Good afternoon, and thank you all for joining us. My name is William Shelmire. I'm an account manager at ThreePart Advisors, and I would like to introduce to you our next Midwest Ideas Conference presentation. Up next is Ascent Industries which trades on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol ACNT. Representing the company today is their President and CEO, Bryan Kitchen. Bryan?
Thanks. Good afternoon. I recognize everybody's had a long day, and I'm probably the only thing standing in the way of you and happy hour. Alongside of me, I've got Harshil Shah, who's our Vice President of Business Operations. What we'd like to do is just buzz through some slides and really use the majority of our time for Q&A, if that's okay. A headline for us has been we've been going through a period of transformation starting back in early 2024. I'll give you a little bit of the history here in a second. Ryan Kavalauskas, who's our Chief Financial Officer, and I have been together now for well over 10 years. Prior to joining Ascent, we worked at a company called Clearon. I was the President and CEO. Ryan was the CFO. The reason why that's relevant is because Clearon was an underperforming specialty chemical manufacturer.
At the time we moved in our roles, we were losing about $8 million of adjusted EBITDA. Fast forward four, four and a half years later, at the time of sale, we delivered about $36 million of adjusted EBITDA on a trailing 12 basis. All of that organic, none of that through M&A. That's really where we cut our teeth from a turnaround standpoint. A lot of blood, sweat, and tears along the way, but we've learned a few things through that process. We always said if we had the opportunity to do it again together, we would leverage in those learnings and make sure that we didn't repeat some of the things that we learned along the way. It's not just Ryan and I.
In fact, when moving into Ascent, I joined the company because what I saw was a company that had good bones in the specialty chemical space and that had plenty of growth runway. It just needed a cohesive strategy and really solid people. Back in early 2024, I received a phone call from the chairman of our board who said, "Just kidding, can you please take over the whole company?" Since that point in time, we've been putting the band back together. What I mean by that is we have reached back out to our network. We've pulled people that have come along the journey with us in the turnarounds, put that team in place. Last year, together, that team delivered pretty impressive turnaround results.
Last year, we delivered roughly a $19.9 million turnaround in adjusted EBITDA, a significant improvement, $20 million or so worth of gross margin improvements, and also delivered about $17 million worth of cash, or generated $17 million worth of cash. A lot of progress over the past year. The company's had a very long history, and not a lot of folks know who we are. We actually started off 75 years ago as a company called Blackman Euler. We started off as a specialty chemical company, but about 20 years into that journey, we got a little lost along our way, and we implemented a diversification strategy, meaning we decided to acquire some stainless steel assets. You've got stainless steel, you've got specialty chemicals, and we've had the stainless steel assets in our portfolio for many, many decades up until early 2025.
Earlier this year, we divested Bristol Metals, which was the largest stainless steel holding that we had in the portfolio for $45 million worth of proceeds. Back in July, we divested ASTI, which was the last remaining operational asset that we had in the stainless steel portfolio for $17 million. Today, operationally, we are a pure play specialty chemical company, period, full stop. We do have one last remaining non-operational asset that's inside of the tubular segment. It's a facility that's idle. It's been idle since August of 2023 in Munh all, Pennsylvania. It's about a $2.1 million EBITDA or cash drag on us, but we believe that by the end of the year, we will have that liability removed and off of our books. A lot of good work last year, standardizing, stabilizing, turning the company around, getting the right people on the bus.
We're heading in the right direction, and now we're really pivoting to growth. Our strategy and operations model is, our operating model is really all about being chemicals as a service. In many instances, you know, larger specialty chemical manufacturers, they focus in on making certain products. They focus in on doing it on a continuous basis, lowest cost to serve, and it's all about getting the pounds out the door. Where we found our sweet spot, because we are a batch manufacturer operating in three different facilities with different capabilities, is our ability to come alongside of customers and innovate technical solutions to meet their customer-specific requirements. We're really laser-focused in on four key segments: HI&I, which is, think of like cleaning applications, oil and gas, and water treatment. There's some natural overlap between the two, and then coatings, adhesives, sealants, and elastomers.
When you look at our business, back in 2023, roughly 90% of our business was top line was custom manufacturing. Customers would call us, but they would say, "Hey, we need you to make our products in your manufacturing assets." Not a lot of margin, not generally ratable, not predictable. Last year, one of the things that we did, in addition to stabilizing and reducing our cost structure, improving our cost structure, was to pivot more of our mix over to product sales. By the end of last year, we moved our mix from 90/10 to 75/25. You can see the margin profile over time reflect that change. We believe that there's really three kind of key things in terms of our areas of focus. Expanding and elevating our current capability, driving organic growth inside of our existing manufacturing assets. Today, we're about 50% utilized across our asset base.
That's both a blessing and a curse, right? The bad news is, we're grossly underutilized. The good news is, oh my gosh, we're grossly underutilized, and there's tremendous upside for us when we fill up those assets. We're also focusing on winning across the moment of matter. Moments that matter for us really mean coming alongside of our customers and innovating solutions to solve their customer-specific needs, because we find when we do that, that business, that relationship becomes much more sticky along the way. In addition to that, commercial and contracting being easy to do business with, delighting our customers through flawless manufacturing and fulfillment, and then last but not least, that ongoing service. The third leg of the stool is all around a creative M&A to bolster our value chain capabilities. We'll touch on a little bit more of that here in the future, in the coming slides.
When you think about Ascent t oday from an integrated capabilities perspective, we participate starting off with primary development. We develop products to solve our customers' problems, but we also customize our customers' products and participate all around from scale-up to regulatory needs to logistics and warehousing and the likes. Again, chemicals-as-a-service, we meet our customers where they want to be met and how they want to be met. From a business model standpoint, not only do we sell products, but we also have capabilities to do custom manufacturing, and we do a lot of that today, but also we have the capabilities to buy, build, and operate. In fact, we have two dedicated manufacturing facilities today that are customer-specific that we run specifically to support their requirements.
When you stack all of these solutions and business models up against, you know, traditional chemical manufacturers or toll manufacturers or distributors, we have the full breadth of capabilities to service their needs. In many instances today, small to mid-size companies, when they go knock on the door of larger manufacturing companies to ask them to help solve their problems, the doors are often shut because they're not large enough. They're not going to allocate resources, and they say, "Please go down the street to go talk to one of our distributors." They go knock on the distributor's door. The distributors, they don't have the competencies or the capabilities to innovate technical solutions. We found a really nice sweet spot where we can come alongside of them. We can innovate technical solutions.
We can develop IP along the way, make that relationship more sticky, and then extract the appropriate margin for those goods and services along the way. Where do we participate? I've already referenced earlier. CASE, coatings, adhesives, sealants, elastomers, oil and gas, water treatment, and oil and gas and water treatment, and hygiene applications. We participate beyond just those four kind of key pillars. We also do a lot in personal care and textiles, pulp and paper, and lubricants. When we say our focus areas, what that really means to us is this is where we're going to preferentially allocate technical resources and R&D resources. From a market size standpoint today, the U.S. specialty chemical industry is about a $200 billion market.
When you look at it through the lens of the products that we manufacture and sell today, that market is about a $9.3 billion market, and we're about a $75 million-$80 million company. Our participation is all but a rounding error. There's plenty of runway for us to grow in that space. Over the past year, and I've already touched on this a little bit, last year was all about stabilizing, fixing the foundation. We stripped out an enormous amount of cost, but it was also about filling the plants with higher margin business that was more ratable and predictable. What the slide illustrates is a volume shift from pretty low sales of proprietary products to 20%-25% of our sales into proprietary products in 2024. Along with that, we saw favorable increases in pricing, and along with that, flow through to gross margin improvement. We're going to continue to drive that.
To be clear, we're not running away from custom manufacturing. There's really good quality business in custom manufacturing. We've just been spending our time and energy lifting the quality of the business that we have in custom manufacturing while we go out and we sell the IP that we have in our portfolio. Similarly touched on this a little bit ago, relatively low asset utilization. We're roughly 50% utilized across our three manufacturing assets. A lot of runway for growth with very minimal capital requirements, right? You look back over the past four years, our CapEx spend has been about $1 million- $3 million per year, not because we're running it with duct tape and popsicle sticks, but that's because that's what it takes to operate safely and reliably and in a compliant manner.
We have no reason to believe that for the foreseeable future, that's going to materially change unless there's a material growth project that's customer-driven that requires growth CapEx. A lot of improvements in 2024, but as we've rolled into 2025, that improvement hasn't stopped. We haven't taken our foot off the gas. We're still laser-focused in on extracting as much cost out of our supply chain as we possibly can. A tremendous amount of work done in 2024 and 2025 on raw material cost, roughly a pretty significant increase in adjusted EBITDA in the first half of this year. We did clean up our portfolio. We generated $56 million worth of proceeds. Pre-networking capital drew up. Another step change in inventory improvement. To be clear, our working capital burden as it relates to inventory is not significant for chemicals. We're nominally, what, $5 million or so worth of inventory.
We're stabilized. We're at a growth inflection point. I'll talk a little bit more about what that growth inflection point looks like here in a couple minutes. Growth in catalyst, durable earnings growth. I mentioned earlier, we have one remaining asset in the portfolio that we're seeking to monetize. It's under a sale-lease-back transaction. It's not really ours to sell, but we're brokering a transaction to get that liability off of our books, confident that we'll be able to achieve that by the end of the year. That will provide a material uplift from a cash standpoint and from a profitability standpoint of $2.1 million. When you look at growth, for us, as we talk internally to our team members, our priorities this year are growth, growth, and growth.
The flow-through impact of accretive growth across our existing asset bases is material, and we know that we need to fill up the pots and pans and get better utilization. What have we done in the first half of this year? We delivered 11% annualized growth over TTM revenues, 150% annualized adjusted EBITDA growth. Very material steps forward in filling up the asset base. All of that to say, that $9 million or so was spread across 50 or so different selling projects, sales cycle time of roughly 2.7 months, and a pretty solid conversion rate of 18%, which is slightly above industry average. That breakdown, if you look at the growth that we delivered on an annualized basis in the first half of this year, it's not just with existing customers, and it's not just with new customers. It split roughly 75% of that was with existing customers.
We're expanding our share of wall, and the balance of that is coming through new customer acquisition. In last year, one of the things that we did is, we recapitalized SG&A, completely new sales organization. We stood up marketing, which is a function that didn't exist. We're now beginning to see that momentum build. As we rolled from Q1 of 2025 into Q2 of 2025, we drove a 45% improvement in our selling project pipeline. Why is that important? In the first quarter of 2025, our selling project pipeline was roughly $45 million. We added another $25 million to that selling project pipeline inside of Q2 of 2025. We're not going to win it all, right? We want to win it all. I want to win it all. I think a realistic and feasible expectation is that we're not going to win it all.
The size and the quality of that pipeline is incredibly important. We have to keep building against that because the upside is just enormous. For us, right, simple and clear, EBITDA drivers. 2023 base EBITDA, 4% management turnaround. We added in another 4% last year due to a lot of tremendous work by the team. Moving forward, as we kind of project out to 2030, where should this business be? The simple way to think about it is we're targeting a 35% gross margin. This is on a continuing ops basis. All in, 35% gross margin, flow through to 15% SG&A, all the way down to roughly a 15% adjusted EBITDA target. That's not based on Hopium.
If you look at comps out in the marketplace inside of specialty chemicals, companies like the Steppens, the Hawkins, the Ashlands of the world are all kind of operating in that genre on a normalized basis. We believe that that expectation is realistic and feasible. We know we've got the growth runway to do it. Again, given our low utilization today, we're 50% utilized, about $75 million-$80 million at top line. We should be able, we will be able to get our existing asset base up to $120 million- $130 million of revenue inside of the existing assets. Additive to that, we're not done with just organic growth. To be clear, 99% of our organization today is focused on driving organic growth, period. That's it, right? Do it cost-effectively, obviously. However, we've started to dip our toes in the water from an M&A standpoint.
We did not do that until Q4 of last year. We were laser-focused in on stabilization and fixing the foundation. We earned the right to start having those conversations late last year. We entered into an LOI, really, very small transaction sizes like $2 million. As we got into diligence, we saw some things that we didn't like. We tried to retrade and ultimately we walked away from the deal just because it was a ride. We're not going to transact. We're not going to go acquire just for the sake of acquiring. We're going to be good stewards of the capital that we have. As we pivot into that inorganic growth mode, I mean, Harshil and Ryan, our CFO, have been doing an enormous amount of work building out that pipeline.
Really what we're looking for from an inorganic standpoint are things that can help us solve our organic growth problem, right? Think of orphan products inside of large, you know, like large corporate carve-outs that we can then integrate into our existing manufacturing assets. That's one avenue for us. Another avenue are smaller specialty chemical distributors that in many instances have products in their portfolio that we either A, make today or B, have the capabilities to make. C, we're looking at that third leg of the stool as complementary capabilities. Today our assets, we have a lot of stainless steel reactors. What we don't have are things like glass line reactors. Because of that, our participation is constrained. We're looking at complementary capabilities. We're looking at complementary geographies. Today we're laser-focused in on the Southeast with assets in Virginia and Tennessee and South Carolina.
We'd love to have something in the Gulf Coast that could help out with our participation in the energy space. All of that to say is, yes, we have $60 million worth of cash. We can borrow up to another $30 million. Our commitment that we've made to each other and to our shareholders is we're going to start small. We're going to start small because we want to demonstrate to ourselves and to each other that we can deliver the contemplated growth synergies and we can deliver the contemplated cost synergies. Then we'll step into larger transactions along the way. From an SG&A standpoint, I mentioned earlier that our target is 15%. We're going to grow into our SG&A. We've recapitalized SG&A. That's not code for it. We went out and hired a bunch of people that have increased our total SG&A.
In fact, when you look at our SG&A in 2024 versus 2025, it's effectively flat, right? When and where we can acquire solid technical sales, technical sales resources to help us accelerate growth organically, we will continue to do that. By 2030, we should be at a place where this company looks a lot different than what it does today. We will have largely filled up our assets. We will likely have added additional capabilities into our existing asset base, and we will likely have acquired additional properties from an acquisition perspective. Just to touch on capital. For those of you that have had some time to do a little bit of research, you saw that we did purchase roughly 6% of our outstanding shares over the past couple of months.
We've been active in our share buyback, especially with the firepower that was extracted from the sale of the tubular assets. We still have roughly $60 million worth of cash. We still have debt capacity of about another $30 million. We have no intention of drawing on that. The transactions that we're going to pursue in the near term are going to be on the smaller side of the equation. Think up to a max of like $30 million, give or take. What kind of multiples are we looking at? Number one, earlier I was talking about three different types of acquisitions we're looking at. What you didn't hear me say is another turnaround or a distressed asset. We will absolutely look at distressed assets. We know how to turn things around. We're not afraid of that.
What we don't want to do is do that right now and compound an existing low asset utilization problem. I'd rather get our asset utilization up to 75%-80% and then stitch on very purposefully a distressed asset that has low utilization at that point in time at a much, much lower multiple. For properties that we look at that are not distressed assets, that don't have low utilizations, think of us paying up to 8x pre-synergies and on a post-synergy basis, up to 6x. That's not code for we're going to overpay. That's just kind of our thought process on deal flow and multiples that we're targeting. We're building out, our intentions are to build out a synergistic platform. Right now we have done ourselves a lot of favors by cleaning up the portfolio. We're laser-focused in on specialty chemicals. We are right-sized. We're beginning to drive that organic growth.
I think we have optionality that this company has not had literally in decades, right? Before when we had tubular and chemicals, investors couldn't get their heads kind of wrapped around it. Now we're to a point where we're pure play where you have incredible focus and it just creates optionality for us as a company. Yeah, and the wrap-up slide. Like I said, we've done ourselves a lot of favors. I feel as though we have not overextended ourselves in the commitments that we've made to the shareholder community. We're not going to start doing that at this stage, right? What we wake up to every morning is honoring the commitments that we've made. We want to hit it out of the ballpark, but we don't want to set unrealistic expectations along the way. The portfolio is optimized. We are stabilized. We are growth-ready.
We've got the right people, right? We've got the right team in place. There is near-term upside. We talked a little bit about Munn Hall. We talked a little bit about organic growth upside as well. The balance sheet is strong. We are undercovered. I believe today, based on future values of the company, we are undervalued. With that, we're happy to take any questions that you might have. I should probably stop drinking coffee because, man, I'm wired. Yeah.
What's the name become of Ascent? What is it called?
Synalloy. Correct. We're marketed as Ascent. There was a branding change that took place several years ago. Correct. The ticker is gone. It's just AC&T now. All of our marketing collateral externally to customers, we've completely rebranded. What have we been known for or what do we want to be known for?
What is your capital? You said what is it known for? You were in the conference room yesterday.
Yes. No, so what are we known for? The answer to your question is, by and large, custom manufacturing or more specifically toll manufacturing. We were the guys that would get phone calls from somebody saying, "Hey, can you make our stuff for free on net never terms?" and we would say, "Sure, why not?" That's kind of, that's how we were known in the industry. That's an exaggeration, right? If you look at our financials, you'd say, "Actually, it's pretty close to being that." There was zero market participation strategy. It was literally answer the phone call and do whatever you can to get any kind of sale. Last year, you saw our sales take a pretty big hit, right? We stepped down our sales. A big contributing factor to that isn't broad market softness. Certainly, that's a contributing factor.
Really, it was purposeful deselection of really bad business, just really bad business. Below, you know, below variable cost. Today, I will say that the perception of Ascent has changed significantly over the past year. We are starting to get looks at projects, selling projects that we never would have a year, year and a half ago. I'm cautiously optimistic that we're going to start winning some of these much larger projects, more transformational projects in the near term. Yeah, our brand recognition was poor. I think our reputation was poorer. I think from an investor standpoint, there was some PTSD, and you probably agree, right, from an acquisition standpoint, that when we acquired Daikin back in 2021, we overpaid for that. While it might have been in COVID and everybody overpaid, that's not an excuse. Again, getting back to our commitment, very disciplined, acquires, and integrators. Yeah.
When you get a customer comes to you and says, "Oh goodness, Bob, we're going to do it, whatever, and provide a solution," and just get it back to them, so there's sort of like a one-on-one project for you, or is it something that you say, "Guess what, we can install this for you and buy the continuing manufacturer for you"?
Yeah, on the front end, what do you want to say?
I mean, on the front end, customers will come and say they have a certain challenge, right? Exactly as you described it. We have the resources, and we are going to look at how we can create this formulation and, you know, help meet their needs. By and large, it's usually with the goal to then have us manufacture that for them, right? We, of course, have supported customers when they have specific needs like the scenario that you just listed. The goal usually is, "Okay, here, and now we can make this for you.
What is the product line that's making then maybe the large sales and business line for whatever reason, right? Would they potentially buff those, that manufacturing of it? Yeah, it's too small for a larger company.
Yeah, think of a peer in their life cycle, right? Like, we probably explain the same thing, right? If you think of the life cycle, we definitely have some customers that work with us at the beginning when it's a new product and maybe they don't have the capacity yet, so we're doing the initial production or at the end as well where they're saying, you know.
I'm trying to think of this in the sense of, I don't mean you say this, right? I think that the different bottom line's very specific, but they just don't.
Yep, that's right.
There's a lot of private label kind of things. They're just a consolidator, you know, of like hot, you know, cream, wheat or.
That's right,
Exactly.
Glasses, things like that.
From an M&A standpoint, very similar, just not CBG, right? So, you know, find orphan product lines that we could then integrate. Absolutely. Thousand percent. Yeah, and then, you know, just to add on to what Harshil was saying about, you know, the Pareto, you know, if you think of the two different, you know, parts of the life cycle, you know, on the beginning from a scale-up standpoint, and you can see this on the chart, do we, you know, the front is very much like a project where the customers will say, "Hey, I need, I need help. I need you guys to either do lab work for me. I need to use your pilot reactors," whatever the case may be, and we'll design a program to support those specific needs.
Two years ago, we actually did like $3 million, $3.5 million worth of business in that scale-up type space, and that business has all gone off by the wayside because there was absolutely no focus on it. We believe there's an opportunity for us to build that back up. Our real intention is to knock it out of the ballpark in that scale-up, that development scale-up space so that we can continue manufacturing on an ongoing basis. In many instances, when you think about custom manufacturing, we're involved on the front end, right, in the development space.
Once the volume ramps to a certain level, the customers will say, "We want to move this back inside of our own internal fence line to maximize our own utilization." When it hits that threshold, when they run out of capacity, they'll come back knocking and saying, "Hey, Ascent, can you do this for free again with net never payment terms?" and we say, "Sure," right? On the tail end at the life cycle curve, they'll kick it out of their assets and kick it back into a custom manufacturer. That's part of why driving more of a shift into product sales is important for us because it mitigates some of that exposure that we have in that life cycle.
I'm just talking about the quartet now.
Yeah, no. Things like surfactants and defoamers are used in a wide array of applications from water treatment to coatings and you name it. That's the cool thing about chemistry. It's generally not a one trick pony. It's not one product for one market or application. It's one product that could be used in a whole array of different markets and applications. That's what we have in our portfolio. We have hundreds of products sitting up on the shelf, but what we really like to do is take those products, take those base products, and then incrementally tweak them to solve customer-specific needs. As a result of that, that sale, it's not a commodity sale, right? It's more of a custom solution sale, and it becomes more sticky for us, and we get a margin premium for that.
How about shipping? Are they getting duty towards if they could do this on the shelf, let them have and say, "Okay, if we tweak this, we'll have out of the agent that is some other kind of thing to where you're almost creating around the.
Very, very little. Now, we have a solution. Up until now, I would say R&D for Ascent has really been more research and duplicate, right? If we're really honest, obviously not infringing on, you know, patents or IP or anything like that. We have just recruited an R&D leader that will help us take that next step and build out those capabilities. In the near term, we will start to do that. He starts next.
Yeah,
Next Tuesday.
Yeah.
And.
Yes, we do. If you need a corrosion inhibitor for downhole oil and gas applications, I got you, right? If you need a defoamer for paints and coat, you know, for a paint and coating or for a coating formulation, we got you, right? Yes, we do. They're not, don't think of them as products that are on a shelf like at a Walmart available for sale. These are rough. No, we're really more of a functional additive raw material supplier than we are a CPG-like company.
How many sales?
Not enough.
Not enough.
In all seriousness, we just extended an offer for a coatings technical sales representative who's accepted, and he starts next week as well. We have one other opening for an HI&I, so a cleaning specialist. We're cautiously optimistic that that offer will be accepted as well in the next couple of weeks. Like I mentioned, the R&D role, but at that point, we will have the appropriate R&D and sales complement that we need for the near term. Yeah.
The revenue.
Yeah, between $120 million- $130 million inside of the existing asset base. You know what we'd really like to get to, you know, by 2030, we should be at a half a billion dollars top line. That's not what, you know, gets me to wake up in the morning. It's not about the size of the company. It's about the overall profitability profile. We believe that we can get to a half a billion dollars at 35% gross margin with 15% SG&A and then flow through to 15% EBITDA by 2030.
It's not.
It's $500 million, right? $120 million- $130 million of that's through organic growth, and the balance of that would be through acquisitions and/or growth capital that we install inside of our existing asset base to take on new business that we can't touch today because we don't have the right equipment.
Outside of sales, you got to buy up some.
Yeah, I mean, the band, we've got a really good band. A little bit of Van Halen, depending on what your genre is. Is it a similar one?
I mean, coming in and selling off assets and firing people, you know, that's you got to do it.
Yeah.
The hard part starts with the organic world.
That's right.
Did you accomplish that?
We did. Yeah, we did. I mean, just for context, when we joined that company, top line was nominally $100 million, and when we sold it, top line was nominally $300 million. We've demonstrated that we can drive organic growth. This is a little bit different because in the prior environment, we were selling a couple of products in a variety of different package formats. This, we have 170 different customers with literally hundreds of SKU potential. The complexity is higher, but we have the right team in place to manage that complexity. The proof's in the pudding, right? We have to execute, right? Yeah.
That's the longest statement we have. I'm still not understanding this. What's your largest product revenue per year?
Yeah, so the largest product, it's nominally $7 million.
Correct.
Yeah, that's, you know, I would say that the second one, the next closest is probably around that $4 million genre. From a concentration standpoint, we've done a lot over the past couple of years to address customer concentration.
Is it sold?
No, that's great. Yeah, the answer is no. From a channel to market standpoint, we're working with formulators, we're working with paint manufacturers, we're working with oil and gas service companies. What we're not doing is selling through distribution. We don't have that inherent channel conflict that would prohibit us from going out and acquiring a specialty chemical distributor, just as an example. It's a direct technical, in most cases, it's a direct technical sales call.
You know, generation hasn't changed yet. There was a big lawsuit years ago, which would still go away if that bill went down. Who's the one guy that owns it?
Who?
Rosenzww
Oh, Ben Rosenzweig.
Oh, Ben Rosenzweig. Yep, yep, yep.
He came down and bought.
Yep, that's right.
Brought in, I think, Christopher Hutter.
That's right. That's right.
Yeah, big scale distribution.
Mm-hmm.
I got there, and there was a very big hustle at Bernie's there.
Oh, wow.
Right now, they're being sold for the dollar, and it's awesome.
It's COVID.
Yeah, the chemical guy is supposed to be a genius. He's got a wedding gown on. All that kind of class.
Yeah, yeah, so Chris is just sending it into the board. He's still one of our largest shareholders. Yeah, he's on the board. He's not involved in the day-to-day operations of the company, and neither is Ben. What I would say, look, I mean, the board that we had last year was a great board for us at that point in time in our journey because what we needed from the board was enormous support to go off and execute our strategy. They did exactly that. Moving forward, though, now that we're a pure-play specialty chemical company, we know that we need to reimagine the board, and the board is very supportive of that endeavor. Look for changes down the road. All right, I'm being cut off.
Yeah.