Good morning, everyone, and welcome to California Water Service Group's 2026 annual meeting. This meeting represents our 99th annual meeting of the stockholders. Good morning, everyone. I'm Marty Kropelnicki, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer of California Water Service Group. Thank you for joining us here today for our 99th annual meeting of stockholders. We've chosen once again this year to hold our meeting virtually. This format allows all interested parties from anywhere in the world to attend and participate without the burden of traveling to our headquarters in San Jose. While we do not expect to have any technical difficulties today, in the event that we lose our audio or webcast connection, please wait up to one hour for us to solve the problem. Please refer to the company's investor tab on our webpage for any updates in the event we have any technical difficulties. I'm sure most of you have seen our number disclosures on forward-looking statements found on page three of the slide deck. Going on to slide four, here's the agenda for today's meeting. First, I'll introduce our Board of Directors. We'll conduct the business portion of the 2026 annual meeting of stockholders to vote on three matters before us here today. One is the election of directors, two is the advisory vote on executive compensation, also known as say on pay, and three is the ratification of Deloitte & Touche LLP as our independent registered public accounting firm. After the vote is tallied, we'll receive the preliminary results from the Inspector of Elections and close the meeting. Once the formal portion of the meeting is adjourned, I will provide an update on the company and what we're focusing on in 2026. Following the update, there'll be an opportunity to answer questions during the question and answer session. We'll do our best to answer all of your questions after the company update, and we invite you to submit your questions any time throughout today's meeting. Next, I'd like to introduce our board of directors, all of whom are attending virtually here today. As you well know, this is simply an outstanding board that is engaged and serves our stockholders and company very well. They are extremely well-qualified experts in their field and play a key role in our governance, risk management, and ESG programs. I'll introduce each of them by name, but you can also look up their biographies included in the proxy statement as well as the company's website. Starting with Scott Morris, our Lead Independent Director, Greg Aliff, Shelly Esque, Jeff Kightlinger, Dr. Tom Krummel, Yvonne Maldonado, Charles Patton, retired, Vice Admiral Carol Pottenger, Lester Snow, and Patty Wagner. This concludes my introductions. We'll now move to the next agenda item, the business associated with our 2026 annual meeting. I now officially call the meeting to order. Our polls are now open, and you may vote your shares online at any time before the polls close. If you've already voted, you do not need to take any additional action unless you wish to change your vote. This meeting is being held as required by the bylaws of the corporation, and I appoint Vice President, Corporate Secretary, Michelle Mortensen, to act as secretary for this meeting. We have a few people who are present today helping us conduct our annual meeting from the law firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, Stewart McDowell, and Aaron Briggs, our Inspector of Elections, Susan Miller, and our Managing Partner from Deloitte & Touche, Joe Young. Additionally, here with me today in the room is Jim Lynch, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Shawn Bunting, Senior Vice President, General Counsel, Shannon Dean, Senior Vice President of Customer Service and Chief Sustainability Officer, and Michelle Mortensen, Vice President of Corporate Secretary. Links to the agenda and the rules of conduct for this meeting are available in the meeting webcast section screen. Please review these rules as they contain important information, including how this meeting will be adjourned if we experience technical issues. To conduct an orderly meeting, we ask all participants to abide by the rules of conduct. If you wish to submit a question, you may do so at any time before the meeting adjourns by following the instructions on the meeting website. Susan, can you please report on the voting shares represented here today? Yes. There are 54,341,710 shares of common stock present or represented by proxy at the meeting, which is 90.8% of the total outstanding shares entitled to vote. Marty Kropelnicki and Michelle Mortensen are the proxy holders representing the shares represented by proxy. Thank you, Susan. Susan's report indicates that more than a majority of the voting shares are present or represented by proxy, which means we have a quorum to conduct the business of the meeting here today. As described in the proxy, there are three matters to be voted on by stockholders. Michelle, can you please present the matters for vote today? Thank you, Marty. Today, we have three matters on the agenda. First, we will vote on the election of directors. The board nominated the 11 individuals listed in the proxy statement. Second is our annual advisory vote on executive compensation. Third is the ratification of Deloitte & Touche LLP as our independent registered public accounting firm. Joe Young, Audit Partner, has joined us for this meeting. Thank you, Michelle. Notice of this meeting was mailed on April 8th to stockholders of record as of March 24th, 2026. Michelle has copies of the notice of meeting, proxy form, and proxy statement, along with the affidavit of mailing from Broadridge, our proxy service provider. These documents will be made part of the permanent minutes of this meeting. Michelle, based on the list of stockholders of record on March 24th, 2026, how many shares are entitled to vote at this meeting? On the record date for this meeting, March 24th, 2026, there were 59,844,254 shares of common stock outstanding. Each share will have one vote. Thank you, Michelle. We'll now take a short break for votes to come in from our webcast participants. I declare the polls are now closed. I ask that Susan collect and tabulate the ballots. Susan, please report the preliminary results based on the shares represented here today on the 3 proposals. On the first proposal, the election of the board's nominees, the total number of votes cast shows a majority for the individuals nominated as directors. On the second proposal, the advisory vote to approve executive compensation, the total number of votes cast shows a majority for the approval of the proposal. On the third proposal, ratification of the appointment of Deloitte & Touche as company independent registered public accounting firm, the total number of votes cast shows a majority for the ratification of Deloitte & Touche. Thank you, Susan. Please prepare a written report with the final count of shares presented or represented by proxy and provide it to Michelle. The final results of the voting will be set forth in the report of the inspector of elections and will be included in the minutes of this meeting. The final results will also be reported in Form 8-K with the SEC no later than four days after this meeting. Based on the results of the voting, the 11 nominees for director have been elected, the advisory vote on executive compensation has been approved, and the selection of Deloitte & Touche has been ratified. At this point, I want to adjourn the business portion of the meeting. I'd like to now share a brief update on the company before we move into questions and answers from stockholders. We will be starting on page seven of the slides. Trust on Tap. As we worked on planning our 100-year anniversary, the theme Trust on Tap quickly evolved as a great theme for our centennial year. Working on the annual meeting slides, the theme of then, now, and next was appropriate given it's our 100th year of operations. When you think about our geographic footprint, our steadfast focus on public health, and customer service and safety, we have overcome challenge after challenge as the West prospered over our first 100 years of service. It's this tenacity, commitment, and experience that distinguishes us from our past and foreshadows our future, all enabling us to move forward better than we were yesterday. Thinking about our founders, three World War I veterans. One, Ahlstrom, who was an ace fighter pilot credited with shooting down the last German fighter of World War I. Wiggins, an accomplished engineer with a strong desire to build infrastructure, and Chenery, an entrepreneur and engineer with the idea of building a national leader of water utility in the U.S. Three military officers, one World War, three years of service, now transitioning back to civilian life. Chinnery, the entrepreneur, had the idea. Ahlstrom, the fighter pilot, became a Wall Street banker, and he had access to capital. Wiggins had the desire to build and to build big. In October 1926, Federal Water Service Company was born when we acquired five separate water systems in the Golden State of California. Chico Water Supply Company, Visalia City Water Company, Bakersfield Water Works, Electric Water Company, and Fresno City Water, five rapidly growing areas in the Golden State. Who would have thought three years later that the end of the Roaring '20s was about to hit and hit hard? On Thursday, October 24, 1929, Black Thursday hit, and the stock market began a three-year slide, taking us into the Great Depression. During the Great Depression, FDR came up with the New Deal, which started to bring our nation out of the depression, followed by World War II. Think about being three veterans, getting called into the war. You start your company, the company's doing great. Depression, now back at war. You get through the war, followed by the Cold War and the many, many environmental challenges we faced out West. Droughts, fires, floods, earthquakes. Let's add in the subprime crisis of 2009 that led us to the Great Recession, a global pandemic, and of course, in today's world, the geopolitical risks and events that we all face as we run our business. Through all this, the company continued to build and invest in infrastructure that stands the test of time and provides value to our customers, communities, and stockholders. The business model is the same today as it was in 1926. When you think about what we do, and I am on slide 10, it's really simple. We invest in infrastructure, we grow rate base, and we grow earnings, and that allows us to grow the dividend. When you look at these slides on the far left-hand side, you'll see over the last 10 years, we have maintained a 10.5% compound annual growth rate in our capital investment every year. That means every year we have been investing 10.5% more than what we did the year before. We know when we're increasing our capital investment, we're growing rate base. The slide on the right-hand side shows what the rate base growth has been. Over the last 10 years, that has averaged about 11.1% per year. In the far right-hand column, you'll see that we received a decision a few weeks ago in our 2024 general rate case, and that provides a lot of clarity in our capital programs for 2025, 2026, and 2027. You'll see the estimated numbers for 2026 and 2027 are the actual numbers that are actually approved in the 2024 general rate case. So overall, despite all the economic turbulence, inflation, et cetera, that we've been living through the last three to five years, we have maintained that cadence of investing about 10.5% more every year. That's allowed us to continue to grow rate base. Now, when we grow rate base, we're growing earnings, and when we're growing earnings, that also allows us to grow our dividend. Our annual dividend has increased every year since 1967, and earlier this month, we approved our 325th consecutive quarterly dividend. In January of this year, we announced our 59th annual dividend increase of 8.1%. This gives us a five-year compound annual growth rate of 7.7% on our dividend growth, which is very healthy. I want to take a moment to brief you on the outcome of the 2024 general rate case. If you recall, the 2021 rate case was approximately 18 months delayed from the time it was supposed to be approved from when we actually implemented the rates. That was very painful for the company. That means we went almost an extra two years without rate relief. This rate case was late, but it was only 120 days late, so significantly better this time than in the 2021 situation. This rate case approves an annual increase of $90.5 million or 10.9% for 2026, and a potential $43.2 million and $48.9 million step increases for 2027 and 2028. I say potential for 2027 and 2028 because they're subject to two variables. One, there's an inflation test. If inflation goes up, that step increase can go up. If inflation goes down, that step increase can go down. Two, our ability to execute our capital program and get that capital in the ground. In California, which is our largest operating entity, we have what's called a forward-looking test year, meaning the capital gets approved in advance and those rate increases are built into rates. In the event we don't get the capital in the ground, we shouldn't be charging our customers for those rates, and that's why there's an earnings test associated with that step increase. In addition, in the 2024 general rate case, the commission approved $1.45 billion of new capital, plus an additional $228 million of advice letter projects, for a total of almost $1.7 billion of capital. Advice letter projects, just to remind everyone, are projects where the timing is a little more uncertain than the three-year window for the general rate case. We're allowed to proceed with the project and file to incorporate it in rates once the project is completed. Overall, from a capital and revenue perspective, a really good outcome in the 2024 general rate case. I want to point out some of the other significant items in the 2024 general rate case. While I was disappointed we were not allowed to decouple, the commission did allow us to continue to use the Monterey-style Revenue Adjustment Mechanism. It's not full decoupling, at least it's a step in the right direction. I still continue to believe that full decoupling is the way to go in California because it's such a water-constrained environment. The Commission's decision allows us to continue with the pension balancing account and the healthcare balancing account. Those are significant costs that can fluctuate based on actual estimates, changes in the interest rate environment, et cetera. The rate case decision authorizes a new sales adjustment mechanism. This allows us to adjust our sales in the next year, provided it's off by 5% or more. That's a new mechanism that we think is very helpful in terms of limiting some of the volatility associated with revenue. We got a new liability insurance balancing account. For those of you that have covered the wildfires or followed the wildfires out west, it's very hard and expensive to procure liability insurance. This balancing account is one way that the Commission allows us to protect stockholders by allowing those costs to flow through a balancing account. We're allowed to increase our fixed monthly charge, also known as the meter charge, by 5% to 55%. Some of you might be wondering what that is. Water utilities inherently are a high fixed cost provider. This means that 55% of our costs are recovered through the meter charge or the fixed charge, and the remaining 45% is covered by the variable charge. When we were decoupled, you had about 35% of your fixed charge being recovered in the monthly charge, and the remaining amount being covered by the variable charge. In other words, you built into the tariffs a big swing in the recovery of your cost based on consumption. Not being decoupled, we have pushed more of the fixed cost back to the monthly charge, and that allows us to minimize volatility for our stockholders and for the utility overall. All these mechanisms couple with the outcome of the revenue increase and the capital, and overall, I'm very pleased with the fact this decision came out. It came out a lot more timely than what it did in 2021, and we are rapidly moving forward to implement the new rates effective July 1st. I would also point out that the first quarter of 2026 did not include any benefits associated with any of these mechanisms or the new revenue. You'll start to see the enhancement of revenue in the second quarter as Jim and the finance team start putting the new tariffs into place and accounting for these mechanisms that are either new or reinstated. I want to take a moment to talk about the California regulatory environment. California is not the only state that we operate in, but California is our biggest state and represents about 90%-92% of our total business. I went back and looked at the last 10 years of rate cases, and on the far left-hand side, you see the year, and then next to that, you'll see the revenue increase. This is the amount that we request in the rate case. Next to that, in the third column, you see what was approved. You see the 12.7% increase, the 6.6% increase, the 13.5% increase, and then a 20.7% increase for 2024. That's the increase we're allowed to charge over the three-year rate case period. Next to that, you see the capital requested. In 2015, we requested $1.06 billion in capital, and we were approved for $685 million. Going down to 2024, you'll see we requested $1.99 billion, and we are approved for $1.68 billion. We got 84% of what we asked for. When you look at the amount that was achieved in the capital program, if you were to benchmark this to what an average utility gets approved in a general rate case across the U.S., typically, a utility receives 40%-60% of what they request in the general rate case. As you can see in the 2018 rate case, the 2021 rate case, and the 2024 rate case, we have been well above 80%. Add all this up with the mechanisms that I showed you on the previous page and the fact that we have a 10.27 ROE, which is the highest ROE of any water utility publicly traded in the U.S., I would conclude safely that I think California is a fairly good regulatory environment to be operating in. Yes, the rate cases can be delayed, but the rate cases are also retroactive, and they accrue interest from the point they were supposed to be implemented to when they actually are implemented, so stockholders are made whole. Overall, I think California has continued to do a good job at protecting stockholders and protecting customers in terms of how we operate the utility, allowing us to minimize volatility and make sure we can continue to do what we do best, which is serve our customers. A big part of our legacy is not increasing rates, although that is part of running our utility on a daily basis. Equally as important is our commitment to our customers and our communities, especially when it comes to providing safe, reliable, and affordable drinking water. Affordability has become a very hot topic on the political frontier, and I wanted to talk about this so people can understand what are the measures we use as we gauge our affordability for our customers. There are two broad goalposts that we use when we look at affordability. One, the State of California requires utilities to run an affordability test prior to filing a general rate case. If you don't pass an affordability test, you can't file your rate case. I'm very happy to report that all of our districts in California passed the affordability test for the 2024 general rate case. That's one measure. The second measure is the Environmental Protection Agency looks at a consumer's utility bill as a percent of the average household income. The EPA generally considers water and wastewater bills that exceed 3% of a household income as expensive, and water and wastewater bills that are below 2% of the average household income as generally affordable. When you look at the table on the far right-hand side, we've included what the last five years looks like in California, looking at the bill as a percent of the average household income. As you can see, we're well below that 1%, meaning our water rates are affordable. Now, it's more than just rate-making that we do to keep rates affordable. We actively pursue grants. One of the things that's critical, why the capital program is so important is we strategically try to keep our facilities in top operating condition because it allows us to extend its useful lives. We've invested millions of dollars in our conservation program. In fact, there was a recent study that shows our Cal Water bills are almost 21% lower than what they would have been if we didn't have conservation. Conservation has lowered the average bill about 20.5%- 21%. We proactively manage our expenses. We manage our overtime. We look at the water source supply and water mix on a daily basis, and we go out to bid with all our major suppliers on things that we procure to run our utility day in and day out. At MFAC, we provide convenient interest-free payment plans for our customers, or we have a tool, it's called PromisePay, that works great, and that helps customers in terms of affordability. Affordable is not just your price point, but it's your ability to pay. PromisePay allows customers the flexibility to pay a payment over multiple periods if they're falling behind. We have two important programs that we pioneered. One was the Rate Support Fund, which is for high-cost service areas and low-cost service areas, you blend the districts to bring the cost down on average for everyone. The second one is a low-income program called LIRA, Low Income Rate Assistance program. Approximately 24% of our customers in California are on the LIRA program. Keeping rates affordable in this era that we're in, especially where it's become a political item, I would just say draw your attention to electric rates, which have gone up substantially over the last three to six years. The water rates have maintained a relatively flat amount below that 1%, meaning water rates have continued to be affordable. In addition to making and keeping rates affordable, we have a big impact on our communities. A big part of Cal Water's success over our first 100 years is that we have kept water local. This last year, we contributed over $2 million to charities and organizations at the local level to help improve the quality of lives for our customers. Nearly half of our employees have volunteered during our third annual season of service. In this last year, we invested $2 million in conservation programs that are expected to save approximately 52 million gal of water per year in perpetuity. In addition, earlier this week, we released our 2025 sustainability report, which will update you on all the important things that we're doing to help protect our environment, to improve sustainability and renewability, to make sure that we have plenty of water for all of our customers going into the next 100 years. Now let's talk about growth opportunities. From day one, from 1926 until now, we have continued to look at growth opportunities that would benefit our stockholders and our customers and communities. I think everyone knows that utility economics, it's a game of marginal cost. The larger your base, the more you can spread your marginal cost over, the lower the average cost per customer. We continue to pursue strategic growth opportunities. We look at a lot of things in a given year, and as you may recall from the press earlier this year at year-end, we announced the acquisition of the Nexus Water assets in Oregon and Nevada. What this is, we're essentially purchasing 16 utility systems in Oregon and Nevada, which will give us 36,000 equivalent units. We say equivalent units because in the wastewater business, it's not a meter, it's an equivalent unit. In the water business, it's a meter. There's 115,000 people that are served with water and wastewater services in Nevada and Oregon by Nexus Water. It'll add about $109 million to rate base, and the purchase price is two times rate base or approximately $218 million subject to customary closing conditions and adjustments. We expect this deal to close somewhere in the fourth quarter or potentially in the first quarter. In addition to the Nexus deal, we announced we were acquiring the remaining interest in the BVRT membership in Texas. As you may recall, in 2020, we entered into a partnership to do greenfield development in that South Austin, Northern San Antonio corridor. Since then, we have built seven regulated utilities in a high-growth area. As of this week, we have just under 20,000 total connected or committed customers. Of that number, approximately 5,000 are utility customers right now that are getting billed for their services, and there's another 5,000 in escrow, meaning they've entered into escrow agreements, put deposits down. These are developers, and they're building out homes that will ultimately connect to our system. This is important because we believe there's an additional 20,000 likely customers in the existing service areas that are immediately surrounding us that would ultimately attach and grow with us. In addition, that we believe there's an additional 100,000 potential customers in that area that will ultimately grow out given the amount of businesses that are moving to that area. In the first quarter of 2026, we filed our change in control application with the Public Utilities Commission of Texas, and we're waiting for that to be approved. We also added 210 new connections to the billable side of the business, meaning they became new connections and new utility customers of BVRT. Growth in Nevada, Oregon, and Texas provides meaningful diversification opportunity. When the transactions are closed, we'll have approximately 100,000 equivalent units, about 20% of our total customer base outside the state of California. We'll have 24 wastewater treatment plants, which is up from approximately 47% in the existing portfolio. The rate base that we'll be adding with the acquisitions will add about 40% to the non-California rate base. Very excited, especially about Nevada and especially about Texas, as we believe those are high-growth areas given their tax-friendly environment for businesses and the amount of growth in businesses we've seen in those states. Looking at 2026, what are we focused on? Obviously, the first big thing is implementing the 2024 general rate case. The team is busy working on that. As I mentioned earlier, you'll start to see the effects of that during the second quarter and the financial benefits of the rate case showing up in the second quarter. We expect tariff increases to go into effect July 1st. We want to close the Nevada and Oregon acquisitions with Nexus Water, close on the BVRT transaction, successfully integrate them onto our platform. Bringing them onto our back office, but keep them local in the service areas that they provide. We need to continue to execute our capital plans. We have a lot of capital to invest over the next few years, we got to stay focused on getting that capital in the ground, especially while the weather's nice, including our PFOS plans to make sure we are in compliance with the Federal laws that will take effect here in a couple of years. We will continue to evaluate strategic growth opportunities that come along our way. Again, a lot of stuff comes our way. I will tell you there are a lot of dogs out there, and I realize we may not be the best-looking dance partner to go to the prom, but we do know how to dance. If an area meets our strategic criteria, and we think it's a high-growth area, we would certainly consider it and the company has maintained a very clean and pristine balance sheet as well as our A+ stable credit rating. We still continue to have one of the highest credit ratings of any utility in North America. Then lastly, we will continue to do what we do best, which is provide our customers with the best-in-class service support and water quality. Now, I would be remiss if I didn't take a moment to talk about our 100-year anniversary. I want to call your attention to a website that we put up there that stockholders can go look at, 100years.calwatergroup.com, where you can go look at the timelines of the company. There are interviews, if you want to get a better sense of the history of the company. It's very fascinating. A lot happened in the first 100 years of operations. I could probably talk about this for six hours with you, all the details and the ins and outs of what our company has gone through. I highly encourage you to take a look at that website, and I think you'll be proud of your company that you have today. We will continue to celebrate the 100 year, we have a number of regional events that we have scheduled with employees and also local lawmakers with the goal of increasing the awareness of the company's track record with elected officials so they understand what we do and the importance that we play in the communities that we serve. In wrapping up, it's hard to imagine what our founders would think about our world today and how complex our world has become. From water scarcity to climate change to cybersecurity and defense systems that we've had to implement and water quality and the 240+ regulatory water quality standards that we enforce, all the way down to the parts per trillion. Now, just to give you a perspective of what that means, if you think about one drop of water, take one drop of water and drop that into 20 Olympic swimming pools, that is one part per trillion. We test water down to the parts per trillion in today's world that we live in. That's how we know the water quality is good. One thing I do know for certain is the fact that our founders would be proud of the fact that through it all, we have remained focused on what matters, and that's the customer. Even after 100 years of operations, protecting public health, investing for the future, and putting the customer first is still what matters. It's because of this foundation, 100 years of experience, and the fact that we still care and focus on the same three elements that I'm confident that our next 100 years will be as successful as our first 100 years. Morgan, with that, we will open it up for questions. Actually, I shouldn't say Morgan. It's actually Shannon. Sorry, Shannon. No, that's okay. Didn't know if I lost my job here. At this point, I'll conclude my formal comments for today. I've asked Shannon Dean, our Senior Vice President, Customer Service and Chief Sustainability Officer, to join us, and she'll read any questions that have come in from stockholders. Shannon, I'll turn it over to you. Okay, great. First question relates to PFAS, which you alluded to. Can you explain the PFAS situation at present and how the company aligns itself with federal and state regulations? Sure. Well, first of all, let's start off with our operating goal, and it's actually a part of our comp plan, is our goal is to meet and exceed our water quality standards every single day that we operate, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. PFOA and PFAS, there was an MCL that was published, and then you had a change in administration. Under the Trump administration, there was some speculation they might move that number around, and they kept the original MCL for PFOA and PFAS, so that's good news. We're sticking with the original guidelines that were given for the implementation. It looks like the commission or the EPA is going to do the same thing. One thing that hasn't moved is the goal of removing PFAS from the water. From a customer standpoint, it's really hard to look a customer in the eye. I can't look Shannon in the eye, for example, and say, "Yeah, Shannon, drink the water, it's safe. Yes, there's something in the water that may cause cancer, but don't worry about it for a couple of years." We have a very aggressive PFAS program. We have approximately 90 to 100 wells out of our 1,174 wells that require treatment, and we are implementing our plans to treat that water now. We are very familiar with PFAS treatment. It's granulated or activated carbon filtration. We have it on some of our other wells, so we are going full steam ahead, and we will be in compliance with the new rules when they become effective. Okay, great. The next question relates to today's share price and our long-term strategy. I'll read it to you. As CEO of CWT, you have a responsibility to employees, day-to-day operations of the company, as well as the share price in the public markets. Are you able to address today's share price relating to tweaking business strategy as well as long-term performance? Sure. It's hard to comment on share price because we obviously don't control the market. What we do control is what we do and how we do it. Just like the slides I showed you where we had the rate base growth and the capital investment growth, the core of what we do has not changed from 1926 until now. We are a rate-regulated utility. There's a process we go through with the commission to get capital, put that capital in the ground. We have to justify that capital, then we're allowed to make a rate of return. From a company perspective, I would argue there aren't too many utilities, not just water utilities, but including electric and gas, that have maintained a 10%+ growth rate on their capital investments year after year. I think that's very healthy. You see that translating over to your rate base growth. From a core utility perspective, that's exactly what we want to see, and that's allowing us to grow earnings and to grow the rate base. One thing I will say that's market related is water utilities, over the last three to five years, have seen their multiplier come down. You've had multiple compression. It used to be water utilities on the higher end had a multiple of 28x to 32x earnings. That has come down substantially, and now you're seeing water companies typically have a multiple of 18x to 20x earnings. That was just a market adjustment that kind of reverbed through the water industry and the water utility industry. Part of that, I think, is driven by some of our investors who are attracted to some of the data center AI boom that's out there and some of the electric companies that are rapidly chasing those dollars. Ultimately, the company's core operations are very healthy. They're very financially sound. The market's going to ebb and flow with trends and things that change. Over the long term, the best thing that we can do is to keep executing our capital plans, keep growing rate base, keep growing earnings, and keeping our customers safe. Ultimately, that allows us to grow earnings, and I think ultimately builds long-term stockholder value. Let's hold the course, keep doing what we're doing, and talk a lot to Wall Street so they understand the business model. Okay, great. All right. Next one relates to the potential for future mergers and acquisitions. It reads, "Does the company see a backlog in potential acquisitions, be it private or public water utility or wastewater utility? In terms of large systems that go on the market, there are not a lot of large systems that go on the market. The Nexus deal with 36,000 connections, that's a fairly sizable deal. You don't see big assets like that float, maybe one every three to five years. The Nexus deal was a friendly deal. We know the Nexus team very well. We had an active dialogue going on with them. They sold part of their portfolio to American Water, and we declined a bid because we said we're staying on the West Coast. American didn't want the West Coast assets, so once they consummated the deal with American, they reached out to us and said, "Would you be interested in these assets?" The answer is yes. The price was predetermined based on the American deal. We're very excited to get those assets, especially the Nevada assets, because they're growing, and Nevada's a very good state in terms of regulation. It looks like Oregon's actually a very good state for regulation as well. Yes, there are things we look at all the time. I will tell you, as I use the dance analogy, there are a lot of people who can't dance. They'll say they can dance, but you put them on the dance floor, and frankly, they're just not good dancers. We're pretty picky when you think about running a regulated utility, when your ROEs are capped, there's only so much you can pay. When you do pay that amount, you want to make sure you have an asset that's in good shape, that you can grow, and that it's in a good regulatory jurisdiction. I wouldn't say there's a backlog. There's a lot of tiny systems out there that don't make a lot of sense to us, and every now and then, a bigger system comes up. We bought Rainier View in 2020. It's now 2026, and now we're picking up these assets from Nexus Water. Between the two deals, that's approximately 60,000 new connections between the two deals, and that's fairly sizable for the water space. Okay. All right. Next up is a very of-the-moment question relating to data centers. It reads, "Being in several states, does the company have the ability and/or opportunity to bring water to data centers? Very good question. If you think about some of our core service areas, like California or up in the Seattle area, up in Washington, they're not ideal locations for data centers. Energy costs are high, labor costs are high, cost of living's high. I think you're seeing more development of data centers, more on the East Coast, Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas. We do have one new data center that's in our service area in the South San Antonio market with BVRT. I think we may see some more that are there. Obviously, there's a whole evaluation that takes place when you look at that. You got to look at what your water supply is. We have to have these long-term studies put in place. Obviously, if we don't have the water, we're not going to offer to support them. Likewise, providing we have the water, we think we're a good service provider. We're also big on recycled water, which I think with data centers at some point will become a much bigger play. I think that'll be an opportunity that we may have some chance to do some more work in. Most people don't know, but when it comes to recycled water in the state of California, we are the largest retailer of recycled water in the state of California. The Apple campus, also known as the Mothership, that has recycled water provided by us. When you think about the big refineries in Southern California, we provide recycled water for their cooling. I ultimately think recycled water, as water scarcity continues to increase, recycled water and even closed-loop systems of recycled water will become more relevant for data centers. Okay, great. Well, this is perfect timing. We've reached the end of our time for Q&A, and that is the last question. Great, Shannon. Well, this concludes the 99th meeting of our stockholders. I want to take this opportunity to thank all of our stockholders who've continued to believe in our company for our first 100 years. I also want to take a moment to thank all of our employees. As much as we are a company of pipes and pumps and motors and all kinds of cool things, it really doesn't work unless you have great employees, and it's really the employees are what make this whole company work. I want to take a moment to thank all of our employees and our board for doing an outstanding job and enabling us to do what we do best, which is serve our customers. We'll look forward to our next meeting next year. Until then, be safe, and hopefully, we'll see you on our earnings calls. Thank you, everybody, and have a great day. This concludes today's meeting. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect and have a wonderful rest of your day.