Wayside Technology Group, Inc.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for participating in today's conference call to discuss Wayside Technology Group's financial results for the first quarter ended March 31st, 2021. Joining us today are Wayside CEO, Mr. Dale Foster, the company's CFO, Mr. Michael Vesey, and the company's outside investor relations advisor, Cody Cree with Gateway Investors Relations. By now, everyone should have access to the first quarter 2021 earnings release, which went out yesterday afternoon at approximately 4.15 p.m. Eastern Time. The release is available in the investor relations section of Wayside Technology Group's website at waysidetechnology.com. This call is also available for webcast replay on the company's website. Following management remarks, we'll open the call for your questions. I'd now like to turn the call over to Mr. Cree for some introductory comments.

Thank you, James. Before I introduce Dale, I'd like to remind listeners that certain comments made in this conference call and webcast are considered forward-looking statements under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are subject to certain known and unknown risks and uncertainties, as well as assumptions that could cause actual results to differ materially from those reflected in these forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are also subject generally to other risks and uncertainties that are described from time to time in the company's filings with the SEC. Do not place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements which speak only as of the date of this call. Except as required by law, the company undertakes no obligation to revise or publicly release the results of any revision to any forward-looking statements. Our presentation also includes certain non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted gross billings, adjusted EBITDA, net income excluding non-recurring costs, and non-GAAP earnings per share as supplemental measures of performance of our business. All non-GAAP measures have been reconciled to the most directly comparable GAAP measures in accordance with SEC rules. You'll find reconciliation charts and other important information in the earnings release in Form 8K we furnished to the SEC yesterday. I would now like to turn the call over to Wayside CEO, Dale Foster.

Thank you, Cody, and good morning, everyone. We continue to drive our growth strategy during the first quarter, giving our business a solid foundation for 2021. Despite a tough comparable prior year period, our gross profit reached $10.8 million, which is a company record, and we continue year-over-year growth across net sales and adjusted gross billings. While we continue to make strategic investments ahead of our growth objectives, The benefits of these investments have yet to fully flow through our profitability. However, we expect to build on this bottom-line growth over time as we continue to work and expand our vendor network and drive integration and synergies with our recent acquisitions. The three core growth drivers we laid out last quarter underscore our progress during Q1, and they will guide our work for the rest of this year. As a brief reminder, these initiatives are as follows. First, drive organic revenue growth from our business by deepening existing vendor relationships. Secondly, further enhance our vendor line card by adding new and emerging vendors with above-average long-term growth potential. And third, utilize our balance sheet and free cash flow to identify and make accretive and strategic acquisitions while working to improve our overall profit margin. This strategic framework provides a useful structure for evaluating not only our quarter-to-quarter progress, but also the long-term operational and financial trajectory of our business. With that in mind, I'd like to review each of these core growth drivers in greater detail within the context of our Q1 performance. To begin in deepening, our vendor relations would remain focused on helping our vendors navigate this current environment as their end customers work to enhance their IT infrastructures. With today's work landscapes becoming increasingly driven by hybrid solutions, including cloud-based and on-premise technologies, this has accelerated our many businesses' technology adoption timelines. Customers' changing needs have shifted our product mix from quarter to quarter, making our expectations inherently choppy as we adapt to meet their needs. During Q1, security, data center, and cloud products garnered a greater portion of demand within our portfolio. replacing hardware as our top-selling product category from last quarter. We recognize these IT needs will continue to evolve, even as the broader macroeconomic recovery from the pandemic gradually advances, and we're working to optimally position and diversify our portfolio to support these needs. These recent spending trends on security, data center, and cloud product lines point to another concept that underlies our current strategy, the prevalence of the cloud. According to a recent guide published by IDC, spending on security products is expected to reach over $23 billion by the end of this year, driven by the rapid growth and adoption of cloud-driven market remote work solutions. In their current state, our portfolio and vendor line card already includes growing exposure to cloud and cloud-adjacent products. Our work to further support and diversify our network will help us continue to build on our platform as an incubator for emerging vendors, ones that are not only serving today's IT needs, but also preparing customers for their IT needs of tomorrow. Next, we're continuing to focus on developing emerging vendors with long-term growth potential to establish mutually beneficial partnerships. To discuss this in conjunction with our current line card, let me now turn to our second core growth driver, and highlight some of the important vendor updates and wins from the quarter. In April, Climb Channel Solutions was awarded the title of Disney of the Year by Tintory, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Data Direct Networks. We have had a long-running distribution partnership with Tintory's intelligent infrastructure products, and we're honored to have received this recognition of our high-touch sales approach and expertise. As we collaborate among U.S., Canada, and EMEA sales teams, we're further expanding our global reach of our line card. This includes several new key wins from the relationships we're building through our recently acquired CDF network. For instance, carrying forward the momentum we generated with security products this quarter, one of our established vendors, Sophos, is launching its next generation firewall product, and we've added this enhanced product to our distribution portfolio. Keeping with the UK, we've also continued to drive growth with digital transformation and enterprise software provider. Given the remarkable success we've had with Micro Focus over the past four quarters in North America, we're now turning our attention to Europe to do more of the same. One other key new product we've added to our distributed suite is Bing Mapping by Microsoft, which we've started distributing across our global footprint. This Microsoft mapping platform integrates with Office 365 functionality on key features and empowers developers and enterprises alike to build intelligent, location-enabled capabilities. Having this product in our portfolio is a significant added resource to our offerings and will help us as we continue to expand and go deeper into the independent software vendor, or ISVs, customer marketplace where we currently sell Intel software-focused products. These incremental UK vendor and product additions dovetail into our progress on our third core driver, which is using our balance sheet liquidity to identify accretive acquisitions and enhance our margin profiles. As we continue to develop our vendor network and advance the full integration of CDF, we're supported by a strong balance sheet as well as the capabilities of our recent acquisitions added to our platform, particularly around cloud services. As I stated last quarter, being able to leverage the skill set of CDF's cloud know-hows team Our adoption and migration experts allow us to provide customers with services ranging from everyday technical support to specialized consulting. This elevates our approach beyond our typical IT distribution function and offers us a new avenue to expanding overall operating profit margin. Further, the cloud products and consultative services we offer through Sigma, Gray Matter, and Cloud Know How, respectively, have accelerated our long-running development of our internal cloud marketplace. This platform can be utilized by each of our subsidiary businesses across all geographies. We expect to launch the marketplace in full this month. The first vendors to be added to the marketplace are Acronis, Bitdefender, and Trend Micro, with many more in line to launch in short order. As we launch cloud-specific vendors, as well as vendors that are moving to subscription-based cloud model, we're taking the same high-touch approach to these relationships as we have historically done throughout our strong partner network. We're positioning ourselves to be the premier choice of emerging cloud vendors and products as we set them up on our platform, get them tapped into our expanding global distribution network, and enable them to grow and increase their brand profile within the IT distribution and solutions marketplace. To conclude, let me say we've made progress advancing our integration efforts, identifying cross-selling opportunities within the U.S., Canada, and EMEA, and working to update our vendor contracts for global coverage. One of the newest vendor brands, Wasabi Technologies, is an excellent example of that. Wasabi is a cloud storage company that delivers low-cost, fast, and reliable cloud storage. They have already partnered with five other brands on the climb line card. Additionally, Wasabi just announced it received $112 million in Series C round of funding that will help expand their global channel ecosystem and provide further value to our customers. It's opportunities like these that will be instrumental in driving growth as we continue to leverage our legacy and recently acquired expanded distribution network. To be sure, we still have considerable work to do in order to achieve our desired level of growth and profitability that we believe our expanded platform is now capable of achieving. As we look out at the balance of 2021, we see plenty of growth opportunities to capture with an often winding road to get there as we meet our vendors' evolving needs. We look forward to making progress to reach our short-term and long-term goals in continuing our strong partnership with our current and future vendors. I will now turn over the call to Mike to discuss our financial results. Mike.

Thanks Dale. And good morning, everyone. Net sales in the first quarter of 2021 increased slightly to 62.8 million compared to 62.6 million in the year ago quarter. This modest growth reflects the positive impact of CDF and Interwork and was partially offset by a change in product mix within our existing vendor network relative to prior quarters. as Dale had mentioned earlier. It's also important to note the first quarter of 2020 had a substantial uptick in growth attributable to a significant client win. Adjusted gross billings, a non-GAAP measure, increased 22% to 210.9 million in the first quarter of 2021, compared to 173.1 million in the year-ago quarter. Gross profit in the first quarter of 2021 increased 33% to a record $10.8 million compared to $8.2 million in the year-ago quarter. The increase was driven by the positive impact of CDF and Interwork during the quarter with offsets from a variety of operational and strategic factors, including customers' early paid discounts, reduced vendor rebates, and increased customer rebates, all of which were not incurred at the same elevated levels in the year-ago quarter. We're working with both vendors and customers to mitigate these factors in the future. As we continue investing in our business and capturing operational synergies from acquisitions, we expect continued gross profit growth. SG&A expenses in the first quarter of 2021 were $8.8 million compared to $7.2 million in the year-ago quarter. As a percentage of net sales, SG&A was 14% compared to 11.5% in the year-ago quarter. The increase was primarily driven by incremental costs related to the operations of CDF and Interwork, as well as one-time severance expenses incurred during the quarter. On the whole, these elevated costs reflect investments we've made to support our base business that are recognized ahead of the profit benefit we expect to realize over time and move forward with integrating CDF in support of this growth. We continue to expect our SG&A margin to gradually improve as we leverage the resources of our combined organizations. Net income in the first quarter of 2021 increased 82% to $1.5 million, or $0.35 per diluted share, compared to $0.8 million, or $0.18 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Adjusted net income, which excludes non-recurring costs related to the unsolicited bid and the interworking CDF acquisitions, net of taxes, was $1.5 million, or $0.35 per share, compared to $2.2 million, or $0.50 per share, in the year-ago quarter. In the first quarter of 2021, adjusted EBITDA was $2.6 million, compared to $3.1 million in the year-ago quarter. The decrease resulted from the impact of the severance expenses, early pay discount programs, increased customer rebates, and decreased vendor rebates. As discussed on our expense line, we're working to mitigate these factors, creating greater better line flow through from our growth investments. Effective margin defined as adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of gross profit was 24.4% compared to 38.2% in the year-ago quarter. The decrease reflects the decline in adjusted EBITDA and the associated mitigating factors on our profitability. We expect to improve our effective margin over time as we execute our growth objectives. Cash and cash equivalents increased $33.7 million as of March 31st, 2021, compared to $29.3 million as of December 31st, 2020. The increase was primarily the result of the timing of our vendor payments. We remained debt-free with no borrowings outstanding under our $20 million credit facility. Looking to the rest of the year, our strong liquidity position provides us with flexibility to execute on both our organic and acquisitive growth strategies. On May 4th, our board of directors declared a quarterly dividend of 17 cents per share of common stock payable on May 21st to shareholders of record on May 17th, 2021. We continue to operate from a solid financial and operational foundation and make progress with our core growth drivers. We expect to expand profitability in the quarters ahead. This concludes our prepared remarks. Now we'll open it up for questions.

Thank you. We'll now begin the question and answer session. If you have a question, please press star, then 1 on your touchtone phone. If you wish to be removed from the queue, please press the pound sign or the hash key. If you're using a speakerphone, you may need to pick up the handset first before pressing the numbers. Once again, if there's any questions, please press star, then 1 on your touchtone phone. And our first question comes from Ed Wu from Essene Capital. Your line is open.

Yeah, congratulations on the quarter. You know, definitely as businesses come back to normal work schedules as the pandemic ends, how do you see that affecting your business this year? Yeah, thanks.

And as Mike mentioned, you know, it changed our product mix as a distributor holding 100 vendors. You know, we have hardware, software, services, the like. I think it's just going to change with that mix. And I can tell you that, uh, what has not changed is how many vendors are still coming out of a startup phase. So we get to look at them and how many customers are actually recovering and looking at different mixes in their product that they're selling to their end users. So, you know, it's, it's all positive. I, you know, I, I, uh, I'm looking forward to actually, um, you know, getting more in front of the customers and vendors. It's opening up in parts of the country and we're doing a lot of the travel there. So, um, Other than that, yeah, it's positive.

Great. And then my next question is on M&A. You mentioned that it's definitely a pillar of opportunity. What are you seeing out there in terms of opportunity and on valuations for some of these potential opportunities?

Yeah, I'll let Mike talk on the valuation side. As far as the opportunities go, we talked about it before as far as adjacent markets. You know, there's been the consolidation in North America on distribution. So we'll look at adjacent markets, especially in the cloud, also into MSP. And as we mentioned, you know, Microsoft Bing Maps, although it's not, you know, a big part of our business, coming to the U.S., it gets us into a whole other category of customers and ISVs. We're selling to the Intel ISVs in Europe. You know, we have Sigma and our EMEA team over there. And then coming to the U.S. with those product mix, I think it opens up some new potentials as far as targets for us. And then we'll continue to look, you know, not only into the Europe market, but other places for, you know, creative acquisitions.

Yeah. In terms of, you know, reviewing prospects and valuation metrics, you know, I don't think our view has changed, Ed. You know, we look for businesses that are profitable. are creative to our business and provide and fit in strategically and we think will provide us a long, an adequate return over a longer time horizon than us and some of the short-term investments we made in the past. That being said, I think there's probably some general uplift in the multiples for distribution companies, particularly the larger ones than if you look, say a year and a half or two years ago, if you look at the Cinex tech data merger and things of that nature. The environment might be that people are seeing the value in distribution and in this model, capital light kind of cash flow business model in general. But when we look to acquire a company, we're probably small enough relative to them that our view of values and multiples hasn't changed that much.

Great. Well, thank you, and I wish you guys good luck.

Thanks, Ed.

Thanks, Ed.

And just as a reminder to enter the queue, please press star then 1 on your touch-tone phone to ask a question. Again, that's star 1 to ask a question. And our next question comes from Howard Root. Your line is open.

Good morning, and congratulations on continued progress, Dale and Michael. I've got two quick questions and a more open-ended question. One, on the dividend, just to look at things going forward, I know the new management team inherited this dividend. It's been at just 17 cents for the last five years, and I kind of assume, but worth asking, is the board still committed to the dividend at that level, and even though you've got these growth opportunities, it's a dividend plus growth kind of story as we look forward, or is there any changes to that thought process on the dividend?

My take on it is the board's still committed to the dividend, and you're right, it has been in place a long time. We talk about it at each one of the board meetings. and you're right, we inherited, and plus we have a new board that has inherited that as well. If we look forward, Howard, and we're saying, wait a second, we really could use those dollars better right now. We don't have use for it. On the acquisition side, we have the free cash flow that we mentioned. I still think it stays in place until we have a better use for it.

Great. And second quick question, the one thing, the net sales, if you look year over year, obviously with a tough comp a year ago, were essentially flat at $63 million, but the adjusted gross billings increased 22% from $173 million a year ago to $210 million, which doesn't track to me. Can you explain how that happens, how the adjusted gross billings goes up, and is there a beneficial effect we can see from that going forward with that number going up but the net sales staying flat in Q1?

Yeah, I'll let Mike answer and then I'll put my two cents in there.

Yeah, so when we enter into a transaction and bill it, it's to a certain extent not terribly relevant to us in how we operate the business or what our cost structure is, whether we're selling a piece of hardware that's drop-shipped by a vendor or a software contract which is drop-shipped by a vendor. However, the accounting is different. If we sell a piece of hardware, we report that as a gross sale And if we sell a piece of software, certain types of software, or maintenance contracts and security contracts, we just report the net profit as net sales. So to get a real indicator of how the volume in the business is tracking, adjusted gross billings is the number that we look at internally. And we use that to measure whether our sales activities are going up or down. The reason for the kind of dramatic shift this quarter where the adjusted gross billings, as you said, grew 20% plus and our net sales were kind of flattish was our product mix last year, if you'll remember or look back, included a large sale of hardware from one of our vendors. And this year, our sales activity included more software and security. It didn't have kind of a large outlier sale of hardware. So it was strictly a function of product mix, how we record that revenue on a GAAP basis. But the economics are really the same to us, whether it was recorded net or gross for GAAP. So internally, we look a lot to adjusted gross billings and our growth and gross profit as the key indicators of how our business is performing.

Yeah, and Howard, I look at it pragmatic, right? I mean, I have to collect $210 million. Just like a quarter year ago, I had to collect $176 million. So Those are real dollars. It's the gap piece of it that actually nets down to what the accounting standards want us to report. But Mike's right. These are the gross billing. That's what we're collecting from our customers, paying to our vendors, minus the margin, and watch us on the gross side and the gross profit piece.

Okay, good. And I think that might tie into this last question more general and open-ended. You know, your gross margins are making phenomenal improvements going from 13% Last year, 15% as I calculated Q4, 17% in Q1. So we're up 4% in just the last year. And I assume that's because of this software shift. And now with you going into this internal cloud marketplace, I kind of feel without any information that your margins will continue to move upward and the profitability of the business grows as you get out of hardware and into software and especially cloud-based software. Can you talk a little bit about how you see that playing out? I know you don't give guidance. It's hard to do that. But just in general terms, is that the way we should be looking at it, gross margins improving, profitability improving, along with sales as you move into this internal cloud marketplace?

No, it's not, Howard. So that's misleading, right, because gross margin on adjusted net sales of GAAP sales It should be, you know, looking at margin on gross sales and gross profit. And you should really look at it just like gross profit, the gross profit dollars that we, you know, produce. You know, will those margins go up but not significantly like that? Because all it takes is, like Mike said, one big hardware sale, and it changes the whole dynamics of how NetGap looks at it, you know, versus just our overall numbers versus our overall GP. And that's what we should look at it. I do agree with you, though, going into the cloud marketplace, those margins, depending on the product that we're selling, typically are higher. So you'll see that. But we're in the distribution business, so the margins are very slim. And it's based on basis points that we can move the needle as we grow to a billion-dollar company overall.

Okay, thanks. Glad I asked.

I'm just going to add to that. I think there's two elements there. When you look at our gross profit relative to our net sales, I think as a general concept, hey, you guys are moving into more cloud services, which are recorded net. Would that number tend to go up? I think the answer is yes. It would be up and down from quarter to quarter based on mix, but over time, it would. What Dale was saying, what I alluded to earlier, But don't forget, internally, we think an important indicator to look at as well is those gross profit dollars relative to our adjusted gross billings. So, you know, we just want to, you know, let people know you should really look at both factors when you're, you know, trying to measure how we're moving forward.

Okay, thanks. Yeah, it's a difficult business to look at from a GAAP basis. And I wasn't as focused as I should be on the adjusted gross billings. But 22% increase in that is a is a really substantial increase for your business in the Q1.

That shows the work that we're getting done, right? I mean, we needed that to get to the bottom line, but yes, that's correct.

Thanks.

And our next question comes from Walter Ramsley from Waller Partners. Your line is open.

Thank you. Congratulations. Good quarter. It looks like a good year coming up. Got a couple of things. The Two companies that the company purchased, how did they do in the quarter? Do you have a figure for what their contribution was and how that stacked up to what you were expecting?

Yeah, I'll take that, Dale. So we don't report separately on the companies we acquired. And the main reason for that, if you look at Interwork, their business is totally integrated into ours. So the value of the cost savings of integrating the businesses was far superior to running it independently and reporting on it. That being said, we were pleased with the performance of the assets, if you want to look at it that way, meaning vendors and account relationships and key management we picked up from Intour, and then also the performance and growth that we got out of CBF for the quarter. So we think both performed well. You know, we don't report the numbers separately because the cost structures are so intermeshed it's difficult to do that.

Okay. And then the new cloud marketplace, could you take a minute and just kind of explain how that's going to work?

Yeah, and it's going to be, like I said, launched this month. We actually saw one of our – it's probably 90% there yesterday with the team. We had a full demo from our IT department. So the way it's going to work is we're going to take vendors that we currently have right now that are moving to a subscriptionized model and also new vendors that just need to go into that model. And it's going to be a login platform or marketplace. So our customers, of course, they have to have all the – the background information done for credit facilities, things like that set up, they log into the marketplace and then they can start buying licenses online, adjust their licenses for their customers. So remember, we're working with their resellers, so the resellers will have their own instance running to manage their licenses for their hundreds or thousands of end users. And you'll see more and more of the vendors moving in that direction because, you know, the subscription is popular. Microsoft is the best at it. And on our reseller side over in Gray Matter, they already have Microsoft in a direct and indirect contract. They're already doing that. We've taken what we've learned and what they've developed over the years to the U.S., and that's why it's a much quicker launch than it would have been if we did not have CDF, Gray Matter, and Sigma. Okay.

Okay. And just quick, I mean, is that going to create a recurring revenue stream for Wayside, or is there a different pricing model?

Exactly. So instead of, you know, where we're selling a license and renewal every year, it'll be a subscription that, you know, eventually they'll get the monthly. It might be, depending on the vendor and how they want to go to market, it might be monthly, quarterly, or yearly, but it'll be that management of that subscription subscription. and the updates that go with it. But, yeah, you'll see that recurring revenue, and that's what we're building, you know, both in the platform and as a company to see that happen. Because, you know, we are mostly all software company. We have some appliances that go to, you know, facilitate what that vendor wants to do with their product or if it's specialized. Other than that, it's software and it's subscription-based.

And just as far as the financials go, you know, as you build up this operation, is that going to – slow down the earnings temporarily while you build it up, or won't it really be a factor?

So that's an issue with some of the vendors more than it is because we have a diversified portfolio. You won't see it near as much, you know, as a vendor that has decided to get away from hardware and be able to go onto a platform or into a market like Azure or AWS. That's pretty drastic as you see their sales change. Ours will be, you know, we're still incubating vendors, and vendors that we're incubating, typically, you know, it will take them a while to get to the platform unless they, you know, consider themselves born in the cloud. So with 100 and some vendors, I think that will be more of a slower transition. You won't see it dramatically as if it was a vendor switching over.

Okay. That's great. Thanks for answering the questions.

Thank you.

And our next question comes from Peter Lux. Your line is open.

Hi, guys. Can you hear me?

I sure can, Peter.

How are you doing? I'm doing okay. As perhaps the longest-standing stockholder in this company, going back more time than I care to think of, is it possible, and it's a question I've brought up before, given the nature of the business and it's hard to sort of plot going forward as a One quarter doesn't necessarily flow from another profit-wise. And the sort of somewhat illiquidity of your shares, and I've asked this question before, have you thought this would be better as a private company?

You know, let me take the first part of it. As far as one quarter into the next year, one quarter doesn't make that. But I would answer differently if, you know, we didn't have two acquisitions, one fully integrated, the other one, you know, still in the midst of – you know, making and getting profitable on both sides as far as, you know, the CDF acquisition because we have a lot of things coming this way, more things going that way, and I say to U.S. to Europe. And it's across both of our business units, right, our distribution and also what we're going to be calling our solutions group, which is the tech extent group we don't talk much about, but that's very similar to gray matter. So, you know, that'll be some of the quarter-to-quarter, you know, changes as we do that integration. On that side, as far as profitability goes, that's on the vendor mix that we have, and that's going to be quarter to quarter as well. And also driving costs out of the business with the acquisitions. As the first question that was out there, are we still looking at creative acquisitions? For sure. And it'll be the same integration piece and questions that we have. And they'll be in different market segments. I mean, if it's purely an MSP cloud play, there won't be any hardware involved. It'll be all on the software side and the services piece of it.

As business tends to be opening up, do you intend to bring some of the flock back to Edentown as a group or continue to do business remotely?

Yeah, good question. So I said on a couple calls ago that it was quick for us to go remote because our teams were remote a couple days a week. You know, we have a Denver office now that happened over last year that we've never had before, so that's wide open with our teams. We're following the guidelines of the local, you know, governments. New Jersey being much tighter as they open up to 25% to 50%, we'll mix our teams back into the office, but we'll eventually get back there. We might not take it as hardcore as my background is. It's that everybody should be in the office in their seat every day. I will get away from that, but then I'm smiling when I say that because I know the team's listening. But no, we'll get back to the office. It's much better in person. The middle of the country is open. The sales teams are traveling as far as the field teams, where it's comfortable and where they're allowed to. It's still tough between getting over to the UK. I'm like, am I planning on a trip as soon as that opens up? And they're talking about June 21st. And then same thing with Canada. It's still in a pretty much lockdown stage, so no one's traveling. But As the authorities let us, we'll be opening up and being in person because it's just that more productive.

And a previous caller questioned your dividend policy. And just as a long-term stockholder, the one thing that has always backbone this company in good times and bad was a solid dividend. And considering perhaps doing away with it and using the money elsewhere, might seem like a good idea at the time, but probably isn't. I don't know if that's something the board would agree with, but I'm sure every stockholder would agree with that.

Yeah, we get different takes, even on stockholders, Peter. We have stockholders that say, hey, why are you paying a dividend? You guys, if you really have the energy and you have the targets, why don't you go right after the growth side of it with either investments internally into the company or through acquisitions? So There's definitely different mindsets. And the good thing about our board, very independent, they have different mindsets as far as, you know, what we should be doing. And I think as a collective group, we'll make that call. We haven't made any decision on that, you know, really for the rest of this year. I don't see that happening as we're looking at targets. If we find a better use for the money that we think we can return to the shareholders in a bigger, you know, value to them, then we would make that call.

And finally, and I've asked this question on more than one conference call, in every quarter you guys say, well, we've sort of finished with the one-offs, and once again we get some one-offs, chargebacks, severances, and so forth. I thought that trend was over.

It is – yeah, I say it is. It is – you know, as far as we look at that. But, you know, when you make an acquisition, you find other things. You're saying, hey, this is what makes the company more profitable. It makes it better to go to market, reorganizing the team. So we're going to have those, and that's going to be with any company, especially if we're doing an acquisition. So you're going to see some of those once in a while.

All right, thanks. Good luck, guys.

Thanks, Peter.

And that concludes the question and answer sessions. I'll now turn the call back over to Dale Foster for final remarks.

Thank you, Adrienne. I appreciate it. And I want to just address right off the bat, I apologize for everybody. I know the time's valuable that we messed up, you know, kicking off the call. We did a recording this time, and the wrong recording was loaded, so my apologies to that. Thank everybody on the call today that listened in, our vendors, our customers, and also to the Wayside employee family that I hope to see in person soon. I look forward to driving continued growth in the company. Just like we said before, still looking for acquisition targets that make sense for us and expanding our customer reach. We don't talk about numbers with our customer reach, and this is the value of resellers, but I can tell you that we're continuing to expand this. And we took advantage where a lot of companies kind of, I would say, turtled up over the last 12 months, and we just expanded. We did things that a lot of companies didn't do, And we'll continue to do that and be disruptive in the marketplace. So thank you to everybody, and I appreciate your support.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.