Conference call. For those that are unfamiliar, BuildDirect trades on the TSXV under the ticker BILD. My name is Prit Singh, and I will be the moderator for today's call. Before we begin, I would like to note that some of the comments today will contain forward-looking information and statements under applicable securities law that reflect management's current views with respect to future events. Any such information and statements are subject to risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking information and statements. Please refer to the various materials the company has filed with Canadian securities regulators for a broader description of operational and risk factors that could affect the company's performance. In addition, please note that all dollar amounts mentioned in this presentation are in U.S. dollars unless otherwise stated.
On today's call, we will be covering BuildDirect's Q4 and full year 2024 financial and operational highlights, as well as its growth outlook for 2025. Following comments from BuildDirect's management team, the call will be open for questions. Questions can be sent using the Zoom Q&A function at the bottom of your screen. If you are calling in to listen to the webinar today, you can alternatively email us your questions directly to ir@builddirect.com. Again, that is ir@builddirect.com. Our presenters today will be the CEO of BuildDirect, Shawn Wilson, and CFO of BuildDirect, Kerry Biggs. I will now turn the conference call over to Shawn Wilson.
Thanks, Prit. For those joining us for the first time, BuildDirect's the leading North America flooring retailer, and we're expanding our footprint through both organic and acquisition of profitable brick-and-mortar locations, and we call those procenters. Our strategy targets consolidation within the $90 billion North America flooring market by creating a strong platform for project expansion and also unlocking opportunities in adjacent categories with a combined TAM of well over $200 billion. Turning to our financial performance, Kerry will walk through the details shortly, but a few top-line highlights for the full year. For 12 months ended December 31, we generated approximately $65.5 million in revenue with a gross margin of 38.7%, and adjusted EBITDA came in at $2.2 million. The $90 billion North America flooring market represents a meaningful consolidation opportunity, especially with 73% of the market served by independent floor covering stores and contractors.
Many of these are smaller, locally operated businesses navigating challenges like succession planning, rising operating costs, and access to capital, which really creates a strong pipeline for strategic acquisitions and market share. At the same time, the continued rise of online flooring and also increasing collaboration with home improvement retailers presents additional paths for expansion, customer acquisition, and also innovation. It is a very ripe market. With a quick overview of our business model, we blend brick-and-mortar with e-commerce. Our procenters are designed to serve professional contractors. They simplify the buying process, reduce costs, and deliver value by sourcing directly from manufacturers and offering fast local service. Simply stated, we lease light industrial spaces in strategic locations to house inventory, showrooms, and order desks, creating a one-stop shop for pros. These procenters also support our e-commerce operations by reducing third-party logistics and shipping costs, which is fantastic, very important.
With over 20 years of experience online, our e-commerce platform offers thousands of products, free samples, and expert phone support and home delivery. As we expand, we are replacing our third-party warehouses with procenters to improve efficiency and control. This model really allows us to enter new markets quickly, delivering a better customer experience and building lasting relationships with contractors. To date, we have a total of nine procenter locations across North America, plus our Vancouver e-commerce location, so a total of 10 locations together. We intend on expanding our physical footprint in the U.S. and also in Canada. Looking ahead, our strategy for growth is clear: start digital, validate demand, then expand physically through our procenter network. This deliberate, data-driven progression from e-commerce to brick-and-mortar is really what sets us apart.
We begin our e-commerce platform to test markets quickly and efficiently without the cost of physical infrastructure by shipping in from out of market. Then leveraging our data, customer insights, so on and so forth, we identify high potential markets for demand, product interests, and also contractor activity aligned. Once validated, we move on the ground by launching a procenter, either buying or building. This flexible approach allows us to scale efficiently based on our preference on ROI and also local dynamics. After opening, we focus on building local strength, adding products, services. Our teams drive contractor relationships, repeat business, and we are viable install services for our focus is on material for the most part. Finally, we optimize by scaling our private label products. Private labels are huge for the flooring industry, improving logistics and integrating acquisitions quickly to strengthen the platform and deepen our market control.
In short, our commerce to procenter model is scalable, repeatable, and capital efficient. It's a core pillar of our strategy and a key engine of driving long-term value creation. Next, let's walk through our expansion strategy, which follows the Build and Buy approach. Starting with Build, this involves opening new procenters in strategic markets, especially where we've already established our e-commerce presence. We're focused on clustering in key metro areas. Think of like Los Angeles, Dallas, Atlanta, these major markets, and then really leveraging our inventory across the network there. On the buy side, we target acquisitions if it's a pro-focused B2B flooring retailer who very often buys from mid-market distribution and focuses on the other pro customer. These deals help us accelerate customer acquisition on the pro side and also quickly convert locations to our operating model.
We highly prioritize capital-efficient transactions, primarily inventory-based with a minimum goodwill and focus on optimizing these businesses through procurement, really first and foremost, and also marketing synergies. Both strategies are supported by our centralized services here in Vancouver across procurement, marketing, e-commerce, and IT, which now allows scalable and efficient growth. With that, I'll turn it over to Kerry for a deeper look at our Q4 and full 2024 performance.
Great. Thanks, Shawn. Overall, I am very pleased with the progress realized in Q4 as well as the full year of 2024. Just looking at Q4 2024 financial performance, that is the three months ended December 31, 2024. The key highlights are summarized here on slide 11, which I will quickly go over now. As my discussion furthers, I will go into more detail on each of these areas. On the far right of the table, you see that revenue was approximately $16.7 million for the quarter ended December 31, 2024, compared to $16.9 million in the same quarter of last year. That is the far left part of the table here.
Looking at the middle bar, gross profit was $6.6 million with a 39.2% gross margin for Q4 of 2024, compared to $6 million and a 35.2% gross margin in the same quarter of last year. An increase of nearly $600,000 in gross profit from the prior year's comparable quarter. Operating expenses were $7 million for Q4 of 2024, compared to $6.7 million in Q4 of 2023, up slightly around $300,000. Adjusted EBITDA was approximately $376,000 for the quarter ended December 31, 2024, compared to approximately $73,000 in the same quarter of the prior year. An increase of $300,000 of EBITDA compared to the prior comparable period. Working capital was $2.7 million at December 31 of 2024, in line with the same period last year. It was around $2.8 million, down approximately $100,000.
Moving on to slide 12 here, which outlines the quarterly and annual income statement or P&L trends. I'll really focus on Q4 of 2024 and the full year 2024 with comparisons of Q4 and full year 2023. On the revenue side, as I just noted, revenue for the quarter was $16.7 million versus $16.9 million in the prior quarter. Looking at it on a segmented basis, BuildDirect.com or the e-commerce segment revenue for Q4 of 2024 was $4.2 million. That was up $406,000 or close to 11% from $3.8 million in Q4 of 2023. Strong momentum. The increase can be attributed to the company's strategic investment into core inventory products, with the product mix shifting to our higher margin direct source products for that segment.
On the retailer segment, also known as it called bricks and mortar or the procenter, its revenue for the quarter was $12.5 million, down $600,000 or 4.6% from $13.1 million in Q4 of 2023, mainly a result of softness in home remodeling and new construction activity. For the full year, consolidated revenue, as Shawn noted, was $65.5 million compared to $72.3 million in 2023. That is a decrease of $6.8 million or 9.4%. Again, looking at it on a segmented basis, for the e-commerce segment, revenue for the year was $15.2 million, down $4.5 million or 23% from 2023. This decrease can be attributed to the company's purposeful scale down of its e-commerce operations earlier in the year to replatform and concentrate on both higher margin products and higher margin regions and postal codes.
On the bricks and mortar procenter segment, revenue was $50.2 million for the year, down $2.3 million or 4.3% year over year for the reasons just previously noted, softness in home remodeling and new construction activity. Onto gross profit. Q4 gross profit increased by $605,000 or 10%, up to $6.6 million from $6 million in the prior quarter. As I've noted, gross margin was 39.2% versus 35.2% in the prior year quarter. Full year gross profit was $25.3 million, down $2.5 million or 9% compared to $27.8 million in 2023, mainly driven by the revenue decline. Despite this revenue decline, gross margin improved slightly, 38.7%, up from 38.5%. The e-com margin rose to 52.1%, while the retailer segment delivered an approximately 34.7% margin. Onto operating expenses. For Q4, operating expenses totaled $7 million, up 3.8% from $6.7 million in Q4 of 2023.
Increase was primarily due to higher selling and marketing expenses, notably pay per click advertising and some payment processing, higher admin and R&D costs as well. For the full year, operating expenses decreased by $2.3 million or 8% to $26.3 million compared to $28.6 million in 2023. Fulfillment costs declined with lower revenue, and admin costs benefited from operational streamlining throughout the year. R&D and depreciation expense also declined year over year. We subsequently announced further operational efficiencies, cost-cutting measures in a March 2025 press release that will save us approximately $600,000 of expenses in 2025 alone. Annualizing this, we expect around $900,000 of ongoing operating expense savings. On EBITDA, so adjusted EBITDA, as Shawn noted earlier, we achieved another positive quarter of adjusted EBITDA in Q4 of 2024, reporting $376,000 of adjusted EBITDA, up $300,000 from Q4 of 2023.
For the full year, adjusted EBITDA was $2.2 million compared to $3.6 million in the prior year. Again, overall, we're happy with this fiscal 2024 adjusted EBITDA in light of the $6.8 million decline in sales in fiscal 2024 versus 2023. Moving forward with the continued focus on operational efficiencies, the announced cost-cutting savings, the Anchor and Yorkshire asset purchase, we're confident of positive trending adjusted EBITDA levels moving forward. Next slide. Quick balance sheet summary. Overall, I'm pleased to report strong position as at December 31. Our current assets are approximately $16.9 million. Our current liabilities are approximately $14.2 million at year-end. That gives us a current ratio of around 1.2 times. Our current assets exceed our current liabilities by $2.7 million. This $2.7 million is referred to as our working capital position.
Cash position at the end of the year was $2.4 million, in line with the prior quarter, Q3 of 2024, which was $2.6 million, and the year-end 2023 balance of cash, which was $2.6 million. Finally, I'll just quickly go over our cash flow statement on slide 14 here. A couple of highlights to kind of note. Cash from operating activities was $2.2 million, down $1.8 million from $4 million in 2023, including working capital or non-cash working capital changes. Cash from ops was $2 million, down $1.3 million from 2023. Cash from investing activities for the full year was $41,000 or $182,000 lower than the prior year. Cash used in financing activities for the year was $2.5 million for the full year of 2024, or a $3.3 million positive variance versus the $5.8 million of cash used for financing activities for the full year of 2023.
This concludes my overview of the financials for Q4 in the full year of 2024. Looking ahead, we remain focused on enhancing profitability across all business segments through discipline and cost management, including those recently announced cost-saving initiatives. We aim to expand our brick-and-mortar footprint, ensure profitability and efficiency for our high-margin e-com platform, and we continue to drive operational efficiencies to support long-term growth in shareholder value. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Shawn, who will go over some of our operational highlights.
On that, thanks, Kerry. Sorry, I was on mute. We have continued to strengthen our e-commerce platform this year. As demand grows, we have increased inventory to really support faster fulfillment. On the marketing side, our focus on pro customers continues to pay off. We are acquiring them more efficiently, driving better traffic, and also with improved margins. On the physical front, which is a huge part of our story, we had a lot of progress with our build model. First in Richmond, BC, we refined our prototype for what the built procenter looks like, which gave us great insights into how to improve the scale and operations, ramp up, things like that. Additionally, we have opened up a new procenter in Brighton, Michigan, which is another good market and good step.
We're evaluating other markets across North America for procenter openings, really trying to make sure we're positioned to serve growing demand from both professional and also contract customer. On the buy side, we're actively pursuing M&A opportunities really to accelerate that expansion. For us, spending time developing integration playbooks, making sure we can bring them into the fold seamlessly and efficiently was pretty important. Also assessing different financing options that align with our broader investment strategy, really making sure capital allocation remains disciplined and effective as we continue to expand. On the corp dev side, we've made great progress by establishing an M&A team, also setting up dedicated business workflows to drive growth through the acquisitions, like really leveraging the most important synergies. Alongside this, we've improved our operational integration models on how that will all work together, which helps us achieve further cost savings.
Looking ahead, we're pretty excited about the opportunities we see to continue scaling both our digital and physical footprints and driving strong returns for our shareholders. Okay, turning to more recent events. On March 27th, we announced the acquisition of the flooring assets for Anchor and Yorkshire for $593,000. This move was a great step in our procenter expansion and also helps kind of model out how we think about acquisitions. Earlier in the month, on March 10th, we expanded our physical footprint by opening a new procenter in California, Santa Fe Springs. This facility is designed to function as a regional hub, offering high-quality products along with efficient logistics services for our e-commerce business. We expect this initiative to reduce distribution costs and significantly improve service levels for our customers in that market.
In line with our ongoing focus on efficiency, we also implemented key platform streamlining, as we talked about here a few moments ago on March 7. These generate approximately, as Kerry mentioned, about $900,000 in annualized savings. For us, really having a disciplined focus on our core platform, cost and services is a really important part of our story and how we think about allocating our capital towards investments. On the acquisition side, as noted, the acquisition of Anchor and Yorkshire, they're both well-established flooring companies that were combined in Orlando. This was valued at $593,000 or approximately about one times EBITDA. It marks a significant step towards expanding our procenters. We established relationships with the local builders and contractors through the acquisition, well-stocked inventory, and also proven operational expertise. Fantastic team. Great team who's there.
For the year-ended December 31, 2024, their unaudited revenue was around $5.8 million and EBITDA of $661,000, which really speaks to how great of a buy that location was. It is strategically placed in our procenter expansion plan. Florida is a key market for us. The Southeast is a great market for us, especially with e-commerce. We can intuitively handle fulfillment from that procenter like we do with our other ones for both local orders, contractors, customers, and also our e-commerce business. Regarding 2025, as we look ahead, our focus remains on disciplined expansion, especially with our procenter network. We are committing to scaling this network across key regions to ensure we continue to meet the needs of pro customers while driving growth.
One of the other initiatives for this year is continuing to unlock operating leverage across our platform, especially around procurement and also a bit on the marketing side. This includes both building, acquiring new locations, and really continuing down our growth path throughout North America. Lastly, we're focused on driving EBITDA growth by continuing to optimize our operations and running very efficient operations. We're confident we'll be able to achieve sustainable and profitable growth while also being able to invest in growth initiatives.
Okay, Fred, back to you.
Thanks, Shawn. Thank you, Kerry. Thank you for all our attendees. We will now begin the Q&A session of the presentation. As a reminder to our viewers, questions can be submitted using the Zoom Q&A function at the bottom of your screen. Alternatively, you can email us directly at ir@builddirect.com. That's ir@builddirect.com. First question. Given your better performance, are suppliers now more willing to provide inventory on consignment? Follow up to that, what's the typical timeline for integrating a new acquisition? And can we expect more acquisitions this year? That's two questions.
Yeah, yeah. I think I'll take a stab at both those. Then, Kerry, any thoughts you can add on? I would say the short answer is yes. With all the, even before the more recent noise around tariffs, there's been a lot of excess capacity in the flooring industry, particularly around hard surface products like vinyl plank, laminate, so on and so forth. A lot of excess capacity due to a variety of factors. We have a lot of options. We've had them for quite a while. We're, I think, pretty strategic on sourcing from different places, different companies to help keep healthy competition up on the supplier side. With that excess capacity, buying on kind of more liberal terms, whether it be really extended terms or consignment, things like that, are definitely out there and things that you can leverage.
I don't see that going away really anytime soon. Interestingly, typically a lot of industries, when you have a glut of excess supply, it drives cost down or price down. That's just not something that's very common in the flooring industry. It hasn't been really my entire 20-year career. Pricing in the flooring industry is very inelastic. It's more about narrative, how it looks, feel, story, brand, kind of things like that. It's a pretty good dynamic to have if you are on our side of the business. On the second part, Fred, do you mind recapping the question again?
Sure. What's the typical timeline for integrating a new acquisition? Can we expect more acquisitions this year?
Yeah. I would say even before integration, I'll kind of first off state, for us, having an M&A pipeline has been a focus for a while. Having the right facilities and teams to be able to execute those has also been important, especially the facilities, like the Royal Bank facility that the team got put in place as a first step of a few steps, was really important, right? Because we're looking for businesses, and we like to buy assets, not intangibles. That's a great way of being able to do it. I would say kind of first and foremost, look, you can meet a company and come to an agreement relatively fast, but for the most part, we like to really do our due diligence and get to know the team, the customers, the market, so on and so forth.
Because for us, it's really about the people. The people are the most important part because they have the relationships with the local contractors and their pro customers. We tend to like the BuildDirect brand better. Our procurement, we're very aggressive. It's very odd to find a company you can acquire that has an edge there. Very rare. For us, when we're doing an integration, a big part of it is that, making sure it's a good fit for both sides. From there, of course, making sure you can do a deal that's effectively based on the assets. We're going to come in and we're going to, over the course of, let's say, around 60 days from start to finish, to answer the question more directly, we come in and effectively put in our systems process.
Then also start layering on product and work through the procurement synergies first. For us, the most important thing is to capture their procurement synergy, which means locking down the pricing side and then being able to lower cost. We lock that pricing side down because you want to capture that synergy. As I mentioned before, the market's not super price-sensitive, and you do not want to just lower cost and lower price. For us, that's really the main focus for the first two months.
Okay. Thank you. How do you feel about the growth in the e-commerce side of the business heading into 2025?
Being that it's April, I'd say I feel pretty great. We had a lot of work we put into the business over the last couple of years, which I won't get into really here because we provide that info kind of previously, but definitely have found our groove for that business. Have a great team who runs that operation. It's just increasingly getting more and more connected with our procenters for fulfillment. Yeah, definitely very happy, content, and bullish on what that business could really do. We're at this point still even online. Our demand generation primarily targets professional customers. The website is set up to accommodate both a pro and also a homeowner. On the demand gen side, it's geared towards as far as how we do our search campaigns, things like that around that customer.
I would say mission accomplished on getting that model in a good spot. At this point now, it's just letting it run. The same way we pulled it back before, let's do the opposite now. That's kind of our thought process.
Okay. Thank you. Next question. Adjusted EBITDA declined year over year. Can you walk us through what's driving that and how you're addressing it in 2025?
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Definitely to plan. Kerry, you want to take that question?
Yeah, sure. Yeah. As we kind of noted, fiscal 2024, adjusted EBITDA was $2.2 million, down from $3.6 million in 2023. Again, the majority of that decline is the sales and revenue that we've noted and ultimately the strategic scale down of e-commerce that we just talked about, right? Sales was driving the majority of that decline, especially on the e-commerce front. The modest decline on the retailer side, the procenter side had a minor impact as well. Sales really are the key driver there. We had some minor investment in sales and marketing as well later in Q4 2024, which I think we're optimistic that those expenses are investments in the longer term. I think looking ahead into 2025, we're actively addressing EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA, obviously scaling our procenters, opening and optimizing Richmond and Brighton and the new Santa Fe store.
Obviously, we have targeted acquisitions like we talked about. We'll be able to support positive EBITDA with Anchor and Yorkshire. Obviously, tight cost discipline. I'm pretty focused on budgeting and forecasting. In 2024, we reduced OpEx by $2.3 million. Obviously, with some of the things we've announced, we've locked in further savings of $600,000 this year and $900,000 annualized moving forward. Yeah, obviously, focusing on EBITDA expansion is key. Our entire strategy from product mix to footprint expansion is centered on profitable, capital-efficient growth that enhances adjusted EBITDA moving forward.
Yeah. I would say the one thing I would add to that would be, and this is coming from both observations of some competitors where you can find their info, and then also from our M&A pipeline on some things we kind of see. For example, Kerry mentioned expenses we believe will turn into long-term assets. For flooring, you have a lot of, not a lot, sorry, but a meaningful amount of sample costs or other set of things like that. We find some companies have different approaches to how they look at those startup costs. We tend to be a bit more on the conservative side. Just flushing through on expenses and not building up, just we're pretty conservative when it comes to that.
Just to clarify, Kerry, I think what you're kind of referring to there is how other companies.
Yeah. We have a lot of those investment costs upfront. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. 100%. Which also helps keep Kerry's tough. He's the sheriff in town, right? We are very tight there. Stuff we do, we're going to flush it through on the expense side, helps keep team alignment for sure as well. We are a big fan of that type of management structure and practice.
Okay. Thank you. Next question. Can you elaborate on the company's current cash position and how you're managing liquidity given upcoming expansion plans?
Yeah, Kerry.
Yeah. Yeah. Sure. December 31st, as everyone's seen, we had $2.3 million of cash on hand and $2.7 million of working capital. Strong position. As we've announced, we did secure a CAD 9.5 million revolving credit facility or a line of credit from the Royal Bank. That's a big feather in BuildDirect's cap, having a cash flow lender come on board here, a tier one Canadian bank. That really enhances our financial flexibility moving forward. We're excited on that. As it relates to expansion plans, obviously, our strategy is tightly aligned with working capital discipline and expected EBITDA contributions from each of the new procenters. As Shawn has kind of elaborated, we take a fairly measured return-driven approach to our growth with a strong focus on cost control.
Overall, we expect to remain cash neutral to positive in 2025, even after covering all our fixed charges, including interest, cash interest, principal, and lease payments. Operationally, we're in a very strong position. This reflects both the structural improvements we've made in our cost base as well as the capital structure improvements in the de-risking that occurred really over the last 12 to 18 months on the debt side. I think we're in a very strong position as we enter 2025 here.
Okay. Great. Next question. Two-part question. How should investors think about the impact of the current tariff situation on your business? A follow-up to that, and I'll repeat it again. Is the current tariff situation actually a catalyst for a potential M&A?
Yeah. That's interesting. I would say kind of first and foremost, with the flooring industry, for the most part, about a third of our revenue is carpet. That's mostly made domestically in the Southeast. That's not impacted. On the hard surface front, we are in a pretty great position in that we don't have long-term supply contracts set with suppliers. We source from a variety of countries. We have flexibility there. We're very intentional about having backup suppliers in different places because it could be tariffs or it could be natural disasters. Stuff happens, right, in different parts of you have to have things covered. We don't believe that we'll lose any kind of competitive footing through all this at all. If anything, we'll pick up a bit of the competitiveness because of our flexibility in our supply chain.
I would say it's more of a something we're thoughtful of on the macro side, right? Flooring is a discretionary purchase, and so it does tend to fare well in kind of all cycles. If anything, that's more of what we're thinking about there. It's interesting on the M&A side. I'll add a little bit of color to this. It's not just that for a lot of these small businesses, great companies, great entrepreneurs, it's not just that things were running kind of normal and then all of a sudden they got more difficult with all that's happening. No. We have to go back a few years. First, we had COVID happen. We had this big nesting kind of phenomenon, people fixing up their homes and just doing a lot of renovation. The flooring industry did very well.
On top of that, small business did very well. Lots of government subsidies and programs, PPP, ERTC. You had just doing business was great for a lot of these businesses in those years. It got back to somewhat normal, which was oddly enough for a lot of these folks that we talked to, just getting back to normal was almost a bit painful or too painful in some cases. Now you have this that hits. You have a lot of, I'm sorry, not a lot, but most companies who do not have direct procurement, they are buying through distribution. The cost of switching products is expensive. It is risky, so on and so forth. We think overall we will fare pretty well. We do think it will accelerate the M&A pipeline. Also with that, we have to make sure we are diligent.
We tend to be a bit tougher on ourselves internally on types of deals that we view as being good and guiding value for the shareholder probably more than most. That is kind of how we think about those two things.
Okay. Thank you. For our attendees here, again, if you do have any questions, please submit them to the Zoom Q&A function at the bottom of your screen. Alternatively, if you're calling in today, you can email us at ir@builddirect.com. Just touching quickly on the debt on the balance sheet. Can you provide more specifics around that stack and then specifically the covenants?
Yeah, Kerry.
Yeah. I can do that. Yeah. At the end of the year, debt stood at approximately $11 million. $8.3 million of that is secured debt. I think I've noted in the past, just to kind of reiterate, that is friendly debt as provided by our three insider lenders, Lira, Pelicanus, and Beatty. Again, they're on our board as well as board. Again, extremely friendly. The other $2.2 million at the end of the year was a portion of the new Royal Bank credit facility and the remaining vendor take-back payments required for our Floor Source principals, again, who are running our Floor Source Michigan-based procenter operations. That will be paid off at the end of this year, early January.
Generally speaking, we're comfortable with our debt levels, particularly given that the insider-held secured debt requires no ongoing cash, interest, or principal payments, which significantly reduces the fixed cash obligations and enhances our near-term liquidity. From a debt perspective, I think we're extremely confident where we're at. As it relates to the covenants, yeah. Under the new credit facility with Royal Bank, we have two new covenants. We have a debt service covenant and a funded debt to EBITDA or debt to EBITDA covenant. From a debt to EBITDA covenant, it's three times. Again, it excludes subordinated debt to Royal Bank. Royal Bank has a secured position on everything. Effectively, it's measuring debt related to Royal Bank and some capital leases. Debt service is 1.2 times to 1, so minimum 1.2 times to 1.
At this point, we have significant room and flexibility around both those covenants. Nothing really to kind of note on that front.
Okay. Thank you. Looking ahead into 2025, what are the top three KPIs investors should be looking for this year?
Yeah. I would say for us, the majority of the known operational improvements on streamlining things like that, we've accomplished that for sure. I would say at this point, it's going to be more around our location-driven strategy. Building new locations, buying new locations, really things like that. We've been pretty intentional, I believe, in how we've structured our financials and talked about them also to help folks get a clear view of what our platform looks like as far as what it does and what it costs and what our operations look like and their financials also. From there, it's effectively a numbers game on the growth side. Of course, paying attention to how we structure deals. That's not the KPI question, but it's, in my mind, tied to it pretty closely.
I would say that's probably the biggest thing. On the margin side, that one's interesting. It takes time to fully take advantage of direct procurement when you acquire a business because it's a pro-focused business, which means they have samples out in the marketplace, and you can't just change it and then resend them out or find them all. It takes a bit of time to kind of work through. I would say we're not done yet on the GM side either. Hopefully, things hold up, and we'll see how the tariffs fare and so on and so forth. We still have opportunity there as well to take advantage of. I would say kind of first and foremost, it's more of a location-based strategy, and then modeling around that is probably what I'd be looking for along the way.
Okay. Thank you. I think that's it for questions. Before we wrap up the conference call, Shawn or Kerry, do you have any closing comments that you'd like to share with the audience?
Yeah. Kerry, yourself?
No, I'm great. I appreciate everyone coming on. Yeah, I look forward to meeting and chatting with you in the future. I appreciate it.
Yeah. Thanks for telling the story. It's been quite a journey, and we're just getting started. It's going to be a really fun time. I appreciate it. Yeah, we're pretty energized and excited. That's it. Thanks, Prit.
Thanks.
Thank you.
Thanks so much, Shawn and Kerry. Just a reminder to our viewers, today's earnings call will be uploaded onto BuildDirect's Investor Relations website. If we did not get to your question, please email us at ir@builddirect.com again. With that out of the way, I would like to thank everyone for joining the call today. Thank you.
Thanks.