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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Yeah. Todd, what I would say is that and if you -- it was in the press release, we had an observation there on the credit losses. So I would really say, when we look at our quarterly run rate, look at the third and fourth quarter combined, right to come up with between where -- I think we're at $0.20 which was too low, and in Q3 and '24 this period. So I think that's probably just I would look at that second half as really be indicative of what the first half of next year should be.
So like I said in remarks, give or take a few pennies is really what we're talking about particularly with the cash basis of accounting creates noise simply based upon when that portion of our tenants pay us.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): UP
| UP |
[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Hey, Ric.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
With respect to the Ratings margins, I would like to point you at the trailing 4-quarter margins that were 63.4%, up 30 basis points. We've seen a very large increase in the margins in Ratings last year, 460 basis points. And for the full year, the best direction I can give to you is think about margin for the full year in line with where we are for a trailing 4-quarter basis. From a longer-term perspective, we don't have new aspirational margin targets for our divisions. We think the right moment to announce those is after completion of the merger with IHS Markit. But a couple of factors that you have to take into consideration. Of course, there continue to be positive secular trends behind the Ratings business. As long as GDP is going up and we see positive economic momentum, there will be positive revenue growth for the Ratings business. Also, of course, all our businesses have always operating leverage. So operating leverage will be a benefit. We do think, over time, we need to invest in some analytical capacity because of the level of volumes that we're seeing. But that's a good problem to have. So some investments need to be made in analytical capacity. So that is the best I can give to you with respect to the outlook. But overall, I would say very strong results by the Ratings business and really topping a very strong year last year.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): UP
| UP |
[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Dave, we'll move that asset once Norfolk Southern vacates out of the same property pool. Clearly, it will be empty, and we will go into a redevelopment bucket. We haven't -- we're very far along in the redevelopment plan. So we haven't disclosed the redevelopment budget yet.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
| DOWN |
[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Well, we are looking to obviously expand the category, but I wouldn't say it's a significant driver. It's about image and what we put through when we're building it, the one in China is very special. We may have a few more but it's not a major growth initiative for us. It's just something that we take as it becomes available to showcase the brand in general.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): UP
| UP |
[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Hey, Jamie, you do an amazing job. And I'm not going to go there either. I would say that, obviously, we are still on track for a Q3 London launch. Obviously, we are paying attention to what's going on. We will -- we'll go out for sale when we think the time is right and that's when we'll share our thinking on slots. What I'd say, at a general level, about Heathrow slots, as you know, with the slot waivers that have gone in there, the sort of scenario last year may be that -- maybe some commentary around airlines who were cash-strapped, they would sort of monetize Heathrow slots because they couldn't fly them obviously with the way waiver process that hasn't happened. And so, again, we continue to sort of have path to more than one London airport and more in due course.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
| DOWN |
[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Sure, yeah. That's a great question. You know, I think I highlighted in intermodal, first, because that was the most impacted business unit that we had, obviously, we had three days is an integral network shutdown in our in our Western network. And, obviously, you know, some challenges in the eastern portion as well. So that was really the the largest impact, we didn't see some benefits, you know, in the in the truck brokerage side where we were able to maintain some of the the phrase that was delayed or needed, needed support with in the spot market. So that certainly was an offsetting benefit case stack had some headwinds as well, but I think, you know, really wanted to highlight it in intermodal, because that's where the biggest challenge was, if you look at volume, you know, we were up 6% in intermodal in January. And that's not adjusting for business days, down 8% in February, and then update in March. We've seen that trend improve in April with sequential improvement there, which came in around the 19%. Volume growth. So, you know, I just wanted to make sure I highlighted that. And, Jeff, did you want to hit on the numbers from the weather event?[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): UP
| UP |
[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Yes, it's pretty close to normal. We're running 25/75, and it was 74% in Q1. We talked about Q4 sometimes having a little bit of a variance, but generally we should be in kind of that 25/75 range.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Yes. Thanks -- thanks for the question. It's all good news. You know, we're quite pleased with our ability to get this done at the pace we got it done.
And what this amendment does is most importantly, it allowed us to achieve better economics. But not too far behind that, of course, is just getting better control over the end-customer relationship, which is important. To your question, I think it really opens the door for us to continue to migrate the back book, as you called it, at a good pace this year, alongside what we do with the rest of the Lightspeed's core business. So, this really kind of opens the door to let that happen.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): UP
| UP |
[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Yeah, we don't see any indication that there is a COVID-related impact here.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Excuse me?[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): UP
| UP |
[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Thanks. Jay, you gave the Sky Bet analogy on the online sportsbook. As you look at your metrics in that segment across things like size of bet frequency and customer concentration. Without perhaps disclosing those stats specifically, how do you think you compare to peers in the market? And can you provide any color on how you think about how fragmented your customer base is as we think about more of a mass-market customer versus perhaps peers more concentrated?[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Yes. Thank you.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): UP
| UP |
[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Sure. Hey, Ralph. Thank you for the comment. Look, we think that these three elements complement each other nicely and our listings business is incredibly strong right now and leads in most categories and that's a terrific sort of launching off point to offer consumers and dealers more functionality. And so the first type of functionality is, as we talked about, to allow them to do more elements of the transaction on our site to make it more efficient for both of them. And furthermore, we think that as they start to do that, they're going to want to do more types of transactions than just consumer buying from a dealer on our platform. And so that's when you start to get into wholesale. So that's dealers selling to other -- selling -- buying and selling from other dealers and there also could be an element of consumers selling to dealers.
And the reason that these three are so powerful on a single platform is when you start to share the data across. And so we talked about some of the examples of that in the script, but when you can start to give wholesale dealers who are doing a wholesale transaction information about retail pricing, that's very powerful. Likewise, when a dealer is looking to sell a car retail, for them to know in the same place what the wholesale value of that might be is also very powerful. And in particular when you layer on top of that geographic arbitrage or the breakdown of geographic constraints, then that data becomes even more powerful, because odds are a dealer and a consumer are willing to value a car differently in New England in the winter than they are in the south in the winter. So the vision for the future is, as we laid out these three pillars, and not only advancing in each of them discretely, but really in stitching them together longer term using data across them.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Yeah, look, if you look at Q3 guidance, I would say, from knowing what our books are, we're halfway through the quarter already, from our standpoint, so we can get pretty comfortable with Q3. And then I think for the full year, it's a little bit different that, again, we're really supply constrained, it's not a demand constrain. So even with some volatility in the market, we still can only sell the amount of material we have and we know how much material we have. So I mean, yes, there could be big swings in Acetyls and that could change it, but we just gave -- it was a narrow range, admittedly, but we just kind of said, here is what our projection is, given that we are fairly close to the end of the year.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): UP
| UP |
[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Well, look, we had said that we would need an infusion of cash to get us to cash flow positive by the end of 2022. And having that in place takes the timing of when we might have to raise that money off the table. It also -- if this growth continues, while we are experiencing stronger cash flows than we anticipated, and stronger per member cash flow, obviously, all the positive and the new to Medicare higher administrative fees help as well. But still, if we grow through the balance of the year at these higher rates, we will be eating more cash this year than our original plan.
Because, as you know, we don't break even in the first 12 months and cash on Medicare Advantage enrollments. So what will be great about getting the H.I.G. deal closed is we will be unconstrained in driving growth this year and with the momentum that we have, we could be using some of that cash.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
| DOWN |
[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
You're welcome.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): UP
| UP |
[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
The guidance we gave does include the -- if you look at the last page of the supplemental information, we gave an estimate for the entire year and it does include the three deals we just announced.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
| DOWN |
[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Sure. I'll give you my view and certainly can let Darren weigh in with his thoughts after. The announcements by various competitors in -- especially the system operators, really hasn't changed our view of things. I mean we are -- our product is an omnichannel product. We're agnostic as to whatever system is on the floor. We're multi jurisdictional. We can go multi-platform for online. So we're also multi system.
And we are the only wallet to my knowledge that can be used with the same wallet in multiple jurisdictions with the same casino operators casinos. But we also -- we are also offering the ability to open that wallet up to purchases in retail in hotel and food and beverage and entertainment, as well as online retail for that matter if the casino operator has an online store. So with all of those additional benefits and opportunities coming from our wallet, I'm not really as concerned about various other companies that are trying to enter the space for the first time.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): UP
| UP |
[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Yeah. Now we can make that statement clearly across all our product platforms, George, no question about that. Now we are surprised, if a customer looks at our product demo and especially across the entire guest journey, right, how they can manage that entire guest journey with the comprehensive set of products we have on the POS side, on the PMS side, and now the inventory procurement products and DataMagine have also been modernized, we do go in with a good degree of confidence. And the recent win loss ratio that we measured, George, internally for the last four months starting from December or so, when we look at the percentage of wins in the deals that we participate in and we have closed as either a win or a loss, a big majority of them we are winning now. So, yes, George, we do go into sales demos and all that with a high degree of confidence and the customer feedback also is extremely encouraging, because they are not seeing this kind of a modern technology-based comprehensive set of products that serves the entire set of needs they have. They don't see this from others as well. So, yes, and no comparison between 12 months from now -- 12 months before and now, George, there is absolutely no comparison. Our confidence is much, much higher than what it was even 12 months ago.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
| DOWN |
[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Yes. So yes, that is probably the one tenant where we did make a change, as I noted in my comments. So we amended the lease to reduce the rent for the fourth quarter of 2020 and the full year 2021 by 25%. So -- but that's really the only tenant of any note where that occurred.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): UP
| UP |
[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Good morning.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
| DOWN |
[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Well, again -- go ahead, Mark. No, go ahead.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): UP
| UP |
[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Yes, so we're seeing some decent activity within the -- in the CRE space. Multifamily has been a very solidly performing segment for us. We've been cautious about that as we monitor internal limits, but we do see some additional opportunity there. I mentioned in my prepared comments that we do anticipate pay-offs into the permanent market to reduce and that's based upon conversations that we have with customers. Typically, we're able to look at 90 to 120 days and get ahead of the pay-offs, which is not seeing the same pace, so I don't know if that's a function of that market being less active or the the loans that were eligible for refinance into that space has gone through that process, but we are seeing renewed opportunity. The committee process, particularly -- and we have a pretty robust preview process for CRE deal and the C&I deals, activity through those channels has picked up as well.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
| DOWN |
[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Thank you, Dave.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): UP
| UP |
[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Yeah. Thanks, Michael. So in the quarter, as you all know, we completed our first follow-on offering. There were roughly $2.8 million of expenses really related to professional services and executing that offering.
And taking the net income number for the quarter of $0.2 million, adding that back gets us to roughly $3 million of net income or EPS of $0.05. And so it's primarily driven by those one-time charges related to the execution of that offering in Q1.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
| DOWN |
[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Yes.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): UP
| UP |
[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Morning, Mitch.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
| DOWN |
[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Yeah, so, we're now doing -- I think we almost hit 1,400 contracts in the month of March, again 17.7 million SAAR, so much more robust than I think we will see averaging for the year when we get done. But we've -- on that pace, we should have an appropriate amount of receivables to be able to go to the ABS market late this year, OK. And then once we get on that cadence, we'll have those out there every, I would say, one to two quarters, OK, to be able to accomplish that and take it off balance sheet and redeploy that capital that's now warehoused. And that leverage, it's actually sitting out there into the network again.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): UP
| UP |
[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Thanks.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
| DOWN |
[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Thank you.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): UP
| UP |
[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
No, but no more thoughts on it. I have got some stuff internally. But the stuff on the products though follows what I just told you. I just -- we want to keep everything clean, everything clear. We're not interested in, again, using it as an example of buying medical debt. It's not something that I want to get right. I want to go at, yeah.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
| DOWN |
[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Yes. First of all, with Electronics, it is broad-based, both geography and end market applications. And in the quarter, in particular, our European business really started to come on strong. We've got great bookings acceleration and a strong backlog in Europe, and that was sort of the last region to kick in for us. We've seen very nice growth in the sale of our relays, in particular, into electric vehicles and battery management systems. That's a very nice product line for us and based on the advantages of the reed switch technology. And you mentioned the NBO funnel. The NBO funnel to us, we started reporting on this a few years ago as we executed the strategy to move the Electronics business to focus more and more on sensors, moving up the value chain to more value-add opportunities. So for us, that's a measure of our ability of our success in penetrating that market and taking market share as we grow into sensors. Last quarter, we reported it was $56 million; it's $59 million now. That additional $3 million is largely the effect of bringing Renco into the fold and comparing our opportunity lists and seeing the cross-selling opportunities between our recent acquisition and our core business.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): UP
| UP |
[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Yes. So to be clear, our accounting for the quarter was what happened at the end of the quarter and through a couple of weeks after that when we actually put the results together, working with our team and our external accountants, and we just follow our process. The mask mandate change that's happened in the last couple of days, I will say that every single external announcement in the pandemic has driven behavior. So we are expecting in the short term to get some increased mask sales. We haven't flown that through. You're right, there's a potential, but it's so early. 48 hours' worth of revenue wouldn't give us any indication. And things are so fluid and change so fast, it's really hard to tell. Obviously, if we went into full lockdown with full mask usage, what you described could in fact be true. But it's just really, really uncertain right now.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
| DOWN |
[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
I'm not really sure. I haven't heard that they're worse, but I also haven't heard that they're better. So I'm going to guess that they're probably about the same. And it's also market-specific. Some places are worse than others, but it's manageable. You're not going to find me complaining about anything.
Look, I wish there was greater density that will allow for more affordable housing throughout our whole country, I think that's a big issue. But you're not going to hear me complaining about anything. I think these are about the best housing conditions we've ever seen. You heard Derek Klutch talk about our mortgage and title operation. Our average buyer is putting 15% down as a credit score north of 740. This is nothing like when we had strong demand back in the early 2000s, when there was no credit and a lot of speculators and flippers buying.
This is real buyers with phenomenal credit that want to live in a single-family home. And these are great, great conditions. And if it takes a little longer for new communities to come along, then so be it. I know we're going to get our fair share of our growth. We've had, I think, just really-we're really proud of the growth we've had over the last seven, eight years, and we expect to be able to continue that as long as the conditions will allow.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): UP
| UP |
[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Thanks, Jason, for that question. In terms of catch-up, we still have probably a little bit higher cash balance that we're carrying today at the $1.8 billion. So that gives us, I think, a good strong start into the year. And then we'll see how the rest of the year plays out. Certainly, as we talk at our Analyst Day in May, we're going to outline and provide some more specific plans around not only our long-term outlook of the business performance, but then how we're going to deploy that cash to shareholders. So we'll probably talk more in May.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
| DOWN |
[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Yeah. So we haven't disclosed the statistical assumptions there as far as the histology changes. We think we're adequately powered to show a benefit on NASH resolution. And as far as the enrollment contributions, right now, we feel that likely it's going to be a U.S.
heavy enrollment distribution relative to ex U.S., but that could change. It just seems like Europe is a little bit behind the U.S. with the emergence from the pandemic. As far as the breakout of fibrosis enrolled thus far, we really haven't talked about what we've seen on the demographics at this point.
But we've said we can allow up to 25% F1s as long as they have another risk factor like diabetes, obesity, hypertension, something like that that predisposes them to metabolic syndrome, but we haven't given breakouts on what we're seeing live.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): UP
| UP |
[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Yes, thanks very much and let me add my congrats as well. So I have two questions. First, Pablo, if you could discuss the potential for future M&A transactions. So what could they look like? And when you say M&A transactions, could you provide a little bit more color on what the company could be acquiring beyond just royalties? And then second, with respect to the comment about funding late-stage trials.
Obviously, Royalty Pharma has had some successes, but also a mixed track record. So how will the company ensure that it's not just taking on trials that big pharma or other biopharma companies are hesitant to fund internally?[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
| DOWN |
[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Hi guys, good morning, thanks for those space for questions here. So just a quick one on my side. Wanted to ask on the performance around OXXO in Mexico, maybe on a bit more segmented basis. So if you can provide some color there on how trends are, let's say, in the city or big city locations versus the ones in the tourist centers that had been lagging a bit behind, any comment there on the details on evolution and performance will be really helpful? Thanks.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): UP
| UP |
[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Yeah. I'll start off with that, Matt, others may weigh in here. But in the near-term, I think that the strength that we're seeing is really attributable to our diversified consumer lending and retail businesses. When you see what we've been able to do in the mortgage portfolio, auto and education, I think those are areas that have been areas of strength in the past and will continue to be in the second quarter.
I also believe that when we get into the second quarter, you're going to start to see, although across the industry we see utilization levels come down a bit in the first quarter, I think we believe that that will start to moderate and stabilize and possibly start to head back up off of historic lows -- historic low level, so you can see commercial contributing as well in the second quarter.
And as you -- that will create the staging ground, if you will, for what we see in the second half where the continuing expectations for reopening economic activity accelerating. On the commercial side, inventories building, capex expenditures starting to recover and increase. So those are the forces that we see in terms of loan growth throughout the year.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
| DOWN |
[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Yeah, Gavin, thanks for the question. Prabu here. I'll take this one first. So, I'd say, if you think about the Q1, there is clearly seasonality in the revenue pattern here. Q1 tends to be one of our stronger quarters, along with Q3, I'd say, in Q2 and Q4 tend to be weaker quarters, primarily due to the holidays within those quarters. So, I would say, a little careful on annualizing Q1 across the four quarters to get to a number that would imply a total year number of higher than $7.3 billion. But, I'd say, as we're thinking through it, the immediate impact we saw for the year was on the COVID side. So we've reflected that in the updated guidance. I'd say, we continue to see some progress as we go through the rest of the year.
As we've previously flagged, we do see some ramp in growth rates in the second half of the year, primarily associated with both our AMCOM, now we call them S3I contracts, as well as the Army rich contract. We do see that ramp occurring still in the second half of the year. But, I'd say, there is a fair amount of variability as we sit here right now in Q1. And would love to be having this conversation over the course of the next several quarters, but I'd say still early in the year, we've got some three quarters to go, so.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): UP
| UP |
[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Thank you.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
| DOWN |
[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Thank you, Salveen.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): UP
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Good morning.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Yeah, it -- it's just -- it's just activity levels in our business, and, you know, our business is a little bit different than others, a little bit smaller cash business that sort of I think drove a lot of activity this quarter. So -- so I think there's a number of factors sort of -- sort of driving and no -- no individual sort of item that's significant.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): UP
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Yeah.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Great. Yeah. Taking the last question first, I think your observation is our observation too which, yes, primarily we think conservatism just recognizing that a lot of our education sales occur in the first quarter that environment continues to be uncertain, although like we said, we feel there are some good things there. It just felt like while the trend being up versus expectation in the first and second quarters and feeling good about the third, it's possible that at this time next quarter we'd be adjusting our guidance. We just felt like it was probably wise just to get a better handle on where education is looking going into the fourth quarter, which we will have a really good handle on we think by May and June. So it's really primarily that. There is no expectation of anything -- any of the existing trends not continuing, if that's helpful.
We will have some additional spend that will be in the function of new hiring -- hiring of new salespeople, which we have new sales classes coming on. Those aren't massive incremental investments, but those are some. There are some there. Also, although it doesn't affect adjusted EBITDA as much, there will be some expense. Last year, the bonuses and other things, of course, were -- well, some of that will hit adjusted EBITDA and reduce. It's not enough to change the general trends. So it's more just trying to feel like we have a really good handle. By the time we would -- if we were to change our guidance we do that knowing where we believe education is. Does that respond [Phonetic] on the second half of that question?[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): UP
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Hey, Joe, it's Paul, and good morning. I think that's an accurate assessment. I mean we do expect some choppiness in the near term as we're altering production managing through this as well as you mentioned if we're building vehicles and then coming back to retrofit them. So we do see a bigger working capital and EBIT impact in the first half of the year.
And then the expectation is that we'll be able to make up for that in the second half. Also incorporated into our numbers, our cash impact guide, if you noticed, was a little bit wider than our EBIT guide. That's due in part to we were planning, going into the year, on having a little bit of a build and inventory level benefiting working capital that as we make up production volumes in the second half, depending on how the semiconductor situation works itself out, we could see a year-end where inventories are flat or -- and not have that working capital benefit that we might otherwise see, which is why we put a little bit more cash impact into it.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Yeah.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): UP
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Sure. Yeah, I guess, historically, I guess when you hear ERP initiative or upgrade, investors get a little bit spooked, but the reality is, I think over the past decade or so you've seen most of these to be very successful. We implemented SAP back in '20 -- back in 2000. So, it's been about 20 years and we haven't had or seen any major or significant upgrades within our system. Currently, we are on track to keep SAP as our overarching ERP system and they are in the midst of an upgrade with S/4HANA. So basically, we will be falling in line with that.
And so we're in the middle of selecting an implementation partner and after that point, we'll decide, which modules move into a true upgrade. But overall, we feel like with the transformation office and the plan we have laid out, we'll be very mindful and cautious with the approach. So, it's not like we're changing our ERP platform, it's really an upgrade of what we currently have.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Well, look, there's a lot of noise. I agree with you there. But I think we're set up to have this conversation with our clients well. They look to us for strategic clarity around how they ought to be thinking about it. and our systems, as I said earlier, are central to what their operational strategy needs to look like. At the end of the day, particularly as you see its trend outside the hospital in the provider network space, they're looking for integration. Is there someone who has the size and scale capabilities to integrate and make that provider network operate effectively against their contract strategies. And we're set up incredibly well to do that, not only with the EMR assets but also with CareAware and with more importantly, healthy intent. So that's where this market is going to move away from hundreds and hundreds of point solution buying decisions to looking to who is someone who I can count on to drive integration. And importantly, that really understands the provider workflow integration opportunities, both within the standards that exist today, but also the integration that needs to occur to actually profitably manage a patient for fee-for-service or take first dollar risk in an area like MA.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): UP
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Well, good morning, Andy. Thank you for that question. I was surprised as well. The -- let me give you an answer to that. I think, Michael, just talked about the demand for chicken wings. And it's interesting that we've arrived at the point that we believe that selling chicken wings is the answer to same-store sales growth, which we would argue. If you're Wingstop we understand that, but we believe that having a robust digital infrastructure already in place and proper delivery partner have more to do with the strength of this business and the strength of the brand than anything else.
We love selling chicken wings but all we think that's doing is impacting the commodity costs, which as we've seen over the many years we've been doing this, rise and fall with what I would call competitive intrusion. And so we want to first say thank you to our suppliers. As Michael mentioned, they have been with us knowing that we will be a wing buyer in this market for the long haul and have supported us. And I think that's really important to recognize that they -- the relationships we have with our supplier partners really demonstrates the strength of Wingstop. And the fact that we have not had any issues with supply even given the demands for the product in the market.
I think our same-store sales performance and our confidence in our performance in 2021 are demonstrating the fact that -- and this really isn't impacting the Wingstop business other than just putting pressure on supply. But again, as Michael very clearly articulated, cash profits for our brand partners remain strong. We've got the right mechanisms in place to navigate yet another difficult wing environment, but overall margin performance even is as strong or stronger than it was in 2017 when we experienced this. So I think we're in great shape. Not a concern.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Ok. If I guess I understand your question, right? You're asking a mechanistic question as to how 458 goes about in our actual view of the data, there are few potential therapeutic benefits in cognitive impairment. And I'm going to have Harald actually address that question. Harald If you wouldn't mind, following up, please.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): UP
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Well, we see our oil as a percent of our production increasing in the second half of the year. And it's really, I guess, say, based on the fact that if you look at our completions in the back half of the year, second half of the year, about 70% of the wells will probably be in the Bakken, maybe upwards of around 70%. And compared to the first half, we're around 50%. So I mean, that's one of the key drivers there. But at the same time, too, we're also going to be switching our rigs in Oklahoma, I mean, as far as -- it's oil-weighted in nature as well. Last year, we were probably -- second half of the year, we were probably 70% gas.
This year, we're probably going to be about 60% oil with those rigs. And so anyway -- so we're making that strategic shift to -- as we keep saying in Oklahoma, we love the optionality you have with the commodity there. And so we're moving in that direction to take advantage of that.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Thank you.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): UP
| UP |
[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Great. Good morning, Happy New Year. Really a great job on manufacturing margins given what's going on. So congrats on that. But looking, Lorie, a bit, maybe at the ASPs there, and pricing, maybe we could just delve into that a little bit and talk through. Bill just mentioned the different types of cars. Can you talk about what types we're seeing in terms of the order book, and understanding that you don't give exact numbers, how do we kind of volley what's going on in terms of filling up the order book with lowest ASPs versus the future margin impact on it?[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
The purchase price? Are you asking about the purchase price or the lease back?[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): UP
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Thank you, Samantha. [/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Yeah. So the -- just to kind of put some numbers around this, when we first estimated that $10 million to $20 million number, it was based on the numbers -- there is about 30,000 retail pharmacies in America, about 100,000 physicians offices, 35,000 hospitals, clinics, urgent care facilities and we estimated how many of those sites would be adding storage. We know what our market share is in those segments.
And I would tell you that -- our communication that we anticipate being toward the upper end of that $20 million, that would be on pace to outfit about one-third of the pharmacies with the storage unit. So the question then would be once we get into the summer and our new fiscal year, will there be a continued build-out of that last mile of vaccine distribution into the remaining pharmacies and clinics and urgent care and it's frankly premature for us to say.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): UP
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Great. Thanks for taking the question. I just want to come back to the conversation around labor inflation and or shortages, and warehouse personnel, and drivers. How much of this issue, the ongoing issue right now, do you feel is related to outsized or high unemployment benefits, which is, I guess, more transitory that ends in September, or how much of this do you think is kind of a more permanent change in industry structure?[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Yes. Well, our services include both jet aviation services as well as Gulfstream. So we saw some nice order, a nice recovery in the United States, but Europe, Middle East and Asia are recovering a little more slowly. So I think we had anticipated about a $0.5 billion increase in revenue.
I think that's a bridge too far in the moment. And I think we're looking more along the lines of...[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): UP
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Steve?[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
This is Paul Stark. As we look at this, obviously vaccinations and the whole COVID situation is such a big key. And while we're seeing some good vaccination pace, it's started to slow down. We look at the borrowers and we've had two quarters where the stability in terms of criticized loans that we would be able to improve our nonperforming somewhat. That hasn't really changed because of COVID but I think as we look at this we're waiting to see the revenue stream resume at normal levels. And the fact that we've -- a big chunk of our criticized or our hotels that's going to take a little bit longer. If you believe what you read that's not the analysis but the hotel recovery is going to be toward the end of the year.
So again, I think we're just trying to be cautious. And as we look at that. that's as one of the reasons we slowed down the provision because we are seeing improved bookings and we are. But until that we assessed the damage on the balance sheet for some of these companies and see the revenues resume, I think we're going to maintain that cautious posture.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): UP
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
All right. Are we on now through this line?[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Good afternoon. Can you talk about your strategy for the education vertical and what you are seeing there in terms of demand?[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): UP
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
This is Tory. Real quick. This is Tory, real quick. I'll give you a couple of statistics, which is kind of interesting to support kind of the Go-To pieces. Our teller transactions are down 26% year-over-year, and our Go-To messaging is up 122%. So there's just a number of connections through Go-To messaging that's occurring. Some of that is just certainly kind of behavior and activity. But a lot of that is, to Cort's point, us connecting with the Go-To banker as we consolidate a store.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Well, I think it's fair to look at these two as two distinct work streams, right? Novitas is basically looking at the pricing of codes that are in their system and they are -- they have full autonomy to decide how they want to determine, what methodology they want to use to determine, what the appropriate rates should be for those two new codes. And obviously, they have engaged with us as an industry's consortium to discuss it in detail. So that's the work stream we would expect they are going to pursue and then, decide what the answer is, whether they leave the code where it is, whether they accept the recommendations of the RUC process or whether they arrive at a different methodology for arriving at their rates. That seems to be a distinct work stream.
The second, obviously, is the CMS work stream around the potential for a national price to these codes. And that's a process that is really now entering into a meaningful comment period in March where we will avail ourselves of the opportunity to provide additional data and methodologies for being able to revisit the question of whether a national price can be established and we will do that independent of the Novitas activities and whether there is interaction between those two things after Novitas rate has been set, I don't know, but we are certainly pursuing them as two very distinct work streams.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): UP
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Yup.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
In terms of, so what we've done is we've modeled oxygen in our low-end of the guide as keeping Q1 flat for the rest of the year.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): UP
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Larry, I want to stay away from specific conversations around customer contracts. It's confidential and proprietary. And candidly, in a tightly contested market like this, it's not helpful. All right? So as a general course, we don't talk about individual customers. We're not going to talk about the details of those contracts. What I can tell you is that the change out of a network is no small feat for us or our customers. So, the agreements we have in place cover all of the existing PCS2 devices and the associated disposables in the US or globally, as mentioned. I don't think we or our customers take those change-outs slightly. It's predicated upon a belief on the value proposition of the product, first and foremost, and how it will enhance their collection capabilities, the yield, the cycle time, the connectivity and the donor satisfaction. And then, I think, increasingly, it's predicated upon our commitment, innovation and technology. We're not in any way, shape or form resting on our laurels. Through the pandemic, we introduced not only Persona, but the Donor360 app that's having meaningful benefit for all of our customers. We rolled it out industrywide. We're not backing off of our technology. We'll double down and we have through the pandemic and beyond.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Yes, I mean, it's always competitive on the one hand. On the other hand, it's such a huge marketplace. And so I would say over these last few quarters, we've just really got our heads down focused on the opportunities that are in front of us with our existing clients and our existing carriers. And so we run into our competition. We did against it in RFPs. We've been against them on spot freight, but we don't put that much of our energy on evaluating them just because we're trying to execute our own business.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): UP
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Well, good afternoon, Morris and Gary. Thanks for taking my questions. Let me start with kind of a multipart question on gross margins. I had some very nice numbers here in the first quarter.
I think you called out mix and volume as the drivers here. I didn't hear you talk anything about yields. I think you've alluded in the last call or two that the potential of seeing those improve as you kind of get more comfortable with the new facility. But -- and so I'd love to hear what you think about, not only for the second quarter and along those lines, but also when you talk about buying some more inventory here at lower cost, but eventually that's going to start to bake in here.
When do you see these -- the raw materials prices start to bake in and kind of level off, kind of provide a little bit of a headwind from gross margins?[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
| DOWN |
[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Thank you, Adam.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): UP
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Certainly. One of the things we've prided ourselves on here at Coupa is being consistent and we fully intend to give mid-year and long-term targets updated as we have in our past two Analyst Days that we've done since going public. And as we noted, of course, there's been a lot of activity here, exciting on the business front. So, for Coupa Pay and other important aspects of the business, we will have a healthy list of updates for folks.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
| DOWN |
[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Yeah, sorry to get back. So I actually have a couple more, believe it or not. I wanted to ask a little bit about on the capital side, maybe for you Scott. First of all, you talked a little bit about -- you always talked about maybe participating in Qatar tenders, and I assume, you're sort of gradually looking at other things. But with respect to the debt repayment, $200 million last year, what -- how do you think about is sort of the right cadence? What's the right amount of debt, and sort of -- when you begin to mix in growth that you -- we should think about sort of the debt balance going down on a go-forward basis?[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): UP
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Thank you.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
George, its Tom. I can tell you that going into the third quarter, our bookings and billings are running about 7% ahead of last year. Keep in mind that our comps become much tougher. So it's not as if volume has slowed down at all. It's remained incredibly robust coming right out of the fourth quarter of last year and all the way through this year. I think that's why we felt quite a bit more comfortable about giving some sort of guidance going forward.
Also, you asked about the -- is some of the lack of supply in the second quarter maybe bleeding over into the third quarter. We're running lead times that are longer than we're used to and certainly longer than our customers are used to. So the demand remains very high. Trying to get it out the door is an issue more related to transportation at this stage than it is certainly about paper. We're able to take care of our own plants through our system. So that's not the issue for us, it's more transportation and I think that's reflective of most of the industry.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): UP
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
So, this is not a kind of source of working capital in the quarter.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Yeah, so the recycling rates in Europe are very high, if not the highest. So, we have that experience with us, which we intend to leverage as we move forward. Recycling rates in the United States are not as high. And obviously, we got to make a significant change in the system in this country. It's not an easy task to accomplish. However, we're taking several actions in different fronts to address it. One of them is, for example, The GPI and its members put together a road map for recycling expansion with very clear targets. And the Boston Consulting Group supported that effort. That's now under execution. We haven't seen that in a long time as far as I remember. We've been exporting solutions for a separate stream collection, based on the experience in Europe and we are running some pilots about that. We are deploying a program that we call 'glass for good', which converts glass collection into value for the communities, for example, to improve education in the communities. We are working on close-loop systems with our customers too. And overall, we are rebalancing the dialogue and increasing awareness of our glass benefits. And in particular, we are working on educating communities about the actual value of glass recycling.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): UP
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Yes. To answer the first part of your question, nothing done in the second quarter, but...[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
I mean, if you're -- I think your math is correct. As we continue to make good progress next year and pay down debt that would drive us being a bit below 3 times and as we've said all along 3 times or lower. So I think our priority in 2021 will be to get that debt level down to 3 times or lower and that speaks pretty well to the excess cash flow we have next year.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): UP
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Yes, Brett. This is Fred. I mean, in the middle of a global pandemic 2020, we generated over $450 million in free cash flow. So, we've laid out our capital allocation policies and we were fortunate in that. We generate so much cash. We're in a position to fund all of those priorities. You're seeing it, we've funded organically for revenue and growth, and we're funding for product development and technology. Dave mentioned, pursuing strategic opportunity, we're returning capital shareholders. In the last four years, we've repurchased over a third of our shares. We just raised our dividend by 12%, and then we've got the balance sheet in really great shape. And again, we're always focused on maintaining that low cost, flexible, pre-payable debt structure. So, we are positioned on a go-forward basis to fund all of our capital allocation priorities.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
I think you're accurate in what you're saying. I think we're really building a lot of capital. We have a lot of earnings. We do pay a good dividend and generally, we try to increase it a little bit. But you're right, we are retaining a lot of capital. But historically, we've used that to four acquisitions, and I'd still like to keep it for that. But having said that, again, with the stock price when it dropped into the 60s, it's something certainly that we're going to consider maybe buying back some of our own stock if it stayed that low.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): UP
| UP |
[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Good morning. Chris, looking globally, how important is outbound Chinese travel to the recovery in Europe? And are there any comments you can make on the trends about on Chinese travel today?[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Thank you. You began this transformation a number of years ago toward an organic growth business investing in the requisite talent. If I'm right, an end state for the process might be a period of time where you're actually kind of bringing in junior talent, onboarding them, and eventually promoting them to the ranks of MDs and SMDs and kind of fueling this organic growth internally versus lateral hires of today, how far away may that be? Is that a generational thing that takes sort of a decade or two or are we three, five, seven years away from being able to feel some of that?[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): UP
| UP |
[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Thank you.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Sure. As I just mentioned, we have optimized the significant amount of the excess liquidity over the last year, including the June payoff of $100 million senior debt and the doubling up the investment portfolio over the last year. We would look to continue to do that and we're doing it with an eye toward the BMT transaction, and the post combination balance sheet optimization. So we do see the opportunity to continue to increase the size of the investment portfolio that works within our framework of acceptable investments, the low-risk moderate yield and providing the cash flow liquidity that we expect from the portfolio. So you'd likely see that continue to increase in the second half of the year.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): UP
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Hi, Chris.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Yeah, it's highly dependent upon how many tons of CO2 equivalent we emit, right. I mean in 2019, we emitted 1.4 million tons, I think we'll be well below that in 2020 and on to 2021. So the cost goes down. Now if I was a betting man, I'd bet that carbon offset credits are going to continue to increase in price. We've secured a few years' worth right now, but I think it will be dependent upon what that -- how that market evolves over the coming years. But again, it's not a material expense and it's not the priority. The priority is getting the amount of CO2 equivalent emissions that we have down so that you pay less of a penalty.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): UP
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Thank you so much for taking the questions. A couple of on guidance, what have you assumed for backlog in your 2021 guidance? By our estimate, it could be about 9% of sales. And then also what are you assuming for normalizing regen supply coming back, are you in the range of [Technical Issues] $30 million. I think you have delegated 100 or 200 basis points of 2019 sales, are you expecting all of that to dial in, is that in your guidance. And then also what are you assuming in your guidance for Arcus and Rebound growth contribution?[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
In now in many cases, you have new models, new platforms...[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): UP
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
I think recruiting will continue to increase in Q2, Q3, and Q4 of 2021. Given the middle management growth last year, particularly American Income, I think we'll continue to see the recruiting activity. I think it's [Indecipherable] most of the agents would return to their previous jobs, American will recruit the underemployed you were looking for a better opportunity. And again given our sales increases, particularly the American Income, we believe many of these agencies want to stay with the company. Also during '18 and '19 when unemployment levels were extremely low or historically low, all three agencies continue to recruit and grow the level of producing agents.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Yes. So, I mean, any all explorers in Argentina finding themselves in that situation, I have two options. Of course, one is to sit on the pesos and seek to protect those. There is a certain amount of liquidity in the forward -- in the foreign exchange forward markets locally.
That typically I would expect, goes out six to eight months. Right. So that sort of gives you a framework for the type of protection you can achieve. And the alternative is to tap into the parallel FX market.
Right? The, their GAAP will vary widely. I think these days it's a much higher than what you would typically expect to see. Right. It has been converted -- I mean, trending downwards.
And we would expect that in the next few months that that GAAP does close significantly to respect -- with respect to what it is today, I'm sorry. Right? I mean, that's sort of a broad answer.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): UP
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Good morning, Marc. Yeah, all those things you listed are things that we're looking at. Essentially we're trying to say what represents the core essential parts of the business going forward. And then everything is not in that definition. Is there a market price that is in excess of what we might expect it to be or a fair market value that we could monetize in a way?
And interestingly that includes -- obviously explicitly 4230 is not -- or Nemvaleukin is not an out-license. We're not getting rid of it. It's just -- it's a really strong asset around which to collaborate and offset R&D expense. We think there's tremendous economic potential for us. So we're not going to let it go. There are other elements of the R&D portfolio that you guys haven't seen that might be the foundation for out-licensing or collaboration. And so, I won't put a time line around that at all.
On the royalty monetization side, interestingly, probably the most valuable royalty stream that we have is VUMERITY. It's also the one that has the least well-defined trajectory at this moment. As you know, it started slowly in 2020, but resubscriptions have been very positive. It's absolutely changed its slope.
So I think as we move through 2021 and we get a better sense of what the ultimate value could be of VUMERITY, its virtue as a monetization stream of course is that; A, the royalty is high; and B, it's long lived. It's got a lot of patent life behind it. So I'll let Iain fill in any other blanks but essentially we're basically going back and looking at all those different elements of the business.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Excellent. So, so [Indecipherable] I imagine sorry but obviously missing some of those auctions in acquisitions to add to the strategy of higher demand Quant & Solutions and alternative strategies. Is it fair enough to assume that the organic growth will come from investments within [Indecipherable] landmark deal. And then as a follow up on that, in Japan is that self funded or parent company funded -- has that worked between self funding and parent company?[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): UP
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Thanks, Kunal.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Yeah. We're active that there is a pipe -- there is a pretty good pipeline. We're looking at things as we speak. As I said before, we love this category. We love to continue to get more scale in the category and we're looking at -- we'll look at the assets that are in this space. Our screening process is pretty simple. We're looking for strong consumer brands with unique positionings and some pretty good understanding of who the user base is. So we know how to recruit. I think our competitive advantages are, we can build distribution and food drug mass small format pretty quickly. We understand how to build household penetration, so understanding the consumer dynamic who that consumer is, what the brand positioning is. We feel like we're pretty good at that. And we're pretty good at innovation. So we're looking where we can use those capabilities to accelerate growth of assets that are out there. And if there is an asset out there in our space of a decent size, you can bank on, we're looking at it.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): UP
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Sam?[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Matt, this is Torry. About $200 million is what we portfolio, some of that came from home lending and some of that came from our private banking segment.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): UP
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[INST] <<SYS>>You are a financial analyst, predicting which direction the stock price will go following this answer from the Q/A section of an earnings call. Be as critical and skeptical as possible. Respond with UP or DOWN<</SYS>>
Yes. Thank you.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
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