Okay. So we'll go ahead and get started. We're very thankful to have Element Solutions, Ben Gliklich, the CEO for the company here to chat with us today. Fascinating story of the company. Again, we've been around this a long time. It started off as something called Platform Holdings, you know, years ago. Had a troubled area, and, you know, Ben and his predecessor fixed it up and have turned it into something that's, you know, really one of the kind of shining stars within our space, you know, as far as one of the few guys that's actually growing the business, have great market positions and, you know, just done a phenomenal job, you know, managing the business, deploying capital, so, you know, again, congratulations, Ben, because we haven't seen that much in this space where you've just been smart with capital.
So, maybe, Ben, let's start, as I've kinda done with a lot of the companies. If you just went back to January one this year, you obviously had some expectations for what were gonna happen this year. You know, what ended up being better? What ended up being worse, you know, this year when you kinda do an after-action review at 2025?
Yeah. Thank
s for the question, Duffy, and thanks for having us here. Gosh, going back in the time machine to January of this year, it's been a good year for us.
Mm-hmm.
So we're on track for a record year, since we founded Element Solutions. We're growing organically really nicely. We're proud to have found an avenue for some interesting capital allocation as well.
Mm-hmm.
You know, entering the year, we had conviction that the high end in electronics was gonna remain strong.
Mm-hmm.
The biggest area of uncertainty on the electronic side has been smartphones, and that, that goes back several years. You know, we weren't quite sure what to expect. I think our base case was modest growth in the smartphone market. You know, the EV market has been a volatile one as well.
Mm-hmm.
You know, if you had to point to something that didn't go as we would've expected it to go, it's the EV market.
Yeah.
Where we saw some weakness with some concentrated customers, and then the biggest question entering the year was capital allocation. The balance sheet, you know, had been delivered nicely. We announced the sale of our Graphics Solutions business in the third quarter of 2024. That closed in the end of February, and so we had, you know, a lot of capacity, and it was a question of where would we deploy that capacity.
Mm-hmm.
And so we spent a reasonable amount of time looking for attractive areas to deploy that capital, and we were fortunate to have found two great acquisitions, more recently here. So what's been better? High-end electronics continues to surprise to the upside. Smartphones, modestly better than we would've expected.
Mm-hmm.
What's been a bit worse? EV.
Yeah.
What's been on the industrial side? We expected the offshore business to continue to be strong.
Yeah.
It has been on the industrial solutions side. You know, volumes continue to be difficult there, but we continue to find avenues to improve.
Mm-hmm.
Margins through procurement and productivity, so that's been a good story as well, and then, of course, capital allocation is a really exciting area for us as we exit 2025.
Fair enough. And so using that as a baseline then, how does that set you up to springboard into 2026? You know, again, kinda same thing. You know, what do you think gets better? What do you think maybe is gonna be challenged next year?
Yeah. I think the right baseline is a continuation of what we saw here in 2025, which is to say the high end in electronics continues to be robust.
Mm-hmm.
Expectations for smartphones are for similar like years just 'cause there's so much volatility around that from a unit perspective, not a growth perspective. You know, we'd like to. We will hope.
Mm-hmm.
That the industrial side of the business recovers. It feels as though the market has been saying things are gonna get better in the back half of the year for three years rolling.
Yeah.
And they haven't. And so we're not gonna go in with a very bullish assumption there. We don't have any data points to support that.
Mm-hmm.
But we do believe we can continue to drive productivity in that business. And then, of course, you know, we've got an FX tailwind for the first time in a while.
Mm-hmm.
and M&A contributing.
Mm-hmm.
And so, you know, together, it's something around $70 million of EBITDA.
Mm-hmm.
That we'll add next year, and those are high quality, fast growing businesses, that we'll be adding to our growth algorithm.
Mm-hmm.
In the out years.
Okay. Let's dive in on both the two acquisitions if we could. Walk through kinda like what they were doing individually before you got them, and then, you know, is there a chance for you to do something differently to accelerate their growth, or are there true kinda sales synergies that you think kinda combined, you know, two plus two is bigger than four?
Yeah, so the two acquisitions are very different.
Mm-hmm.
In terms of our approach to them and the strategy go forward. With EFC Gases, this is a market leader in niche, rare, high purity gases.
Mm-hmm.
Servicing the fastest growing niches of the industrial economy. So that's semiconductor fabrication here in the United States.
Mm-hmm.
Satellite, propulsion systems, and other aerospace applications, then electrical transmission.
Mm-hmm.
Those three areas together are about 75% of sales. They've been growing, you know, 15% annualized back to 2019.
Mm-hmm.
At very robust margins. Our plan for them is to run that as a standalone business inside of Element, leverage the relationships and capabilities that we have, invest behind them, and, you know, accelerate the growth that was naturally coming their way.
Right.
You know, that's just an outstanding team, outstanding business with a lot of runway to grow and moat and the market at its back. On Micromax, you know, it's a bit of a different story where this is a very high quality business, market leading technology in an attractive, high value niche market, but it's a carve out.
Mm-hmm.
It’s been inside of a good company, but a company that wasn’t focused on electronics.
Right.
And even before that, when it was inside of DuPont, it was off to the side.
Mm-hmm.
And so, you know, we think that, inside of Element with a really deep focus on electronics, with great access to specifiers, qualifiers inside of our electronic business.
Right.
MacDermid Alpha Electronics Solutions, we can do a lot to grow their mindshare.
Mm-hmm.
and help them make traction gain real traction.
Right.
In the leading edge. Right now, their applications are in what were historically the most technically challenging areas of the market: satellites, aerospace, and defense applications.
Right.
They're not yet into high performance compute server boards, and we're just at the inflection where a lot of the innovation is moving from the chip to the board and onto the passives.
Mm-hmm.
Which is where they serve. So we see a big opportunity for us to help them.
Okay.
Climb that and accelerate growth in that business, and then integrate them into our overall portfolio.
Okay.
Where there will be some cost synergies as well.
Were they already moving into those areas, and you're just gonna help them, or that's an opportunity you saw to take them from an area and move it into kind of a white space area that they weren't in?
Yeah. Look, their technology is leading in the market.
Mm-hmm.
They have a right to participate in that market.
Okay.
They're already in the passive space, but commercially, I think that there's an opportunity to invest.
Mm-hmm.
To help them gain share in those applications.
Okay. And then with those kind of already in the bag, right, I guess, what does that do for your strategic vision then for Element? You know, again, 26 and maybe going out three or four years, you know, can, you know, is it possible that we see two or three or four of those types of deals every year and we can kind of increase your, you know.
Yeah.
The real growth rate inorganically, or did these just kind of a one-off that happened to come together, you know, and they're slumping and won't repeat?
The there are sort of two mantras for Element Solutions. The first is operational excellence and prudent capital allocation. So we've got great businesses, make them better more days than not. And the way that they manifest as great businesses in addition to above market growth is really strong cash flows. And so our job, the leadership team of Element, is to deploy those cash flows in prudent ways.
Mm-hmm.
With a lot of flexibility around that. So, you know, it's been M&A.
Mm-hmm.
Always in markets we deeply understand, behind our businesses. There've been buybacks. We have a modest dividend. We delivered the balance sheet over time, and so, you know, capital allocation is part and parcel of what we do.
Right.
And you know, the other sort of hallmark is that we wanna be the best company in our industry in terms of the value we provide our customers, the opportunities we create for our people, and the value we create for our shareholders as measured by intrinsic value per share. And so, you know, as we look out over the next couple of years, there isn't some fixed algorithm for capital allocation.
Right. Okay.
Right? There's a fixed growth algorithm organically. There are fixed frameworks around how we deploy our strategy, but we're gonna retain flexibility to deploy capital. We would love to continue to invest, you know, particularly behind our electronics business, but in general behind our businesses.
Mm-hmm.
To compound earnings per share, to improve our value proposition to our customers. There's nothing that we must own.
Okay.
And we've been disciplined around our leverage ceiling.
Yeah.
And so we'll exit the year with three terms of leverage. The ceiling in the past is the ceiling has been three and a half.
Yeah.
Very comfortable at three.
Yeah.
It was as low as 1.9 recently.
Mm-hmm.
but, you know, keeping the balance sheet conservative.
Yeah.
Investing behind our businesses is something you should expect us to do.
Mm-hmm.
Over any three, five-year period.
Fair. Okay, and maybe walk us through on the electronic side, you know, you've, I think, pretty definitely kinda gotten yourself into some of the higher growth areas, but, you know, how is the change in the focus for electronic end markets married up, I guess, with your portfolio and why you've kinda been able to accelerate growth a little bit behind that?
Yeah. Look, there's been the acceleration in our electronics business is a product of deliberate strategy.
Mm-hmm.
A bit of luck.
Yeah. Fair.
Right? You know, the portfolio that we had when we launched Element Solutions was a great portfolio of market leaders in niche markets serving primarily printed circuit board applications.
Mm-hmm.
With a foothold in the semiconductor market. So from a deliberate perspective, we improved our access to the semiconductor market.
Mm-hmm.
You look at what we did with the ViaForm or the Entegris distribution agreement that we canceled.
Mm-hmm.
As an example of that, and then we saw this convergence coming where printed circuit boards were seeing more innovation.
Mm-hmm.
And prioritized resources.
Mm-hmm.
Towards solving those emerging customer pain points.
Right.
and that has given us better mindshare.
Mm-hmm.
with the key specifiers and qualifiers and OEMs in our supply chains.
Mm-hmm.
And so we put our businesses together, this collection of market leading niche electronics assets into one company.
Yeah.
Really made a push on marketing and applications development and strategic account management.
Mm-hmm.
To bring the breadth of what we do to bear.
Yeah.
To these important supply chain partners, and that has driven market share and mindshare, as I said.
Mm-hmm.
and allowed for us to really outperform our end markets and gain great traction in the fastest growing niches of our available market.
Mm-hmm. Okay. Definitely gonna come back to electronics and 'cause it just drives so much, but let's touch on the industrial business for a second.
Yeah.
You know, 'cause it's still, you know, over a quarter of the company. One, I guess, strategically, should that remain part of the company? I mean, you know, again, is there a way to create value with those separate, or do you think that they work well together and it's not an issue? And then two, just again, same kinda question. How do you see the strategy for that business over the next two or three years? What should we expect to see there?
Yeah, so our industrial and specialty space, segment, smaller than it was.
Mm-hmm.
Two years ago because we sold the.
Yeah.
Graphics Solutions business, so it's also two really high quality market leading businesses that are growing earnings in what has been a very difficult backdrop for industrial.
Yeah.
companies over the past several years. We have an offshore solutions business, which is less than $100 million of revenue.
Yeah.
Growing really nicely, very strong pricing power, really strong market position in what has been a growth market, deep offshore exploration and production. So that's been a great story for the company. Really good business. The industrial solutions business is also a great business that has been demonstrating the quality of the business because it's been facing a significant volume headwind over the past three years. Volumes are down, you know, 15% plus. Earnings are up.
Yeah.
That's pricing, that's procurement, that's productivity, despite facility utilization being meaningfully.
Mm-hmm.
Down. So it's primed.
Right.
For really strong incrementals when that market gets better.
Right.
But we're not calling for that market to get better imminently. Both of these businesses are like our other businesses. They're asset like people intensive.
Mm-hmm.
Really strong cash flow.
Yeah.
businesses. We are not emotional about the portfolio as it is currently constructed.
Mm-hmm.
We see a pretty meaningful value creation opportunity from our industrial assets.
Right.
We don't believe that, you know, the right catalyst is self generated here.
Right.
And, you know, we wanna back the great horses that we have.
Mm-hmm.
In terms of the people and the assets and the portfolio.
Okay. And the industrial solutions business, what's the best metric to track macro wise? Is it just global manufacturing? Like, what is it that really drives the volume in that business over time?
About half of it is auto.
Mm-hmm.
With a skew towards the west.
Yeah.
The other half is construction, building products, industrial equipment and machinery.
Okay.
It's, you know, ISMs and PMIs.
Fair enough. And in that down period, have you guys taken market share in that business? Have you done better than the market, would you guess?
Yeah. We absolutely have.
All right.
And I think that that can be supported empirically. So our volume decline is less than the market, and that's because of a real strong commercial emphasis.
Mm-hmm.
And also, you know, we've been supporting customers.
Yeah.
We've seen a pretty dramatic realignment from a supply chain perspective.
Mm-hmm.
A lot of our European customers are moving into new geographies. We're helping them do that. We're equipment financing for them. And so we've won some really big pieces of business. We've also had, you know, several of our large competitors have been in the midst of transactions.
Yeah.
That has created white space for us.
Mm-hmm.
That has allowed for us to outperform.
Fair. Maybe looking at the company as a whole, you know, again, we've gone, it's been a long road with this one. You know, valuation is better today, but I think a lot of people would argue, you know, listen, when you've got peers like Qnity and Entegris, when you're sitting down with it, what is the right way to think about valuing this company? I mean, what is the right peer set in your mind? You know, I think you've done better than people would have suspected two or three years ago, but you've gotten rewarded for the EBITDA that you've generated, but not so much for a multiple improvement. Like, the company is a higher quality company than people would have thought. So just, you know, in general, what are your views on valuation?
It's not our job to assign a multiple to the business. Our job is to grow what gets multiplied.
Mm-hmm.
And we're very focused on that and, you know, buy on a relative basis, we've absolutely outperformed the broader indices in which we.
Mm-hmm.
You know, the broader peer group and even the electronics peers.
Mm-hmm.
You know, this company is now, you know, more than 70% electronics. When you look at our heads up comparison against some of our peers, we've been outgrowing them.
Yeah.
You know, so, you know, we think that the portfolio has demonstrated resilience through downturns.
Mm-hmm.
'Cause there was a recent downturn in electronics and then upside on the way up.
Yeah.
We're proud of that execution. You know, the thing that I think is sometimes missed when you evaluate Element in the context of electronics businesses is the cash flows.
Mm-hmm.
Right? And so, you know, x metals our margins are comparable.
Right.
For those peers. We sell $300 million or so of metal on a pass-through basis. It doesn't impact margin dollars. It just impacts margin percent. So, you know, you could look at it x metals the way we do.
Right.
Margins are expanding. They're close to historical records, and they're, you know, in line with peers, but our capital expenditures are dramatically less than peers.
Right.
Right? It's an asset-like business. And so when you look at our cash flow conversion or even more simply, you look at our earnings per share.
Right.
The PE multiple is, you know, meaningfully lower. You know, what do we do about that? Well, when it becomes dislocated, we buy back stock.
Yeah.
Again, we generate a lot of cash.
Yeah.
And so, you know, in our first seven years as Element Solutions, we repurchased 20% of shares outstanding, maybe a little bit more. We generate cash consistently every quarter, and buybacks are.
Mm-hmm.
Certainly part of our arsenal, to help us compound earnings per share, which is the north star for the company.
Okay. And sometimes we get pushback from investors, kinda flipping that around. The capital costs are lower. The R&D percentage is lower. So therefore, it's not as good a quality company. You wanna have high R&D. You know, you wanna be growing and needing capital to do that. So when you comp yourself, again, to an Entegris, to a Qnity.
Yeah.
You know, it, you know, there's a lot of pieces in that. But what would you expect the growth algorithm relative to those types of companies would be going forward?
Yeah. A simple pushback is if you can get the growth and the margin.
100%.
Without the capital intensity, it's probably a good thing.
No, it's a wonderful thing. But I think their, their point is, you know, there's some point you'll run out of road or whatever.
Look, the growth algorithm that we believe is right for our electronics business is high single digits through the cycle.
Yeah.
We've delivered high single-digit organic revenue growth out of our electronics business the past six quarters.
Mm-hmm.
It hasn't been a uniformly strong electronics environment.
Right.
Sure, the headlines are really strong about, you know, capital into data centers. That's, you know, a small albeit growing slice of the electronics ecosystem. There are a lot of electronics that go into cars, that go into smartphones, that go into industrial equipment, and those are markets that haven't been particularly robust. And so across the broader electronics ecosystem, it's a good time.
Right.
It's certainly not a great time.
Mm-hmm.
We've been delivering high single digit organic growth. We've been outpacing some of the peers you mentioned earlier on a like for like basis with our semiconductor business.
Right.
And our circuit board business. And that's all with.
Mm-hmm.
You know, a less R&D intensive and capital intensive model.
Yeah.
That's just the nature of the business. Now, where we sell into semiconductor, we're spending, you know, the appropriate percent of sales.
Okay.
More in line with some of those peers in R&D.
Mm-hmm.
But our assembly business, where there's $300 million of pass-through metals.
Mm-hmm.
It's less R&D intensive.
Fair.
It's still growing quite nicely. The right growth algorithm for the overall business is mid- to high-single-digit top line.
Mm-hmm.
One and a half times that on EBITDA because we're getting an incremental margin of between 30% and 40%.
Yeah.
And then with prudent capital allocation from the strong cash flow this business generates, you know, two-ish percent of sales in CapEx.
Mm-hmm.
We should be compounding EPS in the teens.
Yeah. Okay.
Over the past three years, we've done things that work against our ability to grow EPS in the short term.
Right.
Selling our graphics business.
Right.
Delivering the balance sheet.
Mm-hmm.
But that unlocks an acceleration or the right thing for the long-term growth algorithm of the business.
Right. Fair enough. No, that's clear. Now, when you look at the electronic materials industry kinda writ large.
Mm-hmm.
Right? You know, again, U.S., Entegris, MKSI. Do you think there will be meaningful structural inorganic changes to that industry or, you know, all this stuff goes through cycles and, you know, now people are pretty excited. Multiples are pretty high. Sometimes that makes it difficult for things to happen. But we've seen a decent amount of consolidation. Probably your closest peer got acquired, you know, several years ago. Would you suspect that we will see continued consolidation in this industry?
Yeah, so this is a market that has been consolidating.
Mm-hmm.
For several decades.
Yeah.
We are the market leaders.
Mm-hmm.
In the markets in which we participate.
Yeah.
We're always eager to bring new capabilities to bear to support our customers and supply chains. Not all electronics materials businesses are made the same.
Yeah.
We just went through the capital intensity, the R&D intensity, and the natural returns.
Yeah.
Of a lot of those businesses. So we're not looking.
Mm-hmm.
From our perspective simply for electronics materials business.
Right.
They need to meet a quality threshold that is quite high.
Right.
'Cause our business quality is quite high. The other dynamic is that because we're in a strong position in our markets, and there has been a reasonable amount of consolidation, there's nothing that will happen from a strategic perspective that will put us on a defensive posture.
Okay.
Where we have to go consolidate.
Right. Okay.
So our view is we're eager to consolidate high quality businesses.
Mm-hmm.
We are a great long-term home for these assets.
Mm-hmm.
I think we've proven through our operating system, and strategy.
Mm-hmm.
That we can run these businesses well when they meet the model that we're looking for and the quality criteria we're looking for. But we're not going to be forced buyers.
Mm-hmm.
by other consolidations. I can't read the tea leaves again.
Right.
You know, I can only speculate around incremental consolidation. But our posture on this is we're happy to add high quality businesses.
Right.
But we don't feel like anything will force us.
Fair.
To do so.
Okay. Kinda post-COVID, you know, again, you guys less so than a lot of my other companies. You don't have to talk about like raw material costs and stuff like that, but kind of underneath, you know, what has been the trend for raw materials for you guys, you know, kinda last year, this year, looking into next year? You know, and how have you been able to offset that with pricing generally?
Our business, a few observations around raws. When you look at our cost of goods.
Mm-hmm.
80% is variable.
Yeah.
We don't have a big fixed asset footprint. When raws go up, that has an impact.
Yeah.
Pretty quickly, but we are able to pass through either contractually through negotiations.
Mm-hmm.
Price increases pretty consistently.
Right.
That's always been the model, and that, that was the model coming out of COVID when there was a lot of inflation.
Mm-hmm.
We're able to pass that price on. We're able to hold that price by and large. And so it took a little while. So our margins were under a bit of pressure coming out of COVID.
Yeah.
We've recaptured that and more.
Mm-hmm.
We've been able to hold price in what's been a deflationary environment for our raws over the past several years.
Mm-hmm.
Our outlook for 2026 is for roughly flat input costs.
Okay.
It's just a conservative assumption.
Yeah.
But we're driving better procurement.
Yeah.
And so, you know, we see room for margin expansion from better procurement and then mix.
Mm-hmm.
We're bringing new technology to market, and we value price.
Yeah. Okay.
So if we're coming to market with something that improves our customers' operations, we share in that gain.
Mm-hmm.
There's a margin expansion opportunity because the segments of the market that are growing fastest are the highest tech.
Right.
So the mix is better. And then we have innovative products that we're bringing to market alongside that.
Okay, and then maybe one kind of around politics. Obviously, there's been a lot of trade noise around electronics in the last year or so. When you look at that, one, has that directly impacted your business at all? You know, again, are you getting calls from the administration kinda saying, "Hey, don't sell this or don't sell that," type thing? And then two, you know, if countries turn out to be winners from this, and again, maybe it's more stuff in the U.S., more stuff in Korea, you know, maybe China, you know, kinda going on their own, you know, chips.
Mm-hmm.
Where do you win? Where do you lose geographically if one side or the other kinda comes out on top?
The business is very local.
Yeah.
So we're buying, manufacturing, and selling locally with local teams on the ground providing technical support. And so when there was a lot of noise around tariffs, the threat was not that we were gonna have to pay tariffs.
Right.
Because of cross-border flows. It was everything's gonna get expensive. It's gonna destroy demand.
Mm-hmm.
Which didn't happen in 2025.
Yeah.
So we've got a resilient model from tariffs. The benefit of our business is it's local.
Yeah.
We're global. We're global leaders.
Yeah.
So when business moves from, let's say, China to Thailand or India, we're there on the ground.
Mm-hmm.
To support our customers who have much more complex manufacturing processes than we do.
Right.
We're helping them stand up their sites.
Mm-hmm.
So we've won share in the electronics business.
Mm-hmm.
As circuit board fabrication, for example, moved from China to Vietnam and Thailand this year.
Okay.
We've helped large smartphone OEMs stand up assembly.
Mm-hmm.
In places like India where they've started to move device or box building.
Right.
The realignment of supply chains thus far has been a positive for us.
Mm-hmm. Okay.
And I would expect it to remain so.
Okay. And just when you get big growth areas like that and movements, sometimes you get inventory build. People always kinda double, triple order stuff just to make sure. Do you see any of that in your chains? Do you worry that, you know, we might have an inventory issue if things slow down a little bit?
Our customers don't really stock our product.
Okay.
The exception is in the semiconductor business where they wanna have six months on hand. But, you know, if you go to a printed circuit board fabricator, they don't wanna have big jugs of chemistry.
Right.
Sitting on the floor. There are lots of people.
Yeah.
Right? And we're local.
Yeah.
So they expect, they place an order, they're gonna get something within a week.
Mm-hmm.
If not a few days.
Fair.
There's not a lot of inventory of our product.
Right.
In the past where we've seen inventory build is of finished goods.
Right.
The most recent example of that was the printed circuit board market for domestic Chinese smartphones. There was an overbuild of the actual finished product.
Right.
In preparation for the reopening post-COVID. I don't see that here.
Okay.
I don't see that here, and the way I could support that sort of from an anecdotal or empirical standpoint is that our growth is coming from new lines.
Mm-hmm.
To support advanced server boards for the data center market.
Mm-hmm.
Right? A lot of the growth we're seeing.
Right.
There was this question about was there a pull forward around COVID. A lot of the growth we're seeing is new investment.
Mm-hmm.
New kit to support server boards for these large.
Yeah.
data center buildouts.
Okay. Fair enough. Maybe just quick update Kuprion.
Yes.
You know, we kinda do an after-action review on that. You know, what has that done to the portfolio? How has that delivered for you guys?
It's not an after-action review at this point. We're in the middle of the action.
Fair. Okay.
We're in the middle of the action with Kuprion. So Kuprion was a technology that we acquired in the middle of 2023.
Mm-hmm.
It was really a material science company that had a very innovative material for copper.
Yeah.
That solved a lot of very pressing pain points in the high-end electronics supply chain, and we have spent the past two years doing three really hard things: scaling up manufacturing.
Mm-hmm.
For a brand new sort of material.
Yeah.
In the market, commercializing a brand new material in the market, and helping our customers figure out how they were gonna get the equipment sets to use this in their high-volume manufacturing.
Right.
And so as we sit here, you know, two and a half years in, the commercial pull.
Mm-hmm.
Is stronger than we could have imagined.
Okay.
So customers really want to use this. And it is because it's enabling them to do things they couldn't do without it.
Mm-hmm.
There's some drop-in applications. There's some new applications, but there's a huge amount of pull to the extent that we have stopped new engagements.
Right.
We've limited the number of customers that we will, you know, sort of talk to about this 'cause.
Mm-hmm.
We can't make enough for them to do samples.
Right.
And so we don't want customers to say, you know, to start working with this, then order it from us and not be able to satisfy that. The first piece is where most of our energy is right now, which is.
Uh-huh.
Standing up the manufacturing capability, and so we were originally gonna build one large plant, and that was gonna take too long.
Mm-hmm.
So we are simultaneously building a, we're calling a mid-scale site, which should be operational at the end of this year.
Okay.
Which will make enough quantity so we'll solve this issue of being able to sample the material for the market.
Okay.
Also get some sales from the material.
Yeah.
In 2026.
Mm-hmm.
And then a large-scale plant, which will most likely be operational in 2027.
Okay.
And then there's a lot of innovation right now with customers on applications.
Mm-hmm.
Technology, how they're gonna use it. But it is an example of how our electronics business has changed.
Right.
Things we're doing from a strategic deliberate perspective to bring new technology to market, to climb the technical ladder.
Yeah.
In terms of access to CTOs and leading engineers in our supply chains and improve our traction in those markets.
Right.
It's bearing fruit. There are, you know, many, many anecdotes I could provide of customers we didn't have good relationships with or access to who are now, you know, becoming customers across all of our electronics.
Yeah.
Portfolio because of dialogue that started around Active Copper or copper.
Yeah. And if you had the large plant on stream today, could you sell everything or you still need to go out and create the demand for it?
It's.
You know, so it needs to have.
There's a qualification cycle with it.
Okay.
Our customers need to qualify the material, and then they need to qualify their product.
Right.
In some cases where we're enabling something new, they need to sell that product.
Right. Okay.
They want it because it's going to drive their revenue.
Yeah.
But they can't sell that product until they're making it.
Okay.
So there is a cycle time, but the mid-scale site.
Yeah.
It's gonna be very busy once.
Okay.
Once it's ramped.
This is displacing what material today generally?
It is providing an alternative for circuit board metallization.
Okay.
Electroplating, certain die attach semiconductor packaging applications, certain thermal interface materials.
Okay.
It's got a really broad.
Mm-hmm.
application set.
Yeah. Okay.
is the way to think about it.
Okay. And then, last one, I always get a lot of questions on the metal pass-through stuff.
Yeah.
Have you guys ever thought of a creative way, you know, I don't put it in the corporate segment or something like that, where, you know, you could kinda look at the way you guys do the margin and that stuff, or you just don't think it's that big of an issue that that doesn't hold you back really to try to do something with it?
So it's a fair observation, and it's becoming a. It will become a bigger line.
Mm-hmm.
Because Micromax sells $200 million of metal.
Yeah.
You should expect us to address that.
Okay.
In our financial reporting after the Micromax transaction closes.
Okay.
We think that the quality of the business is understated because of the.
Yeah.
Because of the metal sales.
Yeah. No, I think that's fair. I just didn't, you know, yeah, somehow, so people can do an apples to apples versus peers.
Yeah.
I think would be helpful. Okay. Awesome. Well, listen, Ben. Thank you so much for coming and spending some time with us today. Again, this has been one of the true bright spots in our space over the last couple of years. So congratulations on that.
Thanks, Duff. Appreciate your time and interest.
Thanks, everybody.