcripts, powered by AI search technology. Plus, they provide competitive rates on expert call services, and you can even have an experienced buy-side analyst conduct the calls for you. But that's not all. Stream also provides the ability to engage with experts 1-on-1 and get your calls transcribed free-of-charge—all for 40% less than you would pay for 20 calls in a traditional expert network model. So, if you're looking to optimize your research process and increase ROI on investment research spend, Stream has the solution for you. Head over to their website at streamrg.com to learn more. Thanks for listening, and we'll catch you next time. For more information: https://www.streamrg.com/

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Are traditional expert calls in the investment world becoming obsolete? According to Stream, they are, and you can access primary research easily and efficiently through their platform. With Stream, you'll have the right insights at your fingertips to make the best investment decisions. They offer a vast library of over 26,000 expert transcripts powered by AI search technology. Plus, they provide competitive rates on expert call services, and you can even have an experienced by side analysts conduct the calls for you. But that's not all. Stream also provides the ability to engage with experts one-on-one and get your calls transcribed free of charge, all for 40% less
Starting point is 00:00:39 than you would pay for 20 calls and a traditional expert network model. So if you're looking to optimize your research process and increase ROI on investment research spend, Stream has the solution for you. Head over to their website at streamrg.com to learn more. Thanks for listening, and we'll catch you next time. All right, hello. Welcome to the yet another value podcast. I'm your Andrew Walker. If you like this podcast, I mean a lot. If you can rate, subscribe, review, follow it, wherever you're watching or listening to it. With me today, I'm happy to have on for the third time. My friend, Your Own, Namark. How's it going? Hey, I'm good. How are you? Doing great. Great to have you on. Your own. I should have said it. He's the founder of
Starting point is 00:01:15 one main capital. Good friend. I think he's a super smart guy. Always happy to have him on. Just before we start talking, Your Own, let me just give everyone the disclaimer I get at the start of every podcast. Nothing on this podcast is investing in advice. That's always true, but particularly true today. We're going to be talking about Limbock, which is a sub-250 million market cap company, you know, obviously at that size, at that scale, at that liquidity, a little bit of added risk. So everybody should just remember that. And please keep in mind, not investing in advice, doing your own diligence, do your own work, all that type of stuff. But speaking to do your own work, I know your own has done tons of work on this company. You followed these guys for,
Starting point is 00:01:47 what, four or five years, something like that. I can remember talking to you about them in 2020. You've gotten out, you've gotten back in. But we can talk about all that. But I'll pause there. just say Limbaq, Lmba, what is Limbaq and why are they so interesting today? Yeah, so I've actually been following them since they came public via SPAC. So like all the, I remember, do your own, all of do your own diligence, non-investment advice, like layer on the fact that this came public via SPAC in 2016. I remember the early SPAC mafia in 2016, 2017, was all over Limbac and the Limbac warrants. And I remember those days.
Starting point is 00:02:22 Yeah. And by the way, those warrants, like, you know, They were down, you know, all the way through the fourth quarter. And with two minutes left in the fourth, they came back and went from being well out of the money and never going to have any value to now having value. So anyone who owned the Warrens has done really well. But yeah, I've followed it since 2016 from afar. They came public. Their mechanical system solution engineering company, they focus on HVAC systems, but they do some other mechanical stuff as well.
Starting point is 00:02:53 And they focus on the HVAC systems, mostly. commercial buildings and you know historically when they came public they came public mostly selling new construction work through general contractors and the thesis was you can roll up this industry at very low valuations you know call it four times EBITDA and grow this thing get some geographic diversity customer diversity and create a lot of value through acquisitive accretive M&A and you know selling work through general contractors is a pretty bad business. These are long lead time projects where you're installing HVAC systems
Starting point is 00:03:33 and new construction projects. You have to quote and bid on the work. And then it could be a multi-year project where you're relying on other parts of the construction to be completed when they're expected to before you could start your part. In the meantime, you're like engineering it, prefabricated in your facility. You're spending money. You're not getting paid yet.
Starting point is 00:03:53 So you're building up inventory and receivables. basically. So it's very working capital intensive. And in the meantime, you could have like cost inflation, but you already gave a fixed price. So you could get underwater. And the projects could have delays and overruns on, you know, not only not only costs, but also time, time is money. And so like you, the variability in the margin profile of work through the general contractors is just, is high variability. It's low margins. Just a bad business. And, um, and the company kind of blew up a few times on guidance where they gave guidance, you know, they missed guidance and had to guide down significantly because of this general contractor work. And so like it wasn't
Starting point is 00:04:33 a good SPAC, you know, roll up. They weren't able to do acquisitions because obviously they had capital issues due to these blowups and, you know, investors got frustrated and it kind of became an orphan stock. I got involved for the first time as a special situation investment in 2020 when And during COVID, obviously, HVAC systems became very important for hospitals, for lots of buildings, because everyone was worried about COVID. They got some government work. They got a lot of hospital work. But the stock had traded down, you know, they had some debt. The stock had traded down to distress levels.
Starting point is 00:05:08 And, you know, I think it was sub three dollars and the warrants were in the pennies. And it became very clear that they were not going to be distressed because this work was coming on. And they were protecting margins. They were able to take some costs out of the business. And so I got involved in 2020 as kind of a special situation, did really well on it in 2020 and was planning on holding it for this transformation into what it is becoming today, which is selling less through general contractors and more directly to building owners, less new construction, more maintenance, service work, small upgrades to your systems, right?
Starting point is 00:05:41 HVAC systems are probably the biggest source or the biggest use of electricity in building. So if you have an efficient HVAC system, you could save a lot on your electric. bills, you become more ESG friendly, and you could do work for building owners to help reduce their energy costs, make them more ESG friendly, make their systems more reliable, especially if you're, you have mission critical infrastructure like data centers, hospitals, biotech research facilities, you can't really have your HVAC system go out at 2 a.m. on a Saturday and wait until 9 a.m. on a Monday to get it fixed. So if you have mission critical stuff and you're a trusted service provider to, you know, if Limbaugh could become a trusted service provider to these building
Starting point is 00:06:23 owners of mission critical infrastructure, they could start doing more service work, which is not only much higher margin, it's less working capital intensive because shorter projects, you do the work, you get paid right away, you don't build up inventory and receivables, and you don't get stuck with these cost overruns and just variability margin. So it's higher margin, more predictable margin, lower capital intensity, it's just a better business. And so while I'm made a lot of money kind of on the trade, the special situation trade of this, this is not going bankrupt. Right now it's a going concern. It got revalued. I still thought there's another huge opportunity of transitioning the business more towards owner direct work. And then
Starting point is 00:07:05 continuing, using the cash that the business is now throwing off, it's more predictable to roll up the industry at really attractive multiples. Right. You could do acquisitions here at four to five times EBITDA, which is a really attractive, you know, for business with almost no cap X, that's an attractive, an attractive acquisition multiple. In the meantime, you're diversifying the business. Through acquisition, you're getting bigger and a more diversified, larger business would be worthy of a higher multiple. So not only would you be making the business more predictable and growing earnings and free cash flow per share organically and the acquisition, but you would probably command a higher multiple in the future. And this was trading really cheap
Starting point is 00:07:39 still. You know, I got a little frustrated with a few things that management did, in particular, in equity raised they did, which, you know, the way they did it and the amount they raised, it just, I think they, you know, they pissed off a lot of their shareholders, including me. I decided it wasn't an investment for me anymore. It was just, you know, it was a trade that I did well on that I gave back some of the gains on and I exited the position. But I, you know, I kept following it on trades where you make a lot of money especially you kind of have an affinity for the company and you want to you want to see what goes on with them and you're curious and so um i kept following the company they replaced the CEO earlier this year um and i you know
Starting point is 00:08:23 i made it an investment if i think it became an investment once again for me not just a trade and um yeah i've been in it since uh january in size and uh you know i think since they came public, they've taken their owner direct gross profit mix from, you know, a third. It used to be two thirds general contractor, a third owner direct. And today it's the opposite. It's it's two thirds owner direct, a third general contractor. So the mix has improved. Their EBITDA margins have doubled from like three and a half percent, you know,
Starting point is 00:08:58 when they came public to about seven percent today. I think over time, the opportunity is to take it to a low teen's EBITDA margin as they continue mixing the business and doing some M&A. So I think there's lots of room for the margins to continue to expand. The stock is still very cheap relative to comps. You know, it trades at a single digit free cash flow multiple, six times EBITDA net cash balance sheet. And so they're going to be able to do a lot of M&A. It's getting added into the Russell now. So there's going to be some passive buying. So there's just a lot of great angles here. It's becoming a better business, a larger business. And so I'm excited to talk to you about it today. And now, a quick word
Starting point is 00:09:35 from our sponsor. Are traditional expert calls in the investment world becoming obsolete? According to Stream, they are, and you can access primary research easily and efficiently through their platform. With Stream, you'll have the right insights at your fingertips to make the best investment decisions. They offer a vast library of over 26,000 expert transcripts powered by AI search technology. Plus, they provide competitive rates on expert call services, and you can even have an experienced
Starting point is 00:10:01 by-side analysts conduct the calls for you. But that's not all. Stream also provides the ability to engage with experts one-on-one and get your calls transcribed free of charge, all for 40% less than you would pay for 20 calls and a traditional expert network model. So if you're looking to optimize your research process and increase ROI on investment research spend, Stream has the solution for you. Head over to their website at streamrg.com to learn more.
Starting point is 00:10:25 Thanks for listening, and we'll catch you next time. Well, look, I think you just said everything about it. We can probably wrap the podcast up here, but I'll try and earn my keep. guess the first thing. So I look at this business and, you know, they've got the, as you said, they've got the old general contractor business, which they're trying to kind of move away towards the owner direct piece. And it makes sense. I agree, right? The owner direct piece, less inventory, less cost, overrun risk. You've got that to direct relationship. As you said, and I think they actually give the example on their calls. They say, hey, you know, this is a business where something
Starting point is 00:10:53 breaks Saturday, 2 a.m. You're not going to wait until Monday. I guess my first piece is, okay, it sounds really nice. But, you know, everybody says they want to transition into a better business. Like, to me, it does seem like this is a business like mom and pop down the street can try to do it. Maybe like a one person shop can't because you can't be on call 24-7 all the time. But what is their edge in kind of transitioning to this versus, you know, the hundreds of HVAC owner repairers in New York or Chicago or wherever they're competing? What is kind of their edge that lets them do this? Yeah, so Limbaugh tends to not operate in these big primary markets. You know, they had in L.A.
Starting point is 00:11:30 I saw they closed L.A. down. They tend to be in these secondary, tertiary markets. It still have growing populations and good economies, but they could be kind of the number one, number two player in those local markets. They've been around for 100 plus years. They're trusted within their local markets. And I think developing a relationship with building owners, giving them advice, showing up at their location and just saying, hey, let's work on a plan together to help improve
Starting point is 00:12:02 your energy costs to help make sure we can extend the life of your equipment. And when you're ready to do a new project, we can be there and quote it for you. And I think holding their hands and becoming a more trusted kind of consultant to the building owners is what makes them a better business over time. You know, the OEs also do this a little bit. The OEs, it's not really their primary business. Their primary business is to sell new equipment, not to help extend the life of equipment. And so I think if you're focusing on doing the right thing for these building owners instead of just trying to sell them this expensive equipment, I think you can become a trusted kind of partner to these. You know, it does remind me of, and this, it was, it was like
Starting point is 00:12:43 percolating the back of my mind, but I didn't get in my notes. But now that you said, like, if you look at, if you ever look at an elevator manufacturer, what is it? It's like Tyson Krupp or whoever like the best part of their business. Yes, they sell the elevator, but that's not actually where the money is made. Now, elevators are different than HVACs, but it's, elevator all their money is made on they get like a 20 year service contract on the elevator and that is money good revenue right nobody's going to stop paying to maintain their elevator so that's where all of their profit is made and as you said an hvac system like you sell up but you're going to sell hundreds and thousands of those hvac systems and you probably can't service them all so it is
Starting point is 00:13:17 probably going to these guys especially i do hear you on secondary markets right where you might not have a lot of density of your service network yep and and yeah you know even if your primary focus is the HVAC system. It's not necessarily a common, be like, how can we save you money? How can we extend the life of this? And when you're ready for a CAPEX project, how can we be, you know, the guy that you want to go to? So a lot of their, you know, even new construction work now, their customers that are building these relationships with them are going to the general contractor and saying, hey, we want you to use Limbock or the HVAC portion of this new project, which obviously allows them to price at a more attractive margins for that business as well.
Starting point is 00:13:58 me just ask this in a different way. So part of the story is, right, they trade for six times EBTA and maybe eight or nine times free cash flow. And we can talk about multiples and here comparison in a second. But part of the story is that they're pitching that you're thinking, you know, is we're going to grow through acquisitions. And I always really struggle with growth through acquisition stories because it does rely on, right? Like, hey, if we're going to grow on acquisitions, well, we're assuming you're going to grow profitably through acquisitions. And it kind of assumes that the sellers are going to give you a deal to grow profitfully. And there's two ways you can do that. A, you know, you think about classic M&A where
Starting point is 00:14:30 there's just massive synergies, cost synergies, right? I buy the station next door. We can fire all of our all of their accounting teams. If it's a TV station, we can get better retrans on cable stations. That's not really the case here. You know, I was looking at their last merger call and they were really clear, hey, I think the quote was there are limited cost energies here. They were like one or two, but it's not about cost energies. They were talking all about, hey, we're going to use this for to find some revenue driven. The quote I have is front end revenue driven sales, business develop, and marketing synergies, which I don't even know what that is.
Starting point is 00:15:03 But I do worry, it's like, hey, this trades for 6X. They want to go buy stuff for 4X and create value. But why are the sellers selling for 4X? Why is that going to create value if there's not really these cost energies here? Yes. So for one, I think the businesses they're buying are just small businesses. And that tends to be the market price. If you're getting closer to retirement and you don't have a kid who wants to take over your business and you want to shop your business at this scale, not just in this industry, but in lots of industries, businesses trade for lower multiples when they're smaller.
Starting point is 00:15:36 And this business specifically gets lumped in with these construction related assets that people are generally more skeptical of, right? What does the seller know? There's variability in margins here. People tend to be scared of these types of assets. I think, you know, LMB has shown an ability to, you know, with one acquisition since they've come public, but it's been a very successful acquisition to buy an asset and be the right steward, kind of the Berkshire Hathaway. If you're a seller and you care about, right, you're not going to, you know, the seller is,
Starting point is 00:16:09 it's kind of, if they've built this business for a long time and they have relationship with their employees, they don't want to tell someone. It does sound silly. Like, you and I are sitting here in like one-man shops, you know, it's just my podcast, me, And I think Penny's behind me. Penny's behind me for people on the video. But I don't have any place. But as you said, if you're a seller, you're selling your business, you build it for 30 years.
Starting point is 00:16:26 You've got guys who've been with you 5, 10, 15, 20 years. You do care about if you're selling to a private equity firm who's going to fire your best friend or the guy who's kids you've seen grown up. Or if you're going to sell to Limbaugh who says, hey, it's going to be mainly business as usual. Maybe we even improve the business. Like, that sell stuff does matter. Improving the business is by implementing best practices, how to maintain and develop these relationships with building owners and help grow this owner direct type work so that you can you know say say no to construction work that isn't priced to margins that are appropriate and just
Starting point is 00:17:00 improve your business mix such that gross margins you know mix higher this business used to do a consolidated low double digit call it 10% gross margins and now it's it's over 20% gross margins I think you could probably get it into the high 20s or low 30s over time as you continue mixing the business even within the owner direct work there's two types of of kind of projects. Within owner direct, there's more CAPEX oriented projects and more OPX oriented projects, you know,
Starting point is 00:17:26 more maintenance related stuff, consulting related stuff. And within the owner direct, owner direct is already kind of two, two and a half X, the margin profile of the general contractor margins. But within that, the operating expense stuff is even higher gross margin than the CAPEX stuff.
Starting point is 00:17:45 And so as you continue mixing the business towards owner direct, which you could do with acquisition, as well. And as you continue mixing within owner direct to the higher service, higher value at stuff, which there's a lot of corporate know-how, right, that you can kind of implement best practices and send them to your local markets. That improves the business. And, right, a single business, by definition, is just let, when we spoke about RCI, we talked about this as well. I think a single business just has less geographic diversification, less customer diversification. And so it's just worth less. It's a riskier cash flow stream than when it's owned
Starting point is 00:18:21 by a pairing that has natural diversification. I'm laughing because RCI was actually the next thing I was going to mention. And yes, it had that. But the other thing is, and this is kind of not common because I know some of your other investments and all of them had this, but RCI and this, and I think it's something you look for. Look, they're small enough where they can go buy those mom and pops that might trade for two to four turns cheaper than, you know, the small private equity owned business. You're small off where they can buy those and that budge's needle. And they both also have some, I'll call acquisition here where, like, your traditional private equity players might not want to play in that space. I mean, obviously, Ricks with, you know, not many investment committees are okaying stripped club purchases these days.
Starting point is 00:19:02 But Limbaugh, smaller, touches construction, you know, on the GC side, they've got costs over on risk. They're obviously trying to switch more to the maintenance type contracts, which, you know, everybody wants those. but it's still got the construction. It's still smaller. It's still macro exposed, quote unquote. It is something that I can see a lot of private equity firms just instantly vomiting on themselves and passing instead of really wanting to, especially at this size. Yeah, and that's exactly right.
Starting point is 00:19:27 I mean, if you're ever going to buy anything for four times EBITDA, you're talking about for a business with minimal cap eggs, which this business does, you're talking about a 25% free tax return on your investment, unlevered. You have to start asking yourself, why am I able to get that? And if you can get it for a reason that makes sense to you that you're generating excess returns without taking on excess risk, I think it's an interesting situation. The best situation is when you could buy into the platform at a low valuation that can then deploy its cash flow at those attractive valuations because then you can get a double whammy of the accretion, the earnings growth, the free cash flow for share growth from deploying your capital into those acquisitions and the benefit of getting multiple expansion on the platform over time as it scales. and as people get more comfortable with it. And that's how you end up with an RCI going from $15 a share to $75 or $80 a share.
Starting point is 00:20:20 And that's how you end up with LMB, you know, going from, you know, $3 when it was in 2020, low double digits earlier this year. I really believe this could be a $75, $89 stock in a handful of years. And some of that is through earnings growth and some of that is through multiple expansion, of course. Let me ask one more on these kind of like maintenance contracts or, you know, the, hey, we're going to have you on call to come repair. the AC at two in the morning or something. Is that also something that a mom and pop, it's tough to say this because Lindbergh is not really acquiring in markets. So they're
Starting point is 00:20:54 not going to, they're going to, they're going to entering new markets. But is that something that mom and pop might have more trouble offering than like kind of a corporate with that corporate knowledge? Or is Limbac generally going and buying mom and pops that already have those maintenance contracts in place? Does that make sense as a question? Yeah. I mean, if you have multiple employees, it's, it's generally easier to be available. all the time for sure. And you have the ability to take on multiple projects at once, right? If you have multiple customers who have issues and you have the ability to service a single
Starting point is 00:21:23 customer in multiple markets, right, HCA, which is a customer, Hospital Corporations of America, which is a customer of LNB, like they trust them and they're using them in many markets at once. So if a mom and pop can't offer that, I'm sure there's some purchasing, obviously synergies from having scale. But, yeah, I think it's mostly just being trusted, having your operating history there, and having a staff that can support, you know, customers with multiple locations. Let me just data centers.
Starting point is 00:21:55 So, you know, we've mentioned a few times hospitals, data centers, these are things that 2 a.m. on a Saturday, HVAC breaks. Disney and NASA, you know, yeah, stuff like that. Just data centers are the one I wanted to think because these are big things, you know, they are generally, they're really big. they're making a lot of money. Why couldn't they have like a, why do they need to outsource this, I guess my question? Why don't they have one person who's handling all operations and internally anything that goes down 24-7 they can fix it? I just think, I think their utilization would be
Starting point is 00:22:28 too low. I think it's, I think their utilization would be too low. It end up costing them more than having someone who's focused on this 24-7 who has all the expertise, the engineering expertise, the pre-fabrication, the on-site, the ability to, you know, source whatever, with whatever materials are needed to fix something instead of having all the inventes like if you own a data center what are you going to have here is going to carry inventory for repairs on site and have one person who might not be doing any work at certain time right if you want someone sitting there at 3 a.m. ready to take your call and dedicated to your facility that's going to cost you money all the time every every night at 3 a.m you're paying for that person to be available with lmb it's not
Starting point is 00:23:06 every night it's as needed but they're available is there a way to measure local market share I don't think Let me ask you a separate question Then I'll come back to that When LNB has this We're on call 24 7 You call us will come They're not getting a retainer fee are they
Starting point is 00:23:23 They're only getting paid They're ingraining themselves In the building owners Right Phone book Or when when work comes up They're the trusted guy who gets the work And so the owner is just less price sensitive
Starting point is 00:23:37 In that environment right Yeah If you're if you're trying to extract way too much value for yourself. If you're bidding 2x the price of someone else, I don't think the owner will have that loyalty to you. But that's not the case here. You can provide pit service and charge a little bit more and still do much better. See, it does seem to me like something where, as you said, if you're in a secondary or third market, where you could get economies of scale like, hey, everyone works with us because as you said, you need somebody on call 24-7.
Starting point is 00:24:08 And you can only do that with a huge book of business, especially on weekends and late nights and stuff. So we can get there. And our customers, you know, it's Uber surge pricing, right? Your HVAC breaks at 2 a.m. on a Saturday. You can pay us 5X the regular right now or you can wait until Monday and we can send someone out there. And I do think like that is something, there's probably what? And if secondary market, 200 people who need 24 severance coverage of their thing, you know, because a house does not need 24-7 coverage.
Starting point is 00:24:35 Even if my AC broke, it would be an emergency to me. But there's 200 people in a secondary market. Like, that's really only enough to support one person paying four people, you know, to cover a whole week or something. So it does seem like there could be, hey, we have 100% market share in these third markets. We're the only player. We have two people on call at all times so we can always service people. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:24:57 I would guess the market share for owners of infrastructure, mission critical infrastructure, within markets. I would guess the market share is pretty high for LNB within their local markets. So, you know, I've asked them recently, I'm like, hey, if office buildings are trouble, does that can impact your business? And they're like, offices aren't really the kind of mission critical infrastructure asset you would think of that needs to have their HVAC fixed at 2A. I'm on a Saturday.
Starting point is 00:25:23 We don't have a lot of office exposure on portfolio. So again, it's stuff like the data centers, hospitals, stuff like that. And yeah, I think within that core customer base, I think their market share, my guess, my intuition is their market share is pretty high than their local market. I'm just, you said offices, they're not our customers. I was just laughing because my we work, the air conditioner would be broken at it. I'd say two out of every five days. So I can guarantee they weren't too urgent about having the air conditioner's fix.
Starting point is 00:25:49 Let me ask. The office building discussion, though, is a nice transition to, hey, I got three DMs. I think two people on the Twitter thread said it. Probably the most popular question, right? People see Limbaugh and they think, oh, a lot of the business is still GC general contracting type stuff, macro recession, commercial real estate recession, all that type of stuff. Top of mind. First question everyone asked. So how do you think about if we have soft landing, hard landing, whatever the landing we're going to have is? How do you think how that impacts them back? Yeah. I mean, first of all, their end markets tend to be less
Starting point is 00:26:20 economically sensitive, right? If you're talking about higher education, not that economically sensitive. Health care, not that economically sensitive. Data centers, we're about to have a surge in data center spend. I liked when you and I were talking or chatting the other day and you said self-AI play limb back that somebody's got to service those data centers i was actually someone messaged me that and i was like oh that's funny so i like i tweeted it and then and then some people thought i was being serious by an i play and they called me idiot but like you weren't being serious but you kind of were yeah kind of kind of not really um i just think generally they're they're you know the end markets that they play in tend to be less economically
Starting point is 00:26:59 sensitive um there's a lot of from the last few years there's a lot of deferred cap x And these systems don't last forever. So there's going to be an eventual kind of deferred replacement cycle. In the meantime, you know, we could still be there helping people extend the life of their existing equipment, improve the operating efficiency of it, which has an immediate payback, right? That's not a spend money now just for status quo. It's a spend money now. And, you know, I was having lunch with the CEO a few weeks ago.
Starting point is 00:27:29 And he was like, listen, we're still going into some of our customers. And at first, they don't want to share their utility bills with us, right? For some reason, there's just a trust component where it's like, why should we be sharing our utility bills with you? But more and more of them are starting to share utility bills with L&B. And L&B is going back to them with a plan of action on how you can actually have an immediate payback on spend today that's going to reduce your cost of operating your facilities immediately. And so I think there's a lot of stuff like that where they could kind of win near-term projects
Starting point is 00:28:02 and then position themselves well for the longer term cap X investment as well. You know, there's M-Core comfort systems. If you listen to their earnings calls, you look at their earnings or results. They're not seeing any slow down. They're super optimistic about what their customers are telling them they're seeing.
Starting point is 00:28:20 And same with LMV. I mean, if you talk to management, you ask them how things are going, they seem to see no end insight in terms of the amount of continued growth they expect to get out of owner direct business has been really strong. I think it's continuing to be really strong. And of course, look, if we go into like a 2008 like recession, um, where everyone just has to cut spend on
Starting point is 00:28:40 everything, op-ex, paybacks and just delay, delay, and not even do immediate payback stuff, then every business gets hurt. But the nice thing here is we're sitting on a net cash balance sheet at a low valuation. We'll be cash generative in that environment as well. And we'll be able to do acquisitions at, you know, more attractive firms than we're even doing than that today. So you kind of have a natural hedge when you're sitting on a net cash position with a business that is now cash generative and should be continuously cash generative because of this owner direct type work that they position themselves to take on. I think you're kind of hedge. If things get bad, you can deploy capital more creatively. If things are good, obviously your operating business continues to perform well.
Starting point is 00:29:20 Can you just two more questions because I am really interested in this business. The first is we've mentioned several times, hey, they can do work that makes your ability. be more efficient and you get a payback, right? And the classic would be you take an old HVAC and you install a new HVAC and the new HVAC uses less energy. It's much more eco-efficient, all that type of stuff. I understand that example, but are there any others? Because I guess just if the, I'm sure there are, but if the way they make things more efficient is, hey, we're just going to install a new HVAC, that's more the H-back unit that's doing the efficiency improvement. Yeah, I don't think it's improved. I think it's improving the existing HVAC. And I think
Starting point is 00:29:59 every building is different. They see the bill. They go inspect the equipment. They see if there's part of the equipment that could be replaced, not all the equipment. They could see if there's leakage, right, of pooling or heating that's causing the bill to be higher than what it should be for a building of this size. And then you could address that. I think there's lots of different things they could look at. And that's where they come in and become a trusted kind of partner to the building owners. Last one. And then I want to move on to evaluation a few other things. you know, just the example we gave earlier where Limbaat comes and I'm getting ready to retire, they buy my business for four times EBITA, and I'm sure they keep me on for a year or two to make
Starting point is 00:30:39 sure the transition goes smooth and stuff, right? But this is in part a knowledge business. And let's say I retire and you were my general manager, right? Like, how do they keep, I guess how do they keep you instead of you going off and starting, hey, Andrew was my buddy. He retired. some corporate overlord owns the business now, why don't I just take all my people and go start my own competitor down the road? You know, like the classic, because they are trying to get into what is more consulting type work. And that has been the issue with a lot of these smaller consulting firms. If a private equity guy buys them, all the mid tier people leave once the top tier people are done and they go and start their own company. Yeah, I think compensating a whole
Starting point is 00:31:18 team of these skilled professionals, especially in today's world where it's a tight labor market, it would be a big off-front investment for whoever is trying to kind of, you know, steal that team out of the acquired asset. And then you have to, you know, you have to, if you build it, they will come in and hope the customers actually come with you. But the customers, you know, a lot of them have a loyalty at that point to the business that's been serving them for a long period of time. So you have to kind of invest a lot, try to get the whole team and then try to win over the customers. I think it's easier said than done. They haven't done a bunch of these acquisitions. I can't say go look at their history and, you know, proof is in the pudding, but that's kind of my intuition.
Starting point is 00:31:58 The one they did at the end of 2021, was it James? Jake Marshall. Yeah, it seems like that's gone pretty well. Yeah, it's gone really well. There were two earn-out thresholds where I think they needed to generate like $8 million in 2020 and then $10 million in 2023 to make both earn-outs. And I think they're on track to hit both earn-outs. And, yeah, I think it's gone really well. If they could do more in positions like that, I think it'd be great.
Starting point is 00:32:25 Let's quickly talk valuation. So we've said a few times the company trades at kind of six times EBITDA, eight or nine times free cash flow. You know, EBDA doesn't, it's funny because it has some big ad backs, but they're actually ad backs that you'd be okay with, except for they do have some restructuring charges in there, but we can talk restructuring charges if you want later. I guess my overall question was, how do you think about valuing this business? Because you've mentioned they've got some peers that trade at kind of 2x the multiple
Starting point is 00:32:51 that they do, right? low double digits, but those peers are also 10, 20, 30 times bigger than Limbeck. So I think people might say, hey, you're comparing a tiny almond to a giant orange or something, you know? Yeah, I mean, there's I, IESC also, which is not that much larger that also. I haven't looked at that one in a while. I remember that when, who was it, the guy who had the best stock of the past 20 years to give a dollar or something, right?
Starting point is 00:33:17 Yeah, yeah. Contine Capital, I think his fund was, ooh, that's done really well. recently. It's done really well. And what's the EBITDA multiple on that? I think it's low double digits also, right? You know, I haven't looked at it in the wild. They actually had one division that was really struggling that dragged down their entire EBITDA outlook. And I think they put it behind it. But yeah, I've got it trading at eight or nine times trailing EBITs, I think. Got it. Yeah, I thought it would have got into the low double digit EBITDA multiple. But, you know, that's another one that's not that much bigger than Wimbab. I think,
Starting point is 00:33:51 you know, the point is you build scale here, you build the diversification, the cash flow stream becomes smooth, you know, less volatile, and it's going to grow into a higher multiple. I don't think it's going to get that higher multiple overnight, but I just think with scale, you know, the blowups are behind them. Hopefully, I really believe the blowups are behind us, especially since we've exited some of the troubled markets like L.A., and we've moved the business more towards these smaller ticket, less working capital, intensive. shorter duration projects that are just higher margin with more visibility and less variability. So I think the blowouts are behind us. Consistent operating results, diversification through M&A, accretion through M&A. I think you naturally gain the trust of the market. And, you know, if a business can grow its free cash flow per share at a really attractive rate,
Starting point is 00:34:43 I think eventually it's rewarded. You know, without doing anything that's too risky, like taking on a lot of leverage or doing things that are illegal or something like that. I think eventually it's rewarded with a nice free cash flow multiple. So looking at a few years, like, I don't think it's crazy to think this trades at 12 or 15 times free cash flow, right? Like, I just don't think those are crazy. I'm not arguing for it 20 times free cash flow multiple here. But I think a lot of free cash flow per share growth through continued margin expansion
Starting point is 00:35:11 through acquisition. And then you get a little bit of multiple expansion. And that's how you end up with a home run result. So would I be putting words in your mouth if I kind of said, look, right now it trades for six times EBDA and you kind of think it should trade for let's call it eight to nine times EBDA which would get you into the very low double digits free cash for multiple plus maybe slap an extra EBITA turn multiple on for it to account for future accretive acquisitions done at a low multiple as you discussed because you're buying mom and pops and all that would
Starting point is 00:35:40 would that sound about right as a framework to you yeah I think that sounds right I mean I think you know they could probably probably so it depends which EBITDA number you're looking at if you just take this last quarter where they did almost 9 million of EBITDA and annualize that, you're looking at 36 million of EBITDA on a run rate basis. The first quarter is a seasonally slower quarter for the company historically. And so I would think they probably do higher than 36 this year, even though that would be higher than their guidance. And I think organically, they could probably take it to 60 from 36 over the next four or five years just through continuing to mix the business towards owner direct and getting some operating leverage, and I think it really depends how much
Starting point is 00:36:24 M&A you think they could do. They're going to generate a lot of cash. Now, if you think they could redeploy all that cash into M&A, then they're going to grow free cash flow per share really quickly because M&A is super accretive. If they can't find enough attractive acquisition targets such that they either build cash on the balance sheet or have to buy back stock at 10 times free cash flow or whatever, then obviously that's much less accretive. But the way I model the business is Continue to mix the business towards owner direct, redeploy all their free cash flow into acquisitions, but I have the acquisition multiples increasing over time because they need to put more money to work. So they probably have to pay up a little more to just get more deal volume.
Starting point is 00:37:06 And I have free cash flow per share drawing from like 250-ish this year to over $7 by 2027. So call it three, four years out. And if they could actually grow from 250 to seven, I don't think it's crazy to think this trades at $85. It's certainly, as you and I was talking, it's trading about $23 per share. If it's got $7 a free cash flow, I don't know, in today's market, maybe. You know, there are some things that. But let me ask another question on M&A. So we already kind of talked about the synergies and everything. But I guess the other question in M&A is, can they do M&A? And what I mean by this is they did the Jake Marshall deal in late
Starting point is 00:37:44 2021. That deal has been great and that was a pretty nice size deal. But they didn't do any MNA in 2022. We're six months into 2023 at this point, and I don't believe they've done any M&A unless I missed a press release or something. But so that's 18 months since their last deal. And we're talking here about, you know, I'm questioning you, can they do a creative M&A? How do they make it accretive? You're building out models that they do a creative M&A. There's not a lot of proof in the pudding that they can do M&A. And I know they're asked about this on every call, but like, when are they going to do M&A? Are they really going to be able to grow creatively through this because, as you said, look, this is, it's not like you're really paying a lot
Starting point is 00:38:22 for future accretive growth. You're not paying anything for a platform, but there's going to be a difference between if they can do consistent accretive M&A or if they just kind of limp along and have to pay out dividends and buy back stock, which I love, but that makes a big difference, especially at this size. Yeah. I mean, look, I think without M&A, my kind of back of the envelope math says this business is worth around 35 today at probably like not 10 times EBITDA, but eight, eight or nine times EBITDA is worth 35 today. I think they can grow the value of that 35 today organically just by continuing to grow their owner direct part of their business, which would allow them to get higher margins and better
Starting point is 00:39:03 free cash flow conversion. So I think you could do well. Like I think there's a, without doing M&A, there's a credible path to getting the stock to into the 40s, I would say, over the next few years. to like a double. I believe they could do M&A. They have someone dedicated full-time looking at acquisitions, MacCats. He's been with this business a long time.
Starting point is 00:39:24 He's looking at a lot of opportunities. He's very disciplined. He's an evaluating acquisition targets. He's very disciplined. And the new CEO, Mike Buchan, is also very disciplined. I don't think they're in a rush just to do deals just to tell investors they did a deal. I think they're looking for the right cultural fits in the right market, at the right valuation. And I think they're willing to be patient.
Starting point is 00:39:45 The pipeline sounds big, and they're looking at a lot of things. I think they were really close on a few things, and they, they turn them down, you know, towards the end of the deal processes because they were trying to be disciplined buyers. And I think that's a good, that should be a good sign to investors who, you know, have been burned in the past by this company, which came public via SPAC, which had to take down guidance a bunch and did some things that kind of, you know, destroyed over a short period of time they were ready. reputation with investors. They're trying to regain the credibility and they want to do good
Starting point is 00:40:16 deals, good cultures, good valuations, good end markets. And I think it sounds like there's lots of things in the pipeline. I think they've said that they're hopeful to do one or two deals a year. Obviously, we're sitting here in June and they haven't done any yet. So like, can they do two in the back half? I don't know if they do one in the back half. I would hope at least one. But I think they'll get a few deals done, you know, every year, maybe not this year, but every year going forward. The pipeline continues to grow. As you know, like when we discussed RCI, like when you become a known buyer, you can develop a big pipeline, but you can't force people to transact. People transact when they're ready, right? When they're getting older, they're ready to retire. They might be
Starting point is 00:40:57 fearful of a downturn, so they might be more inclined to sell right ahead of the downturn. Right now, things are really good in the industry, right? We just talked about how MCOR and comfort systems and Limbach and IESC, like their stock charts are up into the right, their businesses are doing well. And I think you sit there and you develop those relationships as a buyer. And when people already to transact, you're hopefully the buyer of choice. I think they'll be able to put capital to work. It's hard for me to save timing. Just like with RCI, it's hard to save timing. But I think they'll be able to. Let me ask one more way. So, you know, just looking at the company, starting in 2021, you see a ton of insider buyers.
Starting point is 00:41:37 buying when the stock is in the single digits. You know, I'm looking at in March and May 2022, Michael McCann, who was the CEO at the CEO, who I think you like a bunch and who's done a really nice job. He buys several, probably at all $50,000 worth of shares in the $6 to $7 range. And there's a board member, Josh Horowitz, who I don't know, but who runs a fund. Do you know him? Have you talked to him at all? I don't know. Maybe this is I've had some email exchanges, but no, I haven't spread it. Maybe this will make his way to him, and I'll just tell him, you know, come on the podcast if you're running a small cap fund.
Starting point is 00:42:11 It's ridiculous to have somebody running a small cap on who hasn't. But, you know, he does some pretty consistent buying throughout last year with the stock in the $6 to $9 range, if I'm looking at these fines, right? And that's not to say it can't be a deal here, but it does strike me like, hey, last year the insiders are buying pretty aggressively in the single digits. And now they've all got two, three, four baggers on their hands, which is a nice problem to have, but it does strike me that they're not buying. years right now. Do you, do you kind of read anything into that signal? Like maybe it was really
Starting point is 00:42:37 cheap last year and now they just kind of look and say, okay, yeah, it's fine, you know? Yeah. I mean, at six bucks, you were looking at a $60 million market cap on a business that we just said, I think, could do close to $40 million of EBITDA this year. So it was just, it was a broken SPAC with, you know, the CEO running it, I think was having a hard time attracting new investors into the story, given the guy downs and the way they did the equity raise in 2021, I think a lot more people now are willing to kind of look at the story. And I think if you were an insider and you had the opportunity to buy at six, you bought everything you wanted to buy because you knew how silly it was.
Starting point is 00:43:13 I think you're kind of, you know, you're topped up. I don't think you need to keep buying the whole way up. But I don't think you're going to be, you're going to see aggressive selling in the 20 is my guess. I have no idea. It's not like I've shared their plans with me. But you've mentioned the equity issue and stated in 2021. And it like tickles the back of my brain. I think I remember you saying something to me at the time.
Starting point is 00:43:31 But I didn't really research it for this podcast. What was wrong with the equity issue and stated in 2021? So during COVID, like we talked about the stock went to people thought, you know, this might be a distressed company. Yep. Stop went to three bucks. Then it was clear that it was not going to be a distressed company. They were generating some cash. They still had some debt.
Starting point is 00:43:51 But the stock was up to, I don't know, eight, nine bucks. And, you know, I think they started evaluating an equity raise around that time. I caught wind of it. I wasn't approached by a bank or anything, but I caught wind of it or I suspected it. No one told me Limbaugh's going to do an equity raise, but someone told me, hey, a company you're interested in is looking to potentially raise some capital. Like I told the banker, the banker should really reach out to you to talk to you about this opportunity. And I, you know, I suspect that it might be Limbaugh.
Starting point is 00:44:22 So I reached out to the company and I was like, hey, I think you guys might be trying to do an equity raise. like and they're you know the initial response from the first person I reached out to was you know I can't no comment I can't discuss this with you so I reached out to the CEO and one of the board members and I got on the phone with the CEO and explained to him
Starting point is 00:44:41 for like an hour why I thought raising at $8 unless there was something about the business that I didn't know that led the CEO to believe the business would be in distress without an equity raise like of course if you have to do an equity raise to save the business do what you have to do but if you're
Starting point is 00:44:57 reviewing this as an opportunistic raise because the stock just tripled off the lows, I think it would send a very bad signal. The stock's still very cheap, low single-digit, even without multiple. And, you know, the message the CEO gave me was, I hear you. I appreciate this feedback. Let me think about it. I discuss it internally and we'll figure some, you know, we'll decide what we do. And that was in like October, November, November-ish of 2020. You know, then a few weeks pass, no raise. I'm like, okay, good.
Starting point is 00:45:34 I thought some sense into them. Hopefully some other investors talked some sense into them. And in December, they go to a conference. They're talking about how great the business is. In January, they go to another conference talking about how great the business is. This is all the former CEO, talking about how great the business is. And saying he can't wait to report Q4 results, like implying the business is crushing it. And at that point, you know, the stock's still really cheap, 30, 35 million of EBITDA.
Starting point is 00:46:02 You were still looking at eight million shares outstanding. It was like a hundred and something million dollar market caps. So you're still looking at a stock that's like three or four times EBITDA. Stock got up to 15 bucks. People were excited. And then one day, I think it was after the close, all of a sudden an AK comes out. They're doing an equity raise. It's already been priced.
Starting point is 00:46:22 The stock, the company had eight million shares outstanding before this raise. And they were raising, they were selling two. million shares. And this was all primary? This was all primary. Two million shares. All to new investors. They went and wall across new investors.
Starting point is 00:46:41 They didn't contact any existing investors. And they priced the offering at $12 a share. So the stock closed around 15. With 8 million shares outstanding, they sold another 2 million shares. So 2 million on a base of 8 million is like a 25% increase in your share account. And everyone gets diluted by 20% at three times EBITDA and no one has the opportunity to participate in their pro rata share if you've been supportive of this company and been a shareholder for a long time. So, you know, I sold the most of this. They priced it, I think, around 12.
Starting point is 00:47:12 Stock opened up maybe 13 or something like that. I sold a big chunk of the position. And then there were a few other things that, you know, frustrated me and I ended up selling out of the rest of the position and getting out entirely. And, you know, I think it blew my mind that they were willing to do an equity raise. Well, first of all, that they, you know, the initial one, I thought that they had decided not to do, but then they go and, like, talk up the stock and then do an equity, saying things are great. And then you do an equity raise, which implies maybe things weren't as great because you really need to cash. And you only go to new shareholders.
Starting point is 00:47:52 is like, I probably would have, if I thought there was a good use of the cash, I probably would have bought stock at a higher price than 12 to support the company. And instead, I think they just, you know, they destroyed their credibility with investors. Again, after coming public via SPAC, after missing earnings a few times with these big project blowups and then doing that, I think there were lots of people who look at small caps that are institutional along onlys, who would not take a look at this no matter how cheap it was. It is just funny. It's just two things from that story. A, it's funny, they went public as a SPAC in 2016, right? And I understand being a SPA, going public through a SPAC puts some black mark on you, especially after 2021, 2021,
Starting point is 00:48:31 but it's funny, like, it's seven years later, you know, it's a completely different company. And still people say, oh, they went public through a SPAC, which, you know, yeah, it's a company that went public through SPAC, probably lower quality, but it's also probably smaller. It's just funny how that, that's going to overhang over them for the next 50 years, you know, be 2052 and be like, 2016, they went public through us. I think it's, I honestly think it's starting to change. I think more people are, but like, I think what they needed was just a change in management. I think three years should be the due date for they went public for a spec, where it's kind of, hey, this is season.
Starting point is 00:49:03 But the other thing I was going to say is, I do think like, you know, there was some big working capital swings in the business going into COVID, coming out of COVID, and they still had some big blowups they needed to work through on the general contractor side of the business. They're done working through them. 2022 was a clean cash flow year and a clean margin year. 2023, hopefully will be another one. I agree with you. If they can string together three years where margins are good and cash flow is good, I think they get a lot of credibility and people stop talking about the SPAC days. The other thing I was going to say is like management in the board owned before that 2 million
Starting point is 00:49:40 raise, they own approaching 20% of the stock. And, you know, it seemed like a bad deal at the time. And in hindsight, it's probably proven to be a bad deal. the only way it probably would have been a good equity raise is if they had immediately had an acquisition to you, right? Where they say, hey, we're issuing stock at 6x to go buy an accretive acquisition at 4X and after some cost of synergies. But that is not what happened. They just went out and raised equity. It's just funny, you are probably right.
Starting point is 00:50:05 They probably saw their stock up into the right and said, hey, now is the time to do it. And Kobe was a scary time. I get it. But, you know, they own 17% of the company and they probably cost themselves a decent chuck of change. you know, the stocks at 23 and they raise at 12, they cost themselves a decent chunk of change with a needless equity raise and just shows you, even high insider ownership sometimes doesn't fully align you with management or doesn't guarantee they're going to kind of do the smart decision, you know?
Starting point is 00:50:31 Yeah, look, there might have been more uncertainty to the business at the start of 2021, right? Like, no one knew what was going to happen with the economy at that point. They did have some leverage. The business wasn't highly leveraged or anything. And they did have some known working capital unwinds because they did, you know, rebill of customers and get paid in 2020 to help their cash flow position. But like if they would have flagged those things and said, we just want a little extra cushion because of M&A pipelines in good shape.
Starting point is 00:51:00 And just in case the economy slows and gone to their existing investor base, I think it would have been a little better received. Instead, the way they did it just was very poorly. I mean, you price something at a huge discount. You don't let your existing investors participate. And there's no good use of proceeds where, like, you can explain to people why you're doing it. It was just like it felt almost like they wanted to get more liquidity into more flow, more liquidity, some new blue chip. I call it getting compromised by a banker, right?
Starting point is 00:51:29 A banker comes and whispers in your and says, look, you rode the stock from 2 to 15. How smart will you look if you take a print at 12? Like your investors are going to love you for taking some chips off the table, getting some liquidity. You're the next Warren Buffet. You can take this cash and use it. Like, yeah, also also you're going to get some new like high quality blue chip investors. Every time a company tells me, hey, we had to do this primary offering because we had a high quality shareholder who wanted to get added to the rate. Every time they say an angel loses its wings.
Starting point is 00:51:59 It's insane. I can't believe how many like who believes that. The high quality investors, if they really want to get in, instead of buying it all primary to discount, they can just go on the secondary. They can go on the stock exchange and buy it and push the shares up. You know, like why can't they do it that way if they really. want to get in. Yeah. And listen, we have a net, we have a net cash balance sheet today, which we might have had a little bit of net debt if we hadn't done that raise. But like, not only do we have a net cash balance sheet today, we also have 30 million of claims against
Starting point is 00:52:28 general contractors from former projects gone bad that we've shown an ability to settle historically and get most of those claims. We have another 30 million of claims outstanding that hopefully settle over some period of time. Who knows, you know, the litigation process is is inherently uncertain. That's another three bucks a share of additional net cash on top of the net cash we have today. Plus the business will be generating, you know, they've basically said 70% of EBITDA should convert to free cash flow. And so, you know, we're going to be generating, you know, $25, $30 million a year, free cash flow plus $30 million potentially in settlements of those claims. There's a lot of cash here to do attractive stuff.
Starting point is 00:53:06 Even if you can't do a lot of MNA and the stock stays at these levels, I think you just buy back stock and you grow free cash flow per share that way. If the stock goes up and you can't do M&A, then maybe you sit on the cash and wait for a potential recession. I think there's just like lots of things you could do to create a lot of value here over time from this starting valuation. You don't need to do M&A from this starting valuation. You just need to not do dumb things. And now, a quick word from our sponsor. Are traditional expert calls in the investment world becoming obsolete? According to Stream, they are. And you can access primary research easily and efficiently through their platform.
Starting point is 00:53:41 With Stream, you'll have the right insights at your fingertips to make the best investment decisions. They offer a vast library of over 26,000 expert transcripts powered by AI search technology. Plus, they provide competitive rates on expert call services, and you can even have an experienced by-side analysts conduct the calls for you. But that's not all. Stream also provides the ability to engage with experts one-on-one and get your calls transcribed free of charge, all for 40% less than you would pay for 20 calls in a traditional expert network model. So if you're looking to optimize your research process and increase ROI on investment research spend, Stream has the solution for you. Head over to their website at streamrg.com to learn
Starting point is 00:54:20 more. Thanks for listening and we'll catch you next time. I have one more question I want to ask you, but before I get there, just on then back, is there anything about the story that we haven't discussed you think we should have discussed or that we kind of lost over that you think we should it hit harder? They're getting added to the Russell 2000. That's going to create some buying demand over the next few weeks. There's some warrants that expire in July that came with the SPAC. Some are 1250 strikes. Some are 15 strikes. So they're all in the money at this point. Those expire in July. There will probably be some cashless exercises and sales. One of the directors three or four days ago, cashless exercise, like two million of them or something. I think it was
Starting point is 00:55:02 like 100,000 shares or something like that. Yeah. And he, so he had 100,000 warrants, but he cashless exercised them, so only got 30,000 shares or something like that. And I think, you know, the net buying from the index addition is going to more than soak up and more the potential from the warrants. Yeah, other than that, no. Let me ask you my last question. And this is a new question I've been meaning to ask the guest. So you're going to be my first guinea pick on it. But, you know, everybody, I put out a quick blog post on this, but is there anything you're doing with AI to improve or change your process? Maybe I'm just like riding the bubble and hyping on the hop train. But I personally haven't like found out any like real use cases that I think improve it or anything.
Starting point is 00:55:50 But I'm just as anything you've tried or seen that kind of incorporated AI into your process? No, I mean, the only real change in my process or update and thinking in my process. process related to AI is to try to avoid businesses that I think could be impacted over the medium term by AI, whereas historically I hadn't really given it as much thought. Now I certainly am. I like owning businesses that I think have no secular issues with good balance sheets because you know they're going to survive through downturns. They can deploy capital aggressively into downturns when valuations get cheap. And you know that long term their value is their ability to their enterprise value.
Starting point is 00:56:32 I think Lindbach checks all those boxes. Like, you know, buildings are going to need good HVAC systems, whether it's 5, 10, 15, 20 years from now. So no secular issues. I think cyclically, things are improving for their end markets right now. And they have a net cash balance sheet. So I just think when you buy something at a low valuation,
Starting point is 00:56:54 generates cash, clean balance sheet with no secular issues, I think the question in your mind should be like, what will my return be, not will I make a return here? I'm, I, um, even at today's price up in the 20s, I still think it, I wonder like, am I going to double my money here? I'm going to make 50% on my money. If I'm going to triple my money, it's hard for me to think like what, what can really, I mean, of course, every investment has risk.
Starting point is 00:57:21 Like things could go wrong. You could lose money if you buy this. So don't go out and buy this and reach out to me and say, you promise me I wouldn't lose money. But I just, I like these situations. where I think the skew to the upside is so much higher than the skew to the downside. I think it's a low, multiple, and they repair air conditioners and stuff. Like, people are going to need air conditioners repaired.
Starting point is 00:57:40 Maybe, as you said, maybe it's a stealth AI play. They're going to need them repair big buildings, no matter if AI AI overlords take over the world or not. I don't know if you still have it, but you used to have a position in Google. I'm guessing you still do. Have you thought about how AI, you don't have the position in Google anymore? I don't, no. No, and the question was more just, AI as it relates to investor because like my first thought with AI was I was going to be
Starting point is 00:58:04 able to be like, here's my portfolio. Find me five stocks that have similar characteristics that I can research and find new longs. Or like, here's a 10K. Tell me all the risk factors that like aren't in the risk factors or something. I, you know, I, the best I've heard is some people use, I think a lot of people are using AI as like an improved Google or a differentiated Google or something. But I haven't heard anyone using it in a way that as a like concentrated value fundamental investor really improves or anything to process. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I'm sure there are definitely use cases. If you run a really big fund with huge data feeds and you have. Oh, well, they've been doing that for years and I'm sure they get better and better at it.
Starting point is 00:58:44 But that's different than what you and I do, right? We're hopefully we're focusing on a couple companies and doing well and finding interesting situations. Yeah, I think that's right. Long, 100 short. Anyway, you're on, I'm starting to ramble. I've got the dust apocalypse out here. I'm sure you've got it too. It looks like Mad Max outside, but I appreciate you coming on. Congratulations. I hope next week or the week after goes really well. And I'm here for you if you need anything, and we'll chat soon.
Starting point is 00:59:09 All right, thanks, Matt. Later, buddy. A quick disclaimer. Nothing on this podcast should be considered an investment advice. Guests or the hosts may have positions in any of the stocks mentioned during this podcast. Please do your own work and consult a financial advisor. Thanks.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.