Late evening to everybody here who's joining us. Thank you for joining sticking around here for our Credit Bureau Day, and we're very pleased to have added this year to the lineup First Advantage, especially coming off the the big merger that they're currently integrating with. And we have Scott Staples, the CEO, Steven Marks, the CFO, and then Stephanie Gorman as well. IR is around if needed. So thank you all for being here. For those that you're dialing in, it's in a regular kind of fireside chat format. Myself and Ronan will have a bunch of questions on the to ask management team. You should see a q and a box in your in your screen. If you have any specific questions you wanna throw out now or during a conversation, I will do my best to incorporate them into the discussion. I also have my Bloomberg open if that's helpful or or easier for anybody. So with that out of the way, again, thank you all for being here. Scott, maybe I'll just kick it off with you. I I know you're not new to the public markets, but, you know, let's just say, you're first time at this Investor Day. So maybe we can start with, just the value proposition of First Advantage, you know, what they do. Because in a high level, I think, you know, we're pro everyone's probably oversimplifying by saying it just does my background check before I start a new job. So maybe you can just put some framework parameters around, you know, appreciating First Advantage to start with. Yeah. Thanks, Manav, and thanks for having us today. We're super excited to be part of this. I think just let's start with First Advantage overview. You know, we're we're a global software and data company. So I think, you know, yes, ultimately, the software and the data is used to run background checks for clients that are onboarding new employees or or if they're monitoring existing employees or drivers or or contractors or whoever they they are. But I think there's a couple, you know, unique value propositions for First Advantage. One is global. You know, we're a global organization. We do background checks and sell our software and data in 200 countries and territories. We've got a really nice client base, 80,000 customers, a big focus on enterprise customers, which which has been great for us. We diversified their vertical offerings. So our products are customized by vertical, and we'll obviously get into that probably a little later because I think that's the secret sauce to our success in this space, knowing knowing industry segments, customizing our our software to the buyers in our market. I think the other thing is is the trust factor. You know, we're we're we're in compliance. We're in safety and risk. And in today's world, that's really important. The world's, you know, an interesting and unique place. So, you know, our ability to make customers feel comfortable about the safety of their brand, of their workforce, of their workplace is really important to us. But at the end of the day, you know, the real backbone of First Advantage is our platforms. You know, it's the technology, the software, and the data that make it and that's what we're very proud of. You know, we're the category leader in this space. That's also very important in terms of size and scale and and spend and reach. So those are all things that kinda line up to, you know, put us in the the nice position that we're in today. And and maybe just to put some numbers around it, and and, Steven, feel free to jump into, but maybe we can walk through your long term growth algorithm and the different components of that. Because, again, I think the, for a new investor, at least the oversimplification oversimplification would be just based on the number of job churn, but it's it's clearly more than that. So maybe we can just talk through that. Yeah. Steven, why don't you take that one? Yeah. No. But now it's great great point. So, you know, we're able to drive, you know, our our revenue growth, and it's got four real factors to it. And and there's base growth, which is kind of easiest to call it same store sales. And I'll come to that at the end because that's probably gonna drive us into a little bit more of a macro topic. But the other three elements, you know, we really have the ability to influence through like, as Scott mentioned, our vertical line enterprise focus go to market. So we've consistently been able to drive four or 5% new logo growth. So like Scott mentioned, we work in attractive verticals globally around around the world and have been able to drive that growth, and it was obviously a very consistent trend with the Sterling acquisition. So consistent consistency through macro backdrops, huge white space, and a lot of TAM to be able to continue to take market share, grow into some more emerging markets, whether that be APAC and India. So to have that global span enterprise footprint and and and consistency to drive that growth. And like Scott mentioned, you know, we're able to to drive that growth in new in in the new logo by by differentiating ourselves with our platforms, our tech experience, and and new product. And then using those new products, we're actually able to drive four or 5% additional incremental growth through upsell and cross sell. And upsell and cross sell is really three things. A, we, you know, we can gain additional territory within clients. So expanding from The US globally or taking additional geography or regions or subsidiaries even domestically. We have a very wide portfolio of of products around the onboarding and post onboarding space. So we can cross sell a customer who might start with background screening into drug testing, into I nine services, into tax credit services, and things like that. But almost most importantly and most powerfully, we can upsell into what we call package density, which is helping our clients, you know, increase the scope of their services, the density of their background screening packages to make sure that they're amply covering off the risk that match their verticals and their company's risk profile. And that last piece has been the most powerful and consistent lever of of upsell, cross sell growth the last, boy, five, six, seven years, and we see a ton of white space to continue doing that. That's part of why being verticalized, the enterprise focus really matters. So four to 5% new logo, add on four to 5% upsell cross sell, call that eight, nine, 10%, and then we're able to to retain our customers at 96% plus. So that's a gross retention rate. So, you know, do the math. Net net, we're we're able to influence and drive 5% or plus or minus, you know, mid single digit growth through upsell, cross sell, through new logo, through strong retention. And then it comes down to base. And base, as I mentioned, is same store sales. So that's that's really impacted by more of the macro. There is a little controllable factor in their pricing, but pricing has been a very stable factor in our industry. So, you know, we've seen we've seen base be all over the place. Candidly, the last five years just coming out of the pandemic, the war for talent, and now now we've really found ourselves in this more stabilization cycle the last number of years. But even as the JOLTS data that got posted this morning, you know, shows you, it's been very consistent in the last kind of fourteen months or so. So we're really seeing, you know, base approach that net neutral state. And then so when you compound all that together, we're able to influence a lot of growth, upsell, cross sell new logo, retain our business at an incredibly high rate, and then, you know, see that stabilization trend helping support our overall revenue growth. Got it. Before we, you know, touch on TAM and share since you brought up base growth, you know, Scott, in terms of your discussions with your clients, I know we we just talked about how you've been busy meeting a lot of them. You know, obviously, we all see the Joel's numbers. We see the BLS data, so we have some sense. But I guess what I'm looking for, what the clients are asking is more kind of anecdotal commentary around what you're hearing from them. Are they still, you know, in the pause and not making any changes more? Are they starting to pick up activity? Just just any anything you can add there would be helpful. Yeah. I think, you know, the we've always relied for our own forecasting on client conversations. We use BLS and JOLTS data, you know, as a data point. It's, you know, become a little bit more unreliable over the last couple years, certainly post COVID. Where we really see a a tighter correlation between BLS and Jolt's data is in the SMB space. They tend to align. The SMB market tends to align pretty well with what Jolts is saying. But enterprise, you know, tends to be a bit different, so that's why client communications are so important. And we are constantly in front of our customers, especially our large customers. So I think it it really aligns to maybe a bigger picture. If if you look at Jolt's data, for example, and you're looking at quits and unemployment rate and hires and openings, and if you go back, you know, a couple of quarters and you look at it more as a at a high level versus a monthly, it tells a picture that's maybe different than what you're hearing in the press. It it tells a picture of of stability and what I would call flatness. I would say the job market is absolutely flat, And that's not necessarily a bad thing. We are not hearing from customers of, you know, of, you know, decreasing their workforces. We are hearing them sort of saying, hey. We're gonna we're holding our our forecasting and our planning close to the vest because they still there's still some uncertainty as to what's happening with tariffs and with the rate cuts and whatever is going to come out of Washington policy. So they're not definitely not hiring ahead of the curve. We we've been using a term around the company for literally the last maybe two years, which is what we call just in time hiring. Our customers are really doing just in time hiring. So they're still hiring. They're, you know, they're replacing they're doing backfill hiring. You know, they're hiring for potentially peak season and that kind of stuff. They're certainly not doing, you know, any advanced hiring or what we call growth hiring. So our customers are really sending a signal to that to us that the job market is flat. You know, it's more like replacement hiring versus growth hiring, and that's not necessarily such a bad thing for us because as Steven just walked you through on the growth algorithm, if same store sales are flat, you know, we still, you know, can grow and grow pretty nicely. So we'll continue to talk to our customers and and monitor situations. Obviously, you know, tariff tariffs, rate cuts, other things coming out of Washington have kept the market sort of on a on a cautious level, and that's kinda where we see customers today. Well, Scott, I also had just in time just in time hiring is actually also not a bad thing for us either because it allows us to flex some of our competitive differentiation. So the ability to do what we do at the scale we do it at, and then almost more importantly to the just in time hiring is the speed we're able to do it at with using the automation, using our data resources, allows us to help our customers operate that way. Not everyone in our industry can take a a weekend hiring event of tens of thousands of people, and and and our customers have faith that they know that they're gonna get 90 plus percent of those done by Monday morning and be planned and ready to onboard that week. So the ability to go to market, to to to work with our customers, to have all of the infrastructure, to to operate at at speed, at scale, you know, so that just in time hiring really helps us differentiate the market and helps us kind of either, you know, maintain that 96 plus percent retention rate or even help power that four or 5% new logo growth. Okay. Two follow ups to that flat comment. One, can you just remind us your base growth assumptions for the second half of the year and, you know, any comps or something to call out as we roll into 2026? And then, Scott, you talked about how the BLS data is more, you know, more correlated to the SMB side of the business, and then you gave us some commentary on your enterprise. So maybe just that mix of SMB versus enterprise as your any as a percentage of your revenues? Yeah. So so, Manav, it's a great question. So when we when we, you know, think about the second half of the year and base growth, our original assumption for the year was base would just be on the ever so slight side of positive. And then as Scott mentioned, just with a lot more of the uncertainty and just give them, you know, some of the feedback, you know, when we gave out our guidance, you know, a few weeks ago, just just from a kind of a risk management standpoint, have just kinda take you know, tailored that to the just the just the slight side of, you know, of of neutral on the negative side. So, effectively, you know, it's just the negative side of flat, and that's kind of the flatness trend that Scott was talking about. But just wanted to make sure that we had a I had an air of conservatism. You know, the first advantage historical customer base, you know, our our our larger re retail vertical, our larger transportation vertical, there's still a a seasonal hiring, you know, trend for the, you know, The US holiday season. So there's not a reliance on that. We have a much more diverse verticals right now. But, certainly, we wanted to give a little ode to, hey. The tariffs and Washington policy creates a little uncertainty there. So we've derisked that second half a little bit in terms of our our base guidance. But, you know, effectively, you know, from a modeling standpoint, it's the negative side of neutral, which is, you know, very close to neutral. Yeah. And SMB is really, you know, really not a major focus for us. We certainly sell in the SMB space, but we don't focus on it. You know, SMB customers can come to our website. They can order products on our website. They can pay for products on our website. It's a completely different service model, support model, sales model. So everything we do is really geared more toward enterprise. Got it. Okay. And and maybe just to wrap up the the base growth assumptions, you know, at Investor Day, I think you gave some framework on on what you expected next year and the next couple of years. I don't know if you just wanted to reiterate that for the audience. Yeah. So so when we modeled our our our long term growth assumption through 2028, I mean, obviously, like we've talked about when we've given out guidance and updates to the guidance, you know, base base will be negative, ever so slightly negative, obviously, in the second half of the year, negative for the year. And that's just a a concept around where base originally turned negative in 2022. It's been it's been roughly a three year normalization cycle because we operate in a wide number of verticals. Each kind of vertical has operated a little bit in independently. Some verticals, you know, have, you know, oriented back towards normalized hiring far earlier. Some have been far more resilient and just taken longer to get back to a normalized hiring pace. Like Scott talked about, now that we've been in this flat environment for for a sustained period of time, we really feel like we're there. You know, given what we're seeing out of Washington and hearing from customers, we don't see 2026 as the year where we get back to the full long term growth assumptions in base. That's about a two to 3% positive, which aligns a lot to kind of a a a GDP or if you look at long term hiring trends. You know, we do have the ability to do some CPI price you know, pricing type increases that get you there as well. But we kinda see 2026 as still more of a transitory year. So, again, hovering around that neutral state and then getting closer to our long term model than the outer years of the of the the four year model. Got it. Maybe let's ask the vertical mix question a different way. I think can you just remind us of your, you know, white collar versus blue collar, mix? And then even within that, I think, you know, I mean, I I know you're fairly diversified, but maybe just call out some of the, you know, the key verticals that you're exposed to and some of the trends you're seeing there. Yeah. So white collar, blue collar mix is probably, you know, roughly about fifty fifty. First advantage was historically, like, seventy thirty blue collar to white collar, and Sterling was about the opposite. So when we put two equal sized companies together, we ended up right at roughly around fifty fifty. Well, there's some good news there, though. You know, our health care vertical has now become our largest vertical. And with an aging population in The US, we really like our positioning in health care. And I I would say when you think of health care, it's really a number of subverticals within health care. So you've got hospital networks. You've got post acute care. You've got home health care. You've got health care staffing. So there's a really nice diversity within health care. So, you know, one of the largest growing segments in the in The US, we're extremely well positioned. We're about it's about 24% of our business is now health care, and then and then diversified within it. Our second largest vertical is transportation, and that's more of a blue collar focus. So, again, we kinda like, you know, one our largest being kinda white collar, second largest being blue collar. And what we really I think what a lot of people don't understand about our transportation business, if you look at our earnings announcements over the last couple of quarters, our transportation business has done extremely well. And most people kind of think transportation is one of those things that, you know, as re with retail goes down, transportation goes down because, obviously, they're delivering product. And tariffs could affect retail, which then could affect transportation, but it's not happening to us because in in transportation, we really have a large set of products. We sell over a dozen products in transportation, and about half of them or more than half of them are not tied to the hiring on onboarding of an employee or a driver or a warehouse worker or whatever. They're more compliance related. So you think about things like we do title and registration for the vehicles for for companies. We keep driver files for companies. We o d we do DOT compliance. We file gas tax with the federal government for these companies. So lots of things. We do MBR monitoring, which is, you know, massive because, you know, these companies can have drivers out there with suspended licenses or whatever. So a lot of that transportation revenue comes more from compliance than than than the onboarding of a of a trucker or driver. So those two big verticals in health care and transportation have been have been, you know, really, you know, doing well for us. Our third largest vertical is retail, which has also held up, you know, fairly well. It's been slightly down over the last couple of quarters, but not by a lot. I mean, I think that's because our retail focus is is not main street brick and mortar. It's more large scale essential retailers. It's ecommerce. It's you know, people are still ordering online, having things delivered to their homes. You know, that that's a really good business for us. And then there's obviously lots of other verticals, and that gives us nice diversification between white collar, blue collar verticals that are more resilient than others. We we really like the fact that we've got this really nice diversification, and I think that's one of the main reasons we did the Sterling deal was that it it brought us vertical diversification that we felt like, you know, we we could use and benefit from. So as I mentioned earlier when I introduced the company, vertical go to market is everything for us. So when we talk about verticals, we're talking about fully being aligned to an industry, and that's not just from a sales and marketing standpoint, but it's from a solution engineer standpoint. It's from a product standpoint. It's from a customer care and customer success standpoint. So we are aligned by these verticals so that when we go in to talk to these vertical buyers, we come in as subject matter experts, and that helps us do consultative selling. So when Steven talked about, you know, package density and our ability to continue to drive great upsell, cross sell numbers, it's because our buyers see us as experts, and we're using data to show them how they can improve their program and what gaps they have, and that and ultimately leads to upsell and cross sell. Thank you for that. Yeah. I was gonna ask you about that. So you you touched on the upsell cross sell. Maybe to appreciate the new logo growth of, you know, call it mid single digit plus a year, maybe we can step back and you can help us appreciate what the TAM of the market is, how you define it, you know, how much of it is already vended versus, you know, maybe people who don't do it, which would be surprising, but just curious how how you would frame that. Yeah. So, I mean, the the the background screening tab is about $14,000,000,000 by itself. With with the evolution of AI and a few other things, we got the additional TAM that that now we have service offerings in on digital identity, which is an additional $10,000,000 $10,000,000,000. Sorry. But if we focus on that 14,000,000,000 background screening TAM for a minute, it's roughly 50% vended and 50% un vended. And and the way you really think about that is not 50% of companies are getting background screen. In The US, almost everyone is, but they're not doing all of the background screening. They're not doing all of the drug testing, which gives us plenty of white space in in a in a very developed, you know, very concentrated market like The US to continue to upsell and cross sell incremental services that the clients aren't ordering. And then when you look at some of our international markets, you know, roughly half of our new logo wins within our APAC region as an example are never never ever background screening, you know you know, companies before. Never never have, you know, screen, never have done anything before. So it's growing both from getting getting attachment to background screening outside The US and and more deeply penetrating the existing market within The US. So it's roughly 50%, you know, you know, vended and unbended. You know? But if you look at our $1,500,000,000 scale relative to that that bended market, we've got roughly 25% market share. So, you know, ton of green space to grow into, a ton of white space to continue to grow the industry into. So we feel really good about it. And then with the advent of risk that come from fraud in the hiring process, you know, the downside of AI, much easier to fake resumes, CVs, deep fake interviews. You don't even know if it's me here. We didn't do a digital identity when I joined this call. Could be anybody. But, you know, the the those risks have created a whole new market of products and solutions that help companies, that help, you know, you know, just organizations validate that you know, we call it the know your people industry. It's kind of the what banking did with KYC companies are starting to do with their employees, contractors, volunteers, etcetera, about really validating. Do you know the people you're letting into your organization, whether that's physically in your warehouses and stores, virtually into your, you know, your IT environment, IP, things like that. So it's a whole whole new world of evolving risk like Scott in kind of his intro. You know, it's become a scarier world, and and this evolution of of, you know, fraud in the hiring process and onboarding process has opened up this new TAM. I it's very early, so it's it's it's still a small contributor of revenue. I mean, as Scott can tell you, it's becoming an ever more popular and and more prominent conversation point with with customers. Our new products on it are coming out, you know, almost in real time, and and the, the interest is very real. So as that attachment rate picks up, we'll start having a lot more positive news around our revenue and how we're helping our customers navigate those risks. Got it. Maybe this is a good time to just talk about the demerger. You know, why now why recently, I guess, as opposed to now? You know, what was the thought process behind it, and and how we should all be appreciating that decision? So it's funny. You know, Anup, we've been we've been working on this for so long. It feels like years. We'll have a we will celebrate a one year anniversary of of finalizing the deal on on October 31. So we're, you know, we're we're actually coming up fairly quickly, you know, to that mark. And it's it's really been great. I mean, I you know, when you go when you do m and a, you know, obviously, you do all the due diligence in the world and everything, but, you know, as you get under the under the hood, you you find out things, and and there's been just pleasant surprises all along the way. So let's start with, you know, why why the deal? We we really feel a couple of things. One is we felt that, you know, First Advantage and Sterling had the the best technology stacks in the industry. And and Sterling had a few things that we didn't have, and we had a few things that they didn't have. So putting those stacks together, you know, would would create a really nice thing for our customers. Also, first advantage was, as you know, that by far the most automated, you know, player in the space. We've been we've been investing in robotic process automation, APIs, and and even, you know, even a well, that for about nine years and AI for the last four years. So, you know, really a highly automated, high-tech back end, and we felt that we could really bring that to the Sterling customer base, you know, and help improve that customer experience and margins. So we felt like that was an opportunity. But as I mentioned a little earlier ago, we really like the vertical mix. Where where Sterling was strong, first advantage was okay and and vice versa. So for example, before the merger, you know, Sterling's largest vertical was was health care, and health care was our our or third or fourth largest vertical. Our largest vertical was transportation. We did 24% of our business in transportation. Sterling was only doing three. So we're like, okay. There's a really good vertical mix here. And when we looked at it really deeply, there was really only one vertical area where we had any kind of overlap. So we kept talking about the dovetailing of those verticals together to make, you know, make us stronger in the verticals that we're in and kinda fill in the gaps with the verticals that, you know, we were we were we were good in but didn't have scale. And speaking of scale, I just think, you know, this space scale means a lot. So the ability to, you know, do global background checks, you know, all around the world is really important. And it's not just important to be able to do a check-in a country like, you know, like The Philippines or wherever. It's it's being able to check people with the with that kind of background in The US for US jobs. So so that kind of scale and and, you know, global capacity, you know, really matter in this space. So at the end of the day, I think buyers really like the vertical story, and they like the technology story. And we put First Advantage and Sterling together, we really got the best of both worlds. And our strategy in the in the platform space has been best of breed strategy, and our customers are are really starting to see the benefits of that. So two follow ups. Maybe, you know, in terms of the integration thus far, you know, maybe, Steven, you can give us kind of the quantitative updates on, you know, how things are going, what you thought, what's going better. And then, Scott, from your perspective, you know, at least from the outside, you know, when when Stern was also a public company, I mean, we I I think we all thought the two companies had different cultures, and, you know, we all know culture is usually the biggest, hurdle in integrations. So maybe you can comment on if that perception is, is, you know, not entirely accurate in terms of what you're doing right now. Yeah, Manav. Certainly, on the synergy story and just on the overall, some of the the financial KPIs, we are really happy about the progress we made both from from the quantity of savings we've been able to generate and, almost more importantly, the the speed that we've been able to do it. So when we originally signed the deal and did our did our diligence exercise, we estimated $50,000,000 plus of of net cost synergies. And it was important for us to have a plan that was conservative, but also really attainable. We certainly didn't wanna put pressure on the business to have to go find savings in in areas that would impact the customer experience, our ability to have best in class and best of breed products. So to be able to go to the deal, it was it was a very accretive deal at 50,000,000 plus. And as we got deeper and deeper into the integration, like Scott was just talking about a little bit, finding the complementary products, finding that that have complementary verticals, the complementary geographic overlap, They've been able to steadily bring those target synergies up to where we've settled at today, which is 65 to 80,000,000. Through the end of last quarter, we had already actioned 47,000,000 of that. So that's within, you know, eight months of close. We had already done, you know, well over half of that elevated goal, almost a 100% of the original goal. So I feel really, really good about it. And I think the big validation of that is, you know, the other big KPI we've been tracking is, you know, it's common when you have an m and a, you know, of this scale with with with this type of industry is you're gonna you anger some clients. You're gonna you're gonna do something that harms the experience. But we've been maintaining our historical levels of 96 plus percent retention. It was 96.3 last quarter. From the day we signed the deal, which was over eighteen months ago, through this past quarter, and and we we feel that is a really good strong signal that that our customers are happy, our shared customers are happy. We haven't, you know, harmed their experiences. And the fact that we've been able to maintain our our our booking success, our go to market success, our new logo and upsell cross sell revenue trends, the market's responded well to it. So, you know, but from a cost perspective, from a revenue perspective, you know, feel really good about where we're at. Obviously, we're at 47 of 65 to 80, so still a fair amount of work to go in terms of, you know, getting all the savings we can, you know, bringing margin up to where we kind of would expect it to on a blended basis after the synergies. And, obviously, you know, additional benefit as we continue to deleverage the business, we pay down the debt. We've already repriced the debt. So we'll continue to take that cost that cost savings leverage and cash flow generation and leverage that to incremental EPS savings as well. And, Manav, to answer your second part of the question, when I mentioned earlier that from a technology standpoint, we we took a best of breed approach, which is really paying off. We also took a a very, I think, unique approach to putting these companies together from a people standpoint and from a culture standpoint. So one thing we were very smart about doing was realizing that these companies were of equal size. So acquiring Sterling and putting them into an existing First Advantage structure probably would not have worked. So from day one, we took what we call internally as a new co in approach. So, ultimately, we were creating a new company by putting these two companies together, and we actually launched new branding, new comms, new org structures, everything. And that was a nice thing about, you know, having some time to close the deal. We had, you know, literally about ten months or so to close the deal, and we spent that time, you know, really working with experts in the field, m and a field, about how to structure this properly. So we came up with the right org structures. We came up with the right messaging. Like, hey. You know, this is more of a best athlete type approach. So if you for example, if you look at the consumer I mean, the commercial aspects of our business, about 50% of the commercial leaders are from Sterling and 50% from First Advantage. So, you know, we went with, hey. You know, whoever's the best athlete and then, you know, is and is gonna help us for the next part of our journey is is what we're going with here. So I think that sent a great message. And I you're right around culture being, like, the big, you know, potential curveball in m and a any m and a. But as we got under the hood of Sterling, we found people that were just so like first advantage. I mean, it's it's actually been such a great cultural fit story. It we joke all the time. Like, we've we've only been working with some of these people for, like, ten months, but we feel like we've been working with them for years. So I think that's the benefit of when you have two high performing organizations coming together. We we both were focused on customer. We both were focused on growth. We both were focused on product innovation, and that's played really well on making this successful because we're culturally aligned. Got it. Thank you for that. I got to ask the AI question. And and maybe, you know, I I guess the debate is two parts. You know, one is just a broader as some of these big AI bosses have been saying, it could reduce employment by whatever 30% or half. And so if that volume goes away, I guess there's not much you can do. But it's but but my question is more to your well, maybe you have a comment on that as well. But the question is also on, you know, do you see parts of your business that are disruptable? Are you seeing increased competition? Are you disrupting yourself? You know, just those kinds of, comments. So from the first part of it, you know, it's it's interesting. You know, common sense tells us that there's certain industries that should be affected by AI and would have, hence, you know, less need for headcount. BPO, IT services, you know, any type of back office call center type stuff, you know, it just makes sense that, you know, AI would have some impact there. We are not seeing it yet. You know, in fact, when we talk to our customers in that space, they actually are investing because they want to be the AI providers of that. So we are not seeing any slowdown in hiring in those industries that we think are are more susceptible to AI. Inevitably, it may come. It should come. The good news for us is it's it's a small percentage of our business, so we're not at that worried about it. We will also, you know, have some slight modifications to our go to market strategies to make sure we're focusing on industries that are not as disruptible from AI. But the good news is that we're not seeing that headcount reduction in those spaces. And, you know, in fact, you we've got some customers with, you know, with articles out there where they actually have increased hiring because of AI because they're in the investment mode right now. That again, that may change and that should change over the next couple of years. We are not seeing it right now. On your second part of your question, we definitely are not seeing any new competitors because of this. And and I think AI has been an accelerator for us in terms of our sales and marketing advantage because we've been investing in it literally for four plus years. We've got some really good AI initiatives already in flight, and some have been in production for years. So, for example, you know, we always feel that one of the one of the areas that AI can help disrupt in our space in a positive way is verifications. Verifications of employment, verifications of education, and we we invested in what we call smart verifications technology or smart hub technology, which is advanced AI. It's machine learning. It's it's proprietary algorithms that, you know, we update on a continuous basis that that help us do verifications smarter, faster, cheaper. So And that has been in production for, you know, for four plus years. We also use AI in our customer care part of our business where we're interacting with our customers' candidates and applicants and our customers in general. And our customers love it because we have what's called human in the loop AI chat. So for basic questions, like, what's the status of my background check? An AI bot can handle all of that. But if there's any type of question that requires a human to be brought in, our human in the loop technology brings in live agents on the on the spot to help more answer more complicated questions. We also have literally dozens of AI initiatives that are behind the scenes in how we actually perform a background check, whether it's how we get data, whether it's how we interpret data, whether it's how we report that data back. We are using a lot of AI across the back end and clearly seeing productivity improvements and and really quality improvements as well. So we are all in on AI, and we we've been, I think, the the leader in the space in our industry in AI investments. And and keep in mind, you know, we spend about a $130,000,000 a year on tech and innovation. That's a lot of money and and way more than any of our competitors can spend. So this is enabling us to stay ahead of the curve on rolling out new products, modernizing products, bringing AI in, bringing innovation in. So as of right now, AI has been, you know, really, you know, really good for us, and it and it's leading to better candidate and and customer interactions, productivity improvement, and, obviously, margin improvement. Well, it's got think the other the other the other angle on AI that too I and, you I alluded to it before we're talking about digital identity is, know, because we're in the risk management space and AI is just creating new risk for companies, new risk for for organizations, it's creating new opportunity to create new product. Right? That's the the whole the whole reason this digital identity suite of services has become a a real, you know, market size, almost equal to to the background screening size and certainly, you know, poised to outgrow it, you know, from a from a year to year basis. It's because AI is creating new risks, and we're having to come up with new products to respond to it. So that's the whole digital identity suite, and it's kind of the old fight AI with AI. There's a ton of AI built into those digital identity products. And and so that's allowed us to kind of launch new TAM, new market, you know, you know, whole new product suite. So, know, there's obviously, you know you know, pressures, obviously, opportunities, but but we feel like we're like like Scott mentioned, very well positioned to capitalize on this wherever it's possible. Got it. The the other angle to this, Scott, is just the the the data component. Right? And, maybe this is a good segue into asking you to just, maybe familiarize the audience with what and how much data do you currently, you know, own as part of your initiatives? How much of that is proprietary or, you know, at the moment, a tool of efficiency? Yeah. So we have two large proprietary databases, and then we also go to publicly available data, you know, as needed. The two proprietary databases in total have about 90 900,000,000 records. So there's about a 120,000,000 verification records. So that would be where we've done prior verifications for someone on prior employment or their education history. And then the larger database is our historical criminal data file database. So that is where we've done a background check on someone. We we keep, you know, data for a long time. So, you know, we're we're, you know, where it's legal in certain states to keep we keep it for that length of time. And that gives us a, you know, I think, an advantage in the market because we don't we we have an historical file that we can tap into, and we sell that database as an upsell. So it helps us drive some of our upsell revenue. And it's really, I think, a great database in improving the quality of a background check because you're not just relying on public data. You can cross reference it against our historical database, and and and that's an amazing sales advantage for us. And and just maybe to appreciate how proprietary some of your data is, I don't if you could help, you know, with how much of it is available just in your dataset, those kinds of things. Yeah. So on a typical background search, let's just let's just focus on criminal search only. We're we're always going to go out to a public source just to check something, and that could be a federal database, a state database, a county database, a municipal database. There's really hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of databases to potentially hit depending on what the client wants for that background check. And that usually depends on location, role, etcetera. In addition to that, we've got the proprietary databases that we can overlay. So we don't always have to go, like, on a on a verification, for example. We don't always have to go to a public or third party data verifier because we have that data. So that means it's faster, it's cheaper, and it's also a higher margin, you know, which is obviously a win win for everybody. So the proprietary data, consists of, again, employment records where, you know, where someone has worked, education, where they've got degrees from, and historical criminal, data, and that could be, again, federal, state, or county level. Got it. Maybe just specifically on the employment records or the the income verification employment records, and and, you know, you always get the question on, you know, the use of your data versus the use of third party aka Equifax's work number database. So can you just, help us appreciate, I know you talked about in the past, so just, you know, how much of your background checks firstly tap into those datasets, you know, how widely used it is, and just some of the nuances there. Yeah. And just a quick clarifier. We do not do income verification, so that's something that our clients never ask us for. What they do ask us for is verification of employment, verification of education. Now keep in mind that only 20% of our orders actually ask for verification. Because in some instances, like, you're doing a, you know, a a retail clerk, you know, hiring position, you you you don't really care where they went to high school or college or whatever. So 20% of the orders do have verification. And, typically, if you're verifying your employment, you're also verifying education. This goes back to that smart hub technology that we talked about earlier. So every single verification order that comes to us goes first to our smart hub technology. And and you can probably the easiest way to think of that is that it's a really smart router. So that router, which is loaded with, you know, proprietary algorithms and and state of the art tech, is is discerning what is the best, fastest, cheapest source to verify that prior employment or that education. The first place that we obviously want to go is our own database. A 120,000,000 records, hit that first. The second place we're looking to go is is, you know, cheapest third parties. And if they don't have it, then it ultimately could also click over to a manual, which if if no database has it, we go to a manual effort where we're contacting employers or or universities or whatever. But the technology has been improving dramatically. So about 60% of verification orders that come in today are what we call avoiding high higher cost third party sources. So they're either being fulfilled by our own database, by a cheaper third party database, or by a manual effort. You know, we're we we are good partners with Equifax and the work number, and they do have a a a great database. So we do go there when needed, but it's expensive. And and we're in business to help our customers keep keep their budgets down, you know, and get things as fast and as cheap as possible. So that's why we've been focusing on so much innovation in the verification spaces of it. So we can really, from a sales standpoint and a service standpoint, give our customers really what they're looking for and what no other competitor can offer. Got it. I know we have about ten minutes left, so let me run through a few other questions that have come in. So the first one is just broadly on the international strategy. You touched that on a little bit earlier. I think it's about 15% or so of revenues today. You know, is is that an area where you will become bigger as a percentage of revenue via acquisitions? Because presumably, US will still keep growing. Or what's the ambition, I guess, in terms of international? How should we think about that? So let's let's define international first. So when you think about international business, it it's really three main markets. It's it's Europe. It's it's Asia, and it's India. And within Asia, it's it's primarily Australia. So we lump together Canada, US, and the and South America, Latin America into what we call the Americas business. So our international business, as you mentioned, it's about 14% of our overall revenue. It's it's got a lot of growth potential, but let's let's remember that The US is huge. It's it's it's advanced in terms of adoption of risk management technology. It's advanced in terms of compliance, adherence, and things like that. So The US is always going to be, you know, a large percentage of our revenue. You know, will 14% grow to a larger number? Yes. But will it ever ever be more than eighty twenty? I doubt it. Okay. Because I think The US will continue to grow and grow and grow. From an international standpoint, there's not a lot of m and a that's worthwhile. There's not a lot of big players internationally, and it doesn't make any sense to go out and buy, you know, this a smaller regional player because we're just winning, you know, so so nicely in international. And if you look at our international results over, you know, let's let's say even the last year, international has been real positive growth results over the last year. So I think couple things lead to that. One is international was the first to go down, you know, in when the economy started to struggle a bit, and they are now the first to come back. Second, comps got a lot easier. Third, we really have a nice offering. You know, we've got really nice platforms for those regions. They're all built with, you know, with hard coded compliance. You know? So, like, from a GDPR standpoint or whatever regional compliance laws are, they're built into that platform, make our customers feel really comfortable that they're doing compliant checks in those region regions. And, you know, our our growth strategies, our commercial teams, our our our go to market strategies have have all really done well. So we're seeing good growth at it, especially UK, India, and Australia. Those are the real drivers of the growth internationally. I think that, you know, good things will continue to happen internationally. Again, I don't expect it to be ever be, you know, ever be more than an eighty twenty type of situation, and I don't foresee m and a. I just see a lot of organic growth. Got it. And then maybe to round this up, capital allocation priorities, how should we think about that over the next, let's just say, two to three years? Well, I'll kinda break it into two pieces. Right? Obviously, with with the acquisition, we we levered up a little bit just to be able to to to purchase Sterling. You know, until we get our leverage back towards our target range, our long term target range is still two to three times net leverage. Our focus from a capital allocation is, you know, continuing to integrate the business and get the synergies and then deleverage the business. So we've already started that. We've already, you know, voluntarily prepaid $40,000,000 of the debt over the last couple of quarters. As I mentioned before, we priced the debt already and brought that borrowing rate down by 50 basis points. So we feel like we're making really good strides. And, obviously, as we continue to capitalize on those synergies, that'll just help accelerate that deleveraging trend. So, you know, we think it'll take us roughly through the end of next year, through the 2026 to get that leverage right to to towards that three times, that top end of our range. You know, beyond that, it's it's harder to say. Like, you know, Scott, you know, like Scott was mentioning, we'll be offered you know, it's obviously strategic and opportunistic when when that time comes. You know? But until then, our really, our focus is, know, get the synergies, integrate the business, you know, retain our customers, grow, you know, grow organically, and then, you know, continue with that deleverage journey, which obviously will yield yield through EPS benefits like I talked about, you know, probably at the onset there. Got it. Okay. Scott and Steven, we're out of time here. So maybe I'll I'll I'll leave by handing the floor over to you guys in terms of, you know I I think I tried to lead, from the front and trying to help appreciate, that the efforts you guys are making, the algorithm you guys have is more than just kind of a macro volume play. But, you know, I think the stock still trades like that. So maybe just over to you in terms of, you know, what you think investors are are still missing in the story. Yeah. Steven and I will tag team on this one a little bit, but I think there's a couple things. One, you know, we really need to be seen as a software and data company. That's what we sell. And, you know, with that comes, you know, a lot of of benefits of being, you know, sticky in our space. So it's it's a when when you see our technology, you know, demoed, you're like, wow. It's it's incredible. It's state of the art technology that, you know, HR compliance, legal, talent acquisition organizations across the world use on a on a daily basis. It's highly scalable in terms of it can handle, you know, large transactions. We do, you know, a 190,000,000 screens per year through our platform so it can handle velocity and and volume. I think, you know, the numbers are great. You know, think about, you know, how many companies are out there with, you know, our top line, our EBITDA, free cash flow, you know, you know, place in the market in terms of being the category leader. There's there's a lot of good things going on here, and I'll throw it over to Steven to to point out the things that I've missed. Yeah. No. I I think, Scott, the only the only thing I would add is I think I think one piece that that's often overlooked in our story is, look, we've got a like like we've talked about, a great a great resilient and stable long term growth model, a real path to increase profitability through the synergy program. You know, gross margins are just under 50%. So as we scale up revenue, it falls through incrementally to the bottom line as well and get more leverage there. And then certainly, as we you know, if if this has been an industry and a business that you you can generate a lot of free cash flow if you run your business right, and we've got a really strong history of doing that at First Advantage, high quality of earnings, high free cash flow conversion. But as we execute on that game plan, you know, over the next couple of years and deleverage our balance sheet, you get such an incremental benefit to your to your EPS line item. So I think there's a a lot of a lot of potential for real shareholder value creation, You know? And our business model sets us out really well to capitalize on that. You know, it it's a it's a two year plus so journey to get us into those target ranges. And as we're doing that, the incremental benefits mathematically to a GPS, which is great. So I think it's that's a piece that's just sometimes overlooked. It's just, you know, you got all the benefits of synergies, of scale, of revenue growth, of the of the algorithm, things like that. Compound that with the deleveraging trend, and you have a really nice setup for for a really positive story. Got it. Super helpful. Well, thank you guys again for your time. Appreciate, you joining us this year, and hope to have you back, next year. Otherwise, see you next week at the financials conference. We're looking forward to doing it in person. Yeah. Thanks for the time. Guys. Yep. Bye. Yep. Take care. Bye.