[00:00:00] Speaker A: Largely what it comes down to is that people seem to care less about wastewater than water. I think just based on that, we're seeing a lot of companies, and especially ious, you know, slowly turning to wastewater.
[00:00:18] Speaker B: I am Reese Tisdall, and this is the future of water, which we talk about all the ways which companies, utilities and people are addressing the challenges and opportunities in water. This is episode 98, and I know it's going to be a good one. That's because this one's going to be a little bit different this time. We're going to address questions asked of our team during the NAWC presentation, which was titled from PFAS to consolidation, key water market developments impacting utility strategies.
This took place during a webcast a couple weeks ago.
Rather than being secretive about it, we thought we'd use this channel to deliver answers to as many of you as possible. When it comes to the questions that came to us from behind the scenes, you know, we only had the chance to answer so many questions, and there were a number still out there. And so rather than reaching out to everybody individually, we thought everybody might have similar type questions. So you'll get a better feel for that in a minute. Also, if you missed the webcast, you can let us know at water expertslewfieldresearch.com dot. We can see if there's a way we can get it to you or at least help you out, maybe talk through it a little bit. But to answer your questions, most importantly, I will be joined by Bluefield Research's Charlie Seuss. Not only was Charlie Instrumental in delivering the presentation to the NAWC audience, which is national association of Water Companies, but Charlie also has an in depth knowledge of the sector. So I guess, lastly, why not have a little fun? It's summer, after all. So let's do a mailbag. But before we do that, I thought I'd share some news that caught my attention this past week. Earlier this week, Bluefield just released its top companies in water analysis. We do this every quarter, digging into company financials presentations m and a and just looking at the event, shaping the strategies of the 50 largest publicly traded companies in water. So it's a pretty diverse group. And so in doing so, as it came out, I thought I'd share some of the data points from Q one Financial reports that caught my eye. So, as I said, we look at each company individually, but also in aggregate across all 50, but also within their respective segments. So 36 of the 50 top publicly traded water companies saw earnings growth, 36 out of 50. But overall growth was fairly stable at about 5.9%. Overall engineering services led the growth at about 10.4% over the same quarter prior year. So this change was driven by things like PFAS remediation, but also design and engineering activities, sort of, sort of the front end of some of the funding that's going out for IJA and other infrastructure investments, treatment technology and solutions grew to by 8.3%. It's worth noting that DuPont's planning to spin off its water business within that space, so look forward to seeing how that unfolds. And I think obviously PFAS is related to that as well as lead. Also, network and distribution saw a slight uptick of about 1% growth year over year. Looking at Q one, although the combination of the slow rollout of IIJ funds, particularly as you get get closer to the projects, our Q one analysis of IJA and the funding demonstrates this as well. So looking at the federal outlays and the pace or slow pace at which they're being rolled out for a number of different reasons, and then investor and utilities growth slowed to about 1.5%. This was largely a result of rising costs, but also regulatory challenges at the PUC level for some of the investor and utilities. Since COVID quite honestly, the pace of rate cases has been slower than maybe it once was. So that's created a bit of friction in some instances or states. So why should we care about this? Well, I mean, not only is it just interesting, but these companies, they're big. They move the needle in many cases, and they provide really interesting insights into the challenges, but also opportunities that are before the water sector.
Things like corporate spinoffs, launching water pure plays. Good examples of this. As I mentioned, I think I mentioned this on the last Future Water podcast, episode 97. I talked a little bit about Dupont breaking up into three companies, one of which will be about a $1.5 billion water solutions business. It's also worth noting, while that happened, just as an aside, that sounds like Viralto and Xylem are also sort of sniffing around DuPont water solutions as a potential acquisition target. So not sure where this is going to go. They're obviously looking into it, maybe see it as an opportunity going forward so it'll be interesting. Otherwise, the spin out will take a couple of years. It looks like. You can also learn more about my thoughts on this. I post things like this on LinkedIn, so if you want to follow me on LinkedIn, you'll hear some of the read some of these details. I think the other spin out which is worth noting is Danaher. They just did this last year in 2023. So Danaher spun out what is now viral to their host of water businesses. And this really, I think these spin offs, the Duponts or the Danahers of the world, they highlight the trend of companies focusing or trying to focus on their core strengths that are at least enable that by separating their businesses from out under the umbrella of the larger, more diversified holding companies, they'll be more targeted, more specialized. In the case of Viralto and Dupont, you know, it'll put them alongside companies like Xylem, pure plays, another pure play, Pentair Kurita. They all sit at the top of the roster of water sector peer play. So it's nice to see a couple more additions. And I think when they're pure plays, they're like, like I said, they can be more focused, but they can also do m and a more easily because they can do it on their own terms rather than having to go upstairs of a larger, more diversified holding company. So look forward to seeing how this all plays out. So if you're interested in top companies in water, but also I think as I speak, the Bluefield's quarterly m and a quarterly review of the water sector is being released as well. Those are two areas that talk a bit about all about these topics, but rather hearing me go on and on. Let's get to Charlie Seuss and the mailbag questions.
All right, so I'm joined here by Charlie Seuss. So, Charlie, how goes it?
[00:07:07] Speaker A: Doing well, yeah. Looking forward to holiday next week and a little time off.
[00:07:11] Speaker B: So for the listeners, just wanted to let everybody know we're a little behind. So we've been sort of dragging our feet because there's a main break. I think it's a main break outside of my house. So I've been dealing with Boston water and sewer. The reason I care is because water is flowing into my basement, not in huge volumes, about 20 gallons a day. I'm having to empty basically a small trash can into the sink every twice a day. So I'm doing that every day. I've been doing this for four or five days now, but Boston water and sewer, we've had three crews come by the house, and tomorrow they're going to start doing more acoustic monitoring of the street to see if they can find the solution. They keep trying to push it on me to say it's my problem, but I'm not a believer. I know what the difference between inside the meter and outside the meter. Yeah. So I had to push Charlie back to get this done. So thanks for your patience, Charlie.
[00:08:07] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Wasn't going to stop the podcast.
[00:08:10] Speaker B: Oh, exactly. All right. So here's the deal. So as you know, you and I were both on a webcast with National association of water Companies. And as it is for these, we sometimes are restricted by time. I think we answered two, three, four questions. I can't remember exactly. But on the back end, what everybody, I don't believe sees is that there are a number of other questions that come our way and we don't have a chance to answer them. So rather than just put answers in writing and send the answers back to the questioners, we've decided to use this podcast to answer these questions. So that's why we're going to call it a mailbag edition. And so we're just going to kind of have to go through the list of questions, but they did seem to break out in a kind of a couple different buckets or areas of focus. So I think the first group we'll start with are sort of system classifications and regulations. And I will say this once again, I said this in the intro. If you're interested in the presentation, just send us a
[email protected]. and maybe we can just send you the presentation and you might get an idea what exactly we are talking about in addition to this podcast. So, Charlie, I'm going to throw the first question to you. So during the webcast, you spoke about the relationship between system sizes and violations. But one question that came up was, could you start by laying out what we at Bluefield meand when we say very small systems or very large systems, how does it break out?
[00:09:44] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And I guess before I jump into all the numbers, to your point, there's a lot of interesting exhibits in those slides that you were talking about, and I think some of the questions that we got tie in really well to those exhibits and individuals there. So I definitely, you know, encourage people to reach out, you know, if, you know, I've thrown too, too many numbers out there. But, yeah, I guess, you know, to start real basic, there's obviously a huge range in terms of system sizes, but the kind of official EPA classifications that we use are one end very small systems, 500 people or less, and small 500 to 300 people, medium systems ranging from 3300 to 10,000, and then large systems, you know, 10,000 to 10,0000 people served, and very large systems are everything greater than that.
[00:10:39] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think just adding throwing more numbers into that pot of numbers. The very large systems, those are the big ones. Those are the LaDWps, the DC waters of the world. They're serving, obviously, more than 100,000, but there are only about 418 of those, at least on the water side of the equation. So it's pretty consolidated among the very large. And then you get. And that was really, I think, maybe why it came up. When we start looking at ious and utilities, there's so many small and very small systems, and in many cases, we've sort of raised this. That's really where a lot of the constraints are, financially, technologically, resource, workforce wise, but also where some of the problems are, particularly when we talk about violations. So. But on a related note, one attendee asked if we can assume that systems serving fewer than 3300 customers are non regulated or public. I mean, can you provide, like, a quick breakdown, I think would be helpful, of the ownership structure or the numbers behind all of that?
[00:11:46] Speaker A: Yeah. So, you know, there are around 50,000 community water systems in the US, and those are essentially split between public and privately owned systems. But the private systems tend to kind of lean smaller on average, and serve around 14% of the total number of connections or customer connections. So then on the wastewater side, you're looking at about 23,000 wastewater treatment works. 70% of those are going to be publicly owned. But in contrast to water, these publicly owned wastewater systems serve around 97% of the total number of connections. So a little bit of a difference whether or not we're looking at water or wastewater here.
[00:12:30] Speaker B: And I think also, you know, this is part of the discussion during the webcast with all the attendees, and was, you know, when you say 14% is private, that's not just investor owned utilities. That's also communities.
Small communities in Texas or municipal utility districts. Not just american waters, ious, or essential utilities or Cal waters. Well, another question we received, sort of, in this area, we received another question about normalizing the violation data against a number of systems. I know you've done that, but what does actually the violation data show when we look at it for the systems?
[00:13:11] Speaker A: Yeah, that was a good question. So, as of April of this year, community water systems in the US have reported around 1100 health based violations. We're just going to talk about that in a truck for a second. 87% of those violations involved systems serving populations less than 3300 people. So small or very small systems. But when we normalize that data against the number of systems, slightly less than 1% of large and very large systems have recorded a health based violation compared to around 2.7% of small and very small systems. So it's not a huge difference when you look at it that way. But again, we're talking about tens of thousands more systems falling into those smaller categories.
So the capital needed to address these issues is far more spread out. So I think there's different ways of looking at it there and then on the wastewater side, kind of a slightly different story. Over the last three years, about two thirds of the facilities that reported effluent violations serve less than 3300 people. But again, after normalizing that against the number of systems, small and very small systems are actually 14% less likely to have reported an effluent violation. But I think that could very likely be a result of less reliable and more incomplete data for smaller systems. So I think looking at the geographic distribution of violations is still really important, just given that some of the gaps in the data that you may just come across.
[00:14:43] Speaker B: Yeah, I know. I appreciate thats a good answer because I think that highlights a lot of the concerns which I alluded to just a little while ago about the smaller systems and that segment, the fragmentation of it. So next, lets tackle some of the financial and regulatory questions. So sort of back at you.
Whats a realistic annual cost estimate for PFAS MCL compliance, given that the EPA's 1.5 billion per year estimate seems pretty low now?
[00:15:16] Speaker A: Yeah, this is something we really only just very briefly touched the surface on in the presentation. I think it's something we have a lot more data and research on, but happy to share a little bit about that. So last year, we had forecast about $13.5 billion through 2030. That's more than likely on the lower end. At the same time, we've seen some global estimates as high as 250 billion by ACom, around 100 billion. I think it was by Veolia to essentially eliminate pfas from the environment as a whole. So quite a big range there, obviously. But going back to our figures, which is just for drinking water, that is a low and pretty conservative estimate, just because there are still a number of unanswered questions, first and foremost, inventorying the problem and identifying ways to pay for it. But on top of that, the scale is immense. And unfortunately, regulations and legal systems and governments are still, there's a lot of unanswered questions there. So I think one thing I consider, though, are the dozen or so states that have already taken steps even prior to the federal announcement to establish the new mcls. So I think our belief is that these states that have been proactive are likely to move faster as they've been independently demonstrating their will to do so.
[00:16:39] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's a really good point. So we haven't even gotten into the legal challenges and such. I think the expectation is, or the reality is it's already halfway through 2024, so we're not talking about a long period of time for first thing we need to do is do some inventory, figure out the scale of the problem. That in and of itself takes time. So I like that. So how willing are public utility commissions to provide rate relief for consolidators purchasing small troubled systems?
[00:17:13] Speaker A: Yeah, this was another interesting question that came in that we didn't have time for. But I think this is an issue that's going to vary a lot from state to state. For context, coming out of COVID a lot of the moratoriums on rate increases have been expiring.
A lot of utilities are needing to catch back up in order to pay for these necessary infrastructure upgrades and find ways to address some of these rising costs over the past few years. So with that in mind, and I think maybe more to the point of the question, there has been a constant push among ious and even some of the kind of regionalized municipal utilities, but in states like Virginia, actually, but to adopt consolidated rates or in other words, single tariff pricing. So a number of states have already allowed ious to do this. But in theory, the essential idea is that it allows utilities to reduce rate shock or ratepayers by spreading the cost of these infrastructure upgrades across multiple systems. So this is a practice thats definitely been met with opposition in some areas that have seen skyrocketing rates without much to show for it, terms of water quality or access or whatever. But on the other hand, it has been an important tool for funding some of the critical customer assistance programs that utilities have implemented for low income communities. So I think it's a question where the answer can get pretty complex and context specific.
[00:18:47] Speaker B: Nice. All right. Well, that's a good one. I agree with you. It's a good question. So. All right. If everybody could just stick with us now. We're getting some intriguing market trend questions. So let's change gears a little bit. Charlie. So maybe I see this one and maybe I'll just take this one. So the question is, and also gives you a little bit of a break here. So what are the thoughts on workforce development and the fast approaching retirement wave? Well, given that the team that was out searching for the leak around my house. And in my neighborhood this morning, there's going to be a retirement wave coming fast and furious. I can tell you that. That's my own experience, but also just how much information that they need or that they actually have in their head. So sort of, in thinking about this, laid out a couple sort of relatively quick answers. So when it comes to the, our thoughts on it, it's, I mean, fundamentally, it's pretty obvious. Critical skill shortage. The water sector faces a significant challenge as a large portion of its workforce retire. You know, they're retiring. So this is particularly concerning for water and wastewater utilities, where it can be really specialized and in some cases specialized to a neighborhood or to a specific technology. And also technologies are changing like they were using, you know, Guterman technology earlier today trying to find the leak. And you've got to get people trained up, and older workforces may not understand that. So that's one aspect of it. Knowledge transfer, same thing. There's an urgent need to transfer knowledge from one generation of workers to the next.
It includes the treatment processes, infrastructure maintenance, and just overall quality or compliance with water quality standards, technological adaptation. I sort of alluded to this. There's a growing focus on digital solutions. I think the younger the generation, the younger people expect that they anticipate that when they come into the workforce, this is happening at a fast pace. And so the retirement wave, honestly, one positive way to look at it is this may accelerate the adoption of these technologies, such as digital solutions, advanced monitoring systems, and that could also potentially help bridge the workforce gap. Recruitment challenges. You know, I think the water industry, it may struggle to attract younger workers. You know, when you're comparing yourself to Google or the high tech, high flying brands that seemingly a lot of young people look to for opportunities. The water sector is not that right? Nonetheless, interesting. But I think recruiting is a challenge and will continue to be, though it feels like it stabilized a little bit after Covid. With all this moving around, things seem to be a little bit calmer. Training and education focus. I think that's always a big issue. It does take a long time to train, particularly utility operators, but also we do need more training and understanding of things like PFAS, advanced treatment. What are the solutions for that? But also the digital technologies that I already mentioned. And I think overall, I think this is putting a positive spin on it. This is a potential for innovation. Influx of new, younger professionals into the water industry should drive innovation. Like new ideas, new blood, new expectations could change the tenor of activities within the water sector. I think that's a good thing. All right, I got another one here for you, Charlie. It's changing it back to you. So how is the role of private equity played out in the regulated or non regulated utility segments?
[00:22:25] Speaker A: Yeah, this is a question. I think we get a fair amount across different research areas and services. But I at least on the regulated utility side, I think there are a couple of notable examples. First and foremost, central states water resources. And thats an IOU thats investor owned utility thats backed by Science capital. It was really helped drive the companys honestly record breaking M and a spree over the last several years. I cant remember the number right now, but I think it was around her. Over 200 acquisitions over the last five years. Another one would be national water infrastructure. I think that's another name that's worth mentioning. That's a Louisiana based IOU.
It's backed by Bernard Capital and has been in recent years working towards a pretty ambitious regionalization project in Louisiana. So that's another one we have our eye on. But I think on the other hand, in the O and M space for contract services, we're also seeing private equity firms leveraging Ma as a way to get their foot in the door. Some of the notable examples being new Mountain Capital's partnership with Infermark. You have Keystone Capital's investment in Clearwater solutions. And then there's the recent sale of SI Environmental for more in equity to LLCP. So there are a number of examples, even in just the top 15 or 20 O and M providers, where private equity firms are really shaping different company strategies.
[00:24:10] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah, I like that. So heres another one for you. So how is the, and I think this is interpreted as you want.
How has a non regulated market grown in the last decade and whats its future trajectory?
[00:24:26] Speaker A: Yeah, another good one. We touched a little bit on this in the webcast, but just for context, weve tracked around 1700 active o and M contracts across the US, together representing an estimated $2.9 billion in annual contract revenue as of last year. But the onm outsourcing market has seen pretty steady but still slow growth at around 3.85% or so over the past couple of decades. So this is largely a product of kind of the steady flow of mid sized contracts serving populations anywhere from ten to 50,000 people. But ultimately, though, I think we do expect this market to continue to grow just due to a lot of the same drivers that we've been talking about, whether it's workforce challenges or compliance issues, outsourcing O and M to a third party provider ultimately is often a more appealing option for some utilities that are trying to maintain ownership of their system while still leveraging those same economies of scale.
[00:25:37] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think we also included in sort of the spectrum of private participation in water because some of these contracts are for 3510 years, so they're nothing, not concessions would be, which would be a further extreme. This is really a matter of, you know, a public private partnership. Right. And so, um, and I think, you know, just for clarification, we say non regulated. I mean, I think the, the investor and utilities call it like, would it be market based business units or MBB? You know, market based business. That's one way to look at it as well. So, but a segment, I agree that we see real growth opportunities in it and we've seen some activities, particularly in the south, southeast, on the water side of the equation. So here's a question, and I think I'm going to take this one. So where do we see opportunities in private water outside the US? So it's a good question and I don't know why this question came to be. I cant remember what exactly we were talking about when it came in, but I do think we ill just lay it out. We look at the world in three different market types when it comes to private water. Ill sort of get to what I was going to say, and that is theyre the purely private markets. So that would be like the UK or Chile, right. These two countries are served by private utilities. Kind of sets them apart really, and for context, sets them apart from the US for what its worth. The UK, which is I think the worlds largest private water market, its actually, this is what I was getting at. Its been in a bit of turmoil because of Tims waters recent financial struggles. The London utility which serves, I think its like 17 to 20 million people, its buried in debt and has really become a poster child for private mismanagement of, of critical infrastructure, in this case water and wastewater. So Macquarie, the financial services firm at Australia, they got out of it in 2017, but they had been paying investors or owners a billion dollars over a better part of ten years in dividends. And the operations of the utility has not been doing so well. So it's not good.
I think really the point being is while this may not seem like a big deal in the US, its a different market. I think it does put a bit of a cloud over private participation in water for good or bad. I dont want to say its necessarily fair, but people do read the newspaper, whether it be pick your paper, it can make its way into the us papers. If youre an investor in utility in the US, it may create some pushback as you look to either acquire or operate or manage a system in the US. The US. So another type of market is really another type somewhat unique because it really includes pretty broad mix of public munis, private investor and utilities. So also got the contract operators. It's somewhat surprising to outsiders that p three s like the bigger ones there is everybody. Outsiders look to the US say, why aren't there p three s? It's a financial tool, really to supposedly benefit the utilities, but you don't really see them that often. They pop up periodically. We've seen one more recently, actually. I think, Charlie, you've done some research on it, on the facility in Florida. That is a P three. I think Keowood is involved in that. So that's interesting. One would think there would be more, but it seems to be a tougher to hoe, as I would say. And then lastly, Bluefield has historically tracked utility concession markets around the world. These includes countries like France, Spain, Italy, Brazil, Colombia to a lesser extent. You know, we also account for concessions in p three s across hundreds of desal plants in the Middle East, North Africa, Australia, China. So that is a market opportunity. They're not fast changing. And there are companies that are pretty well established in that space. So in many respects, it's pretty consolidated among a core group of players within the respective markets. Also might add, you sort of within that group, I would also add, like consolidated water is also one of our top companies in water that we track quarterly. They've carved out somewhat of a unique position as an independent water provider in markets throughout the Caribbean. They've sort of also looked at Mexico and other places, but they're an interesting player as well because they've got some desalination and water utility assets that they own and operate or have a concession for in the Caribbean. So I think it's pretty interesting to see where that is. Like Charlie speaking for him, we spend a lot of time looking at the US and the investor in utilities. But that being said, we also do look at what's happening in Europe and the rest of the world. All right, so last seemingly, I think this is the last group of questions coming your way, Charlie. So let's look at some broader trends. So one thing that came up, and I think I know why it came up, but the question is why is wastewater seen as a less risky and more attractive market entry channel?
[00:31:03] Speaker A: Yeah, this another good question that I think maybe might depend a little bit more on who you ask in the sector. But honestly, I think largely what it comes down to is that people seem to care less about wastewater than water. I think just based on that, we're seeing a lot of companies, and especially ious, slowly turning to wastewater. Essential utilities is probably the largest one that comes to mind.
Recent years, we've seen them going after probably larger municipally owned wastewater systems. So a shift away from water, then again, central states m and a activity over the last several years has largely been focused on smaller wastewater systems in the south. So it's certainly something we've seen there. But additionally, I think wastewater does present certain opportunities for utilities to take advantage of certain efficiency gains, whether we're talking about power management or energy capture or even reuse and recycling. So I think that's actually a pretty exciting aspect to the wastewater side. But again, drinking water is a serious thing.
It's critical to human health. And I think for that reason, the public can be justified in being a little more weary of change, and regulators are equally cautious.
[00:32:37] Speaker B: Yeah, I think I've heard some people say it, don't touch the drinking water, because then you do have to be pretty risk averse. There's a lot at stake when you're managing water for a community, let's say.
All right, that's helpful.
I think we're looking at the last one here, Charlie. So it's a banger. Beyond the bipartisan infrastructure law, what's the outlook for future federal incentives in the water sector? Charlie?
[00:33:07] Speaker A: Yeah, I think there are two main ones that come to mind here. For me, obviously, everyone's excited about Iija bipartisan infrastructure law, which has provided some important tailwinds to the sector. But first, Wifia or the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation act. That's a program that provides long term, low cost supplemental loans for regionally and nationally significant water projects. So with the potential for expanding that with you, could it really become a more critical source of funding for large scale water infrastructure projects? And then the other one that I would mention would be SRF or state revolving funds. So both the Clean Water State revolving fund as well as the drinking water state revolving fund, theyre both key sources of funding for water infrastructure improvements.
IJ has obviously infused a lot of dollars into those programs, but I think we also think are seeing that future federal budgets are expected to increase allocations to these funds, and that would, in turn, enable states to finance more water quality projects. But there's probably a couple I'm missing here. I don't know if there's anything else you want to add.
[00:34:37] Speaker B: Yeah, I think we looked at it when I think the infrastructure week was being discussed or rolled out. Was that 2021? I think one interesting thing, I guess, maybe positive thing about water is that it touches everything.
When you get things like Inflation Reduction act and there's investment in hydrogen or the Chips act and it's focused on semiconductors, there is a water component to each of those, among all the others, or transportation through the bipartisan infrastructure law, or IJ, let's say the water sector gets 55 billion in new funding. Transportation gets, I think it was 105, 110 billion. So twice as much, essentially. But when you build a road, you also need culverts, you need catch basins, you need a lot of other sort of hardware and equipment to help manage the water associated with transportation. So it's not an all or nothing federal incentive program to look at. You know, there are some dedicated, I think you pointed at the, the biggest ones that most people talk about water infrastructure with, you should I say, and then state revolving funds. But when there are other dollars going into different sectors, water opportunities do exist within those. I think the other thing I would also add, and I think we even raised this, I believe, during the webcast, and that is these big waves of federal funding seem to come either after the great Recession or more recently after Covid and infrastructure. I think the bigger concern is we need probably more dollars, a more sustainable approach to water infrastructure investment. The floor could come up, but also in a more regular, ongoing basis. It shouldn't be a reactive, oh my God, we have to generate jobs or we have an infrastructure problem. So let's deal with it. Infrastructure is not going away. It's not getting any younger. It requires ongoing maintenance, operations and investment. So. But no, I think you pretty much nailed it. So I like that. I don't know with anything else to add. Charlie, why don't we, while I have you, since I don't have any more questions to ask. That came from the webcast, what are you working on these days and what can we expect to hear from you research wise?
[00:37:05] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely.
We covered a lot today, but we're certainly staying busy this summer. We've got a us vendor market share report in the works. We're in the middle of this large annual exercise, a number of us working on collecting over 800 utilities capital improvement plans, and I think there's a lot of exciting additions to that this year that folks can look for later this summer. And yeah, looking forward to what's coming out what's coming down the pipeline here.
[00:37:44] Speaker B: Yeah, I've been given a lot of shout outs on the podcast past couple episodes. One goes to the intern team that is helping us work through all those capital improvement plans. I mean, it's a heavy lift for those who haven't collected capital improvement plans or at least, you know, pulled all the data out project by project. It's a big lift. So. And they're actually moving towards the finish line. So they've probably gone fast. We've done this for years, several or three years in a row at this scale, and they move faster and faster. We're also getting better as far as using select tools as well. So good on everybody for that. But yeah, I'm interested to here and learn more about sort of the pipe markets. And then we also have our big forecast we're working on. So.
All right, Charlie, well, with that, I think I can set you free so you are free to move on to bigger and better pastures than this. So thanks for the time and the time of this recording. I hope you enjoy the weekend.
[00:38:49] Speaker A: Thanks, lovers. You too.
[00:38:51] Speaker B: All right, take care.
All right. That was super helpful to have Charlie at least join me on that. I'm not sure I could answer all those questions, so he took the hard ones, I took the easy ones.
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