Good morning, and welcome to the Three Part Advisors IDEAS Conference. I'm Sandy Martin, Investor Relations for CORE Molding Technologies, and this is a real exciting story. Over the last couple of years, we've gone through major transformation, improving the profitability of the business, so, lots of revenue diversification initiatives going on. With us, on the team are, Dave Duvall, CEO, and John Zimmer, CFO, and I'm gonna hand it off to Dave.
Morning, everyone. I was told I had to stay by the speaker here, so normally I like to walk around. So my name is Dave Duvall. I'm the CEO for CORE Molding, and I'm here with John Zimmer, our CFO. I think we have a great story to tell, and hope we get some questions at the end.
So CORE, we are, our 2023 sales are $358 million. You can see we're pretty evenly spread between U.S., Mexico, and Canada. We have two facilities in Mexico and one in Canada. Almost 2,000 employees. You can see, really look at the highlights for CORE w e're a market leadership position, fiber-reinforced plastics, composites. Really few competitors, high barriers to entry s ome of our presses are 5,500 tons, so you're talking about a press the size of a house.
'Cause we don't do small parts, it's all large or ultra-large parts. Anything we do would be 10 or more, all the way up to a couple hundred lbs in one press w e'll do an entire boat hull, personal watercraft, in one mold. Long-term relationships with blue chip customers, and I think that's a big part of our value proposition, is that these customers, if you see here, this is a personal watercraft hull for BRP.
It can't leak, it can't break, it can't crack, so we're t hey're trusting their brand with our delivery and our quality, and that's a big part of the customer loyalty in growing your wallet share with these customers. Proprietary, highly engineered products. You know, everything is specific w e're sole source. The tooling alone would be $200,000-$2 million just to be able to produce these parts.
Everything is specific to the product. Once you have the program, you have the program for life y ou're not gonna move that program i t's too expensive, too costly, and then you'd have to revalidate the entire process. Single source technical solutions. Again, everything is single source y ou can't dual source, or it's not financially viable to dual source, 'cause then you'd have to have two sets of tools and two processes, and validate two processes within their plant.
Like, product innovation, expertise, we do a lot of really supporting the customer, design for manufacturability. They have an idea, and we work with them to bring that idea to life. We're not the ones coming up with the innovation, the solution. We're bringing that innovation on how do you manufacture that at a more competitive cost, higher features, at a better process than what you could with someone else, or what you could with a traditional material? And that's really our value proposition.
I'd say 90% reoccurring revenues. You know, a lot of the programs, once you win the program, it could be five years, it could be 10 years, or it's a major length or project for that entire program. When we look at some of the addressable markets, where I say we're strong in powersports, we have about 85% market share in personal watercraft. We do every hull and every deck on BRP and on Yamaha.
Yamaha is a thermoset, and what that means, it's a catalyst, and once it solidifies, it's set. You can't recycle it i t gets ground, used as a filler. It's a higher performance, it's a higher strength, higher weight, or higher resistance, higher temperature, and then on BRP, it's a thermoplastic i t's, you can regrind it and recycle it.
Right now, when we say demand in powersports, the area for growth there is in golf cars, right? You see golf cars everywhere now, and the difference between golf cars today compared to five years ago, it's not just some functional piece that you're running around on a golf course that people flip and run over, right? Now, you see them with stereo systems, and it's amazing what they do with golf cars now i was at a Club Car about two weeks ago, and they had a golf car that they're setting with a round table in the center with a love seat all the way around it, with a driver that they didn't even talk to w ell, this is crazy.
You can't call it a cart anymore, it's a car. You get corrected. Construction and ag, it's an area that we see in growth w e're implementing paint in some of our plants now. In the past, we didn't do paint. We always outsourced paint, and the challenge with that, when you have large parts, logistics is a big part of our model. You can't ship large parts.
So what we're doing now is implementing paint so that we can also mold and paint these parts, and that's really where we'll see the growth in construction and ag. Truck, we got about 30% market share in the truck market itself w e do the hoods, roofs, deflectors, anything you see on the outside.
So what we're doing right now is, because we're now 50% thermoplastics and 50% thermoset, is really trying to grow wallet share with our current truck customers with interior features like bed bunks, cabinets, and things like that inside the vehicle itself. Consumer products, we do some consumer products t he areas that we see the growth now are packaging w hen you look at some of the reshoring, a lot of companies are moving from Asia Pacific into Mexico. The type of packaging you see there is what you would use for regional packaging.
If I'm shipping overseas, I'm probably gonna use a large metal crate. Industrial and utilities and building products, we have a lot of business with UFP w e keep trying to work with UFP on growing their outdoor products a ll the lattice that you see. T hat's what we're making that lattice, t he plastic lattice in UFP or in Lowe's, Home Depot.
That's what we make as a lattice s o working on fencing and outdoor products there. Industrial and utilities, stormwater drains, vaults, flush covers. See a lot more as far as trying to reclaim the land with the stormwater drains, so I don't need a retention pond, as well as moving into fiber optics. So all the vaults and covers that you see.
When we talk about the customers, you know, truck, we do business with all the truck customers. You know, Navistar is by, is our largest customer w e do a lot with Volvo, PACCAR, and we just started a program with Hino, a year and a half ago. Powersports, strong with BRP, Yamaha, Polaris. Deckorators is UFP, they rebranded.
And then Industrial and Utilities, Oldcastle, Xylem, do a lot with Generac and, AFL. Really, how do we diversify? Transportation, we're strong w e do, hoods, roofs. We're really focused on doing the interior powersports w e're really growing wallet share from personal watercraft into ATV, UTV w e're seeing growth there, as well as growing into, golf cars. So again, growing the wallet share. Industrial and utilities, that's a really unique product up there at the top. That's called a TroTrof. If you look it up, a TroTrof.
So if you look at the Brightline, high-speed rail lines going in, we've done them in Canada already. Those tracks have all the data and signal transmission along the tracks, and those are about 32 lbs apiece. You can install them just like Legos along the track, whereas prior to that, it was concrete being installed with a crane by shutting down the track. It's 10 times faster to install that and 15% lower cost.
We just need the government to approve all the money and get all the trains going. Again, stormwater drains, large HVAC systems down at the bottom, and then really the outdoor furniture and building products. Really strategic areas for growth. Revenue growth, that's our focus now i think what we'll really show is that what we've done is we've focused on the execution of the business. For me, you know, you could talk about all the strategies that you want, but if you can't execute, then you don't have a strategy.
Right? We focused on i f you look back at the financials in CORE back in 2019, 2018, you can see that timeframe, CORE was not profitable y ou'd seen we had to go coming into a turnaround, and what you see now is we put all the systems in place i would say that we probably have one of the world-class succession planning operational systems in place, and now we're really driving the growth in the company. Invest for growth is the next part of our strategy.
But you have to be prepared for it because it is very costly in transportation if you're shipping products that fail in the field, you have warranty issues, or you're shutting down your customers. So technical solution sales, we do help the customer drive. Invest for growth i f I look at where we are today in our strategy, you know, what are w e see a decline in. You know, when we talk about interest rates, you see the personal watercraft, we see that. We see the trucks are somewhat stable w e know that the truck peaks exist, and really trying to grow between thermoplastic and thermoset.
Lead generation processes and really engaging with customers. Part of our value proposition is that they have to think of, when they have a problem, CORE, right? How are they always thinking about CORE? How does CORE solve their problem? It's a customer loyalty y ou need that customer loyalty.
So really cross-selling into current markets w e talked about truck interiors from truck exteriors. We do have a lot of short-term revenue projects to expand lead generation campaigns, meaning that if there's molds out there that we can run for them, we'll do toll molding, toll processing in the short term. It's not a long-term strategy.
One area that when we talk about the turnaround, we really transformed the organization, and I would say it's really focused on the execution in everything we do w hat is the best process you can use through your entire process and system, so operations, finance, HR, succession planning, org development, we have that in place, What we're now working on is our sales organization.
So how quickly and how fast can we make processes with both focus on quality of event and quantity? So the sales processes, streamlining that. We've added resources to our sales and marketing. We've added four key account managers for revenue growth, where we're structured by vertical y ou own powersports, you own truck, you own golf cars.
Driving it from an ownership standpoint, we are adding a chief commercial officer to really f or me, it's about what are those specific targets we're going after? What is the opportunity? What is the addressable spend? Who are the competitors? What products are they using? Which ones do we have the biggest opportunity to get? You should be getting that.
You know, so we gotta be a little more purposeful and direct about what we're going after and how we're gonna get it, and that's what I mean by really transforming the sales and marketing organization. We've done it for the rest of the organization. This is just the last part that we need to do.
And then for me, again, I love data, so implementing the market analysis, heat map, hotspot, what are we going after? What's our ability to win? What's the margins in that area? Is that the biggest return on investment? Areas that we see growth, again, water systems. You see with the stormwater drains n ow, on this product, we made that out of a thermoset, and we also make it out of a thermoplastic. Again, we don't brand a product o ur customers brand the product.
See the broadband, so all the fiber optic, people moving out to the areas in the suburbs, they still want high speed internet, fiber optics a nd what you're seeing on these vaults and the covers, they'll bundle up the fiber optics in a vault, and then when a line breaks downstream, they have to take another line out and run it down. So they're running larger vaults, and then this used to be made out of concrete or polymerized concrete n ow you're starting to see it out of composites.
And it's really getting the customers over to understand there's a lot of testing at first on the validation side to show that you can park a truck on top of it, and it will not crack. You know, people like concrete and rebar, but it's changing. And then you see the infrastructure for the roads a gain, that's the TroTrof when you see it run along the side of the road.
I think the real value proposition for w hen I look at the value proposition, it's the value proposition that we offer as composites, and then there's a value proposition that you offer as a company or as an organization. When I look at those products for TroTrof, you can see the competition would use a cement piece that weighs about 400 lbs y ou need a crane to install it, so you're gonna shut down the rail line to install those. You need skilled labor to install it, whereas our product, you can see them carrying it right there. It weighs about 32 lbs. That is a 15% lower total cost and 10 times faster.
I would say the ten times faster is by far more important to them than the 15% lower cost. They always wait till the end t his gets installed at the end, and they're always in a rush. Now, waiting for the government to get all the infrastructure bill through and all everything approved for a Brightline rail line, that's where we're waiting.
We already have some programs we're waiting for t here's an LA to Vegas going in and also one in Texas. So innovative material and processes, if I look down below, that's an entire hull for a BRP watercraft s o we mold in. We're able to mold in all the engine mounts, fasteners. When it gets to BRP, all they do is install the motor and put the lid on it.
High strength to weight, this is a Yamaha. Now, Yamaha's value proposition is they want to win every race, so they use a thermoset. If you look up Yamaha, they'll brand our material as NanoXcel technology. It's actually lighter than water, so it'll float. For two and a half miles an hour, that's what they'll do.
BRP wants everyone in the world to own a personal watercraft, whereas Yamaha wants to win every race, right? Different value propositions, different composites, same product, different value proposition. You know, it's really neat i think this is literally where CORE excels if I look at w e have a different 50% thermoset, 50% thermoplastics, and we're able to combine those processes into one solution.
If anybody's seen what's called the BRP Switch, it's a mix between a personal watercraft and a pontoon boat. You know, I think BRP is fabulous at marketing. Instead of somebody jumping to a pontoon boat, they jump to something in between, a Switch. The red part that you see at the bottom.
That's a fiber-reinforced plastic. The gray part is not i t's called a structural foam. You could have made that entire thing out of fiber-reinforced i t would have cost more. You could have made it out of all structural foam and made it very thick i t would have cost more. But what we were able to do is work with BRP and provide part of it, the fiber-reinforced, the red part, where you need the strength that holds a motor, and then the other part is structural foam, where you don't need the strength.
So that's a unique solution, and only BRP has, that only CORE could provide. When I look at lightweighting, you know, again, when we talk about the vaults, when you're installing a concrete vault, now they went to a polymerized concrete to prevent cracks and leaking into the vaults. That vault weighs about 90 lbs, whereas a composite vault is about 25 lbs. The difference is d o I need a machine to put it in the ground, or do I need a person to put it in the ground? Significant difference.
Again, you look at with the stormwater drains, you can see the gentleman carrying the part, and they can cut those holes on the job. You don't have to order it, so on the alternative, I have to order the pipes and install them with a crane. Significant difference, so 300 lbs- 40 lbs. So a big part of what we do with BRP, and when we talk about our ability to work with the customer early in the design phase and be that trusted supplier, is designing in the features that makes it unique.
If you look at a BRP hull on one of their personal watercraft, what you'll see is that we mold that entire hull in one shot. It comes out as one shot w e're able... On here, you're able to see these are the engine mounts. You're molding in the engine mounts. You're molding all the fasteners and all the retainers, so that when it gets to BRP, the only thing they're doing is installing and bolting on. Everything's ready to go.
We worked on running boards for a truck. Originally, they had 43 parts, bolts, nuts, fasteners, and then we were able to make that out of a fiber-reinforced plastic that snapped into place, one part. And that's what I mean by we take a customer's idea and turn that into something that is unique for them. But look at the value proposition for CORE Molding, and we really, when we're really going through and looking at investor growth on how we want to grow the company now that we have the engine in place.
Really, why do people buy from CORE Molding? Yeah o riginally, I wanted it to be conversions, technical, and all this, and really, you start looking at why you're winning business, and, you know, we focused a lot on the turnaround when we first started on t o me, culture is a competitive advantage, right? Anybody can take your products, your technology. They can learn it. They can take it, but you can't take the culture. If you can create an organization where it's just easier to get things done, you're gonna be more efficient, and nobody can take that.
And what I mean by that is I look at y ou know, one of the metrics we always look at is turnover w e do a lot of employee engagements and a lot of employee surveys, and feedback, and, you know, it's everybody's a part of something bigger.
And really, when I look at the costs, you know, it's 50% of the salary of someone as a cost, and I look at what our turnover is, industry average in manufacturing is 23.3 and ours is 8.6 . That alone would tell you, you're saving money, and you're gonna design faster, and you're gonna be easier to work with, and you're gonna get bigger customer loyalty. So to me, you know, a lot of people will talk about strategy, and I would say, "I don't care about the strategy i f you can't execute, there's no strategy it'll work."
You gotta be able to execute, and that's what we focused on till now, and now our strategy is to how we're gonna take that and leverage it to grow. We have the cash, we have the funding in the bank, and that's our focus now.
I think big part of why we win business, again, BRP w e got the Gold Supplier Award. We got 10 PPM for a truck part, and this y ou're talking about something where people look at it and tell you that it's - they see a half a millimeter blemish. You know, 99% on-time delivery. You know, industry leader at the CAMX Show, multiple composites, and a big part for us, it's a moat for us, we have 82 large presses. You know, each press, let's say, takes a year to install, and it's probably about $8 million.
We don't do small parts. Everything is large or ultra large. So I think we partner very well with the customer. We co-develop our product design t his is a new product that we're coming out with now. In the middle there, for it's a federal regulation for all ATVs, and you'll see it on golf cars. The problem was that people would run over a stick, and it would come up through the underboard and impale someone's leg or... So now there's federal regulations w e've already been through the federal regulations on what impact requirement is made, and we've converted all that. We just made our first one last week.
It's for the entire underbody of every ATV, UTV, and golf cart to meet the impact resistance, and it's a federally required mandate. I think stability and design, and we developed the manufacturing solutions, again, large and ultra large parts. And like I said, we were gonna put paint into our Matamoros facility and then use that as our beta site to then start putting paint in, and that's really we've seen in the past w e've had to turn down a lot of ConAg business because we mold it, and then they want us to paint it, but we never had paint in-house.
So we're putting paint in-house now, investing in that to do that. And I think a big part of our portfolio, large and growing portfolio of complementary processes, again, thermoplastic, thermoset, and being able to combine those into a solution for the customer. When we start talking about acquisitions, that's a big part of our growth strategy moving forward. We can see that we don't have something out into the west of the U.S.
To me, when we look at acquisitions, the perfect acquisition would be $50 million, one or two plants out in the west, in Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona, or the west of Mexico, in a complementary process that does not do small parts i t would have to be 2,000-ton injection or larger and be complementary to our current process, whether that's pultrusion we're looking at, fiber winding, as well as other thermoplastic composites. All right. I'm gonna hand it over to John to go through the financials.
Thank you, Dave. So go through our capital allocation strategy a s Dave and Sandy mentioned, you know, we went through a period of time that you know, we were going through a turnaround e very dollar we generated was going back into the company to make it profitable, to go through the turnaround w e're now in a spot where over the last three years, we've generated a lot of cash flows w e're back to who CORE used to be, which is really a company that can utilize its assets and then drive cash flows.
We're in a spot where our job has changed from going from a turnaround to figuring out how to redeploy the capital. We have four areas that we're looking at to redeploy the capital. We'll continue to invest in organic growth.
Right now, we probably, because of some of the slowdown we're seeing, macroeconomic slowdown we're seeing, we probably don't have to spend as much on capacity, organic capacity growth at this point. But there is times that we will be putting money into capital for certain reasons o ne is to always keep our assets, the assets we have, running at the current levels.
The other is that there is gonna be times that we have to have the right asset in the right location, 'cause as Dave mentioned, we make large parts, and it is really about having the right press in the right location. Talking acquisitions, Dave mentioned the acquisitions, so we're looking to allocate some of our capital there. We did start creating a return of capital to shareholders.
In March, the board approved a $7.5 million buyback of our shares. We did start in Q2 to buy back shares. We plan on at least buying back each year as much as we issue in equity comp, so we're trying to stop the dilution of our equity comp plans, our LTIP plans, or make it self-funding through cash.
Last of all is just maintain a strong balance sheet w e're a pretty conservative organization w e recognize that we are in cyclical businesses, both economic cycles and then individual industry cycles. So, you know, we're gonna keep our debt somewhere below two times EBITDA, especially as we go through and do acquisitions, those types of things a s of today, you can see our debt's in pretty good spot w e're at net zero debt at this point, and the debt we do have on the books is currently has an interest rate of about 4.95%.
The last five years, what's happened is our sales did peak in 2022. We got some of the benefit of COVID, of everybody staying at home and everybody riding an ATV or driving an ATV and, buying a personal watercraft and, you know, instead of going on vacation, basically going to the local pond and buying and using their personal watercraft. We have seen a slowdown. So we're both seeing the economic slowdown, which is being driven by the Fed with the interest rate hikes w e're also seeing what we see as a rationalization where people are going back to a normal level.
There was a period of time also that, especially through 2023, that the distribution channels were not full b oth BRP, Polaris, Yamaha, all of the, our customers were refilling their distribution channels t hey were empty, and so that really happened in 2023. I would say that 2024, we're starting to see a more normal level, more back towards the levels that you would have seen without COVID, without all this extra demand.
And then what we're seeing now is just the general economic slowdown s o our sales have slowed down. The nice thing is we've because we've fixed the business, did the turnaround, we can still stay profitable even with the slowdown revenue. As you can see, our adjusted EBITDA.
Still, you know, on a trailing twelve month, we're at $36.7 million at 11%, and then our return on capital employed is 12.1%, coming off 16.4%, but one of our challenges that we need to, you know, really look at is, you know, how do we redeploy this cash? We have $37 million of cash on the books at this point, that we need to redeploy, where in the earlier years, we really didn't have the cash w e were not net debt w e were actually in debt.
So if you back out the cash, we're about 15.6%, and really our job is how do we redeploy that capital, in order to make the return that we want? Our target returns is somewhere between 14% and 16% return on capital employed.
This business is really all about cash flows y ou put big assets in, and you have to utilize the assets very well y ou make them go up and down as many times as you can in a year, and if you do that, you'll end up with, some really good cash flows y ou can see as we went through the turnaround, you can see our cash flow, how much cash flows we were generating from operations, how much we had to put back into sustaining CapEx and growth CapEx.
You know, in 2021, our free cash flows were not where historically we wanted them to be, as we were going through the turnaround b ut you can see in 2022, started to pick up, then 2023, it was $25.7 million. And so far this year, for the first half of the year, it's about $15 million s o we're back to a point where we're running the presses, we're running the business very well.
And again, this business is all driven i f you can run the presses and run the business well, you will be able to generate the cash flows, which is what we demonstrated, and we continue to demonstrate through the first half of 2024.
About two years ago, we set these long-term financial goals for ourselves. We still have kept them at this point, that we are trying to achieve them. You know, at the time we set the, in 2022, the revenues, our revenues were $377 million t hey're now at $358 million and then, and going down.
And so we are really watching that one. That one, we thought that, you know, we really didn't know the impact of COVID e verybody asked us, "What's the impact of COVID?" It was like, "Guys, we really can't tell you the future for sure on it." But that one, we're seeing that we want to get to $500 million w e would do some acquisitions to get there. I think that this one we will keep an eye on. We might be seeing this one extend out a little bit farther i don't think we think the organic growth in the future is probably as rapid as it was maybe in the last two or three years due to COVID and supply chains.
The nice piece, though, is the operating income and return on capital employed targets that we set of 7.8%-10% and 14%-16%. We're still very comfortable with that, That was really about how well we fixed the company, and so we think we have the six plants running extremely well at this point. And so we'll be able to, even with lower revenues, hold some of the profitability, get a good return.
And then, as Dave mentioned, you know, now our new must-win battle is how do we grow the company? And we're starting to invest in that, which will, you know, go back to trying to drive the top line there, which is trying to get to that goal of $500 million over three to five years. With that, we're open for questions.
What caused the sharp drop in your stock last year?
So, I think it, you know, really, and there's some of the people in here that owned the stock at the time, I think. I think there was a period of time there as COVID was happening, and a lot of people were asking us, you know ''What's what's the COVID effect versus what's the normal run rate? And again, we, we said Guys, we really can't tell you. You know, that if you went to BRP, they were saying, "Hey, they're going to sell a lot more ATVs." You went to Polaris, "They're going to sell a lot more." So in November, in the Q3 after the Q3 , we could see what happened last year was, is the restocking was done.
If you look at BRP and Polaris and all those guys, somewhere in their Q3 also, they kind of came out publicly also saying: "Guys, distribution channels are full." And so we really saw, coming into the Q3, really late in the Q3, that we saw a pullback in sales, especially from those guys that got that full s o we actually came out and said: "Guys, we think revenues next year, for the rest of this year and next year are going to be a little bit softer
because everybody's distribution channels were full, and we saw that, so we came out with guidance, and it... Until that, we had had three years of it, it... Everything was going great with COVID and everything, and the revenues were going up, and it was the first time that we really could see that we were going to have a revenue decline, and we announced it, and that's what happened with the stock that day.
In about 15 minutes.
Thank you. Two questions. First of all, relative to the rail car, you said it's 15% cheaper, but yet you also said it's 10 times as fast to install. So it seems as though it should be less expensive, unless less than 15%, or more than 50% lower cost, unless the original purchase price is higher. Can you kind of reconcile that for us? And then secondarily, the undercarriage of the ATVs and UTVs and w hen does that rate go into effect? When you produced your first one, I assume that was a test as opposed to a commercial one?
Yeah, I actually had a picture of the first one produced i put it into the deck that we're showing people today. It's a big part y ou know, it's probably about that big. So that's the first prototype i t will go into production next year. It's physically prototyped i t's done. You know, we're doing trials on the vehicle level testing now, but it goes into production and launches next year. And all manufacturers have to do it.
And then the rail product, why is it only 15% less?
Actually, we work with Trojan, who we supply, and they're the ones that are really looking at what the cost and value proposition is for that i mean, that's really from them, what they say the savings is and what the speed of it is.
So they're charging more than concrete?
I would assume.
Yeah. Concrete's a very cheap, actually, substrate to make i mean, it's really pretty much sand and water and some cement mixed in, and so it, the actual concrete's a cheap substrate, and so plastic would be a little bit more expensive, but net-net, a lot more easier to install, and so you get the net savings.
Yeah. And the big part of it is the maintenance. With the concrete covers, they have to have a crane to pick up the cover and get underneath with this, and just pick it up or replace the entire piece i t's like Legos y ou do straight 90-degree sides.
I know you're, you know, actively looking at some of the opportunities. Any progress out there just on kinda what [audio distortion] we're seeing and what the valuations are like, or you can report there?
Yeah, yeah. The good news is, actually, we've met with several bankers in the last two months w e haven't hired them w e just know all the plastic bankers out there. We have heard the valuations are starting to actually become more realistic.
There was a period of time there that we're out there, and just like in the housing market, there just wasn't enough supply out there where people were looking to sell, or they were looking to sell at the old COVID levels, and so it didn't make sense.
So some of the valuations we heard were still in the, you know, the eights, nines area w e have heard that we're seeing some, from the bankers we're talking to, they're seeing some get into the sevens. Historically, plastics, and especially stuff that we looked to buy in the past, was, you know, six to eight, and so you were trying to get in that six times b ut we're hearing it starting to come down. The targets that we went with, the challenge we had is we were going through the turnaround.
We weren't really looking for acquisitions at the time y ou're looking to actually, you know, fix the business and make sure that you got all these plants stabilized. So we didn't really have a pipeline going into this. So when we did hire a local bank to kinda help us when we knew what we were looking, we're really developing the pipeline at this time w e're reaching out to people that are not for sale today.
And so you're starting to get them s o of the 50 people you reach out, there's only gonna be maybe five of them, seven of them, that wanna talk to you m ost of them are just saying, "Guys, I'm running my business. I'm not looking to be sold or be bought." So we're in that level.
We have also put the feelers out to all the plastic guys that we know out there that do CIMs i will tell you, I've seen, I used to see a CIM a month, a week. I'm seeing probably about a CIM a month now t here's just, the volumes are not out there right now.
And the CIMs I'm seeing are really not great, not something that we're looking at. It 's a process that we're gonna be disciplined at, but, you know, we figure that we're gonna have to pull the acquisition into us i t's not just gonna show up on our doorstep w e're gonna have to go find it, and that's the reason we really hired a banker to help do all the cold calls and try to get people active to start talking to us.
Yeah. You know, one thing, though, is that I worked at Carlyle, and all we did was we just acquisition, acquire, acquire, acquire a nd every time I'd go into the company to acquire, the very first thing I would ask you is: "So what's gonna change about my company when Carlyle buys it?" "Well, you're gonna become a financial institution, and no one has a name t hat's what's gonna happen."
Right? With CORE, it's very different, right? We're gonna go in and, "Hey, this is the culture l ook at our plant, look at what we're doing y ou'll be invited into this." And from the size of acquisitions, it's important to these owners. It's a $50 million company.
So they've officially cut us off, so I'm sure there's other questions w e can figure out who they are and what, but-
Yeah.
He walked out, so if you got another question real quick, but he did officially cut us off.
Any other questions? It seems like there's been a lot of insider selling, recently. Have you been in contact with?
Yeah, I think, I mean, Dave has, I have, Renee has i think part of it is there was a period of time there when we went through the turnaround, there was no selling. You know, we were gonna accumulate w e're actually getting shares.
Diversification efforts is probably going on. I always, when people ask me, I kind of say, "Well, look at the color of my hair and probably try to figure out what I'm doing." You know, I'm, you know, I'm getting up there. So I just think it's normal diversification, from all our standpoint w e didn't really sell there as we were doing all the turnarounds w e were buyers and, accumulators, and so I think it's just really kind of diversification efforts at this point.
It's been a lot of years of accumulating i think the rate that I'm selling right now, it would take me seven years to sell, even if I got no more stock.
Thank you.
Thanks.
Just recognize with family shares, how big is that opportunity? How many customers are there?
We're starting with ERP-