Morning, everybody. My name's Jim Salera. I run the packaged food and beverage practice here at Stephens. And with us today from SunOpta are Brian Kocher, CEO, and Greg Gaba, CFO. Brian, Greg, thanks for joining us this morning.
Thanks so much for having us.
I think a lot of good starting point to begin our conversation. We were talking a little bit before we started. For a lot of CPG companies and really restaurants for that matter, 2025 has been a year of challenge, uncertainty. We've seen volume, traffic pressure. Yet you made a decision recently to pull forward investments to meet an increase in demand for the products that you produce. Can you just walk us through that decision and what you're seeing from a demand standpoint?
Yeah, so I think we're very fortunate to be in categories that continue to see tailwinds. Our plant-based beverage group business, that category continues to grow in the high -single digits. You look at our fruit snacks business, that continues to grow, that category in + 20% range. In fact, we've grown double digits, 21 straight quarters in that business. Going to beverage, teas, and broth even are categories that are continuing to grow in the consumer landscape. First, we're really strong categories, I think. Secondly, we've partnered, remember, we've got a very clear mission. We're a co-manufacturing and private label solutions provider. We support our customers' growth. We've been able to align with customers of women. Not only are our categories growing, but the customers that we're operating with are growing faster than the categories. Frankly, they demanded more volume, more capacity.
We are a fantastic solutions provider with R&D and quality and a nationwide distribution center, efficient transportation, sorry, a nationwide production system, efficient transportation. They're demanding more volume. We've been really glad to pull forward some capital investments, which we thought might be in 2027 or so. Our fruit snack line is 100% subscribed already. Our aseptic processing line is 50% subscribed. We really like the dynamics in our categories and with our customers right now.
We'll come back to maybe diving in on the specific category demand in a minute. Could you just lay out the impact of pulling forward that demand and what that looks like from an operation standpoint? I think in the most recent quarter, you guys talked about kind of a $10 million headwind to EBITDA in 4Q. That runs the gamut of maintenance, overtime, operating, and efficiencies. Could you just kind of walk us through that?
Right. So just to avoid confusion, we're really talking about two pull forwards.
Yes.
Right? One was the capital that we decided to pull forward because we were simply oversubscribed. The categories and the customers needed it and demanded it, and we could fulfill it. This particular quarter, we were also presented with a couple of opportunities with marquee customers in great categories for us where we could really drive some significant growth that probably was going to be above and beyond what our long-term algorithm suggests. We were really faced with the decision of saying, can I bring that volume on now, or potentially do I forego it for years and years and years in a competitive situation? We brought the volume on now. We knew it would cause some complexity. Transparently, it caused more than we thought. We knew it would cause some complexity. Again, I love those customers. I love the volume that came on.
I love the jumpstart that it gives us. I know one thing for sure. I cannot improve the margin on the volume that we never get. I can't do that. I am really excited about that volume long-term. Maybe Greg, just walk through some of the margin impacts and the temporary nature of those.
Sure. Yeah. We talked about a $10 million change versus our expectations for the fourth quarter. I really view it as kind of there's four buckets we highlighted, but two of them relate to Midlothian. We've been having the wastewater challenges at Midlothian all year with the limitations due to the wastewater system. That really hurt us in Q4 coming up here. As we brought the additional volume in, that really stressed the system. We already knew we were inefficient. Bringing that volume to a constrained environment really hurt us. That's about $2 million. The good news is there's a complete fix for this. We have the equipment ordered. We have it designed. It's coming in. By the second quarter, by the end of the second quarter in 2026, the new wastewater system will be installed. That issue will be resolved.
In addition, in the fourth quarter, in October, we shut down the plant for a week to get ready for the new line that Brian talked about, the installation and the preparation for the installation of the new equipment. Those two are kind of isolated issues related to Midlothian. The other $6 million, two buckets, really $3 million was stressing the system of bringing on this additional volume for the rest of our network. It required additional overtime, additional maintenance, et cetera, as we really pushed those assets. Because of that, we had more unplanned downtime, resulting in the maintenance, resulting in the overtime costs. Because we were focused there, we had to delay our margin improvement plan. We expected to be well into our margin improvement plan at this point in time. That has about a $3 million impact versus our expectation for Q4.
The good news is there's a fix to these problems. We expect the impact to decrease in Q1 and then decrease further in Q2 as we start working through that volume. We get back to our margin expansion plan by Q3 of 2026. That's when we'll start seeing our margins increase as we work through that.
Great. Could you help us quantify how much incremental capacity you'll be installing in 2026, both between the fruit snacks line and then pulling forward some of this other demand? Has that resulted in having to put other customers on delay or allocation or maybe pushing back new business? Just how are you kind of bridging the gap as you get that capacity installed in 2026?
I would think of it at a couple of high levels. I would think of it as we have the capacity now that will allow us to fuel our current customers' growth until we get the new capacity in. Between improvements that we foresee in the supply chain, we think we can manage our existing customers' growth. That's one thing to think about. We announced a new fruit snack line, which will increase our fruit snack capacity by about 25%. That business is about $160 million annually. Think of it as about $40 million of annualized revenue capacity that could come along. We talked about the aseptic facility, our line that comes on is about a 10% capacity increase. Again, once we get it up and running and it's fully in tune, think of that as sort of a $65 million revenue capacity opportunity.
We believe we still have further opportunity to increase the output on our existing equipment. We have done that very successfully this year, more expensively than we thought, but very successfully in creating, at least in this quarter, 13% more production units in the quarter than we had in the same quarter last year on exactly the same equipment. That is progress.
Are there any execution risks we should be aware of as you kind of have this increase in available capacity alongside bringing volume? A lot of the times when manufacturers add incremental capacity, they do not have so much volume coming online immediately. Can you just walk us through anything we should be thinking about or anything that you are concerned about in terms of kind of matching up that new capacity with new demand one-to-one?
Yeah. I think the good news is we've tried to be very transparent with the opportunities we have over the next couple of quarters in our existing network. Greg outlined that. I feel good that we've not only identified those, but communicated those clearly so that the investment community has very clear expectations of how we see that unfolding. That's kind of on our existing equipment. The good news with both of these new capital equipment additions is they're existing lines and existing facilities. We've got the management infrastructure in place already. We have, for the most part, the electrical components and the plant infrastructure in place. We have trained workforces. I wouldn't say this is a greenfield. This is adding a line. I'll give you a couple of proof points.
When we added the last fruit snack line, more or less within two quarters, we were bringing that up to full capacity. That is a very good proof point for it will not come on day one, but between 90-180 days, we really see that opportunity to bring that volume on and then operate it efficiently. Partly because we have done it before.
Coming back to the specific categories, we talked about strong demand, plant-based beverage, strong demand, and fruit snacks. If we look specifically at plant-based beverages, are you seeing any softening, whether it's in your retail or food service channels? Is it that your customers are kind of insulated from what we see as broader retail consumer softness? Can you just walk us through what people might see in either the syndicated data or if they're looking at restaurant traffic trends versus what you guys are describing is obviously very strong?
Yeah. I think the first thing that I would say is syndicated data and restaurant traffic trends are not correlated to our revenue stream for a couple of different reasons. First of all, that syndicated data probably only represents about 1/4 to 1/5 of all of the plant-based beverages. You are talking about a really small sliver of it. It also represents, just transparently, the absolute slowest-moving segment of plant-based beverages. Where we really excel and where we are over-indexed is in food service and in club. I think we have a unique timeframe where you have the long-term tailwinds of health and wellness, nutrition, environmental, animal welfare, all of those reasons, taste, all of those reasons that people participate in plant-based. Now you have that combined with the, I would say, migration towards, I would not say a flight to private label, but there is a migration to private label.
There's a migration to value on consumers. We love the fact that we're a private label provider. We love the fact that we're over-indexed to club channel where the most value is. We love the fact that our coffee business continues to grow. Our food service business continues to grow. Why? Because coffee shops continue to proliferate across the nation. We are in eight of the top 10 coffee chains across North America, and we're in all four of the four fastest-growing coffee chains. As much as people see some foot traffic data on certain publicly traded or publicly disclosed areas, as much as they see that, the entire category is actually growing. In fact, 46% of consumers actually plan on visiting coffee shops more frequently over the course of the next year than less frequently. I think that's really, really important to remember.
It's more about coffee chains and their growth and menu proliferation or menu migration to the point where plant-based beverages are not add-ons anymore. A lot of times they're core ingredients. You don't go order a latte and say, "Oh, I'd like oat with that." It's already in the product. I think that's a menu migration that doesn't come through in syndicated data, that doesn't come through in foot traffic stories. That's one of the reasons that we're benefiting.
On that last point, are you able to frame up how much we've seen consumers shift from kind of hot coffee to cold coffee? Because my understanding that the plant-based beverages work much better in that cold format versus the hot format. I would assume that that kind of bolsters the growth.
Jim, you would be happy to know that our R&D team has made sure that our plant-based beverages work in hot and cold coffee. There you go. We see the migration over the last 10 years. No doubt. I mean, some of the coffee chains would suggest that 60%-70% of their drinks are cold coffee drinks now. Again, I think that's part of the menu item, the menu changes, and the menu migration that plant-based beverages have benefited from. When you look at, and let's round it back to your track channel, when you look at that whole category in total, the track channel, the club channel, which does not report data, the food service, which is hard to get data, when you look at that whole group together, we believe that's growing in the high -single digits. That's actually accelerating from last year when we thought it was growing in the mid-single digits.
Is there anything we should think about when it comes to customer concentration risk? You mentioned you're in eight of the top 10, which is pretty broad. Of those top 10, do one or two represent 50%+ of kind of the overall grid? What's the new unit expansion for some of the smaller chains look like?
Yeah. When you look at our financial statements, right, we disclose one customer is greater than 10% in our queue. That's it. We are pretty diversified. Our top 10 customers are roughly 80% of our business. We only have one greater than 10%. That customer, along with all of our other customers, continues to grow. We're growing. That customer is maintaining its 33%-ish share rate. All of our customers are growing. It's a great situation to be in. The one that is greater than 10% is a really great customer. We continue to expand our portfolio with them and continue to have great success with them.
I think the other thing, Jim, that's really important, as much as we talk about producing volume, this is really a service and solution business. The number one reason we gain market share is when someone comes to us and says, "Hey, I'm having a little bit of trouble with my existing supplier," or, "I'm having trouble with my tertiary supplier or secondary supplier. Can you help me?" That's the number one way we gain market share because we've got the R&D resources, we've got the scale, we've got that nationwide production network that allows us to economically service the needs and solve problems for our customers. That's also the number one rule of customer retention. Don't cause problems. Our service rates are really high. We continue to innovate, either co-innovate or on behalf of our customers in the category to help them grow.
We have continued to increase our own capacity, even our existing assets, so that we can service the tremendous growth that they are seeing. The good news about us is if we are growing 17% in the most recent quarter, our customers have to be growing too. They are buying that. They do not hold inventory. Most of them hold two weeks' inventory of our product, three weeks maybe. They are not holding the inventory. They are buying it and selling it. That is great for us.
We talked about consumer trends shifting in coffee and retail consumption towards plant-based beverages. A lot of reasons for that. Another area or kind of emerging trend we've seen for consumers is increased consumption of products with protein-dense characteristics. You guys have a line that services RTD beverages, plays well into that category. Can you just walk us through what you're seeing there in terms of demand from customers? Maybe if you can give us an update on how that line's performing, opportunity to increase overall capacity utilization rate, whatever you're comfortable sharing there.
Maybe I'll talk about customers and then you talk about how we're doing market-wide, production-wise. Is that good? Yeah. I think there's no doubt you see protein almost everywhere. It's not exclusive to our product or our categories. Again, I go back to what our mission is. Our mission is to solve problems or provide solutions for our customers. Our customers come to us with a variety of reasons. They want a low-sugar option. Maybe they want a low-sugar oat milk or a low-sugar soy or coconut. They want a better nutritional content. They want protein that is infused. They want a different caloric content. We work with them on all those types of things. I'm not ready or prepared to announce anything of significance, but I'm trying to give you a perspective that that's a normal course of our business.
With our top 15 customers, we are in conversations with their R&D department. If not monthly, then it's weekly. We are constantly working to innovate with them. I'd say our job is to help them meet the rapidly changing consumer demands. I feel really good about our capability to do that. Maybe Greg, you can talk just a little bit about the 330 mL line.
Yeah. We do have the one line in Midlothian. A reminder, right? In Midlothian, we do have the wastewater constraint. Therefore, we're not able to run all of our lines at full capacity until that constraint is fixed. That's the reason why if you look at our investor deck, we show our protein beverages not growing as fast as the market. It's because of that constraint on our one line that we have in Midlothian. Once that's fixed, we fully expect that to grow at a higher pace.
Great. Duck beverages, fruit snacks. Brian, you mentioned earlier fruit snacks. I think it was 20 straight quarters.
21.
21 quarters, double-digit growth. Is that demand coming from a specific customer or sub-channel? Just because I think most people do not think of fruit snacks as this kind of roaring growth engine. Yet to be able to deliver that type of growth for as long as you have, there has to be something that we are missing there. Can you just walk us through?
Yeah. I think if you look at the overall snack category, let's say salty snacks, those types of things, that's a little bit flat to down. If you take a cut of the better-for-you sub-segment, it's actually for several years been growing 20+%. Growing in club, growing in retail, 20+%. Certainly, if the entire category is down and that segment is growing 20+%, you can see how it continues to be a larger and larger portion of the segment. It is fueled by, I think, the same trends you see for almost any better-for-you product. Clean label, natural sugar, natural colors. The sugar in that product comes from apples. I think we can live with that. The color in that, if we want a blue fruit snack, it comes because we mix purple carrots in there.
It's all artificial or no artificial flavor, no artificial color, no artificial sugars or added sugars. Really clean label. That's one thing. Secondly, it's really a good value. When you really think about it, you can drop a fruit snack in a purse, a backpack, a lunchbox, and it's $0.50- $0.60 a serving. That's really good value. I think lastly, I would say each of those fruit snacks are individually wrapped. They're very portable. They can go anywhere you want. It makes them really convenient. With that category, and I'm not just talking about our product, I'll talk about all the products in that category. You're hitting health trends. You're hitting clean label trends. You're hitting better-for-you trends. You're hitting convenience and you're hitting portability. I think that's why it continues to grow rapidly.
As I said, we announced a fruit line that we're going to add in the last part of 2026 that's 100% subscribed. I think that also tells you we don't see that slowing down.
Great. Why don't we pause there and see if there's any questions in the audience?
Can you talk a little bit about your debt balance and how you see that amortizing down over time?
We're being broadcast too, right? All right. The question about our debt balance and is it over, how do you see that migrating over time?
Yeah. So we're currently sitting at that 2.8 x leverage, right? One of our, when it comes to capital allocation priorities, our number one priority has been consistent. It is to deleverage and to pay down debt. Second priority is to invest in capital projects. We gave a couple of examples on where we see some nice accretive ROI projects that we're going to invest. The third priority is to return some capital to shareholders. I think it's really important, especially for our size of company, that we remain under 3x leverage. Even as we're growing our CapEx here in 2026, we expect to remain under three times throughout the whole year in 2026 and expect to get down to 2.8 x by the end of the year.
We have, with the share price where it is, we do look at that as well as an option. It is attractive at this price. However, we do think that it's critical that we stay under three times leverage, put the CapEx in. Only if we can fit that in while staying under three times would we consider doing share buybacks at this point in time. Based on the price, that is also an attractive option.
Great. Other questions?
We talked a lot about demand from different avenues and you guys pulling forward some investments around your incremental capacity. As we see this demand scale, are other co-manufacturers also putting new capital to work to expand capacity? What are you guys hearing from customers that really separates SunOpta from what else is available out there? Is that a risk that over time there becomes an incremental capacity such that it kind of sets off a price war from the manufacturing side and that creates a challenge retaining some of this new business and getting to the margin targets you're looking for?
Jim, I have to commend you on filtering like 17 questions into that question.
The sell-side special.
Yeah. Let's kind of break that apart. We do not see new plants going into the manufacturing environment in our area. We've heard of a line or two that might be added. Frankly, I think our competition's capacity is actually coming from us winning share and creating a void in there. One, I don't see a whole lot of capacity. We continue to believe that this is a capacity, I would say, light to constrained environment, which obviously we love to be in. We also think the cheapest capacity we'll bring on over the course of the next year will be the capacity we can create in our own efficiencies, quickly followed by the two CapEx items that we've mentioned here today. It's interesting to talk about price.
Maybe, Greg, I'll let you talk a little bit about the pricing that we've done sort of this year and the impacts of that. As much as I say we are a solution, we are winning, and you can't doubt that we're winning. I mean, we're growing volume. I think it's now nine quarters that it's 15%+ volume growth. We're winning in the commercial marketplace. As much as that happens, we're never the lowest price. Never the lowest price. We continue to try to push that envelope and charge for the value in the services that we bring. I think maybe, Greg, just talk a little bit about some of the price ups and downs we've seen this year.
Sure. Our general philosophy is we make a fair manufacturing profit. For commodity prices, if they go up, we pass it on to our customers. If they decline, we give that back to our customers. We took the same approach to tariffs. We did have a tariff impact this year. As of today and as of the end of last quarter, we're now at a point where we've been able to pass all that tariff exposure on to our customers. That is great because there's no gross profit dollar impact to us. However, that price does get passed on to our customers and then ultimately to the consumers. There is a better pressure right now to take additional pricing going forward because the consumer is now absorbing some of that tariff price increase.
However, it doesn't mean we're not going to always look at that as an option going forward. I do think in the short term, there will be a better pressure to take additional price. As we get on to 2027, 2028, I expect that to be a normal part of our model again.
It's a model that I'd say it didn't happen when Greg and I came. I mean, it's a model we've had in place for years and years and years. I think we've paid attention to opportunities that we could price. Definitely, tariffs have put some pressure on the system this year. We're proud of the work that we've done on tariffs to pass that immediately through. At the same time, we want to be cautious as to how it filters through to the end consumer.
Brian, you mentioned earlier that service is one of the key reasons that you'll see potential customers come to you from another manufacturer. In addition to service, you obviously touched on price. Anything about kind of the geographic layout of your manufacturing network? Do you have unique capabilities that they can't find in other plants or maybe as far away and they need to deal with importing? Just anything you can walk through it.
I think first and foremost, I would say service, yes. I'd say it's the solution that we can provide. The solution, I would talk about in broader terms. We've got 21 food scientists. I think it's the biggest food science group in the industry. 21 food scientists that we can deploy on behalf of our customers to go through those things I mentioned: flavor profiles, caloric profiles, nutritional content, protein infusion, all packaging size. There are all types of things that we help our customers solve for there. That is one of our solutions. The other thing that I mentioned is our aseptic network is four facilities in a diamond shape throughout the U.S.
Even though I will tell you we're never the lowest-priced producer in any of our competitive situations, I would also tell you that because geographically we can get to anywhere in the U.S., we might be the most economic solution for the customer because of transportation. Remember, I think customers pick up. They have, I don't know, 60% or 70% of our overall transportation, that the customer acts 60%. We don't have transportation risk either on that. I love the geographic mix. I love the fact that because of our size, we also have a supply chain that people can't replicate. One could say, "Hey, can someone do fruit snacks like you?" They could buy the equipment. We're one of the largest organic apple juice and organic apple puree buyers in the world.
If you want to be significant in that category, you can't replicate that overnight. You can't replicate that skill, that experience, that scale. I think those are some of the things that give us the opportunity to either solve problems, provide solutions, or address concerns customers have with their existing providers that we've got an answer for. Did I miss anything?
Great. Talking about servicing, talking about incremental demand, can we maybe just circle back to your long-term gross margin target, which is 20% +, and the cadence that we should expect on that with kind of all of these moving pieces on demand and pricing and incremental spend and the kind of presumed inefficiencies when you're getting those lines started up? Can you just walk us through maybe how we should think about gross margin next year and then when we should be back on that cadence to be at that 20%+ ?
Sure. We touched on our short-term challenges and the $10 million gross margin pressure versus our prior expectations in Q4. We talked about some of the solutions for that. This has an impact on the gross margin percentage as well. As we resolve the wastewater situation in Midlothian at the end of the second quarter of 2026, that will really help us from a margin perspective. The result of being able to not constrain our lines, run at our full speed, those additional units that we get out at the same cost basically, obviously would be accretive to us and help our margin in Midlothian.
On the other side, as we work through our constraints of absorbing this volume and allowing us to get back onto our margin improvement plan in the second half of 2026, that's where we see that inflection point, Jim, where we'll start to see margin improvement in Q3 and Q4. I will say there will be a little bit of downward pressure as the new lines come on, as Brian mentioned, usually one to two quarters to get those lines up and fully running when they're fully subscribed. We will see improvement Q3 and Q4. I think by the time we get into 2027, specifically the back half of 2027, I really think that we have an opportunity to get up to those 20% margins, Jim.
Are you guys able to share any thoughts around actual ROIC targets as you bring this new equipment in? If I recall correctly, the aseptic line is $35 million. The fruit snacks line is $25 million. Just when you're looking to deploy that amount of capital and you're having these conversations with customers that they bring this new demand for you, can you just walk us through kind of the underwriting process on your end? Do you guys have a threshold on ROIC and kind of a does it need to meet that by the first six months, the first 12 months?
Yeah, we do. Our overall long-term target for ROIC for the entire company is 16%-18%. Both of these projects are accretive to that margin. We fully expect to get there. I would say it's going to take a couple of quarters to ramp both those projects up. On an overall basis, we still feel really good about that 16%-18% ROIC target by the end of 2026, early 2027.
Anything we should be aware of? We touched a little bit about tariffs earlier, and I know that that's a constantly moving target, but that might impact this new volume that's coming on or the fruit snacks or any, whether it's packaging or raw materials, just thoughts through tariffs and kind of the cadence of how that gets passed through. If there was a tariff on something that you guys paid for, but then the tariff got removed, kind of how you handle that dynamic?
Yeah. I mean, it's similar to our raw material costs, right? It's transparency with our customers. We pride ourselves on being transparent. I think that's the key to having these long-term relationships. A lot of our customers are 15, 20 year plus because we provide solutions, because we're very transparent. Same model for tariffs, Jim. As I mentioned, as of now, we're fully covered off for tariffs. Obviously, it's a situation that continues to change. We're watching it. Our customers are watching it. Our commitment is we're going to be transparent. We're going to communicate. If tariffs come down, we'll reduce the price based on the tariffs. If they go up, we're going to pass those on again. I mean, it's a model that's worked well for us. The customers don't necessarily love getting tariff increases, but they understand the model.
With all these different initiatives underway, as we look over the next, let's call it 12- 18 months, what do you think investors should look at as key milestones that would demonstrate that the strategy is working and everything that is kind of in place and running as it should be?
I think there's a couple. One, I would continue to see incremental progress quarter after quarter. I expect to see that. Now, remember, we have some seasonality in ours, so you kind of have to incremental progress, yes, but adjust for the seasonality we have with broth in the third and fourth quarter. Continued progress there. Certainly, we feel really good about our wastewater solution in Texas. We feel good about the design. We feel good about the capacity. We feel good that when that gets implemented. I mean, the way I would think of it in Texas right now, if you had a garden hose that had a tourniquet on it, that's what we're doing in Texas in our Midlothian facility. That wastewater facility or equipment will allow us to take the tourniquet off and allow that plant to produce at full effectiveness.
Finally, we'll be able to see Midlothian at its full strength. I feel really good about that. That's going to come on at the end of the second quarter. That would be another milestone that we would want to see. Continued growth. We said the CapEx projects will come on in the latter half of 2026, making sure those come on and see. I want to make sure we don't overlook the milestones and the progress that we have seen as well. This is a business that for once you stripped out discontinued operations, this continuing business is one that's grown revenue 13%-14% CAGR for the last three years, four years.
Grown EBITDA about the same, maybe a little more for the last several years that we are very comfortable in our long-term algorithm of 8%-10% revenue growth and 13%-17% EBITDA growth. If you look really at 2025, some of the pure hard GAAP numbers are really impressive. Revenue growth, operating income growth, cash flow growth, earnings per share growth, all of those have continued to improve. I think you will continue seeing improvement in those GAAP numbers as we continue rolling through into 2026.
Final question, wrapping things up. This one will be short. Change of pace for us. As we look forward, the number one thing you're most excited about and the number one thing you're most concerned about?
I'm absolutely the most excited that we have detailed plans by plant, by week of the things that we need to accomplish to improve efficiency and throughput and increase margin, right? You improve efficiency and throughput, the result is increased margin. I love the fact that we have those identified. I love the fact that we have owners identified for the task, that we have a rhythm and a rigor to follow. The demand generation engine has paced this business for the last couple of years, and that thing is cooking, and we continue to see it moving. I'm really excited that we've got a very clear line of sight in how to drive margin. We know the infrastructure we need, the governance we need to make improvements there. I'm really excited about that.
I think that's the piece that I want to make sure everyone comes out of. I mean, in this market, averaging 15% volume growth for nine quarters is, I would say, in the very top segment. I don't know if it's decile or the top 5%, but it's at the very top. We've got line of sight to make sure that our margin is following that path. Regardless of the short-term challenges, when you start looking at the pure hard cash and net income numbers, those continue to grow at an accelerated pace. I'm excited about that and excited to see this unfold and allow us to continue telling our story quarter by quarter.
Great. Brian, Greg, thank you guys for your time. Thank you, everybody, for joining us.
Thank you.
Thank you, Jim. Appreciate it.
Thanks.