Biopharma analyst and today we have Royalty Pharma, so we have Terry Coyne, CFO; Marshall Urist, EVP, Head of R&I, research and investments. Right. Once that R&D and people got really.
Kind of like hooked up, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Okay.
Dana like almost fired me. Yeah. So, I guess on the back of a very successful year, maybe Terry, this is for you. You got rid of the external manager. You did a buyback. You sort of have the gradient of like, is it buybacks? Is it uses of cash? You're obviously gonna still invest in new assets, right? but help us with kind of where you are in that process. Are the price of assets changed over the course of this year to where you would tilt towards maybe continued buybacks or just help us with kind of that thought?
Yeah. So, you mentioned the internalization. That was a big, strategic transaction that we did in the beginning of the year to internalize the external manager and sort of make everything into a single company, which was really important from both a strategic perspective and also a financial perspective. And with that, we also, at that time, we announced a $3 billion share repurchase authorization. And, we were very aggressive in the first half of the year, particularly in the first quarter. We took advantage of what we thought was really attractive, valuation in our equity and bought back through the first six months about $1 billion of stock. We did slow down, in the third quarter, and that was driven largely by actually just the deal flow. So we look at everything.
We have a capital allocation framework that we've talked a bit about, and it's based on the relative value of our stock price relative to intrinsic value and the attractiveness of the royalty opportunities. And so in the first half of the year, clearly we were, you know, really focused on, you know, taking advantage of the really attractive valuation in our stock. As the year progressed, the deal flow increased pretty significantly, and we had some amazing transactions that we were able to get across the finish line, like Revolution Medicines, in June, and then Imdeltra, over the summer. And, you know, I think that what we're feeling right now is that there is still a tremendous amount of momentum from the deals, from a deal flow perspective.
We'll continue to look at everything through that lens going forward. You know, there could be periods where it tilts more one way or the other. I think, you know, as we've, you know, certainly in the second half of this year, our focus has been capitalizing on some of these really unique opportunities that have come our way.
Yeah. And let me, let me, follow up on that. So if you look at the BD M&A environment this year, you see either bias towards like Chinese deals that are low upfront, bigger buybacks down the road, or maybe this is for you, Marshall, or you see a lot of deals that are CVRs, right? Super creative structures. Are you, is this entering you guys thinking more frequently, like in terms of having a, a more novel structure, or has it just been risk sort of stage amount, you know, amount paid? In other words, like, has there been a demand from the sellers of royalties to have more, a more unique, like pressing valuation sensitive or what, you know, the, the puts and takes?
Yeah. No, it's a good question. And I think certainly as we are working with a broader range and type of company, I think the demand and the need to customize structures to fit their needs, you know, has continued to increase. And we really welcome that. I think creative structuring is something that, you know, we really pride ourselves on. I think we've been a leader in that. And, you know, as we get, as the market demands more and more of it, I think we're more than happy to stay creative. Terry mentioned, you know, Revolution Medicines. That's a deal with a structure that, you know, evolves along several dimensions, you know, goes from a phase 3 investment today to one that expands as data accrues, as there's commercial performance, as there's label expansion.
And that's gonna span, you know, five plus years easily, right, of working with the company. And then, you know, that structure also evolves in terms of cost of capital, right? So the incremental draws that become available to the company, you know, as de-risking events happen is reflected in the sort of pre-wired cost of capital. So I think there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of moving pieces there, but I think it's a reflection of just, you know, we have the flexibility to meet partners' needs in new and different ways.
Okay. Yeah, that, that's helpful. And just on the cost of capital, I mean, you guys have very impressive like ROIC numbers that you've been, you know, very public about. As you look forward, do you have to take additional risks to keep at that level? Do you, you know, or is it sort of the natural stacking of some of these royalties and their contribution gonna play a natural like sort of tailwind to the return numbers?
Yeah, that's a great question. So yeah, for the first time this September, we've always talked about internal rate of return as sort of the key metric that we look at. And for us, it's still that is still the you know major factor behind the major thing we consider when we're making investments is the IRR attractive? Is the duration of the investment attractive so it can generate a really nice multiple on the cash? But what we realized over time is that IRR is tough for everyone to calculate on every single deal, and it doesn't really speak to the performance of the overall company. And so in September, we introduced these two new metrics, return on invested capital and return on equity.
What we showed is that very consistently, you know, over the last five years, our return on invested capital has been consistently in the mid-teens with very little variability, and our return on equity has been consistently in the low 20%. I think looking forward, we're confident that we can maintain similar levels, and it doesn't require taking on more risk. I think we're gonna continue to have a very balanced approach. There will be things that are approved and selling with really attractive growth like Imdeltra, and then things that are in development, that have a lot of upside where we also feel pretty confident that the, you know, that the risk is pretty low, like Dirac's on RACIP. So I think we're gonna continue to take a pretty balanced approach.
I think we all believe that those levels of return on invested capital, return on equity are sustainable for the foreseeable future.
Terry, some of the historical numbers have been a tailwind from some of the equity investments that you made, that sort of Biohaven play, etc., that have played out. Is that the assumption going forward that you'll continue to make equity investments and maybe that could be an additional tailwind, or is it just sort of a plain vanilla royalty agreement you're going to move forward?
Yeah. So, we actually don't include the benefits of equity investments in those calculations. It's really, you know, the royalty investments that we've made. But we have made some equity investments that have created a lot of value. Going forward, our plan is to, we'll do it from time to time. It's not going to be a core part of the business, but more as a supplement. And it's typically the times where we use equity are times where our partner has a goal of a quantum of cash, but they also have a goal of a royalty rate, a maximum royalty rate. And so sometimes the equity can be there to sort of solve for the gap, if the royalty can't be as big as, you know, the quantum of capital that they need.
Gotcha. Okay. If you look at, we had a discussion this morning with the FDA commissioner, and he was talking about, you know, innovations and moving beyond just sort of weight loss and some of the cell and gene therapies, which are obvious. But from maybe a technology or a TA perspective, like Marshall, is there a category that, you know, you'd say royalty like absolutely has to participate in the next like two to three to four years, or you just look at every one of the opportunities kind of as a whiteboard and like on a through almost an academic lens of what's the best, you know, IRR?
Yeah. It is really about what is the best, most exciting product. And I don't think there is any. We certainly don't feel that there's any given, you know, therapeutic area that is kind of make or break or will define us and the success, you know, the success of our portfolio building going forward. I think the advantage we have and why, you know, we have that luxury is because, you know, we invest so broadly across every therapeutic area that there's just a lot of opportunity for us. And so, you know, I think if we're not in one, there's gonna be opportunities in others, right? If you look at this year, it's been pretty broad across INI and oncology. And, you know, there's like just a lot of variety in what we do, and I think that serves us well.
You know, in a sense, it also mitigates, you know, any concerns people might have about our ability to continue to refresh and renew the portfolio because we can invest anywhere and have the team and the resources to do it. You know, we don't, there's nothing we would define as sort of must-win, for us to be successful.
But let's talk about diabetes, for example, or obesity, like metabolic diseases overall. You've seen a lot of M&A. You've seen lots of aggressive deals. Obviously from the top down, pharma knows they want to be there. And there's a lot of companies that, you know, wanna turn the data card over and maybe they're cash constrained at the moment. Like, but you'd have to take more risk to get there, right? There's a lot of, it's a high bar, right, for clinical risk.
Yeah, and I think you can see our selection criteria in a lot of the deals we've done. So I think, you know, there may be, right, cardiometabolic development programs tend to be very expensive, right? And it's competitive and you wanna move quickly. So, you know, if and when those opportunities arise, right, you know, we're gonna go through it and think, one, you know, is this a program that matters too? Do we think it's in the hands of someone who can make it a reality? Right? I think, you know, small companies in obesity these days is probably a pretty hard game to play, right? So we have to have the right partner and the right program together.
But, you know, given the capital needs of the industry, you know, I think we're gonna continue to see a great flow of opportunities.
Okay. Yeah. And, and just on the back of one of those companies, Lilly, to reach the agreement with the White House, I do feel like there's a number of pharmas and big cap biotechs that have kind of tried to mitigate the tariff risk with onshoring, you know, of capital. Has the, I guess, the expectations of some of the sellers of royalties to you guys changed over time in terms of, you know, do they, maybe they don't take as much, you know, risk now because they're onshoring resources and maybe they don't need as much money, but they still maybe want your validation or your support? I wasn't sure how the political environment has kind of changed the conversations that you've had with potential royalty partners.
You know, if I don't think it's changed things dramatically. I think if anything, people having a little bit more confidence in, you know, what the landscape is gonna look like is helpful, right? Because, you know, it's given people more confidence to, you know, to continue to invest. And, you know, given the, you know, like you said, the amount of M&A we've seen, I think everyone expects we'll see more. I think there's clearly an appetite, you know, the amount of capital our industry needs is, you know, is forever growing. So I think that's where our opportunity is gonna continue to see, you know, great opportunities.
Yep. Yeah. And just in terms of the deals and the capital deployment, Terry, you know, you guys have had a five-year target of $10-$12 billion, although you've, I think, exceeded almost every year what you initially set out with the IPO. Looking forward, you know, is it sort of more of the same an incremental higher number? Do you expect there to be sort of a step function? I guess it depends on the deals that are out there, but is there an urgency, I guess, to meet the targets and to do deals if it's something that you're not excited about, if you just want to sort of?
So I guess the way I would describe it is more $2 billion-$2.5 billion is kind of baseline.
Yep.
We feel though like there's a lot of momentum where that number could be, could be much bigger. We're open to that. We're ready for that, but we're also not gonna force the issue. We're obviously out there talking to every company and telling them about the benefits of royalties and having us as a partner, but we're not. We're not. We don't feel like we have to deploy capital. We need to make sure we make good investments. So that is always the sort of driving force. If you know, if you ask me, are we more likely to be higher than $2-$2.5 billion in five years or lower, I think it's much more likely to be higher, right?
But it really, I think it's gonna happen naturally as we continue to see all this momentum from, you know, synthetic deals, partnerships with pharma, all the innovation that's leading to all of the fragmentation in the industry that's leading to more and more royalties. All of those things are gonna be, you know, tailwinds for our business, and, you know, I think that we feel very good about the ability to, you know, meet and beat the, that those types of the $2 billion to $2.5 billion that we've described.
But it's not as though we sort of start the year and be like, "Oof, you know, starting from zero, gotta get the capital off." You know, we're gonna wait and be disciplined. If the deals aren't there, we'll wait and see.
Yeah. I mean, if you think about it, we this year to start the year, we did the deal with Biogen R&D funding deal on Litifilimab, and then almost six months went by and we didn't do a single deal.
Yeah.
And that's fine. We weren't worried about it. We figured it's gonna happen. But even if it doesn't happen this year, it'll happen next year. And so, it just so happened that then all of a sudden, you know, in two months, we announced almost $3 billion worth of total transactions. So, we like to be patient, but we're always ready and resourced. We need to make sure that we're ready from a balance sheet perspective and a human capital perspective to sort of jump on the opportunities when they do come. And they always do come.
Yep. Let's talk about the Merck trip to the sort of co-funding deal. I know you guys had; you probably said you had at least a look at that.
Maybe help us with your thoughts about that overall as a strategy from pharma and then looking forward. Do you think those types of co-funding deals would be greater, like in frequency, or do you think that's sort of a one-off?
Yeah. No, it's a good question. So I think we, you know, we really believe that the pharma R&D partnership deals are gonna continue to evolve and we'll see more of them. I mean, except for a couple of, a couple of companies, you can't name a company out there that doesn't have sort of, you know, pipeline, pipeline and LOE stress out there. You know, there is more pressure to, you know, to put more through the pipeline, to invest more in R&D. And, you know, these partnership deals are, you know, are a really attractive complement in that, in that situation.
If you think about what's on offer with those deals, right, you have a partner who takes full risk on a phase 3 program, you know, can fund in the hundreds of millions of dollars in exchange for what is a relatively, you know, modest piece of the economics long term. And the pharma has, you know, has a partner who they still keep the vast majority of the economics and a partner who is passive, right? They still run the program, you know, they don't lose any control. That's pretty attractive, right? And so, you know, all the, all the elements are there. We did look at that Merck transaction. I think if we take a step back and say, "Look, that's a, you know, Merck is a, obviously, you know, one of the greatest oncology development companies in the world.
That's a high priority program over there." So, you know, seeing R&D partnerships at that visibility, we think is just a sign of, you know, that that is an area where you're gonna continue to see more momentum.
Yeah. I think that from just to add on to that, from our perspective, while we were not on the other side of that transaction, it's great to see momentum in the space for pharma deals, which it's been building. And it feels to us like, you know, as we look to the back half of this decade, there could be a lot of those types of deals. And that could be a really good opportunity for us to add great assets, great products to the portfolio and things that we're really excited about.
I mean, it'll take time to see the return on that, but does it make you more nervous that a company like Blackstone could be more aggressive in this arena?
Not at all. No. I mean, you know, it's Blackstone and other companies have been in this space for a while now. And so, what we've said in the past, and we still believe this is, you know, if we're really excited about an asset, we should be able to win. We have the lowest cost of capital, and we have a proven track record of being great partners. And so we don't feel any, we continue to maintain that same level of confidence. But the more, you know, the more parties there are out there talking about the benefits of royalties, the better, because it just adds depth to the market, adds legitimacy to the market. And, you know, it will be ultimately a tailwind for us as well.
So I guess a growing TAM for the royalty market, I think, is a good sign.
Exactly. Exactly. Exactly.
Okay.
Yeah. And honestly, the more, you know, we've talked about this a lot, right? Having other players in the marketplace is a good thing, right? Because like Terry said, you have more people talking about it. But also, you know, when the partners see that there's like a robust environment out there and there's, you know, multiple players that actually just gives everyone more confidence to do more, right? So it grows the market.
Yeah. I mean, if you think back, Jeff, 10 years ago, even, even 5 years ago, royalties were a very bespoke thing. And only a few companies did them. 10 years ago, no one really did them, not, not synthetic royalties. But, you know, and 5 years ago, it was still kind of new. And, there were a couple companies that were sort of at the forefront of that, like Immunomedics, Biohaven. But, now, you know, it feels like it's become such an ingrained part of the capital solution for all of these, for any company in biopharma, big and small. And that's a really, that's a really great thing for our business.
And not to sort of ask a boilerplate type of question, but like we hear a lot about AI and the use of, you know, analytics.
How have you guys rolled out maybe this across royalties, either in the investment process or in the financial process? And would you say that the barriers to entry could be lower going forward if companies can deploy some sort of AI tool to kind of evaluate things? Or, I mean, obviously you have the reputation of Royalty, which is hard to put a number on, right, from a math context. But do you think there's gonna be more entrants in the space if they are able to figure out how to, you know, engineer royalty going forward?
I'll take a crack at that. Marshall can jump in. It's not gonna solve the capital problems, so you know, we have it may enhance people's ability to do due diligence. We are doing that now, and we're trying to figure out more and more ways to embed it in our investment process, but people still are gonna need tremendous amounts of capital to invest in this space and scale and diversification, all of which we have and all of which are very hard to come by, and so I think it will be an additive tool, but some of the barriers to entry that have existed will not be solved by AI.
Yeah. I think there's no way that, you know, I think there's any substitute for the almost 30 years we've been doing this, right? And all the accumulated institutional knowledge and experience that we have in terms of structuring, in terms of all of the financial scale that we've built over that time, you know, none of that is, you know, that we at least don't think AI is gonna help in the, you know, look, it can help with diligence. Does it give you conviction? Is it gonna help with conviction to invest, you know, $1 billion in a single drug, right? You know, I don't think that's the case, right?
We're certainly, like everyone else, trying to figure out how do you, how do we get faster, how do we get more out of the deep data resources we've built, and we're doing all of those things, right? But, you know, again, you have to have all the sort of building blocks to even, you know, get started.
Yeah. It does seem like you guys' process is mostly the same that you could use AI to maybe make your process more efficient, but I wouldn't look to Royalty Pharma for margin expansion.
No, we're probably not gonna be a margin expansion story. [audio distortion]
Not a lot of meat on the bone there. Yeah.
Exactly. But it could. Could you use it though to look at therapeutic areas or sort of portfolio, royalty portfolio management to try to maybe optimize or fine-tune?
Yeah. You know, we are, I think, using it. I've been really impressed with the creativity of our team in terms of how we're using, you know, AI applications in diligence. And certainly, you know, anything that helps with sort of large-scale data analytics can make it sort of faster and organize things faster and everything else. You know, in some ways, it sort of just, you know, continues to add to our competitive advantage because we have, you know, a sort of a deep pool of experience and information to, you know, to continue to stay at the forefront from a process perspective.
When you look at the royalties that once you have sort of expiration of the patent and you see sort of a decay, has the more mature assets, has their progression been as you guys had modeled before? I mean, I know it's probably a tiny piece.
So I think we would admit that we're pretty good at modeling things that go up.
Yeah. Yeah.
Understanding how something is gonna erode from, you know, a generic entry is not a core strength of ours. But I think that we, you know, there's plenty of analogs out there and we use them like everyone else. I think where we do differentiate ourselves is, you know, modeling the impact of competition. So like, let me take you back to we did the Tysabri investment in 2017. And at that time, most people thought that Tysabri was going to just go down, down, down. And I think by 2020, it was gonna be almost cut in half. And it was almost a $2 billion drug at that time. And it has done so much better.
And that was an area where we had a differentiated view that it would be a lot stickier and that it would, you know, that it was such an important drug for the patients that were on it that it wasn't going to erode like some, like, I think most, a lot of people on the sell-side thought. And that gave us conviction in making that investment and paying the price that we paid. As far as, you know, what happens with other products and their LOEs, I don't know, Marshall. It's definitely not like where we spend a lot of our time.
Yeah. Or, or maybe the way to think about it is, you know, when we make an investment, I think the shape of the decline curve as like patents come off in various geographies is not a big driver of our return, right? You know, obviously if it's slower, it's better, but that's never something that sort of makes it investable or not if the curve looks, you know, the shape of the decline curve to Terry's point.
Yeah, and a lot of.
Very hard to do with any of those things.
A lot of times we'll be pretty conservative and, you know, look at scenarios where it goes to zero after the LOE versus scenarios where the erosion is a little bit slower and.
Yeah.
You know, look at different sort of outcomes.
But the big thing though, to your example with Tysabri, Terry, is that you know, you did the Sanofi deal, right, recently. So you have core skills in oncology.
Yeah.
Neuro.
We've been following that space for, you know, MS for.
10 years.
Yeah. We've invested almost $4 billion in MS, north of $4 billion, I think, in MS. So it's definitely a space that we know really well. And I think it's a space that we feel like it's been overlooked multiple times where people said, "Oh, MS is; there's nothing to be done here." And then, you know, it happened with Tecfidera. It, I think it happened again with Ocrevus. And we think Frexalimab is another example where that could be a sort of another leg to the MS story.
Same thing you could say in the case of neuropsych, right? You guys picked Cobenfy, not Emraclidine, you know, and that's a category where, you know, the mechanism is exciting and could have a number of different indications. Is there another category? I know, I know Alzheimer's and neurodegeneration has been super tough to predict what are the winners and losers, but is that a category you feel like is still wide open for unique structures?
Yeah. I think there's a ton of opportunity there. I think the, you know, Emraclidine story is one that, you know, sort of keeps us all sort of humble in terms of what mechanism means in that setting, right?
Yeah.
So, you know, yeah, we, you know, it is an area we look at a lot. We are sort of appropriately cautious and sort of being honest about what we really understand and don't understand. But there's certainly, you know, look, the drugs that we have, even in large categories, are, you know, like depression and other areas are suboptimal in many ways. And so it seems like there's definitely opportunity and need. And I think it's a matter of being patient and waiting for the, you know, waiting for stuff where you can really have conviction.
Yeah. And then in, I mean, in Alzheimer's, we're excited about. We have a royalty in Trontinamab, the Roche Brain Shuttle product. And it's gonna be later in this decade that we'll see data there. But so far, it's very encouraging. It looks like it could be the most potent drug to lower amyloid. And so, we will see. But I think we're pretty optimistic about that one as well. And certainly not something that we're getting, feel like we get any credit for or that investors have much interest in, from a Royalty Pharma perspective, at least at this point.
Right. And looking at other assets, so, Voranigo, talk a little bit about the process there. 'Cause I think there is a theme where maybe consensus expectations are usually long-term remarkably lower than reality.
But then you also wanna keep some of the companies that you're doing the transaction with, like grounded as well, right, in terms of their expectations. There's usually a delta, right?
Yeah.
Between what they think and consensus thinks and you guys are usually trying to be in the middle or?
You know, we, so two parts of that. I think one is, yeah, you know, we certainly sort of build out our team sort of is encouraged not to look at consensus while we're sort of building our own forecast to sort of come at it in a, you know, in, in sort of a pure way as much as we can. But Voranigo, you asked about too, you know, this is a product that is a great, something, you know, that we are excited about because look, it's the kind of product that only we can kind of get access to right now, right? When it's being launched by a, you know, by a private French company, right? It's been an incredible launch, annualizing it over $1 billion after, I think, four quarters, something like that of launch.
You know, that's a great example of a product we identified, got excited about, you know, years ago and, you know, waited around until we had the opportunity and, you know, really went after it aggressively when we had the opportunity and, you know, we had the conviction. We liked the product. We, you know, saw a forecast that had lots of drivers for upside in terms of how long patients would end up staying on the drug, et cetera. That's a great story for the kinds of unique assets that, you know, Royalty Pharma can get access to and for our investors have exposure to incredible products like that.
And is there a trend, Marshall, on that? So if you have a—let's say—a product that has much less visibility across the street, do you usually find that the seller expectations are way higher than reality or, I don't know, just see it seems like if you have a crowded process that everyone sort of.
You mean lifts the tire?
Yeah. It's a peak sales and expectation?
It really depends. I mean, we, you know, the Voranigo is kind of a specific example because we were buying it from Agios and it was their drug originally, right? So they knew the product pretty well. And I think they had a view as well. You know, look, I think overall, you know, one of the things that's made us successful over time is, you know, we do really try to pay fair and reasonable prices for things, right? So like everyone walks away happy, right? We feel like we're getting a reasonable deal and the seller feels like, you know, they're getting good value as well. You know, I think it sort of would be sort of shortsighted to take a different approach, right?
Because, you know, if people feel like they're getting good value, and it's a structure that makes sense for them, you know, they're gonna walk away happy. That's gonna make our market bigger over time. And so that's really our approach is, you know, trying to always be fair. And, you know, look, maybe that means we're not, it might be a situation where there's a piece of value that we don't wanna pay for upfront, but we also acknowledge like, look, that could happen. Let's pay a milestone or share some value at that point.
Yeah.
We both feel like we have exposure to the upside scenario.
Yeah. You don't wanna have an adversarial relationship with your seller, right? So you have to feel like it's a win-win.
Completely. Exactly.
You mentioned this came from Agios, so I, I guess that one of the things you guys have done, the past couple of years is really engage with some of the earlier stage companies just to kind of keep abreast of all the developments and innovations.
Yeah.
Has the sourcing changed over time? Has, instead of companies coming to you, have you just followed some of these companies along and then been proactive to reach out to them on types of deals? I wasn't sure if that kind of has changed since you guys have IPO and become a much bigger, you know, top line and bottom line company.
Honestly, there's been more of both, right? You know.
Okay.
Certainly, you know, one of the incredible things and maybe that we underestimated about the IPO is just what it did for our brand and, you know, people coming to us and our position in the industry. So, you know, look, the amount of incoming volume that we see has grown dramatically. But at the same time, right, we have also invested in our team and sourcing and making sure we have a very robust outgoing effort because the truth is we know what we like a lot of the times. And so it's not a great strategy to just wait for that to walk in the door when we go out. And so we have a team that interacts with companies very early, probably before they're investable.
But to have that relationship to help be driving their conversation about how they see their capital structure when it does come time for them to be kind of in the zone, we have that relationship. And I think that's incredibly powerful. So it's a lot of both, actually.
But you wouldn't necessarily leverage those relationships to maybe get in earlier to the process. You still have kind of the same risk parameters, generally speaking.
Yeah. You haven't, I mean, if you look at what we've done, you haven't really seen us shift significantly like to be doing, you know, a different type of early, earlier things.
Yeah. Oh, that's true, and you can't really, you know, AI the relationships, right? Like there's a lot of.
You cannot AI the relationships.
I haven't figured that out yet.
Right. Have like an AI agent that goes out and does BD. No.
Oh, exactly. Exactly. Terry, I guess from an investment perspective, internally, you know, you've seen you guys have hired a number of professionals and you can. I see the deal funnel; the flow still looks to be pretty compelling. But how are you thinking about the business like five years from now, like in terms of how you could scale the size and scope? You know, is it just a natural cadence to get to, you know, meaningfully higher or are you trying to move that along?
That's a great question. So the amazing thing about our business is there's, it's so efficient. And since we are passive, there isn't like a huge ongoing effort to add value, right? We're, we basically make our investment and then we let the partner execute. And we're making investments in partners who we are confident can execute. And so where does the business look in five years? We will be bigger, without a doubt. We'll be bigger from a financial perspective, but we will be bigger most likely from a people perspective. But you know, if we were to double our capital deployment, we do not need to double our people. It might mean that we need to increase the investment team by, I don't know, Marshall, you know, a third, but not double.
And that's the amazing thing about our business is that, you know, we've set it up so we can be processing multiple deals at the same time. We had a period, you know, at one point this year where we had three transactions going simultaneously. And, you know, that's, five years ago we couldn't do that. It would've been really hard, and now we can do that, and I think that, you know, could that be five transactions going simultaneously, six, eight? Yeah, for sure. And so I think that we just need to make sure that we're trying to stay one step ahead from a resourcing perspective. One of the other benefits of being a public company has just been attracting talent.
We've been able to get amazing people to join the team. And I think that they, you know, it's a shared vision. It's people that are very long-term who wanna toil away on one investment for three months and be the expert on that investment. And it's, you know, we've, I think Marshall and the team have done an amazing job of finding those types of people and, you know, integrating them into the company and then also just developing them over time.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay, guys. Well, thank you very much.
Thanks. Yeah. Thanks, Jeff.
Good conversation.
Thank you.