Good morning. Thanks for joining us at the 26th Annual Needham Growth Conference. We're pleased to be sitting down with to have a discussion with the CFO of Bel Fuse, Farouq Tuweiq. And also here with us today is Lynn Hutkin, who's director of financial reporting. So Bel has a long history of designing a broad array of components that protect and power and connect electronic circuits. This has been one of the more interesting micro-cap, small-cap stories over the last two years. My name's Jim Ricchiuti. I'm a senior analyst in the equity research department at Needham, covering companies in the advanced industrial technology space.
So again, it's been one of the best performing small cap names in our coverage universe, and I think this is gonna be a good discussion. We're gonna kick it off, though, with some slides. I think Lynn is gonna walk through the clicker on the podium. Sorry. The clicker on the podium. Okay. Lynn, here's the clicker. We're gonna go through about eight or so slides. We'll move into Q&A. Farouq, are you okay with doing some Q&A from the audience as well? Lynn, take it away.
Thanks. I think we've got about 40 minutes.
That was [unclear]
Thanks for joining us today here. So just a quick background about Bel, for those who may not be familiar with us. We did just last week celebrate our 75-year anniversary in business. So we have been powering, protecting, and connecting electronic circuits since 1949. As you can see from here, we started actually in the automotive industry, making fuses, pivoted into black and white televisions, color televisions, moved into the networking space. We've been very acquisitive over the years, starting in 2010, with our acquisition of Cinch. That was our entry into commercial aerospace and military. And then just recently moved into the eMobility space, and as we'll get into it, you know, AI is coming up, space is coming up.
So the theme here is that we have been evolving with the technologies over the decades, and successful at doing that. So just a breakdown of our revenue. We're about $670 million on a TTM basis currently. Sorry, I'm trying to see the slides here. So by product group, we do manage the business in three segments: Power Solutions and Protection, which is about 49% of our business, Connectivity Solutions, which is 30%, and Magnetics, which is about 20%. We're also diversified by end market. So networking represents about 29%, industrial, 24%, commercial air and military, about 16%, and then the balance is a variety through our distribution channel. By customer type, we are about 70% direct to the OEM, and about 30% through distribution.
And then regionally, we're also diverse, almost 70% North America, with the balance split between Asia and Europe. And then at the bottom here is just a representative sample of our blue-chip customer base. So we have been on a financial transformation journey. You can see 2019 versus the most recent trailing 12 month period. A lot of this took place just in the last three years, so Farouq joined us in early 2021 as our first CFO. And over the years, we have just been making improvements, sales growth, margin expansion of almost 1,000%. Our EBITDA dollars were $26 million back in 2019. Through the most recent trailing 12 month period, we're at $112 million.
Our EBITDA percentage expanded from just over 5%- 16.7%, and then the most recent Q3, it was 19%. So a whole different look of the company. Farouq came in asking all the right questions, helping to close the gap between where our margins were versus our peers. From a free cash flow, that has also expanded. It was $15 million back in 2019, and now it's up over $80 million. Our cash balance has continued to grow during that time, and our debt has been paid down to $60 million, and that is at a fixed interest rate of 2.5% now. So we're not planning on any further debt paydown. Our net leverage ratio was 3.1% back in 2019, and that has been eliminated at this point.
We are in a net cash position. So lots of good things happening, lots of activity. We've been doing restructuring around the world. We announced four facility consolidations that are largely complete. So lots of work across the global team that has helped to achieve these results.... Looking forward, we do have exciting growth drivers. We expect Aerospace and Defense to continue to be strong into 2024. Rail has also been an area of strength for us in 2023. We expect that to continue into the next year, along with niche industrial. On the bottom part of the near-term side here, there are some areas of the business that have been soft in 2023, and we do expect those to rebound over the course of 2024.
So even with the financials that I just showed you, not all areas of our business have been running strong. So, these items on the bottom were soft for us in 2023. The consumer segment, distribution, which cuts across all areas of our business, that's about 30% of our business is distribution, and that has been soft over the last year, with lots of inventory in that channel. We expect that to work out, we're hoping, by the Q2 of 2024. Networking for us has been a bit of a tale of two cities. In 2023, it was strong for us on the power side, but on the Magnetic side, they were over-inventoried. And so that has been seeing a fairly significant year-over-year declines in the Magnetic space, largely to networking.
And that's something that we expect to work out in 2024 as well. And then premise wiring. So if you think about new construction builds, we do the wiring behind the walls, so that has been down as well. Just another area that is expected to rebound. And then looking at the medium term, eMobility. So eMobility in 2022 was about $20 million of sales. We expect that to go up by about 50% in 2023. So it's still relatively small dollars for us, but definitely a growth driver. AI is another medium-term growth driver for us. And we are not direct beneficiaries when it comes to AI, but we are, you know, secondary or third-level beneficiaries there.
So as data centers are being built out or upgraded, our products do serve in those data centers. And then Space. You know, we're calling Space the new EV. So it's still very small for us today, but, we do have products on satellite. So as that increases in volume, we will benefit from that. And then the last bit of news today is, we just announced yesterday, our new president of our Power Solutions and Protection business. So Steve Dawson has been with Bel as an instrumental leader within the power space. He's been working very closely with Dennis Ackerman, who has been in the role for a long time. Dennis announced that he will be retiring in July of this year.
So yesterday we announced that Steve will be succeeding Dennis in July. So Steve has a very strong technical background in industrial engineering, and he's also very strong on the business side. So he was integral with the acquisitions of CUI and EOS that we did in recent years. Prior to being at Bel, he had worked at Cooper Industries in the Bussmann division, and also with ABB in their Power-One division. So lots of industry experience, managerial experience, so we're very excited to have Steve taking over this role. And that's it.
up there and, [unclear] if it's okay with you, I'll stand here and fire away some questions.
You know, I think Lynn alluded to it, you're celebrating your three-year anniversary.
February
... with Bel. You know, investors have told me they haven't seen a CFO come into a company and have the impact. And it's more not just an individual effort- ... it's a group effort. But you know, I'm- and seriously, I'm curious, as you think about the time that you've spent with Bel, what have been, you know, the major factors in what's contributed to this resurgence of the company that's been around for a long time?
Yeah, I know. I appreciate that question, and thanks, everybody, for being here today. There's really no real magic bullets here. I think it's an amalgamation of efforts and things that we have done. But at the core of it, fundamentally in our business, for you to succeed, you have to have good products that address some kind of issue or problem. And if you're good there, you have a fighting chance. I'll take that a step further and say you don't get to have the privilege of selling into our end markets without having certain level of qualities of engineering and technical excellence. We're not a heavy consumer company.
If we were selling things to TVs and laptops, it's a very different company than companies that are selling into defense and commercial air, and some of where we play. We have demanding customers. So if the core of the business was always about evolution and technology, engineer-to-engineer discussions, and getting orders and winning-... we know we have a good nucleus to build around. So the question is, well, the supportive tissue and organizational structures, what was that doing? And as we looked at that, there was some indicators that were a little bit unhealthy. So our margin profile does not dovetail with where we serve and where we play. So as you start looking back at the, "Okay, well, why is the margins off?" Then you start looking at it from the top down, and you're looking at things, in terms of, for example, revenue.
Well, what new projects are you going after? Who are you spending time with? What lead position are you playing for? What is your pricing? How does that compare to competitors? And what is your kind of pricing strategy? Then you get down to the COGS line. How are the factories running? How efficient and lean are we? Do we have the right factories? Do we have the right equipment? Should you automate? And as we went down, the same thing on the SG&A, as we went down the sequence of thought process, you know, it wasn't anything, you know, earth-shattering that we found, but we found there were areas that needed improvement.
So we started addressing these kind of tactical issues, but more importantly than that, we had to ensure that you have the right people around the table, and that are having the right motivational structures and accountability structures. So as we think about compensation, as we think about setting goals and objectives that would be clearly defined, we've done a fair amount of adding new teammates. We've done, you know, some maybe bigger things in certain areas. For example, our European sales team, we've nearly 100% turned that over in a span of a year and a half. So, having the right people, driving and with the right purpose and sense of goals and objectives, and rewarded fairly, I think is what sets us up.
So obviously, the output of all that is things like facility consolidations, comp structures, ERP systems, pricing strategies, you know, reshuffling the sales org, our engineering team, right? So these are all kind of outputs of that table setting.
So where do you think we are in this process?
Yeah.
Some of this is low-hanging fruit, although always not easy to execute on.
Yeah.
You know, where do you think we are?
Yeah, I don't think, you know, what we can internally talk about, you know, you never arrive. There's no sense of utopia, where you get to and you stop. But operating from that perspective, we're getting to a more steady state that we've done a lot of things in the last three years. Are we done? No. We've still got some stuff to do, but I would say what's left ahead of us is less headline grabbing. It's more surgical, it's more tactical, but we still, you know, have some things to do. The good thing is, the things that we have done is proving out, as we've seen the results, in a very tough environment.
So we're down on volumes, right? We're you know, over inventory, demand, and all this kind of buzzwords that we talk about, and we're still getting to perform despite those market challenges. So we know when the thing turns, we should be set up for success. But you're never done. There's always some tweaking to be done.
You know, looking at the major verticals, you've got some large customers. Presumably, you have some line of sight into what those customers are doing.
Mm-hmm.
When we see that big slice of the pie that's going through distribution, normally, component companies don't always know the makeup of that revenue. It sounds like you do.
Correct.
I wonder if you could talk to that.
Yeah.
What gives you that line of sight into that channel?
So, for unclear why, historical reasons, but distribution of electronic components, specifically where we play, it is common for OEMs and expected to get full visibility into the POS data. So if somebody goes on a website somewhere and buys something, we will know who bought what, for what price, and that's pretty critical data. And the reason is there's 2 parts of our distribution business. There's the more what we call e-commerce type distributions. So think of Amazon, where what we've seen recently, especially since COVID, engineers don't wanna call 10 component people to get their components and work on version 2.0. They wanna go to a website that puts them all in a box and sends you the box to your house, and you can start working on version 2.0.
That's critical for us because it creates that communication pathway and market discovery to see where are the products going, what's the next thing? And then also reaching out to those engineers saying, "Hey, we noticed you bought this. Do you need any modifications?" And so on, and that starts that discussion, seeds the market. The other part of our distribution is distributors that go after big customers, multi-billion dollar customers, where we partner with them. Our salespeople are on the ground with their salespeople, and they open up doors, and they help us get into situations and give us a chance for success. So it's a high-margin business. It generally... While distribution is not an end market in itself, products are generally made for certain applications and operational conditions.
So, you know, generally, it's not like there's 20 new end markets that these things are going to. We just don't break it down, given it's a manual exercise with thousands and thousands of purchase orders, but that's on the list to do. But distribution is a key part of our business. At 30% compared to some of our peers, we're a little bit under distributed. So that, I'd say we're a little bit late to the game. Some, you know, the guys got into it, I think, in the early 2000s, mid-2000s. We're a little bit late, but we look at that as opportunity. Ultimately, distribution is a fancy way of saying shelf, right? So we see the POS data, what's coming off the shelf, and we're seeing some nice demand kind of going out.
It's just the shelf is a little bit full, so we gotta get it down to have that opportunity to replenish it. But distribution is a key business. Also, I should say, sometimes people find us through distribution, then they come direct once it scales or things go into production. Again, not unique to Bel Fuse. It's a market-wide. It's an industry thing, but it really depends on how well you lean into the distribution channel and harness its power.
And with respect to, which is the point you just made about the shelf being a little full in certain areas of distribution, I mean, we're hearing that from a number of companies.
What, what are you seeing in terms of destocking and-
Yeah, so-
and returning to more normal conditions?
Yeah, I mean, historically, kind of pre-COVID, when, when the industry-
Hit these kind of periods, generally it takes one to three, maybe four quarters to work out the overstocking. I think our industry started industry-wide, getting into this destocking mode, I think the third or Q4 of 2022. For us, we started seeing it in roughly Q2 this year. So we were, you know, given our end markets, we've been a little bit more resilient. So if we say, we've been in and out for six quarters as an industry, I think the chat around the industry, our view as well, is this should be worked out by middle of Q2 this year. If that is true, that's roughly eight quarters worth of destocking, which would be pretty high. The question is, why?
Well, we came through an unnatural period of COVID, so maybe that was elongated, so the eight quarters can make sense. But the good thing is, we don't think there's another, you know, six, seven, eight quarters ahead of us here, so on the tail end of this thing here, but a little bit long in the tooth from a historical perspective.
Okay. I want to spend some time on the business areas, the product areas, the Power Solutions and Protection business. What is it? About half the business?
Mm-hmm. Yep.
And maybe you can give us a better sense as to, you know, what these products are, the competitive strengths and also the margin profile?
Yeah
of that business.
So Power was a business, I think, as you follow the stories, was a little bit of a problem child for us for a very long time. And, a decent amount of effort and work has gone into that. I would say our Power segment's probably our most diverse in terms of end markets and product sets. And so it's a pretty wide range. It has seen recent growth, driven by a few different factors, including growth in our eMobility business, our EV business. Also, our networking business, while it's down on Magnetics, it's been up on Power. Also, our Rail business has been doing good with some of the recent investments that we are seeing in Rail and some of the industrial applications.
Despite being up and the margin improvement that we have done on that business, it does have its soft points. So we have a consumer business in there, roughly 7-8% of our business, that's soft. Distribution and power is soft. Our fuse business as well in that business is soft. So despite its strong performance, it's not, you know, running at full speed ahead, so we look at that as opportunity. The other thing I would say, you know, the fuse, you know, we'll sell fuses that are, you know, super tiny and small, you know, for pennies, and then we'll sell an eMobility system that goes on a semi-truck or a school bus that helps aids charging. So we got pretty wide, that runs into the $6,000-7,000 range.
So we have a wide price point, size point, but ultimately it's around the power side of the unit. So we'll sit on top of a data server shelf at the top, a PDU, to kind of power the unit. We'll kind of do the fuses. As we said, we'll also do some external chargers on certain components, and the medical applications. So it tends to be our most diverse one, but it's getting a lot of attention because historically, our business was a third, a third, a third, across the segments, roughly. This one went up, but also magnetics is struggling right now. So it's a combination of a little bit skewed, I think, visually, given Power is up and Magnetics is down.
But truth be told, power is also having its weak spots, which again, if we're performing in this environment, we look forward to the day when things wake up again.
Yeah. I mean, even with those weak spots, I think the business has grown-
Correct
... 20% or so on an average rate-
Right
over the last three years.
Yep.
That's not too bad.
Then the margin profile, I think, when, you know, kind of pre-COVID was low 20s.
Mm-hmm.
Gross margin, and now it's kind of into kind of, you know, north of 35%. So that's obviously been very additive for us.
Lynn alluded to, gave you some metrics on the EV business, what it represents in terms of revenues. Talk to us a little bit about the customer base. You gave us, you know, one example. How diverse is that business? It's really been a bright spot.
Right.
I think initially when we heard you guys talking about that, we weren't quite sure what to make of it, but it's really played out, especially in terms of the growth rate.
Yeah.
But give us a little better sense of that business.
Yeah, you know, if you look at our 75-year history, it's always about evolution, right? So we start out in the fuse business from black and white TVs, then color TVs came in, and there was this kind of big ramp, and then personal computing came, and we saw the technological evolutions going on. And eMobility, as we call it, which is, it's industrial EV, so we're focused more on high price points, things that really get beat up because we bring a very sophisticated technology offering. So we're not going through the passenger vehicles, so we're on industrial school buses, garbage trucks, mining equipment, support vehicles at airports, so big kind of ticket items. And we've been in that business, kind of started going after in 2011.
Obviously, the industrial side of it lags the commercial passenger side of it, but we've been in this business since 2011. For years, it was $2 million, $3 million, $4 million, $1 million. It was sampling, testing, getting the miles under our belt, because that's very critical, so we had a first mover's advantage. 2020, I think was the first year, or 2021, where we saw we hit that inflection point to roughly $10 million, and then in 2022, it went up to $20 million. Then, you know, it went, you know, we guided towards something with the thirties, so call it 50% up year-over-year. In an end market, that's a little bit struggling as we think about fundraising needs and so on.
That product set, you know, while you look at a lot of things that we do is pretty physical, there's a lot of software and firmware in our products. So this is a highly sophisticated product, and all those miles and testing is critical. And then our customer base, you know, we have, I think, over 270+ customers, ranging from startup folks that we read about in the headlines and trying to do kind of the next thing, all the way to your regular mainstay household names, multi-billion dollar companies. So it's very diverse from a customer perspective, and it, you know, but we have not, despite the growth, we haven't had that one customer that really took off yet, and there, there's a couple of reasons for that.
One is on the European side of the world. What drives that business to some extent is kind of the subsidies and the government incentives and the mandates, 'cause they cost a little bit more. On the US side, there is some of that, but also companies' desire to be more green and more environmental leaning forward. But with interest rate environment, you know, we're seeing kind of just a little bit of a maybe slowdown here, but with that, we're still at the 50% mark. $30 million, roughly, assuming that's where we land, that's almost 5% of our sales, and didn't exist two-three years ago. High margin business, is growthy, and it's, it's exciting. And we doubled down on that end market.
We acquired a position of a company out in Germany that addresses the same markets, but a little bit different. They work on the fast charging side, so these big vehicles can be sitting around for hours in a day. So they can really fast charge these vehicles significantly faster, right? So it's a really interesting tech. They're ahead of the market a little bit here, but as that kind of starts going, we think that will be also another additive instrument for us from a product perspective. So it's an exciting part of our business.
We think for, how do we think about the growth, outlook for this business? I mean, obviously, you're going to get to a bigger size, which is a great thing, but, you know, in terms of longer term growth and what's the, you know, competitive landscape like?
On the, yeah.
Yeah.
On the mobility space?
Yeah. Yeah.
So our products have application on the passenger side of the world, but the price point's expensive. It's too sophisticated of a product, and given our size, we're not high volume kind of players. So as a result of that, but, you know, we have a little bit of a different business model. Industrial eMobility, EV lags the commercial side, as we think about infrastructure, battery capacity, how fast these things charge, price points, and so on, it lags. So we still don't feel that it's hit a normalized growth, kind of trajectory, given some of the challenges in that space. Will it get solved? We think so. Will it take a little bit of time? Yes, and we'll be there. Competitive environment, we have competitors.
Generally, our competitors, especially on the Asian competitor side, generally go to the more volume, less sophisticated product offering than us, so we don't really bump up against them too much on the industrial side. On the industrial side, we are seeing more competitors coming into the space, but we have years of testing under our belt, refined code, lines after lines, so we do think that we have a very unique offering. But, you know, it is a development game. It, you know, it's a big world, it's a big TAM that's ever expanding, and we try to continue to stay out ahead of it. But like anything else, it will attract competitors, but we were in it for a long time, building these early on relationships. So we feel we're decently set up for that.
Okay, let's maybe shift a little bit to one of the next largest product segment, which is connectivity solutions. It's again a very broadly based business, and it's growing, what? Low double digits. Is that fair to say, it's in the last couple of years? Yeah.
We'll be up kind of into the double-digit territory this year.
Yeah.
We're seeing some nice wins and strides there.
So what's contributed to some of the more, you know-
Yeah
... a little bit more consistent growth of like-
So I think for a long time, this business from an end market, there was some pressure. So on the defense side of things, you know, spending was down. Our defense exposure is really around munitions and communication. With the unfortunate events that we saw in the world with Ukraine and Russia, we started seeing our European allies and the US folks start to dial up the spend a little bit more on the hard defense. So we have facilities in the UK and in the US that service both of that. So we're seeing more demand driven by the world events and affairs that we're in, and realizing that maybe it's not all peaceful.
With this increased geopolitical issues globally, whether it be in the Far East and in Taiwan, or we're seeing in the Middle East and the Red Sea, unfortunately, that is kind of additive to our munitions business. So we're coming off years of lows, now it's kind of waking up. The other thing is commercial air. Pre-COVID, we saw a lot of challenges in that, in terms of some of the mechanical and technical issues. Then COVID further took that business down with a grounding. Now we're kind of getting back into that stride where OEM production is up, and then the more passengers are traveling, so it's creating MRO. Roughly 75% of our business is MRO, 25% of it is OEM. But you gotta get on the OEM to get to have the privilege of the MRO.
So again, very high margin business for us, great business for us. It just it's been down from an end market perspective. The other thing going on, I'd say, in this Space, you know, as Lynn was talking about, you know, there, there's some interesting things going on there that we think that will be contributory from a margin, top line, volume perspective. But similar to e-mobility, we've been in the Space game for over 40 years, but Space wasn't a volume game, right? It was, we're launching one thing every now and then, or maybe a few a year. It wasn't commercially viable, but we've been in it, so we have years of legacy and reputation and understanding how these things perform that's paying off dividends for us in these days as we're going after business.
So I think we're a little bit conservative in talking about it, but I think we hope to start showing a little bit more of that business. And then we have our legacy business in terms of industrial and other harsh applications where our connector is going to.
Just on the Space side, was that what you were referring to? Was it in the Q3 call, some exciting-
Yeah.
-wins?
Yeah.
Okay.
We have some pretty cool wins and things that we're excited about. We'll hopefully gonna be talking a little bit more about, you know, those positions just as we kind of settle down a little bit on these.
Okay. So from a revenue standpoint
Yeah
... that's something that's a lit-
Right
... little further out, but you-
I mean, these are long development cycles.
Right.
So the connectivity business, I mean, when you want to play in defense, those are long design cycles. It's gonna take four or five years, maybe on a good design. We've chased things seven, eight years. Space is kind of like that, right? So it's a lot of testing and launching things, see how they hold up, let's crash it, see how it goes. But ultimately, when it normalizes and we're seeing some of these, as we all read these headlines of kind of these numbers are gonna get shot up in the air and kind of see how that works out, you know, I think we're front and center on a lot of this stuff.
You guys made a very timely acquisition in commercial air-
Right
... when the market was pretty much at a bottom.
Yeah.
And it's turned out to be a nice acquisition, certainly from a timing standpoint. Maybe on commercial, remind us again, what does that represent of the business?
It's around, most recently, right-
It's around 40-
Yeah
$40 million.
Yeah, and still-
Annual
... scaling back to kind of where it was kind of before a lot of these things happened. So-
Yeah
... so it's still early stages of scaling.
Are you selling to the both major airplane-
We're predominantly-
Yeah
... US focused-
Okay
-and leveraged.
I mean, what we're, you know, I think people are hearing, including at this-
Yeah
... at this conference, is that, yeah, this looks like a pretty long runway-
Yeah
... for build activity. So is that your sense as you talk to-
Well, we're very bullish on it.
Okay.
We'll be up double digits on it this year, which in commercial air is a pretty kind of big thing.
Yeah.
When you read kind of the tea leaves out there in terms of backlog and in terms of demand and sold out till, you know, whatever year and all that kind of stuff, we think all that's additive. Then also that's on the OEM side, but as we think about just global fleets, they seem to be expanding.
Mm-hmm.
Right? Just, it's not just a pure replenishment, it's an expansion. So whenever you expand that TAM, there's more planes that need to be refurbished, than were on those planes. So you kind of get on both ends. You get on the OEM side, expanding of fleets and more people traveling, all that creates opportunity for us.
Okay. And on the defense side, where the company's had a fairly long, long history, you know, unfortunately, you know, we've seen some real unfortunate geopolitical-
Mm-hmm
... conflicts. Is there any reason why the defense business won't be a strong tailwind for the foreseeable future?
We-
The funding is there.
Yeah.
We're seeing allies in Europe-
Correct
... you know, increased spending. You know, look at some of the areas you're playing in-
Correct
... and there's a lot of restocking, unfortunately, that has to be done.
Correct. So we agree with that sentiment.
Okay.
So we do think it will be a tailwind for some time to come. So that will be, again, additive for us. And as we also just look at kind of development and new things coming on, you know, unfortunately, global instability creates opportunity, and we'll be beneficiaries of that.
Margin profile on that business?
So that margin profile right now, we kind of have it in the mid-30s, right? Scaling up a little bit. You know, maybe a little bit more to push on that, but I think our overall margin improvement will slow down as a percentage, given that we're kind of already at that, you know, the 35-ish%. But I think we still got a couple more things to do.
Okay, and then quickly on the Magnetic Solutions portion of the business, that's been a less consistent performer for you. What are you seeing there?
Yeah, we have end market concentration in that networking, especially data center. As we read about inventory in the data center, a little bit too much inventory in the channel, and because it's concentrated from an end market perspective, we got to feel it. It was down roughly 50% in the Q2, over Q2 the previous year. It was down 35% in Q3. So we're going through it. The way we look at it, though, is a segment of ours that historically was a third of our business, today roughly 20% of our business, was able to take pretty big hits, and we still come out on top as a company, as we look at that as an opportunity. At some point, it's gonna wake up, and we think of all that will be additive.
One of the big facility consolidations is in that segment.
Right
... that we expect to finish kind of roughly here into Q1, but that will also yield some nice savings. So we look at our numbers last year as, you know, there's some fair amount of cost in there that's coming out as we go through this facility consolidation. So we expect at some point it'll recover, we expect some operational leverage and some, you know, a little bit better cost management side.
Okay. We're running out of time here, but let's talk about capital deployment. Balance sheet's in great shape. How are you thinking about that?
Yeah. First time net cash position in Q3, end of Q3, for the first time since 2014. And, you know, we're sitting at around $100, so now we're generating some pretty nice cash flow out of the business. The question is, what are we gonna do with it? One, we think there is a backlog and a pipeline of M&A that we think will come, so we'll obviously look to use that. And then also our CEO acknowledged on a call last go around, that we're always looking at what's the best return of capital, and that could take a form of a buyback. Obviously, we don't have one today, but you know, Dan kind of acknowledged that.
So we'll see as we build the cash position, where the world is, what's our internal investments gonna look like, but we wanna be good stewards of the capital, is, I think, the message.
Okay, we're gonna end it there for... Thank you.
Awesome.
Lynn, thank you.
Thanks, everyone.
Thank you.
I appreciate your time.