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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 mentioned it because we saw that really go into the back half of last year in a broader way, if you recall. And so now when we think about anniversarying the back half, we are still growing on top of those levels which gives us encouragement that these aren't necessarily one-and-done but we are seeing a long term penetration of the product lines.[/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 everything is improving. And in the early days of pandemic, we saw the more resilient customer menu types were around Mexican and Italian and QSR. I think of late we've seen pretty much everything come back where in those markets that have few restrictions. And I think that's why we feel good about the health of the industry, right? It's independents, chains, different menu types, all kind of coming back is what we're seeing at this point.[/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>>
So, I would say we're among those other companies. We -- through a lot of hard work and specific actions, we felt like getting through Q2 and Q3 was going to be the toughest part, but Q4 and I would say into Q1 has been very difficult as the second or third wave, depending on what you want to call it, really ramped up particularly in this country, but also in Europe, just caused more people being out either sick or being quarantined.
We really struggled through the fourth quarter to complete shifts and really get the appropriate number of people at our manufacturing sites such that we could produce product at normal rates. That was kind of the primary, I would say, manufacturing inefficiency. So, you're paying more in overtime, you're paying more in temp labor, you're really doing whatever you can to get people in. That has waned somewhat and kind of consistently with what we're seeing with number of positive tests coming down dramatically and hospitalization starting to come down and that's being reflected. And while it's still something that we're managing, it has waned a little bit.
And now what's being replaced or what's replacing that is more of the logistical issues around truck availability, and particularly international shipment container availability and ship availability. And just those inefficiencies when you're expecting something to take three weeks and it takes six weeks and that would be inbound raw materials and obviously, outbound finished goods. So, all of those things, you start to pay expediting charges for freight and so on and so forth. And so those are the kinds of issues that we have been talking about and seeing. And yes, I would say things ramped up in Q4 more so than Q2 and Q3.[/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>>
Ebrahim, this deal is all about two companies coming together with two strengths. They had tremendous strengths on both sides. They have tremendous businesses. We want to be in those businesses, diversification to this combined balance sheet. No question that the warehouse business is a very attractive business. It ties very nicely into the mortgage business. We believe that business can significantly increase on where it's today, just given the size of the capital structure. They have loan limitations for one customer. So think about taking the company close to $100 billion and what the capacity can actually be. So we're very comfortable with all their lines of businesses. We've diligence tremendously all of the product mixes.
And I think we are great complements to the company. So there's no expectation of rolling off any of the lives. If anything, I believe the synergies of growth is there. There's tremendous growth opportunities to roll this out throughout the entire platform. We talked a little bit about back in the first -- in the beginning of the year about when we came out with the fourth quarter results. We need to build the for the bank. This is no question going to roll through our retail franchise that has been underutilized from the beginning of time. We want to transition away from the thrift balance sheet. Having the product mix, both on the commercial side, outside of multi-family and CRE, in addition to having a significant amount of consumer products. Once we start running these brands of these products through the branch network, it's going to be a very powerful opportunity to grow different lines of businesses on the balance sheet, we believe there's tremendous synergy there.[/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>>
Some are producing papers together with Black & Veatch, which you can find on our homepage. I think the first paper is already out, and there will be more papers coming. It will be a bit part of what you're now talking about 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>>
Again, as we look into the year, we feel confident, otherwise, we wouldn't have raised the guidance overall. And as we look into the dynamics going to next year, it really points out to a profitable growth year for us. I think the next year of projects, I think we -- what if you talk about Transit, what if you talk about Freight. In Transit, we see largely authorities and governments committed to invest in the Transit system, so that continues.
We haven't really again any cancellations or anything like that. If anything, I think there is opportunity for growing momentum there, especially as you look at a number of stimulus packages going across. And on Freight, my comment here sometimes more on the elements of the timing of orders. I mean certainly, I'd say, requires more I think, negotiations than some of the elements of North America, but positive momentum forward.[/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>>
LIBOR $2.50 on the highest price tranche and the older tranche is LIBOR $2.25.[/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. I'll pass it off to Steve Clark, to talk a little bit about what he is seeing in regard to specific customers and working with those relationships. And then, I can speak a bit to how we're thinking about those trends with regard to CECL on the provision.[/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>>
$86.7 million.[/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>>
Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I wanted to ask about the drug discovery revenue guidance portion of your guidance. And what besides the BMS upfront payment are you expecting to drive that guidance? The collaboration programs that you have ongoing, were there any discontinuations or delays that play a part in that guidance? And did you say that you're not expecting a partnership for an internal program this 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>>
Hey, it's Michael Bilerman here with Nick. So I was wondering if you can talk a little bit about, there is a number of student housing portfolios, some small, some larger on the market, deal activity is picking up. How in the reconstituted Capital Allocation Committee on the Board and management, how are you now evaluating those portfolios on the market today?[/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. We are producing segmented blades 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.[/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. As we started off saying, Velodyne Lidar is the leading producer of lidar in the world, and we are clearly the ones defining the lidar market. And this happens to be because we have the highest revenue in the space, we build and ship more units than all the other players put together combined, in multiple product categories. We have a broad portfolio of products.
We have a robust pipeline of products across many different applications. We have the manufacturing leadership and ability to scale up to meet the demand, and whether the inevitable uncertainties that exist in the marketplace. And finally, we are moving forward fast and including software as part of our offerings with our first software product that we announced today. With all of this, we have very high confidence in our ability to continue to grow, continue to execute, as we have done so consistently, and continue to be the pioneer in bringing lidar-based safety, across all of these different applications to all of our customers.
Thank you very much for your time and your questions.[/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 my question is regarding the supply side environment when you spoken about giving hikes to the senior staff from June. Just wanted to -- I wanted to get some sense on the exact cycles for the overall all staff for FY '22?[/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, guys. Thanks. I just wanted to start with the bookings question just to make sure you've got the expectations right here. Just trying to do the math on the Q4 implied guide. I think it would be about 90% growth so I wanted to see if that's accurate. Obviously, you've got the super easy comp there. And maybe as part of that can you just talk about some of the activity you've seen through the first month of the quarter? I mean, I assume you've got pretty high visibility here, just given that you raised the low end of the full-year guidance range for the bookings?[/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. Our next question comes from Gregg from Mizuho.[/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. Actually, with the recent acquisition of Insight, we picked up some land. It's -- it's immaterial really but --[/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>>
Thanks and thanks for the discussion on gross margins earlier in the presentation. The input inflation part you said maybe that might be 100 basis points, based on the third comment and then the transitional items maybe somewhat more than that. I guess my question is about those transitional items. Clearly you matched up pricing against the input side, but how much of those transitional items are really fair game for pricing offset. The mirror side of that is how much is Campbell specific. I would imagine labor and logistics is fair game for that and how much do you think these transitional items can be offset by pricing into fiscal '22.[/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, on the revenue piece, it's -- like I said earlier, it's -- the reduction in automotive is being more than offset by improvements in both industrial and HVOR. I mean the improvement in HVOR and industrial are about the same in terms of the sequential step-up or at least relative to what we guided last time.[/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, Ravi, for the question. On the enterprise, customer behavior in the second quarter was largely impacted by SurePost volume. As Brian declined, our SurePost volume was down 1.3 million pieces. That happened because many of our brick-and-mortar enterprise customers reopened their stores.
And as the economies reopened, customers went back to those stores. So we actually anticipated this when we built our second-quarter plan. And in fact, to be -- average daily volume performed better than we had planned at the beginning of the year. As we focus our efforts going forward, we're really leaning into those customers that value our end-to-end network and focused on value share, not so much volume share.
As we discussed during our June investor conference, a package is not a package, they all come with different characteristics. And we're leaning into those packages and those customers that value our end-to-end network. Brian, anything to add?[/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>>
Some of the perspectives of where we're going to focus the capital?[/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. We believe that the best metric to assess our performance is actually ARR and billings, dependent on various factors, including sometime customers enter into multiyear agreements, which actually happened in Q4. Therefore, we believe that the best KPI to assess our growth is net dollar retention and ARR.[/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, David. I'll start, and Amit can build. But what I'd say is it's important to look at those two year CAGRs, as you point out, that's what we've been talking about because 2020 was such an unusual year, right? But what's underlying our confidence in that CAGR is the brand performances that we talked about as we went through the prepared remarks. Our snacks business, our frozen business, our veg business, our international businesses, our emerging markets business, all performing very strong. And if you think about our new guidance for 2021, essentially, just from a top line basis, we're saying flat. So what we thought potentially -- what many companies thought of 2020 when there were COVID beneficiaries, would be a high watermark is, in fact, we're going to lap that. And so that's because of the strength of our brands, the execution in the marketplace and the plans that we've put in place. So Amit, do you want to?[/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. Srini, just two questions. One is on the contingent provisions which have been dipped into. There is some reconciliation of INR400 crores, in the sense that you had INR8,600 crores of contingent outstanding. You made INR1,300 crores, so it is INR9,900 crores and you dipped to INR3,600 crores, right but the account -- the eventual number you have got is 5,800. So there is some INR300 crores, INR400 crores of difference, what is that?[/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, good morning. This is Emily Shu on for Andrew Obin.[/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, good afternoon. Sorry for previous technical difficulties. Questions on Primatene. First, can you just talk about what size of the business the target distribution represents. Is it something closer to Walmart or Kroger and then do you expect any seasonality to drive Primatene sales especially this spring?[/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>>
Hi, thanks. Good morning. My first question, Albert, I think in your prepared remarks, you pointed to when talking about reinsurance, I think you pointed to flat premiums. And I think you said you were down around 10% in property cat at 1/1.
I just wanted to make sure I got those numbers correct. And if those numbers are correct and that was kind of an all-in reinsurance statement unless we see material changes, I guess, during other seasons of the year, could we expect that book to be kind of close to flat, I guess, is what you're saying for 2021, the reinsurance book in total?[/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. Listen, my hope is that they would focus more of the infrastructure federal funding on infrastructure on things like separating sanitary and storm sewers, bridges roads that sort of thing, because I think that's really where you can't bring private capital as easily to bear. In water and wastewater, we like to think about the solution as bring low-cost capital to the game here, as well as local rate making. So that combination, I think about almost like a user fee rather than a federal bailout. So to the extent that, those federal dollars would flow for our use, I think that would be useful. To the extent that, it would flow to municipals and give them temporary band aids on some of their massive capital needs.
Obviously, that is not as productive. But I really don't see it, having a major impact given the vast bucket of need and the relatively small dollars that are designated here for water and wastewater.[/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. If you look at our business, we continue to grow and gain share. Our policies were up 8% last year. So we added in net something like 200,000 policies, give or take, the $2.4 million, and we've really invested over the last couple of years. If you do a side by side of our purchase experience digitally, it's as good and easy to use for consumers as any digital experience that's out there from any company. And then importantly, in the property management channel, we're rolling out Cover360, which really will drive attachment over time. It makes the whole process of compliance and having the appropriate coverage easy. So, we feel good about our momentum. We continue to grow and gain share relative to the market. If you think about multifamily, it was disrupted by COVID more than many of the markets in the US just given the challenges with renters, we had a lot less mobility last year or people moving and despite that, we grew policies 8%. So, it's a good business. We continue to gain share and we continue to invest to differentiate our offering.[/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. You're correct that we're definitely seeing pressure in -- all industries seeing pressure in trucking and particularly in transportation and those things. And so, it's something we're closely watching. A lot of our contracts we have in place do carry out for extended periods of time, but it's something we have to care about.
Luckily to date right now, as we've seen, pricing on the products is also going up as we go forward with it. And so, we've been able to work with it. And with this cost, our end-product customers are also seeing that increase, and so they're working to pass that on to their end products. So it's a supply chain issue that we're all working through to figure out the best way to handle.[/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>>
Right. So, basically we're talking about companies -- our target is mainly thousands of fits, but the projects do start with type of a hundreds. In terms of services, we do provide the first -- most basic services Direct Route SBC. On top of that, we provide management. On top of that, we provide other routing services, call recording services in the future also some cognitive services. So, it's a stack of technology. Actually we start to push it as Team's Voice-as-a-Service. And when you're deploying voice like Team's voice, you really need a stack of technologies to provide overall processing. So, it's SBC, it's routing, it's management, it's devices, it's meetings, etc. And then, that's what's consist the Team's Voice-as-a-Service, as we will discuss, call it before AudioCodes Live.[/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 only comment I believe that was made and if you take a look at the press release is that we had significant claim closing success in segregated portfolio cells that resulted in an unusually large amount of favorable development in the quarter compared to the fourth quarter of 2019. So, I would characterize it by saying the Workers' Comp business was status quo very, very successful and the Segregated Portfolio Cell had an even better quarter during the pandemic than they did in the fourth quarter of 2019.[/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, Sameer. 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>>
Thanks. Good morning, everybody. Hey, Vicente, I know we've talked a lot about the M&A funnel. But just quick question. As you're kind of thinking through the types of opportunities, are you looking more for kind of fixer uppers where you can utilize the IRX system to really drive better margin expansion? Or is there like a good balance of maybe margin accretive type acquisitions that you're looking at as well?[/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, Doug.[/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>>
We've always kind of to disclose the cash flow hedges and the new disclosure this quarter is a fair value hedges that we have on the bond portfolio. I think the objective there was really just to help us to understand some of the things that we're doing to potentially increase our asset sensitivity down little -- down the road a little bit. That clearly is the objective of the fair value hedges that we have on the bond portfolio. As far as the cash flow hedges, I think it's probably more likely than not that we'll look at terminating some part of those over the coming quarter or so, and when that happens, of course, we'll be able to kind of lock-in those gains and amortize back its earnings. So that's something that you have to look out for.[/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.[/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 Bob.[/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>>
Joe, we've got a great company, we've got great products, we've got great people, that's the number one but also I would say that the result is -- certainly the result is people have been interested in home. There is a lot of interest in home and then people are looking at our brand where we have quality, we can deliver, and it also goes back to -- that Brad had asked. We have also given more discounts or savings than we normally would do, and there's a reason for it. Even though our margins have held up, our sales increased, we have given savings up to 25% and the reason is that we wanted to -- and I wanted to make sure that all the new people that are interested in home come to us and become our clients and that's what's also taking place. So I would say the benefit of our client base plus increase in clients through, of course, our marketing, through our name and also the savings which has all helped us increase 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>>
What we're saying is, no, we're not saying that. What we're saying is this year with the membership we have, we're earning $13 a share. And inside of that number is a $1.50 overhang to the COVID. It has nothing to do with the membership, it's just the direct costs of COVID-related care, utilization suppression in the corridors. So the only thing that's in the $1.50 are those three items, those three items not included in that COVID impact is any impact from increased membership.[/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 for taking my questions. I have a couple of questions, if I may. One, kind of focused on the near-term one. If I look at the 800 gig opportunity at ICE6, I wanted to compare this to your leading competitor.
I think they've mentioned they have 5,000 modems shipped to almost 70 customers. By my math, that suggests that they're probably seeing a twice ramp in their 800 gig shipments versus any previous upgrade cycle. Can you share with us how many design wins you've had? I may have missed it. And can you quantify what kind of a ramp or magnitude of ramp you're seeing with 800 gig design win? And then I have a longer-term set of questions.[/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. So thank you, everyone, for your interest. Thanks for the questions. We get back to work, plenty to build, plenty to continue to deploy, and we will look forward to giving you updates on Q1 in a few months.
Thank you very much.[/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>>
Guys, first of all, thank you so much for your attention and for taking the time to join us today. We are very happy and very pleased with the strong quarter that we shared the results with you. We wish you a great rest of the day, and may the frog be with you. Thank you very much.[/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, I would expect as we look at the free cash or you can look at EBITDA maybe as a proxy EBITDA minus capex, we would expect equivalent type of free cash flows or slightly higher based on the guidance Q4 to Q3.[/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. Aaron, I think the word less reliant is, you know, again, it certainly -- it's not what we're looking for. We're looking to sell best-of-breed products that our clients need and our customers need. So as long as our manufacturers and distributors continue to innovate and sell best-of-breed [Audio gap] best-of-breed products, this industry right now, as I spoke about earlier, no controlled environmental act.
The industry right now, the cannabis industry, there's a bunch of different parts of it. One is the home grow . So the home grow again is certainly less demanding than you're seeing from the single-state operators up to the large MSOs. So there's a lot of different divisions of this industry right now.
Some of it equates much more to the, again, the home markets with -- that are not -- that use different products some of that large MSOs do and the large single-state operators. You know, I only could tell you back in 2014 when I started in this industry, when you walked into a growth facility, plants were on the ground, individuals were running around, watering plants, feeding plants. There was no standardization within these grows. If you walk into a grow right now, I mean, you'll be -- it's fascinating when you really see the complexity of what's going on in these grows.
The two biggest inputs right now for the large MSOs and single-state operators are manpower and electricity. And right now, what you're seeing is a tremendous shift right now. We're looking for more sustainable products to grow. So for GrowGen, as long as best-of-breed-products are on the market, we're going to continue to buy 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>>
Well, in the -- yeah, and from a percentage standpoint, the growth in ExpertFinish and our penetration in R&R is -- from a percentage standpoint, also, is disproportionate because it's off a smaller base.[/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, good morning everyone. Thank you for taking my question. Just following off Anita's questions just on the performance of some of these mines. Essakane, that was very high costs in Q1. Maybe Bruno, can you talk us through what you're expecting cost-wise as we go through the rest of the year?[/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>>
Hey, Ian, why don't you take that one.[/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. There's definitely component pressures in the supply chain right now. And you're right. We see that across a lot of people in the industry. For us, it's not a huge number. We wanted to call it out because it was a unique item, but that $10 million of revenue will ship in Q2, but we are just assuming that it's a sliding problem. So, there is some amount of revenue that slides out of Q2 into Q3, Q3 into Q4, etc. And so when it does snap back, I mean, we'll talk about it. And we'll talk about it openly, but again, it's not a huge number in the overall item. But our expectation is that it's going to continue through the balance of the year if that changes again, we'll disclose 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>>
Good morning. My first question just wanted to ask for mirvetuximab. Can you talk about the manufacturing, specifically where is it manufactured and which companies are involved? And what other steps are required to doing manufacturing, whether it's assay validation or any kind of studies prior to submitting the BLA?[/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>>
Is the governor of -- I'm sorry.[/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 was wondering because your unsecured bonds are over-collateralized versus other REITs in terms of the larger unencumbered pool, could this be an inflection point where the rating agencies give you more credit for this larger unencumbered pool, just given you've been more cycle-tested managing through the pandemic?[/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 for taking the questions. Yes David, I first wanted to start, maybe just help us understand. You've obviously got the robot. You've got the interbody module launching.
You're going to launch imaging later on this year. And then you're also talking about a new design and development ethos. How long do you expect it'll be before you get some of those procedural-type solutions to roll out onto the market?[/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. No, we are very involved Peter, thanks for the question. We are very involved. We are very involved though around the globe, in every and each real-time payment initiative and the United States is no different. As you know, I mean, United States is lagging behind the rest of the other markets around the globe or the main markets like India, Malaysia, UK, even Brazil now.
So -- but we are very positive about that. We are working very close to the Fed about that, on the FedNow initiative. We have even people from our company sitting on the Board of the initiative today and we are very part of it. So our plan is to be very, very engaged.[/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. Thanks for the question, Andy. I think starting with what we think is possible. Scott and I are aligned around that mid-20s as really being the spot where we think that we need to get to from a primary working capital as a percentage of sales perspective, and we think we made tremendous progress over the last couple of years in a number of ways. One, DSO has come down, and we've been able to hold it to a level that we think is around where we want to be at or where we think we should be at, at around 70 days. We think there's marginal improvement in that area that can happen, but we're probably working around the edges there.
Where we really see a significant amount of improvement coming in 2021 is around inventory. And foundationally, I think we've got the tools and the talent in place now to manage inventory in the right way within the company. And now 2021 is about delivery on the working capital improvements in inventory. So that's where the majority of our focus is going to be in 2021.[/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 -- first, thanks very much Kimberly. I think I first have to give credit to the creative group and the brands, because I think the product is on target. I also think that there is a very strong demand in the market right now and that demand I think is there because she is just beginning to emerge from a 15 months of lockdown when she couldn't get out, she is incredibly anxious to get out and be with friends and be social again. The last 15 months she is, as I said, been locked down and wearing sweats and track pants and lounge and the sorts of things you do when you're just at home and now that she is wanting to go out again, I think she is starting to see that she might need to refresh her closet and then she is buying things that are more appropriate for outside wear and for meeting other people and being social. So I think the demand is there, the demand is still there on the home side and I also think that because over the last year, she hasn't been able to engage in many other activities that used to compete with the retail business for her dollar that she is reasonably flush with cash and has very little place to spend it right now. Most of the areas are still just beginning to open. So I think that we are benefiting from that as well. So I think it's the emergence and it's the financial end of it, but I think more than anything it's the product, and the brands, and the inventory behind it. So I give our people lot of credit.[/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>>
You're talking about -- good morning, John. You're talking about the tenant side on the latter part, payments and deferrals?[/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've had some initial discussions with our carriers, and we've been preparing the data here to look at that. And so when we get signed off and feel comfortable with that on our side, we can make an adjustment and have it effective 30, 45 days after -- through a technology release.[/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, Richard.[/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 morning.[/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>>
Not necessarily. Part of what happens in 90 days, that's a pretty short period of time. Part of what happens in the 90-day period is your segment exposure and what happens in the seasonality if you've got more of this versus that. And so I think you shouldn't -- I wouldn't automatically assume we'll lag the market. But I think it will take us the next second half of the year to get to the point where we feel comfortable that our inventories are more sustainable. I think the first thing we'll see is we won't miss any sales. The second thing we'll see is our costs will come down.[/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>>
You have him.[/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>>
So they have all the patients 20 -- some patients have investigator evaluations. There's been some additional patients. But there's no full central review data set available at this point.[/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>>
Hey, Steve.[/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, thanks, Mike. Listen, at the end of the day when you think of our long-range plan five to seven top line, seven to nine bottom line, we actually do that on a non-adjusted FX basis, i.e. it's essentially a volume plan. And if FX goes against us, we'll move price and that we'll adjust. I think the confidence you should have in 2021, relays itself out. Here we are three years into our plan and we are right in the ranges where we should be despite the fact that in 2019, we had something like $150 million of headwind on cost. And in 2021, we had about $270 to $280 million headway on FX. Yet, here we are still in the middle of our planned range. So, it's very -- it should give you a lot of confidence that we know how to manage these. Yes, you can have dislocations in a quarter, obviously, but if you think about '19, '20, '21, that's a very strong track record of delivery with almost pretty close to, if not more than $400 million of headwind over this three-year period.
Andrew, do you want to talk about costs?[/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'm going to let -- Chris is going to take the first part of that, for sure, Mark.[/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>>
Not sure. So from a capital spending perspective, a few things versus last year. First, we obviously pulled back quite a bit on store facilities, what I would call semi-maintenance spend. And so you are going to see a little bit more investment in things like air conditioners and things that make our stores fresh and the way that they should be.
It will be pretty spread in that we are going to have more in the road, e-commerce and technology spend as we get going more on some of the e-commerce capabilities that Brad talked about. And then next-gen stores, we would expect to ramp up across this year with 15 new stores that's hired and we've done a little bit. So a little bit of new stores, but just as a general rule of thumb, technology is probably a little bit more meaningful to the overall total.[/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>>
No. -- Yes, sorry, yes. So I don't have an exact breakdown of -- but I would say most of that should be recurring. 36th Street, as you know, has a preferred rate contractual, and then we have a participation in dividend income a majority split, which has actually been -- we're well into that each quarter, and it's growing. So that is actually partly recurring and then the variable component actually takes us up quite a bit over the recurring amount, which we like.
So the majority -- I would say the majority of it is recurring, but then where it's not, we're actually seeing good, consistent variable income that has actually been growing as it ties to 36th Street.[/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 Europe, they started out really strong. As you know, they had a great third quarter, mid double-digit increase, Bret. We -- and we had a good October. They were up high single digits in October. We saw a big reversal in November, a double-digit swing from October as Europe locked down due to COVID. So we saw the third wave come through, and that just kind of knocked the wind out of our sales. December bounced back a bit from that softer November. But again, good news, much like North America, we saw a nice rebound in January, and our European team was up strong mid-single digit.
So we're encouraged. And we got a lot of good things going on with AAG. I would really, Bret, call out our U.K. team. They had a really strong year despite some pretty severe lockdowns during the course of the year. But again, I couldn't be more proud of our U.K. team.[/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>>
It's an interesting technology and I think there will be potentially a market segment that they'll address. But the market segment that we are in the broadband area part, it requires so many effects large pipes and large amount of data that it really doesn't apply much in our 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>>
That's a really good question. So the biggest markets traditionally for plastic surgery are New York, L.A., Miami, Texas. And I'm going to touch with all my colleagues. The thing that really impacts is the -- when we had the closure of elective procedures.
And that's what happened in March. So if you have closure of elective procedures, at that point, you just really can't do anything. So that has not been the case in California as far as the doctors I'm speaking to. And so the demand is still there.
They're still coming in. And will there be a pent-up demand after that? I'm sure. I'm sure, especially, New York and L.A. are probably the super strength in what they're doing.
The patients are still coming in. Will it be more afterwards? It's hard to predict. I'm sure there are people who are scared, who are not probably coming in. So I anticipate once the vaccination process continues, just like everything else, I expect that trend to continue with it.
And the ones that are actually are concerned that want their elective procedure done will probably feel a lot more confident to come through. So if I had to answer the question in a simple way, yes, there is going to be pent-up demand in those markets. We expect it, anticipate it, but the volume right now has not been impacted the existing volume. Everyone's doing quite well because of the fact that the elective procedures have not been stopped, which was very different back in March.
Does that answer your question?[/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 bookings trends, yes. So listen, a year ago and in the past 18 months RMD has had some significant multi-year buys. So as we burn down the backlog there, our book-to-bill is a little bit lower, but later this year we do expect Next Generation Interceptor, we talked about that, that will be over $1 billion booking that we will book here in the second quarter. LRSO and some other international Patriot awards that are forthcoming later in the year. So all in all, I still expect on a full year basis, a book to bill of about 1.0 for RMD and RIS for that matter.[/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, I think what we saw was a reacceleration of bookings in second half of fiscal year '21 really. OK. And, you know, as we -- you know, we came into fiscal year '21 blowing and going, I think. Wasn't the growth rate in fiscal year '20 like 91% growth or something?[/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>>
So, Alex, it's a good question, I think, obviously, there is a crazy amount of SPACs every day. If you remember, back in June, which seems like an eternity ago, we did do a press release that we were exploring an investment vehicle, when you can extrapolate from there. What we elected to do was really focus on the core business. We felt like there was a lot of blocking and tackling that we needed to focus our time and effort on. And when you look at what's going to drive earnings growth, what's going to drive outperformance for Kimco and their shareholders, we believed it was focusing on the core business. And then continuing to look for opportunities, focusing on retailers that are real estate rich, looking to take advantage of dislocation in our sector because of our balance sheet strength, because of our liquidity position and then provide that upside to our shareholders versus a separate entity.[/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, I mean we obviously by shutting down our dining rooms for almost a year now we have put all those things on the back burner, as it relates to what happens inside the four walls. I would only call attention to Wingstop being a very unique brand and that the roster size for our restaurants is rather small compared to most, and the number of people you can physically put in the kitchen starts to get fixed very quickly especially, at the higher average unit volumes that we're seeing.
So we -- aside from pandemic-related expenses in labor that is really about retention during this timeframe, you should be able to see as the volumes grow exceptional leverage on the P&L, which is under -- the underlying undercurrent if you will on our P&L today. So those -- while those are important opportunities for us I think, growing the top line is our key priority making sure that we keep our restaurants very efficient and keeping our model simple will yield better labor outcomes than some of the other tactics that we've talked about in the past.[/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, good morning, guys. Can you hear 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>>
Getting better. But still, I've learned a lot more about ports than I ever thought I'd learned from our customers. It's getting better, but it's going to take a while. I mean everybody talks about the chip that's well talked about, well-known, but you're talking about basics.
And so it's getting better, but it really comes down to the operations of ports efficiently and the impact of virus on employees in those ports and having people to work and unload the ships and things like that. So it's a pretty drilled out sort of analysis they have. But the reality is it's still constraining, but it's getting incrementally better, but it will take another six months to kind of -- in most in their sites, they're saying, hey, at the end of the year, that will be better and we'll see 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>>
Yes. Well, in the first question: We project an increase in volume in the second Q and the third Q in both of them independently from the seasonal that is affecting mainly Europe, but the mix will reflect a strong increase in North America; increase also in Europe, in all of the -- let's say, the components that we are selling to non-energy segment, industrial and segment related to automotive that will also increase; and slightly less from Eastern Hemisphere. That's the reason why the increase in our overall price of sale will reflect the change in mix that is containing this increase. In term of carbon reduction. As you know, we committed a 30% reduction in our CO2 emission. We expect to invest in the range of $150 million in the next four years to achieve the target. Part of this investment will be realized this year. Particularly, in Italy we are investing during the course of this year, but I mean this $150 million will be distributed along this period of time. This is our program today. We are continually exploring opportunities for -- let's say, for adding additional program or projects that could reduce our carbon footprint, but this is one we have in hand concretely for the time being.[/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. So we said at the Capital Markets Day, we intend to spend between GBP 200 million and GBP 400 million a year on M&A. The likely targets, of course, are going to be in the areas of commerce and experience and technology, those areas that we anticipate high growth occurring in. In fact, the two relatively small acquisitions that we've done this year-to-date absolutely sit in those areas, a small acquisition up in Scotland of an e-commerce consultancy business and then a digital consultancy business in Brazil, both of which are in line with those high-growth areas.
But in terms of our capital allocation, we said that we will -- as I said, we'll do GBP 200 million to GBP 400 million in acquisitions. And then any capital above and beyond that, we'll intend to return to shareholders. And so if you apply the guidance that we gave at the Capital Markets Day in December, then it's easy to see in future years if we achieve those levels of growth and the cost savings that we've anticipated. There will be further opportunities for share buybacks in 2022 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 think -- I mean, Craig, the interesting thing is this has been going on for 40 years, right, and -- in the private markets. I mean, when you look at developers selling off to -- their land off to Walmart or Target or the pads and building the small shop for the boxes, this has been going on in the private world for a while. What this does in the public space is gives investors that access and that availability to achieve very, very attractive yields. I think this certainly could be replicated, I think it would be difficult. I think the combination of GIC, Monarch and Zimmer together is difficult to replicate. This is a year in the making. And this was something that took a long time. And our pipeline is large, and we've got off to a very, very quick start, which we knew and paid a lot of attention to as we were cultivating the deal in the first place.[/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, Ryan.[/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>>
Exactly.[/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, Dan.[/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>>
That's right, Mike, operating margin.[/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, Rupert.[/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 mean, we said we'll be -- 2022 is when we're targeting cash flow profitability. Mark mentioned that, our interest payments happened in Q2 and Q4 the big interest payments. And so, that gives us a little bit of headwind in Q4. So even if we were seeing some good momentum on the production side, we'll have those headwinds on the interest cost side. So I think, we'll stand by -- we'll be cash flow positive in 2022.[/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>>
It's gotten better. Look, I think there is a couple of things that have played in. And this is nothing original from Greg Levin in this regards. And that is, as Tom mentioned, balance sheets are strong for consumers and for basically people that need to get a job in that regards.
So getting the unemployment benefits, and I'll get back to your comment about some of the other states that have started to eliminate the federal. But they get the unemployment benefits coming through. You still have child care on there. And then, frankly, as a country, we kind of opened up in June, right in the middle of summer, where people have gone, "Hey, I've been stuck inside for the last year.
Do I really want to go out and get a job right in the middle of June? Or can I have a summer before I have to go back and get a job." So I think as we get later into this year, I know unemployment benefits from a federal standpoint will end in September, that things will get easier. That's what I'm saying at knowing -- and then you've got child care that's going to help with people going back to school. So I think all of those forecast a better hiring scenario in the future. But even taking a step back from that, we have heard from our team members that as certain states have eliminated the federal unemployment that they've said it's gotten easier from that perspective.
And I would tell you, going through the summer months, it seems to get easier every single month from that perspective as well.[/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, Matt, you're on the right theme here. So in fact, when I talked about this most recently inside Agilent, I talked about this is where our LSAG and ACG businesses come together and there really is a very symbiotic relationship here, which is both businesses help one another, right? So I pointed earlier to some of the strength we saw in the pharmaceutical industry in LC, LC/MS in Q1, but it also was tied to the enterprise services story we've been talking about for a number of years. And when you start to get yourself into a different relationship with customers, they truly see you as that valued partner.
And for example, when they've had several years of an enterprise service arrangement with you and you show them collectively -- or I should say, actually objectively, what's been going on the lab with various different vendors in terms of equipment, it will point to, for our case, a decision to let's move more of our business to Agilent instrument side. Also, I think as Bob mentioned, we were there on a responsiveness standpoint. On our services, digital capabilities, we were able to respond to customers even in the midst of the pandemic and they remembered that, that we were there for them and that translates into instrument business when they're doing their next round of capital purchase. So I think there really is a very close symbiotic relationship and although we run them as we show the outside world two separate business group results, they work very, very closely together, not only inside the company, but most importantly, with customers.[/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. Thank you everyone for your questions. We're grateful for our shareholders and our employees for joining us today, and have a great day.[/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>>
We got our numbers.[/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, no problem at all. So relative to SG&A. So just to be really clear, we are going to be increasing SG&A throughout the year. So Q2 will actually be a headwind year-over-year, right, because last year there was significant pull back because of COVID. So Q2, Q3, Q4 we were pulled back pretty significantly because of reduced travel and entertainment. We pulled back on the branding as well, because demand was so strong. In Q2, we're definitely going to be throttling up the SG&A spend in Q3 and Q4. So we'll be returning to more normalized levels of SG&A as we move through the year. We fully expected Q1 to be light, because it was COVID impacted. Relative -- and so long story too right. So over the longer term here, we clearly expect to SG&A to be a leverage story. We will get leverage this year as well.
Relative to gross margin, we talked about Q2 being a little muted. Despite the lines coming on, we still have start-up expenses and we have higher inflation and so our price increase does not take into -- come into effect until August, 1, so Q2 will be exposed. But as we move into Q3, we'll have the price increase behind us and in Q4 as well. Also with Q3 you're going to have -- we're expecting to be running full out, so capacity utilization will be very, very strong as well. So Q3 and Q4, you'll see ratable increases in our gross margin performance.[/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>>
Hey, Jeff, great to talk to you. Yes, there are some investments in building out new channel relationships with our carrier partners. We continue to be bullish on the opportunity to grow that channel and we continue to see organic expansion within those channels that have already been solidified clearly. Once the relationship is solidified, we have an opportunity to grow within their customer base.
And yes, we absolutely believe that can be an efficient customer jet -- customer acquisition strategy and ultimately, you're seeing that in terms of even while Steve mentioned the increase in sales and marketing spend this year, we're still seeing really extraordinary customer acquisitions, LTV ratios in the business. So, we're still very efficient from a sales and marketing perspective, and that's part of the reason why. I think the reason for our success with those channels is fundamentally in offering strategy that meets the customer where they want to be met. And so, we started with multiple forms of advocacy, that advocacy delivering core differentiation for carriers who might otherwise be unable to deliver that blend of technology, clinical capabilities, and advocacy.
We've been adding expert medical opinion in virtual primary care, we've added two new solutions that are really core to what customers are looking for, and therefore, added new tools that our carrier partners can take to their customer base to differentiate themselves. So that -- the breadth and depth of our services, I think, is one of the things that really attracts partners to what we do.[/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, maybe I'll kick it off. And, Neill, if you want to add any additional color. I guess what I would say whether it's massive MIMO, macro, etc., our engagement in the base station area in China is substantially limited. And that's primarily because we can't engage with the biggest player over there, which is Huawei.
And even other players over there have sort of a bias toward local efforts just simply because of its geopolitical situation. So our really activity is driven primarily outside of that. We do obviously have some amount of business in China, but I think it's mostly driven outside of that. We're actually seeing some pretty nice wins with customers outside of China.
Neill, is there any additional color you want to put on that?[/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>>
Profitability. Yeah, we, you know, they are preferred customer, so we believe they're more profitable. And on the retention side, the retention is dramatically different, not just on the Robinson side but as you have more and more policies with us. So that's why it's so important for us to continue to give people a reason to stay for decades and decades to be able to have products that can all come from the same carrier whether or not we write it on our paper or not.
So, yes, that's the preferred customer and we want wider margins there and the retention is longer.[/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, Terry. It's Peter. Thanks for the question. Yeah, the month of December was felt really good. It actually felt like kind of pre-COVID environment. I don't know that I would say that it was robust per se though in General Middle Market or our general business banking businesses, those businesses continue to do really well. But we saw a little more of our momentum I think in some of our specialty businesses than just pure middle market.
Now that said, I do feel good about sort of where the pipeline is going into the year. We're encouraged by what we are seeing in that segment. And hopefully, the first quarter will be a little bit better than what we've been seeing in this COVID world. So again, I think that most of our general businesses are still -- have this headwind of that you're seeing with COVID across the country, making it a little challenging.[/INST]
Direction (UP or DOWN): DOWN
| DOWN |