Bob Lewis and Doug Lewis of The Visionary Group dive into how everything about firm combinations — from deal structure and their impact on staff, to how accounting and PE firms are identifying targets — is changing, and will continue to change in the future.
Transcription:
Dan Hood (00:03):
Welcome to On the Air With Accounting. Today, I'm editor-in-chief Dan Hood. The drumbeat of private equity deals and accounting just keeps going on and on, as does the much longer trend of elevated levels of traditional firm M&A. But as this market evolves, so do the structure of the deals and the concerns that go along with them here to talk about that evolving state of play. And the concerns both real and imagined that many in the profession have about all this are two leaders from the Visionary Group, which advises firms on transitions just like these. We've got the President of the Visionary Group, Bob Lewis. Bob, thanks for joining us.
Bob Lewis (00:33):
Always a pleasure. Dan. Good to see you again,
Dan Hood (00:35):
Have you back and managing director, Doug Lewis. Doug, thanks for joining us.
Doug Lewis (00:39):
Thanks for having me. Dan, I'll take the lukewarm approach to being here. I'm right in the middle of the road.
Dan Hood (00:44):
Well, you both at this point. This must be old hat. You both have been on several times on the podcast, so it's fair to be a little blase. It's all right. It's also relatively early in the morning, but this is a great topic and there's a lot going on in m and a, and particularly with the influence of private equity and the accounting expression. So let's dive right in. I want to start by talking about what's driving all of these deals, and there are a huge number of deals of all kinds and more and more different kinds of deals going on. Maybe Bob, you can kick us off there and say, what's driving all these?
Bob Lewis (01:16):
Well, let's start with the elephant in the room of the week, which is the Baker Tilly Moss Adams deal. I think that puts him into number six in the country. So the question everybody has is what's driving all these deals? Initially, a lot of succession. Okay. A lot of succession concerns because you've got aging baby boomers, not enough people to take over the firms. That's still a big part of this, but the bigger driver really is the infrastructure firms are coming to us and going, I'm 10, 15, $20 million. I don't think I have the infrastructure to be able to compete, is this market continues? Plus, because of all these deals and because of all the private equity, their competitors are getting larger, more resources, more ability to recruit, more ability to offshore, more ability to automate. It's putting more and more pressure on these firms to be able to maintain this. And then you add that baby boomer piece in the aging Baby boomer, and we've got really the perfect storm here.
Dan Hood (02:15):
There's a lot, not sure isn't maybe quite the right word, but there's certainly a lot of factors pushing people towards considering deals, thinking about deals, Doug, with so many deals going on. And so every week you seem to hear a new one and again, a different kind of deal. What is this doing to firm culture? How is this impacting the way firms are internally?
Doug Lewis (02:37):
When we look at the acquirer, the consolidator landscape out there right now, whether it's private equity, traditional firms, these hybrids that we'll get into in a minute here and talk about, there's such a spectrum of great operators that know how to flush out culture very early on in the process. And what we're finding is the good acquirers or the good consolidators in the marketplace, they just destroy culture in that first call. They really dig into it. They don't even talk about the numbers, the firm, anything like it's all high level vision, culture. Do we even like each other? And now I say that's the good ones that are doing that. There are many out there who I'll say are less than reputable and are simply chasing numbers and don't really worry about the culture aspect too much. But it is a wide spectrum out there. More often than not, that is the focal point of every first, second, and third conversation between two firms
Dan Hood (03:29):
Got. But as you say, not everyone's approaching it from the right direction or necessarily even carrying it about it at all. And I think particularly for a lot of staff, that's a big concern. We're in the middle of a huge staffing shortage, giant staffing crunch going on there. And I think for a lot of people, one, they're either afraid that an acquirer is going to come in and be terrible for the culture or just lay them off, or they may actually be right. In some cases there may be people who come in and drive away staff. How is that impacting staff? How is this affecting our pipeline shortage?
Doug Lewis (04:04):
That's a good one. I'll hit that first and then I'll let you clean up, Bob. Sure. So usually in all these deals, there's so many myths out there when we talk about private equity or merging or selling a traditional firm, whatever, A lot of myths. The first one out there is everyone wants to come in and just cut my staff, fire people get rid of best performers meeting before anyone that could not be further from the truth. The good professionals, whether they're up and coming through the staff ranks or the leadership positions already, those professionals are seeing their career paths expedited. They're accelerating into more opportunity, more roles, usually if there's any fallout from a deal, again, whether it's a private equity transaction, one of the hybrids in the middle or a pure traditional firm, it's usually those kind of mid-level and kind of lower performing professionals before the deal are the ones that walk away. It's very rare when someone comes in and just starts eliminating headcount.
Bob Lewis (04:59):
Dan, to add onto that, just a couple really, really quick short points in every transaction, the history of transactions in any business, some people always leave because they're just unhappy with the change. It's just part of it. The ones you hear more noise about though aren't the A and B players in the operation. It's the C and d, the firm I was in. I was more of an A or B because that's all they had. Now I'm moving to a larger entity and my skillsets aren't quite where they need to be, and I'm the one that leaves because I'm unhappy because I'm not in controlling. That's a lot of what unfortunately drives that way. Are there some bad deals out there? Yeah, there are. That's where we look for deal killers very quickly, upfront, and what Doug had said about the culture, number one thing we look for is culture in the deal is if that doesn't work, these people don't want to buy a farm and then have a fall apart because the culture didn't work. They spent a lot of money buying that firm. They don't want to lose that investment.
Dan Hood (05:53):
Well, and staff is, I mean, what if that's a huge consideration we hear about for these deals that people are constantly, they're want firms that have a strong staff because everybody's got plenty of work. It's finding the bodies and the capacity to do the work. So alright, so we'll level set a little bit, right? We're not seeing layoffs from private equity firms covered in, we're not seeing mass departures, but we are seeing some departures. But Bob, you're suggesting that those are just sort of natural that's going to happen in an m and a deal. People are going to leave because the firm is changing or because they went from being, as you said, an a B player to a c and D player in a larger organization.
Bob Lewis (06:32):
Dan, even think about a hundred hundred percent firm with just a 10% turnover rate in this industry. That's not crazy. That's 10 people. That's at least once a month, somebody's leaving. That's just natural. And you get a two, 300 person firm, you got people leaving just naturally for other jobs and moving whenever retiring. It's just part of the cycle.
Dan Hood (06:52):
Gotcha. Doug, you had talked a little bit about the sort of next generation of leadership and how they're taken. I want to dive a little bit more deeply into that. And I think because we do hear for our, and again, it's a great distinction between there are good acquirers, not so great acquirers, but when we talk to some of the great acquirers, one of the things they talk about, particularly for PE firms is that they're very serious about making sure that the older partners that they're making the deal with are thinking about their younger professionals as they put together all the terms and as they think about how they're going to act going forward, how do we see all this change impacting younger professionals, maybe dive a little bit more deeply into their career paths, how they're changing? Are they getting better, are they getting worse?
Doug Lewis (07:34):
Are you sure you don't want Bob to handle the younger professional question that seems more
Bob Lewis (07:39):
Let Bob know any younger professional off of this?
Doug Lewis (07:41):
It seems more ally. No. So with anything it, it's a mixed bag, right? You're going to have some people that absolutely hate it, regardless of how phenomenal the opportunity might be. You're going to have some people that absolutely love it regardless of how terrible the opportunity might be. So more often than not, we're seeing younger professionals get so much more opportunity in a post deal environment. And again, I'm not strictly on private equity here. Private equity is making a lot of noise, but there are a lot of traditional independent firms who are making acquisitions, merging firms up into them that are creating significantly, I'll call it deeper and larger opportunities for the next generation of leadership. Because with the economies of scales after these deals are done, there are so many more service lines. There are so many more clients that are upscaled that these professionals are getting exposure to and leadership mentoring. So there's all these different opportunities and I think the way that I look at it is historically across any business, the accounting sector included, the cream always rises to the top. The best professionals always rise through the ranks. And with all of this consolidation we're seeing with all these transactions, it's the exact same thing. It's just been expedited more ever before. So now a lot of these A and B level performers, they're getting so much more opportunity at a faster rate than we've ever seen before.
Dan Hood (09:05):
Gotcha. They're on a bigger stage, more chance to shine. But also it sounds like acquirers particularly are looking more for them, right? Paying attention to them, trying to make sure that they get the chances that they deserve a little more quickly.
Doug Lewis (09:18):
Of course, because we've talked about it already, there's still a talent shortage in this profession. I know we're making an effort to fix that, but it's still there. It's still existing. So these acquirers out there, regardless of who they are, they want to keep the best people happy. They want these performers to continue to grow the firm and they're going to do everything they can to give them the resources and ability and opportunity to do so.
Dan Hood (09:42):
I want to pivot a little bit away from the individual experience, particularly the young person's experience and more about the broader firm experience of these deals. And it's just always been the case for any kind of acquisition regardless to whether it was traditional or PE driven. But there's also always a concern that this is going to change everything about how we do or a business is going to change. There are some specific concerns I think for private equity because they say, well, they're only hearing about the bottom line. They don't care about our integrity or our client service or our public service role. They're all about bottom line. So there's some specific concerns about how PE might come in and change the way a firm operates, but there's always been with m and a concern about what this is going to mean for the way we work. Are we seeing private equity change the way firms operate? Sorry, Bob, I meant to throw that to
Bob Lewis (10:32):
Bob. So here, absolutely not. So let's lay this out really easily. I'm going to go out and spend a ton of money as a private equity firm to acquire the Dan Hood accounting organization. By the way, you've got an accounting group. If you didn't know it, I'm going to spend a bunch of money to do this, then I'm going to come in, I'm going to change how you do tax, audit and accounting so we can get sanctioned as an organization and that can damage the investment I've made. So first of all, they don't really know how to do accounting auditor tax. That's not what they want to do, nor do they want to do it. But what they're changing is not how the work is done, what they're changing, how the work is efficiently done. Automation, resources, services, able to hire more, take care of the recruiting. That's what they're bringing to the table. They're centralizing the admin function, they're centralizing support function, and the lay firms do what they do best, which is go out and service clients, sell new clients, take care of all the regulatory stuff and move on. It actually works against them to go in and tell you how to do a tax return. It defeats the purpose of why they want to go in and even acquire a firm. So
Dan Hood (11:40):
There's a lot more to dive into. I do want to take this section of the episode with a quick question for both of you, just to get both of your thoughts on this. And it's basically, I think for a lot of people, they look at all these deals and they go, they feel like m and a is a problem. It creates more problems for the profession than it solves, particularly with private equity. It brings all these external actors who may not understand the profession and see it from the inside the way the CPAs do to get both of your senses of much. One, how much that's a feeling abroad that all these deals are a problem for us. And two, what's the reality? How much of a problem is it? How much of an issue is it, Doug? I dunno if you want to jump in on that one first.
Doug Lewis (12:22):
So I'll play devil's advocate. I think it is a problem, Dan, but I think it's really only a problem for those firms who are grasping onto the old way of doing things. I mean, you can fight this tidal wave of m and a activity, you can do it. And there are firms doing it out there. We know many of them that we respect how they're operating or you can lean into it. I think there's a big difference in how you view this thing based on the size of your firm as well, because we're finding that the mid and large cap firms across the profession where the majority of activities really taking place are finding it almost impossible to continue to compete on their own. Now these small firms and is small, is very relative. So we don't have to actually put a number on it, but these smaller firms out there in the marketplace, I think they're viewing it more as a problem than the mid and large size firms because it's threatening their way of business. It's threatening how they want to do things because as these larger firms continue to consolidate and can invest heavily more in artificial intelligence tools and other technological processes, they can start driving down fee pressure into these lower firms. So I think it's a problem based on how you view it, but most of the time the people who view it as a problem are the ones who are holding onto the old way of doing things, the old way of running firms, the old way of growth.
Dan Hood (13:48):
Gotcha. So essentially it's inescapable, but it doesn't mean it has to be a problem. It's only a problem if you try to escape it,
Doug Lewis (13:54):
Pretty much nailing the head there, which is rare for you, but you got it.
Dan Hood (13:59):
One right there. One, right? I can barely put two words in a row together myself, but on a normal day, but once in a while I hit Bob, want to be you a problem or
Bob Lewis (14:08):
Not? Well look at it this way. Is it to better be stuck in a firm that can't grow, doesn't have the resources and is have an aging leadership with no defined career path? Or is it good to move into an organization that actually can offer the things like in a pyramid type format? I look at it this way, think of a box and a pyramid. If you're in a small box, you could be the top, you hit the top of the box, you're there, but you can't get any bigger. If you go into the pyramid, you've got a ton of opportunity here. The problem is for many firms, the reality is there is no other option. And it's a matter of when they get to it, it's survival for them. And we have to go back to the fact that the average baby boomer is, I think 68 now. They own most of these companies. There's transition occurring, but those average baby boomers can't find enough younger generation beneath them that want to buy them out, and it just continues to spiral. If I were running a 20, 30, 40 person firm, I'd be concerned about the other 39 people in my firm and what they're going to do if I can't manage to find a way to transition it. And I think that's what a lot of people are facing now. We are just flooded. What calls some firms I just
Dan Hood (15:22):
Flooded, right? Well, so many of 'em have had said for years, well, I don't really need to plan this. It'll happen naturally when I get to 60, 65, whatever. And now they're discovering that it doesn't and that they haven't prepared anything. They haven't prepared for staying the same. They haven't really prepared for changing. So you can see a lot of them running up against that clock, as you say, turn in 68. Alright, we're going to take a quick break and then we'll be back. And we're back with Bob Lewis and Doug Lewis from the Visionary Group talking about the state of play at m and a and how it's affecting firms. We've gone through, I think we've gone through and discarded a lot of myths about the way particularly PE is impacting the profession. I want to take a little bit broader step back, Bob. You've said that there are kind of three layers of m and a options for firms. We were talking about firms need to grapple with this. They can't just stay the same. What are those three layers?
Bob Lewis (16:20):
And they're very distinct, by the way. The people who are not familiar with it, they won't see it. But we've got a traditional firm, okay? A traditional firm is one that is not accepted in any kind of private equity backing or outside investment, and they're still operating. Some of these are very large firms. You can go to the top 20 and look at a few that are left top. Actually in the top 30, there aren't that many left anymore, but the ones that are up there, you can see them. Okay. And you can go all the way down the ladder to like a $5 million kind of firm that's operating on its own. That's layer one. Layer two is I was a traditional firm. I was $200 million, $300 million, and I accepted outside investment. I could be a million dollars, a billion dollars and accept that outside investment.
(17:01):
But those are traditional firms. Had infrastructure in place, took outside investment or now beefing up that infrastructure, going out and acquiring other firms. So that model's different than the traditional model. The third lane, the third one is the new one. That's what's been around for about three or four years now. I'm an independent private equity group. I'm acquiring Doug's business, Dan's businesses, everybody's business stringing together, creating a new firm out there that has an infrastructure to it, but it's more developing. They've got definitely more resources. So if I look at the chain, typically the resource pool in terms of financial private equity group is providing more money to be able to do more. So if I've got a firm and I think I can really grow it and pool with the other three or four firms out there, we create a huge infrastructure, but I'm creating more of that infrastructure.
(17:52):
I can move into that traditional firm with two private equity backing. I can dip into the private equity pool while going into an infrastructure firm, or it can go open into traditional firm. And there probably isn't as much cash in the transaction, although they're all adjusting how they do their models now, but it's different operating environments all the way across the board. And people don't understand that until we explain that to them in detail. And then we try and get them, they have three different looks so they can look at the three different options that are out in the market. That's the way we've been doing it.
Dan Hood (18:22):
Well, and each one is they're very different. And I think it's easy from the outside for people to be like, wow, it's all just deals. But they actually, each one comes with its own specifics and its own pluses and minuses. Doug, I would say this is going to impact deal structure. If you've got all these different options, there's going to be different deal structures to go along with 'em. How do you see deal structures changing in the profession?
Doug Lewis (18:45):
So historically, like you alluded to, this is the way I'm going to do it and it'll take care of itself at some point. Taking care of itself at some point was historically an internal succession for the most part. If it was an external deal, usually the structure was something like one times top line revenue paid out on retention over five 10. We've seen them stretch as long as 15 years, which
Bob Lewis (19:07):
Is absurd. Seen 15 years.
Doug Lewis (19:09):
Good luck finding that transaction in today's market. So we're seeing everybody shift to multiple of EBITDA now, the adjusted EBITDA firm, the profitability, which has historically how so many other sectors trade their businesses. Now what that multiple, but that is from a valuation standpoint, my god, we could probably do four or five hours just talking about the nuances there that we're seeing and different methodologies to go into. But everyone's starting to value these firms now on the profitability of the firm, which makes sense. We are seeing the valuations of the more profitable firms take a little bit higher than that traditional one times gross revenue. So there's again, a rule of thumb is they're still going to start every conversation at one times gross, and then we're going to adjust it up or down from there. But we are seeing a lot more cash in transactions, both private equity, these hybrid deals and the traditional m and a transactions going on between firms as well.
(20:04):
We're seeing some different stock purchase options as well built into deals. Now that's just kind of that traditional deal structure and how that is evolving or shifting. We're seeing a lot of interest now in alternative options too. So BDO and esop, they're not the only ESOP accounting firm in the country, but that conversation is becoming more popular to explore for firms. That methodology. Also IPOs. There's only one public accounting firm right now, currently today. This is, I won't say when these late April, late April is when we're recording this. There's only one publicly traded accounting firm right now in the us, but it's a stated goal of three of our top 300 firm clients have said they want to grow to a certain amount, certain revenue threshold that they're aggressively going after right now, and they plan to take it public now. We think that conversation is becoming much more commonplace as well. So it's not just are we buying? Are we merging? Are we selling? Should we be looking at an esop? Should we looking at it at an IPO should be looking at some different structure in a transaction that just isn't viewed as the historical way of doing things.
Dan Hood (21:13):
Yeah, the one hand it's confusing and there's a lot of choices and you've got to do a lot of thinking. And so on the other hand, the amount of options you have is, I mean, just in the past five years have exploded. I mean, technically ESOPs were around for a long time and there have been some firms that have been ESOPs for a long time. But I mean most of these ideas weren't things that firms thought they could do. So suddenly they have all these just so you start with a bunch of having to think about what you want and what's right for you and what's a good fit, and having a lot of different discussions about where you want to go. But one of the things that I was curious to think about this is when you're just doing based deals among accounting firms, internal successions, and it's all normal, your partnership agreement is your partnership agreement won't really get in the way much. But as you start looking at wildly different deal structures or wildly different corporate structures or organizational structures, if you're going to become an esop, you start running up against, I think some issues in your partnership agreement, how your partnership agreement is written and set up. Bob, is this becoming an issue at all where firms are like, Hey, we want to do this. And people are like, oh no, you can't do that, or you have to do it this way, or
Bob Lewis (22:23):
It's gotten interesting. Before I go there, add one point onto the question on the deal structures. There's another option to roll equity. So you're giving me cash, like a private equity transaction. I can choose not to take that cash or roll it back into equity into their organization. That's a big one. But the thing we really want to focus on, the value component deal structures. When we look at a deferred comp program, traditional deferred comp program versus how you could get one you could get for a firm if you sold on the outside, it's a pretty big discount involved. So there's a little bit of an emotional thing going on. But back to the partnership agreement. So this kind of fits right into it. So Dan, we've seen this already in the market more than once, which has got us kind of onto this, I call it handcuffs.
(23:10):
So here's the deal, Dan, you retire from our firm, okay? You go into your deferred comp program, but in the agreement it wrote in that if the firm does an m and a transaction sells, merges, whatever, A, you could immediately get full payment for your deferred comp instead of waiting over 10 years and or B, you've rewritten the partnership agreement so that whatever price that Doug and I sell it at, after you're gone, you now get that new valuation price. So the problem is, Doug and I are sitting there going, we need to figure how to make this firm work. The market's changed since you left three years ago. Okay? We do need to merge up for resources. We need an infrastructure. We can't compete, but we can't do it now because if I do that now, I have four of the partners that have retired that have got to change our entire comp structure on, and we can't afford to do that either.
(24:06):
And I got a problem, especially if the money is called to do upfront when the deal's done, because I may not be getting that cash in a merger. There's maybe no cash at all involved. So the handcuffs are getting put on some of these firms, and I get why some of the exiting partners are trying to do that because they're trying to capitalize on the markets that if the business goes up, they still get paid out later. But that is a huge problem we're starting to see in firms and people who write that into the partnership agreement are basically telling the next level of partners to come in. I would never sign that agreement because now I'm going to be handcuffed for the next 10 years going out with who's retired partners been. It's something I never saw coming. It's interesting though.
Dan Hood (24:46):
Well, given the amount of the depth with which most got for partners, pay attention to their partnership agreement, it's probably going to surprise a lot more firms than they may think. I mean, most of those sit on the shelves and gather a lot of dust and who knows what's in 'em. So worth dusting it off before you do anything in terms of considering a deal, as Doug said, we can talk for four to five
Doug Lewis (25:09):
Before you move on from the partnership agreement comment, I want to hit number one. It's holding up poorly. Let's just start the conversation there. Like Bob kind of alluded to, and you just said something interesting too, it's been sitting on the shelf collecting dust, nobody even knows what's in there. It is shockingly more common than you would imagine for firms during a transaction to go. We have two different versions of our partnership agreement.
Dan Hood (25:32):
Oh cow, that's than
Doug Lewis (25:33):
I. And they're all executed.
Dan Hood (25:35):
Yeah,
Doug Lewis (25:37):
We have two different versions that state different things, and I wish I was making that up, or it was a one time or an oddball thing that happens far more than anybody would imagine.
Dan Hood (25:47):
Wow, wait a minute, I've got this second constitution here. It's different. That's terrifying. But why don't point a perfect example of why we could spend, as you said, another seven to eight hours discussing this because things are changing in real time. While we've talked, probably things have changed, new deal structures have come up, but we unfortunately can't spend more time on it now. So I do want to wrap up. I want to get to any final thoughts as people go out and look at this new landscape and this ever-changing landscape. Doug, maybe you can go first. Any final thoughts for people to take away as they go out into the world and try to figure out their next steps?
Doug Lewis (26:25):
Sure. I mean, I would say, this is going to sound a little cliche, but I mean run your own race as a firm. We do a lot of m and a transactions here. That's not our whole business. We're actually big fans of firms remaining independent if they can do it and make that conscious decision. So we've all these different programs, this whole Build to evolve program, which helps firms figure out which path makes sense for them, whether it's remaining independent looking to sell and merge upward, looking at outside investment or pulling off that internal succession. So there's all these different paths, but ultimately every firm is going to have this unique story to tell and it's really just figuring out what it is. And just to put a bigger picture on that, I'm looking at, it just happens to be up in front of me right now in an upcoming presentation we put together are trailing 12 months of m and a deals that we did. So I'm looking at 'em right now. We have 22 transactions on there ranging from a million 0.2 to 26.5 million. Alright? Now, of those 22 transactions we did, only three of them were private equity deals.
Bob Lewis (27:25):
Six
Doug Lewis (27:25):
Of them were private equity backed deals, and the rest were traditional firm to firm deals. So we're not the guys there to come up here and jam a specific thing down to firm's throat saying, oh, you need to do this and this is the only path for you. We like to present every single option, walk down every path with these firms and figure out what makes sense for their specific situation. I think that's an important thing to note when you are speaking to consultants, advisors, other firms, friends, industry people about what's going to make sense for your firm.
Dan Hood (27:53):
As you say, there's a huge range of opportunities and options, so don't let anyone pass you by without giving it a look. Bob, how about you, Heidi? Any final thoughts?
Bob Lewis (28:05):
Final comments is change is really emotional. Everybody, first, knee jerk reacts if you want to remain independent, which again, we have a whole process for that and are big believers in trying to remain independent stress test your succession plan, that's your first going to be sign of problems and holes. And the other part is this whole thing about merging upward in private equity because of some of the myths out there of what they think happens. There's a lot of fear that creeps into the process. This is my baby. I don't want to watch my baby get handed off to whoever. The other part though is at some point you don't want your baby to be the 30 5-year-old unemployed adult living in your basement, which is what can happen if you don't adapt and change. So throwing that out there, but
Dan Hood (28:55):
Don't have that
Bob Lewis (28:56):
Situation. All my children actually have homes and live on their own, so that's a good
Dan Hood (29:00):
Thing. Yeah, their concern is that you're going to end up in their basement.
Bob Lewis (29:03):
Yeah, maybe
Doug Lewis (29:04):
Possible,
Dan Hood (29:06):
But yeah. But hitting
Doug Lewis (29:08):
Too close to home now, it's
Dan Hood (29:10):
Just a concern. Now
Doug Lewis (29:11):
Hot in here.
Dan Hood (29:13):
No, but as you said, you can't not change. You have to grapple with it. And getting through those emotional elements of it are important. Well, as we said, we will come back every, we'll meet what every two to three hours to update this conversation because it's changing so rapidly. But for the moment, Bob and Doug, thank you so much for both of you for joining us, the Visionary Group, and thank you all for listening.
Doug Lewis (29:39):
Thanks, Dan, appreciate it. Thanks for having us, Dan.
Dan Hood (29:42):
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