Redishred Capital Corp (Pre-Merger)

XTSX:KUT

Earnings Call Transcript 2020-Q2

[Operator]

Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the RediShred Capital Corp. Second Quarter 2020 Financial Results and Business Update Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference over to Jeffrey Hasham, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.

[Jeffrey I. Hasham, CEO, President & Director]

Great. Thank you very much. I appreciate everyone joining this morning. Good morning, everyone. We got a nice quarter to announce, and I didn't think it was going to be a nice quarter. I guess, a nice quarter given everything that's happened. So what I will do is, I'll run through the overall consolidated highlights. I'll have Kasia jump into the details on the corporate locations and on the balance sheet, and then I'll wrap it up with a COVID-19 update just to give everyone sort of where we are and what we're doing. So as I said, overall, when we spoke back in May, and as I've given many of you highlights in March and into April, I guess all of us did not know what was going to transpire and how it was going to transpire. And the quarter did not get off to an auspicious start. And April and May, overall, in terms of same location shredding revenue, and I won't steal too much the cautious thunder, but we were down in and around 40% on a same location basis and in June, we were down 7%. So the quarter completely turned around for us with respect to June and a lot of reasons for that. Obviously, the big reason for that is easing of restrictions, number one. Number two, pent-up demand. There were a number of purges and one-time purges and events that were going to happen in end of March and into April that were put to pasture for a little while, and we were able to get those back in June. And I think the good news is we're continuing some of that momentum into the summer time here. Summer is usually a little slow, but -- and it is a little flat, but it's certainly nowhere near the April and May, what we saw in April and May. So overall, we generated $6 million in revenue. That was up 8%. And why was that up 8%, and we'll dig into those numbers in a moment. But obviously, Chicago and Connecticut were new stores, new locations for us. And both added to the revenue, which is greatest. Now one of the things that I think is important to note now is that 91% of our revenues are from corporate locations. And then the remaining 9% are from franchise-related fees and royalties. So there's certainly been a shift by buying some of our larger locations over the last 24 months, obviously, towards corporate, and that's part of the overall process and strategy that we're following. Consolidated EBITDA was CAD 1.6 million, and that was down 7%. And obviously, we were down 7% in the second quarter. That was COVID-related, and again, Connecticut and Chicago mitigated against further EBITDA declines. And obviously, both Chicago and Connecticut were impacted by COVID-19. They were down. When we look at their prior year numbers when they were franchisees, of course, they were down. However, they were additive to our consolidated results, and again, we'll walk through both same-store and new store in a moment. Important to note, as we were going into April, we did not know what any government would do for us. So we took it amongst ourselves to do anything and everything possible to make sure that the company had as much runway as possible. Looking out, we did not know how long it's going to last, so we went and we shored up our balance sheet by working with our truck-financing companies and deferring some debt and working with our bank and deferring some debt. And given our long-standing positive relationship and positive track record, those things were done and done collaboratively and cooperatively. And of course, we continue to work with our institutions, truck-financing payments have recommenced and bank payments will commence in the fall. The big thing, I think, for us here is the wage programs, the subsidy programs, both in Canada and the U.S., have provided support to us, and we've used that support. We've used that support to make sure we keep our employees working and producing programs for the future to keep our drivers on the road safe and to make sure our drivers who -- they don't -- they're not there hourly to make that we talk them up to get them to where they were before. And the loyalty and the dedication that we've seen from our drivers as we've now got into June and into July and August has been excellent. So the government programs certainly helped us do what we need to do as a company to look forward and to take advantage of some market opportunities in the marketplace going forward. And we'll talk a little bit about that at the end as -- when I give my COVID-19 update. So the consolidated results were better than we expected. June came out boring and the summer has been so far, so good. And I think we don't know where the fall will be, but it's certainly so far, we're feeling better and the results are better than what we expected. So let me turn this over to Kasia, and she can talk about the corporate location details in the balance sheet details.

[Katherina M. Pawluk, CFO & Secretary]

Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining the call. So I'll dig into a little bit on the corporate location results for the second quarter and talk about the U.S. dollar results just to eliminate the foreign exchange impact. So as same location trading revenue declined 25% in Q2 2020 over Q2 2019. And that was due to the stay-at-home orders that prevented us from servicing our nonessential clients, which were closed. This also then impacted our recycling revenue as our tonnage decline due to the fact that we serviced less clients year-over-year. We did, however, see paper prices increase substantially in Q2 over Q1 of this year, which helped mitigate the overall decline in recycling revenue. In total then same location total revenue declined by 26% in Q2 over last year. However, we did reduce costs in most areas of the business wherever possible and curtailed all our discretionary expenditures. And so as a result, our EBITDA margin held quite strong, with same location margin of 31% and non-same location margin of 33%. And in addition, we did receive the U.S. government funding, and therefore, we were able to make a onetime payment, which we call the COVID payment to our frontline staff and other stuff to compensate for the reduced wages during the initial months of the pandemic. So included in our EBITDA number was $130,000 in COVID payments related to same locations and $45,000 in COVID payments related to the acquired locations or non-same locations. And so that was a total combined of $175,000. Our same location EBITDA margin, excluding these COVID payments was 36% in comparison to 35% in the prior year. So overall, our margins were strong, although the quantum of the EBITDA or the dollar amount of EBITDA declined as the sales decline was substantial. And our results from acquisitions or our non-same locations, included Chicago and Connecticut results, as Jeff mentioned, and these results were not in the comparative period. So the EBITDA from acquisitions was $399,000 in Q2, and the EBITDA margin was 33%. And excluding the COVID payments that we made, the EBITDA from acquisitions was $444,000, with an EBITDA margin of 37%. And as a result of these acquisitions, we did over the last 9 months, our total location revenue grew by 7%, and our EBITDA was down 4%. And now I'll briefly just speak to the corporate location results for the first half of the year. So in the first half of 2020, same location shredding revenue declined 11% and that's in comparison to 25% in Q2. And that's really because we didn't have growth in the first quarter, which was not heavily impacted by COVID-19 yet. Recycling revenue declined 49% for same locations in the first half of the year over last year. And that's due to the fact that paper prices in Q1 were down $109 per ton over the prior year. And then that, of course, coupled with the decline in the tonnage in Q2. Same location, operating costs declined 8% year-over-year, given all the cost-cutting measures taken in Q2. However, this was not enough to mitigate against the sales decline due to COVID and the decline in paper prices. So as a result, same-location EBITDA declined 34% in the first half over last year with an EBITDA margin of 30%, inclusive of the COVID payment. Our EBITDA from acquisitions for the first 6 months was $860,000 with a 33% margin. And in total, our corporate location sales grew 20% during the first 6 months of the year. And that's due to the acquisitions that we added. And EBITDA, excluding the COVID payments, grew 7%. And lastly, I'll speak a little bit about our capital management. So during the quarter, our cash balance increased by CAD 1.8 million to CAD 8.8 million, and this was due to a couple of factors, the government funding that we received. The fact that we were able to defer our term loan principal payments as well as most of our truck loans. And also, we did grow our operating cash flow as well by $420,000 despite the COVID impact. And as Jeff mentioned, we have the term loan principal payments that are deferred for 6 months, and those started in April, and the truck loans were deferred for 3 months back in April. So those are now back online to be paid starting in July. And we do also still have access to CAD 4 million of additional capital through our credit facilities. Then I'll pass it back over to Jeff on the COVID update.

[Jeffrey I. Hasham, CEO, President & Director]

Great. Thanks, Kasia. So I think overall, when I sort of look at, again, what has transpired, Kasia mentioned the many things that we've done to mitigate, particularly when we did not know how the government would react, the government reacted proactively as well, just as we did, and I think overall, these things helped us in the quarter. The management teams and the operating teams found ways to work together. And frankly, we've learned even more about our business on how we can be even better at it, from a routing perspective, from a client service perspective. So coming out of this, we're hoping to be much smarter and better as we come out of this. Very important that one of the things, obviously, that will continue to take place is we're going to continue to have very strong focus on safety and health protocols. Most of our routes are now 1 person on a truck. And look, there are times where you need 2 people on a truck. And so what do we do, they'll follow up in their car. And they'll do a big purge together, and then they'll go on to the next one. So there's some benefits to that. And -- but there's also some inefficiencies with that. But overall, we've done that. We stagger start times. People are not starting together anymore. We're not starting in a team huddle like we used to do. And so again, there's good and bad to that. However, right now, we want to keep everyone safe. Office employees, we have work-from-home arrangements, although more and more people are now coming back to the office, and we've set up the environment both here in Toronto and in our local offices to allow for social distancing in that regard. Obviously, increased sanitization on the trucks with bins, with customers, personal protective equipment, all of that's happening. I mentioned the -- what we saw in June and in August, June, April -- sorry, April, May and June. So what are we going to do coming out of this? And I think it's important that we look at what are we going to do going forward? And what have we already started? So number one, I think it's important to note that part of June's results are what are -- came from a review we did of the marketplace. And what we saw in the marketplace in April and May as many of the independents stopped spending money on marketing, as did we, we cut back big time. And what we noticed is that bid rates were lower with Google, so advertising bid rates were lower and there was demand. So we started to increase our spending in the tail end of May and that spending continued into June and the bid rates were lower, so we're getting our -- more than our fair share of purchase coupled with pent-up demand, that allowed us to have a pretty good June, and we've continued that into July, into August. Obviously, the independents have now started to also spend money. So we're starting to see, again a more normalized situation in the marketplace. Having said that, we're trying to be a little more clever. So number one, we have increased marketing and service programs to all of our clients with home-based employees. If you are a home-based employee, we have programs for you, whether they're box programs or we have a new RediShred-back program. These are programs that we've deployed to our customers, and particularly our largest customers, typically professional services customers. We've increased marketing and marketing spend and service programs to residential clients. Typically, our residential mix of inbound leads is about 20%. There was a point during the pandemic, where we were about 40%. That has now come back to more commercial, not all the way back to 20% residential, but that is a marketplace that is underserviced and they are on routes as well. So that's an area we're spending more money on. We're increasing sales initiatives directed to essential service businesses and institutions. I think that's important because those were the companies that were open during a crisis, and they will continue to stay open during future crises. We've increased markets through our e-waste services offer, devising with Kansas and where our e-waste hub is, is that there are markets like Chicago, like St. Louis, like Oklahoma City, like Des Moines, that we can take large volumes and bring them back to Kansas. And so we are now looking and we are offering services in those markets, not small order services, but large order services. So -- and we've already won some business, particularly in the Chicago market through that endeavor. We're increasing the markets where our ProScan services can be offered. ProScan is a low-CapEx, pretty quick install service. We offer it in Charlotte, and our franchisee offers it at Springfield, and we can offer this in other market. So that's another area that we're looking at. We're going to continue to target small and medium-sized enterprises. Why? Our large professional service clients in the -- particularly in the downtown cores, they were the ones to shut down, and they're the ones to come back last from home. They're coming back. Many of our large professional services clients are coming back, but they're slowly coming back. Where small, medium-sized enterprises, what we've seen is they're coming back faster. Suburban markets are coming back faster, that's where we're marketing to. So that's what our data and analysis are telling us. Lastly, we're relaunching our acquisition programs directed at both franchisees and independents. There are opportunities with independents. Unfortunately, they've been hit by a double whammy of paper prices and COVID-19, and it's been very hard on them. And so we can offer a solution for them to exit and for us to continue onwards. And our franchisee program, we had to pause that for a little bit until we knew what was happening in the marketplace. Now that we know, our view is we'd like to continue to proceed on our franchise programs, we've started on that endeavor as well. So we have lots on the go. We've learned a lot, we've -- our teams have done excellent work in rerouting when routing routes are crumbling. They've done excellent work and making our routes better. Our marketing sales team found ways to market more efficiently and effectively, target new markets and sell into new markets. And we've been able to do a lot of this virtually. So overall, as I said, given the circumstances, the second quarter was a positive one, one we can build from into the third and the fourth quarter and into 2021. So I'll open it up to questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Nick Corcoran of Acumen Capital.

[Nick Corcoran, Equity Research Analyst]

I think you briefly touched on this in your prepared remarks. But can you maybe just discuss a little bit more what you're seeing geographically between your suburban and downtown locations and how are they being recovering?

[Jeffrey I. Hasham, CEO, President & Director]

Great. Thanks, Nick, hope you're well. And yes, good question and good observation. Our downtown cores, frankly, have been hit harder than the suburbs and with logical reason, most downtown cores have lawyers, accountants, marketing firms, investment professional firms and all of those firms were able to send their employees home and continue to operate their business from home. It's not perfect and nor is it ideal for them as well, but they are able to do so. And so those downtown cores have been hit harder than our suburban centers. Our suburban markets, when you look at them, manufacturing, retail, small, medium-sized enterprise businesses, of course, medical and medical-related services in the burbs, also in the downtown cores, there's many as well. Those weren't impacted. But there's a disproportionate component of professional services in downtown cores versus the burbs. So we saw the burbs, the suburbs come back faster. A good example of that is our New Jersey market is predominantly a suburban market, and while the restrictions were hard and heavy and slow to lift in New Jersey, once they lifted, people went back into their facilities, into their offices. And we've seen a bit of a stronger rebound in New Jersey than we do in New York. In New York, why is that? Because in Manhattan there's still -- they're slower to come back. They are coming back, but they're much, much slower to come back. And Downtown Chicago would be similar, where in the burbs in Chicago, it's been very positive. And again, Connecticut is more of suburban markets. We've seen slow, strong, steady growth there. Overall, what do you learn from that? We know where to target right now. That's a nice thing about our business. We don't have to spend money in Manhattan if we don't want to. We can spend money in West Chester and in Jersey and Long Island, and those markets are more open than -- even Brooklyn and Queens are much more open than Manhattan. So we're able to spend money differently and sell in different markets to attack those markets, and that's the beauty of this business. We can turn things on and off pretty quickly. Nick, did that answer your question?

[Nick Corcoran, Equity Research Analyst]

Yes, that was great overview. And then maybe just talk a little where you are at compared to your COVID plan that you might have discussed with the quarter and what's the Q1 results in May? Or can you just maybe give an indication where you are compared to that original plan?

[Jeffrey I. Hasham, CEO, President & Director]

Yes. Well, we're ahead of the original plan. Again, in April, late March and in early April, I think the lens that many people were looking at was the great unknown. And even into May, we were down 37% in May. So the lens was still not great. And -- but I think, again, as the restrictions came off and the demand came back, I was surprised that how quickly the demand came back. It's not all the way back. As we just mentioned in some of the markets, it's harder, southern markets are worse than northern markets. But we are ahead of where we thought we would be at this point in time. We don't know where this is going to go, of course, but I think sort of projecting out, September is sort of that trigger date where a lot of companies are saying, you know what, we want our people more in than out, right? So more working in for the office than out of the office. So there's a little bit of that. So there's a number of trigger dates that are coming for a lot of companies. Some of it is in September, some of it might be later in the fall, and some of it might be January. And -- but a lot of companies are starting to migrate their people back. So yes, we're very happy that we over-performed in the second quarter compared to where we thought we would be. And so far, so good in the third quarter. And the fourth quarter, we're optimistic. We're also cognizant of that, could there be second waves and things like that, yes. So we have to be prepared still. So did that answer the question, Nick?

[Nick Corcoran, Equity Research Analyst]

Yes, absolutely. And then just last question for me before I get back into the queue. Can you maybe comment on what you've seen in July in terms of just the system volumes and the system sales?

[Jeffrey I. Hasham, CEO, President & Director]

Yes. So July -- summertime, July, honestly, was a little bit of a flat, they're a little bit flat. So we sort of typically go January through June, and those are great months as you sort of build through and then you hit the summer. And so we saw both July and August, a little bit less than June in terms of -- August is not quite done yet, so you never know. But July and August have been a little bit less than June just because you're getting into the summer and people did take vacations and did go away. We were nowhere near down 40% or 37%. We were still hanging pretty well north in the 80% range versus plan, which means we were even closer to prior year, which is good. But it's -- and again, the current view on September is we are seeing some uptick in bookings at the moment. So it looks like September is going to -- and September and October tend to be better months, right, as people get back to work after Labor Day and all of that. So we're hoping that trend continues as well.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from David Ocampo of Cormark Securities.

[David Ocampo, Analyst of Institutional Equity Research]

First question is sort of on the sustainability of your cost-cutting initiatives. You guys did a fantastic job, especially trimming the SG&A and the corporate side. I'm just trying to get a sense of, is this more so a permanent reduction in your cost structure? Or is it, say, 50% is permanent, 50% is temporary as volumes come back?

[Jeffrey I. Hasham, CEO, President & Director]

Yes. Look, as volumes come back we're going to bring back the team where it's logical. And so look, will every cost come back? No. There are certain things you learn about the business during these times that you can do more efficiently. So we've already made some decisions that not everyone will come back even if you get to 95% or 100% of pre-COVID levels. Obviously, with acquisitions, that changes story, right? Because of acquisitions, you may need a little more clerical, you may need a little bit more other entry-level positions that come along with that growth. But having said that, as it sits today, we're probably going to have 80% to 90%, probably not closer to 90%. We get back to 100%, we're probably at about 90% of the cost come back. And again, a lot of these people were temporary furloughed and temporary layoffs. And there's still people on temporary layoffs throughout the organization. And -- but we have brought people slowly but surely back as the business has grown. And so we're -- every time we take a logical set function, and the people are stretched, then we bring someone else back, right? And we don't want to burn out our team. And there were moments where, particularly in June, where we almost burned out a few a folks as it was crazy in June, as you can see from the results. So I think we'll make those decisions logically.

[David Ocampo, Analyst of Institutional Equity Research]

Yes. And you just touched on the acquisition front. So maybe we can dive in there. When I look at recycled paper pricing, it's really falling off the cliff. And when we've talked in the past, you mentioned that some of your competitors rely solely on recycled paper pricing to generate any cash flow. So are you starting to see more businesses start to fall off? And some of your competitors start to fail? Or is it the case where there's still a bunch of subsidies out there in the market that's keeping everyone afloat?

[Jeffrey I. Hasham, CEO, President & Director]

Yes. I think what's keeping everyone afloat right now is a Paycheck Protection Program. That money is running out, right? I mean that -- I mean we see it in the news, and we know that money is running out. And will there be a further bail out? Probably not. So we're -- right now, there is more activity with some of the independents saying, okay, do I -- maybe I should sell now or I should start considering selling. So that Paycheck Protection Program did what it's supposed to do, it kept everyone alive, in some cases where someone was not performing well because of the paper prices in Q1, it actually kept them going where -- and then when the paper prices came up, so it kept them going a little bit more. That's going to dwindle for sure, and then we will have our opportunity. We, during this period of time, we've added new customers. And as our customers come back, we are less and less reliant for ourselves on the paper revenue, right? We plan things with its low levels of paper revenue, and our business is much more efficient now than it was 1 year ago and 1.5 years ago or 2 years ago. So we've seen this before. And so we're very ready for it. And the independents, unfortunately, once that Paycheck Protection money runs out, there is going to be -- I think we're going to see some more activity there.

[David Ocampo, Analyst of Institutional Equity Research]

Yes. And how are the discussions with your franchise locations now? Is there anyone that's kind of kicking the tires of potentially selling to you guys as they look to exit the market?

[Jeffrey I. Hasham, CEO, President & Director]

Yes. We have some activity. We pause that activity. And we -- this summer, we reopened the activity. And so we're looking at that. I think one of the things I can say about our entire system and our franchise system is they've seen similar results to us. They follow the playbook that we outlined. That's the beauty of being a franchise system, and they all started to increase their marketing. They all started to do much better in June and July. And -- so the franchisees have done remarkably well through this, which is great. So I think a number -- the ones that we were talking to before the pandemic started in March. We're now talking to again, and we're refreshing our databases and refreshing our due diligence. And we are looking at how this will work, and then we'll come back to hopefully, an acquisition going forward. And so we restarted that, right? So we paused it but we've restarted it. And so it's going to take a little bit of time to get through some of the incremental work to make sure that we're paying the right amount and we're structuring it the right way.

[David Ocampo, Analyst of Institutional Equity Research]

Yes. And last one for me, it's just a maintenance question. What can we expect for the cash outflows from the deferred payments? Just trying to get a good sense on your cash position heading into H2.

[Jeffrey I. Hasham, CEO, President & Director]

Yes. So our truck financing, and we're happy to do this with you and anyone individually, but the truck payments have now started. So they started July -- essentially July 1. So into the third quarter, truck payments have started. The term loan with our bank, that one will kick in, I think it's November. So April, May, June, July, August. Sorry, Kasia, do you know the exact date?

[Katherina M. Pawluk, CFO & Secretary]

Yes, will kick in, in November.

[Jeffrey I. Hasham, CEO, President & Director]

November. Right. So thanks for that.

[David Ocampo, Analyst of Institutional Equity Research]

Do you know the dollar magnitude there, Jeff?

[Katherina M. Pawluk, CFO & Secretary]

I'm trying to just pull that up for you quickly right here. I mean in Q3, for our -- the bank debt will be still interest-only payment. So that, along with the truck loans and will be sort of $550,000 plus another $750,000. The other debts that will sort of come into place starting in Q3 is our earn-out payment for the contingent considerations and the no payables that we have from the prior acquisitions.

[David Ocampo, Analyst of Institutional Equity Research]

Okay. That's great.

[Jeffrey I. Hasham, CEO, President & Director]

Thanks, David. Appreciate it.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Devin Schilling of PI Financial.

[Devin Schilling, Special Situations Analyst]

Could we talk a little bit about the government wage subsidies in the quarter here? Are these expected to continue in Q3 and Q4? And I guess, both in the U.S. and Canada? Are these payments largely onetime in nature?

[Jeffrey I. Hasham, CEO, President & Director]

So in the United States, the way the program worked is sort of you applied for it, and you basically took all your payroll data and some cost data and said, okay, here's what it is. And they applied a formula, and they said, "Here's a bunch of money. And now you go spend it." And -- but they -- originally, the spending period was 8 weeks, and then they expanded the spending period out. And if you spend it on payroll dollars and specified expenses, then you can start to claim more and more of that as forgiven loan versus a loan-loan. Is it -- whatever remains as the loan is paid back at 1% interest rate. So it's good of a loan as you're ever going to get. But -- so that's what we're working on now. So the current estimate of forgiveness is based on what the preliminary calculations have shown. However, there will be more forgiveness, most likely as we continue to bring people back and consume more of those dollars and they'll -- that will be applied, and we'll get more forgiveness. So that's someone in Canada. At the moment, the revenues are now back up enough that we're not really qualifying for the Canadian side of things again, that could change. But we did use it through the second quarter. But into the third quarter, we haven't qualified, which is in a way, a good news story because that means the revenues have increased to a sufficient level where we didn't need it. So I take that. It's like paying more taxes when you're making more money, right? It's -- in a way it's bad, but it's good, right?

[Devin Schilling, Special Situations Analyst]

Yes. No, that makes sense. I guess moving on to my next question here. I guess just looking at some of your key markets, have you guys experienced any reduced competition. I guess some of these independents, have they returned back to the market as rapidly as you have expected? Or do you see a bit of an opportunity here over the near term?

[Jeffrey I. Hasham, CEO, President & Director]

In June, they were slow, and we were fast. So in June it was certainly us just sort of evaluating the marketing team and sales team did a great job of evaluating the marketplace and saying, "Hey, there's an opportunity here, and we took advantage of it. In July, the competition has come back, still not to the same level, but they have come back and we've seen bid rates, Google bid rates and AdWords, the cost of those go up, and that was -- we forecasted that would happen. So we have seen that occur. I think I'll come back to the point that I made earlier with David, is that I think as Paycheck Protection money runs out, we will start to see some reduction in competition because there will be those that cannot continue. I already know that there are some that are not looking to buy more trucks. They're not looking to -- or they're even looking to sell trucks. I've noticed a little bit more out on the used market website. So there's a little bit of, I guess, natural attrition in the marketplace. But we haven't seen the fullness of that, that I think we will as we get into the fall in early 2021 as the money runs out that they got from the government. If they don't get anymore, we're going to see, I think, some closures and/or more opportunities for us to buy.

[Devin Schilling, Special Situations Analyst]

Okay. Got it. That makes sense. I guess, lastly here. Can you provide an update on some of your guys' franchise agreements? Are there any expiring this year?

[Jeffrey I. Hasham, CEO, President & Director]

Yes. So we're in some conversations with folks either to buy or they always -- in the U.S., they always have the option to renew, right? If they're in good standing, they'll always have the right to renew. So there's a few there. But again, we're in those conversations. And so that's good. And really, the franchise agreements, many more expire, 2011, '12 and '13. Yes, 2011, '12, '13. So 2021, '22, '23, that is the need for most of our franchise agreements for exploration/renewal. So we're just about to head into sort of the sweet spot for those that signed up 10 years ago.

[Operator]

This concludes the question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Hasham for closing remarks.

[Jeffrey I. Hasham, CEO, President & Director]

Great. Well, first of all, thank you, everyone, for joining the call this morning. We really appreciate it, number one. Number two, I want to thank everyone. So many of you are our shareholders and our financial partners, and you've been there for us throughout all of this. Supported us. We have lots of conversations. We've also gotten a lot of good advice, and we've tried to put a lot of that to work. And here we are, we're going to continue to put our head down. There will be bumps, there will be challenges as we go forth. There's no doubt about that, but we have a great team, and they've shown that they can be agile and flexible, and we'll I'm sure we'll continue to see that from the team, and that's our commitment to everyone that we will continue to do that. And of course, there's some opportunity out there, and we'll continue to seize the opportunity as best we can going forward. So a number of you, I'll be having some one-on-ones with over the next couple of days, and I look forward to that, but I want to thank everyone for their support and for joining us today. Thank you, and have a great day.

[Operator]

This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating, and have a pleasant day.