Alrighty. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking the time with us. It's a pleasure to kick off our latest Water on Wall Street conference, yet again with NAWC this year. We're joined this morning by Dennis Doll, Chair, President, CEO of Middlesex Water Company. He's gonna walk through a brief presentation here. We invite many of your comments and questions on email, chat, whatever venue you see appropriate. Again, throughout the course of the day, this applies as well. But if there's anything you'd like to see differently here in terms of logistics, let us know. We've got a whole staff on hand here to help us out. But with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Dennis to go through the presentation. Good morning to you, and thank you for kicking us off this morning. appreciate the opportunity to connect with you yet again. With that, please feel free to go ahead. I think the slides are rolling on everyone else's side. All right. Well, thank you, Julian. Thank you, Bank of America, for hosting us this morning. Also, thanks to all of you for your interest in Middlesex Water Company. Hopefully, we have some interesting things to share with you. As Julian indicated, I'll go through a brief slide presentation, and then we'll take some Q&A. With that, I'll first start with the obligatory forward-looking statement, as everyone is well familiar with. Just a high-level snapshot of our company, established in 1897. You can see some current metrics, our market cap, average trading volumes. You'll notice that there's a pretty wide range in the stock price over the past 12 months, which is pretty extraordinary. You can see the dividend yield and diluted earnings per share on a 12-month trailing basis. The focus that we implement within our company day in and day out, you can see that list of bullet points. Those are obviously critical areas relative to any public utility. I won't read them in detail, but you can see that they're all pretty relevant. They're pretty important, and they are a number of things that we balance day in and day out. That block at the bottom there, that reference to blocking and tackling, we think that's pretty critical for our business because it really is the lifeblood of what we do as a regulated water utility. We continually upgrade and replace our utility infrastructure. We continually finance that capital program. We receive timely and adequate rate recovery, and we repeat that process. With all the regulated utilities in our consolidated portfolio, they are each within different parts of that cycle at any given point in time. Then you can see over to the lower right there, the core values of our company. Those are the values that we live and breathe every day. I continue to say, we don't like to just portray them as a flashy graphic. We really do work hard to put the meaning behind those words and to ensure that we live those values day in and day out. Surprisingly or not surprisingly, many times when we're faced with a decision, a business decision of any kind, we do need to refer back to those values to say, what is the right thing to do? We do use that as a guiding principle. Some recent developments. We were added back in June of 2021 to the S&P SmallCap 600 index, which we do believe contributed fairly significantly to the uptick in the stock price. Much more interest in our company from a broad range of investors, which was really helpful. We closed recently on a bond refinancing deal, $45 million of outstanding bonds at a reduced interest rate. We do have some relatively recent legislation in New Jersey affecting our New Jersey operations, where you can see requiring public utilities, community water systems to inventory and replace lead service lines within a ten-year period. This is in addition to what we're focused on relative to the US EPA's recent upgrade or changes to the Lead and Copper Rule. We're integrating those two initiatives to ensure that we can fully comply with both at the state and the federal level. We did announce recently that we are selling our regulated wastewater utility to another wastewater provider in the state of Delaware for a variety of strategic reasons, which we believe will be ultimately in the best long-term benefit of customers and our shareholders. That closing may slide beyond December thirty-first, but we're still working through the final details to bring that over the finish line. We do have regulatory approval for that transaction, but there's obviously a number of operational details that we need to work through to effect that closing. We recently completed a brand new ozone treatment facility at our largest water treatment plant in New Jersey. You can see that the snapshot of that building. It looks relatively unassuming, but I can assure you there's an awful lot of infrastructure, not only in that building, but underground, which supports it. You wouldn't think that that would be a $72 million project just looking at it, but it is an enormous undertaking and was successfully completed. We are now treating primarily with ozone as the primary disinfectant in the water treatment process. Our ReNew program, which we've spoken about many times before, in its 26th year. This is something that we do year in and year out to upgrade and replace infrastructure, largely in the form of pipe replacement. In recent years, or historically, we had been doing mostly main cleaning and lining. Now, based upon the age of the mains and other factors, we are doing more pipe replacement than main cleaning and lining. We do this year in and year out to ensure that we can continually maintain the infrastructure as needed. We're also at that final bullet point on the bottom there. We are locating meters out of customers' homes into pits, exterior pits for a couple of reasons. Largely to ensure that we can get access when we need to help identify leakage when it occurs and so forth. New PFAS regulations. Certainly, I think most are aware at this point that the U.S. EPA does not yet regulate PFAS, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. However, we do believe regulations are coming in the not too distant future. New Jersey, State of New Jersey, has adopted a stringent regulation relative to PFAS. We do have that issue at one of our well treatment facilities in New Jersey, and we are working with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection to remediate that issue, in addition to the fact that we have a very large project that has been in the works for several years now to ensure that we can fully comply with those new regulations. We do believe we have identified the polluter that has contributed to the PFAS in that well field facility. We had filed a lawsuit several years ago against that alleged polluter, and that is working its way through the courts as we speak. Some recent governance highlights. We've added a couple of new directors in the last 12 months. You see in the upper right there, Dr. Joshua Bershad, M.D. He joined the company, the board in December 2020. Really extraordinary individual, very thoughtful, very expert at approaching problems from a different perspective, which is really healthy and really helpful to our board. We also added Vaughn McKoy in July 2021, an attorney and an entrepreneur, also a very thoughtful individual. It's just great to have such diversity of thought across our board, which these two individuals really complement the board well, and we're really grateful for their willingness to serve and looking forward to the future with their participation. You can see in the lower left there, we did issue our most recent, our latest corporate sustainability report, which was updated from the report that we had issued previously that was put out in October 2021. A wealth of information in that report relative to what the company is doing on a variety of fronts regarding sustainability, ESG, and a number of other factors. We did adopt an expanded code of conduct, which does include guidelines for board and supplier conduct in August 2021. Our governance processes continued to evolve and mature as they would in any organization. We're really grateful for the changes that we've made and implemented relative to corporate governance. Touch on some financial highlights. You can see that revenues at $141 million for 2020. This is the most recent full year. Net income at $38.4 million and diluted earnings per share at $2.18 per share. Most recent 10-Q issued for the third quarter of 2021. You can see operating revenues there at $109 million compared to $106.9 for the prior period, and then also the metrics associated with changes in O&M, net income, and diluted earnings per share, again on a nine-month basis. A brief snapshot of our revenue profile. The breakdown on the right between the regulated and the non-regulated. You can see that New Jersey still continues to be the lion's share of the regulated revenue, although Delaware is catching up with all the growth that's occurring down there. You can see that, the profile, the breakout between the two. What we call the non-regulated revenue, the non-regulated business, even though it's regulated relative to environmental requirements with U.S. EPA and state environmental agencies, the non-regulated is the contract operations business, where we're providing operation and maintenance services for municipal governments and other contract commercial operations. That comprises about 9% of our total revenue profile. Operating revenues on the regulated side broken down a bit further. You can see on the residential class that Delaware is coming relatively close to the New Jersey operations, largely because of all of the organic growth that continues to occur in the Delaware operation. Over on the left-hand side, you can see the breakdown by customer class across commercial, industrial, contract sales. Contract sales includes long-term wholesale contracts that we have with municipal entities who are physically interconnected with our operations in New Jersey. Then on the net income side, you can see the breakdown as well. Contract operations contributing to non-regulated about 6% to the total net income profile. On the regulated side, you can see that New Jersey is at $23 million and Delaware at $13 million. Retail customers, largely residential customers. You can see that the growth that we've experienced over time in our Delaware operations from 2018, you can see from the 2021 estimate a 5% growth rate for 2021. Looking beyond 2021, you can see that we believe that organic growth, that retail growth, has continued to be assumed to be very healthy. That's based on water service agreements that we have executed with developers and other information that we have relative to what the plans are for development in different communities throughout Delaware. As we've said many times before, Delaware is a great growth area. It's an area that people like to retire to. A lot of people have vacation homes there. It's close to the beach. It's close to the airports. People can be close to their families. Just a phenomenal environment for lifestyle and growth. You can see that again, those projections are continuing to be moving well into the future. On the utility plant front in Delaware, you can see the investments we've been making since 2018, and those numbers continue to increase year on year. 2023 is obviously the further out you go, the less certain we are of the projections as we continue to refine the capital program and identify the projects that are creating the most critical need. What's really interesting about Delaware when I joined the company, there was a lot of disparate systems, small systems scattered throughout, largely the southern two-thirds of the state to lower counties in Delaware, Kent and Sussex. During that time, we have continued to interconnect a variety of our systems into larger regional type systems. Even though there's still a fair number of smaller plants that are independent, over time, we continue to combine them, which creates operational efficiencies, redundancy and a variety of other factors that benefit customers. Utility plant, New Jersey, again, being one of the older systems, there's no shortage of activity and no shortage of infrastructure upgrade and replacement need. You can see what those numbers have been since 2018. Our 2021 projections at $61 million, and going forward into 2022 and 2023. Again, we continue to refine those estimates. These numbers are not locked in stone yet, but we do continue to ensure that we have not only a one year capital budget, but a five year capital program to ensure that we know what is coming in terms of future regulation, in terms of infrastructure needs. All of our utility plan investments are based on a risk-based approach. We determine where's the greatest need, what are the greatest risks relative to service quality, whether it be water quality or the reliability of the distribution system. It's a very thoughtful, very analytical process as to about where we spend money and when we spend it. We did file in May 2021 for a base rate increase in New Jersey. You can see that the numbers there with utility plant since 2017 has grown substantially. You can see that the increase that we've requested at $31.3 million, a pretty substantial increase. You can also see from that chart that it's largely utility plant related. Certainly, the more utility plant you put in place, the more depreciation you have. Some marginal increase in operating expenses since that last case. The rate increase request relative to the utility plant investments is at $18.7 million. Clearly largely driven by the capital needs. How do we finance the projects and the program? As I indicated before, this is one element of that blocking and tackling approach. We finance the program, the capital program, on a short-term basis with short-term bank lines of credit. You can see that we have $110 million in lines, which is a pretty healthy number to sustain us for the short term. Then we take that out over a period of time with a combination of long-term debt and equity, with the approach to ensure that we keep that capital structure largely on a 50/50 basis, debt and equity, in order for rate making purposes. Then we have up to a $20 million private placement loan, proceeds from a $20 million CoBank loan. CoBank is an organization that we use to fund the capital program in Delaware. We have the proceeds from a Middlesex Water Company Investment Plan or dividend reinvestment plan. We did open the window for a discount relative to the investment plan recently to help ensure that we can get a little bit more equity in through that process, as opposed to going directly out for a secondary offering. We know dividends are important to our shareholders, and we know that our shareholders are largely focused in the utility business, the regulated utility business, on a dividend. We've been increasing the dividend over the last 49 years. We are committed to growing the dividend. However, we evaluate that decision every year relative to sustaining it and growing it. We do have a target payout ratio to keep the dividend ratio below 70%. You can see from that graph that it's currently at about 48%. We still have a fair amount of room relative to the payout ratio. Again, it's our hope to continue to grow the dividend over time, but we do evaluate that decision on an annual basis based upon what's going on with the rest of the profile. That's the conclusion of the brief overview relative to company operations, the capital program, the growth opportunities. Happy to take whatever questions the group has at this time. Julian, I'll hand it back to you. All righty. Excellent. Well, thank you so much, Dennis. Really appreciate the opportunity to connect here. Let me just kick it off with one consistent question today I'm gonna ask everyone, and that is, you know, can you define a little bit about the total return opportunity to investors? How would you frame return? I mean, clearly you've got a dividend growth historically north of 6%, pretty consistent track record at that. Just kind of thinking about the prospective opportunity. Obviously, you've got a lot of latitude relative to your dividend payout ratio targets, et cetera. Can you speak about both the total return from an earnings and earnings accretion as well as sort of a dividend and dividend growth perspective? Sure. Well, I think I covered the company's philosophy and our plans relative to dividend growth. Obviously, you know, the stock price, we've had a pretty healthy run over the past 12 months. As we all well know, investors are grateful for that performance, but they also wanna know, okay, what are you gonna do for me tomorrow? That obviously gets to the focus on increasing earnings per share. Well, what drives increases in earnings per share? Clearly growth opportunity on the revenue side, both revenue and the bottom line. Then you get into the whole aspect of M&A, which we believe there are a substantial number of opportunities, both largely in the New Jersey operation, but also some in the Delaware operation. With respect to some recent changes that have occurred, which I've spoken about previously, in New Jersey, one in particular, the Water Quality Accountability Act, which we see as driving more and more municipal entities to reconsider whether or not they wanna stay in the utility business. The requirements of the Water Quality Accountability Act are pretty defined and could be somewhat onerous for some entities who aren't fully prepared to comply with all of those provisions of that law. We see that as an opportunity. The Water Infrastructure Protection Act is another one, that is, has been in place since 2015 in New Jersey, but again is not yet been used, as it relates to acquisitions. We do believe that is going to also be driving some consolidation in the industry in New Jersey. Certainly acquisitions of other potentially investor-owned systems. There aren't a lot of them, at least not of any scale, but nonetheless, there are some opportunities out there that we'll be focused on. The M&A activity combined with revenue growth, and one of the key drivers will continue to be in our company, both in our New Jersey and Delaware operations, is investments in utility plant. I don't see that changing anytime soon. Obviously, investments in utility plant which drive customers' rate increases does put upward pressure on rates. You get into the whole issue of affordability and at what point is water service no longer affordable. No one has the answer to that question. As a precious resource which is required to not only sustain life but for our everyday needs, you know, what is the right price to put on the cost of water service? We are sensitive to that issue, and we are certainly always looking at opportunities to mitigate the impact on customers. Excellent. I mean, maybe just let me hit that a little even more directly. I mean, how do you think about this payout ratio being as low as it is? I mean, is there a thought process to raise the dividend to kind of more squarely align with perhaps peer payout ratios? Understanding that, as you say, I mean, you all have a growth rate that's pretty meaningful, and I'm also listening to you and talking about M&A to try to accelerate, you know, your underlying rate base growth even further, as far as I can tell. Well, when we look at the dividend payout ratio, certainly we look at the peer group and what the rest of the world is doing, but we also know that we have to do what makes the most sense for our company. As we all know, the total return from any of the companies in the peer group is a combination of whatever their dividend growth is and revenue growth, you know, bottom line growth. They're all different in that regard. Of course, we look at the peer group, but it's not the deciding factor as to what we do relative to dividend growth, at least not the only factor. Got it. Excellent. Now, can you talk a little bit about just what that pace of bill inflation is? You just talked about it a second ago. You alluded to it a moment ago. You know, what have you seen? What has transpired in recent years amongst your customers? What are you thinking about prospectively? Then also let's put this bill affordability in the context overall as well. I think that's important to mention here too. Well, given the scope of our capital program for the foreseeable future, it is quite likely we will be in requesting base rate increases, certainly in our New Jersey operations, on a pretty routine basis. We had typically been in for rates about every two to three years, 2.5 to three years. That cycle will likely not change materially in the foreseeable future, given the investment needs that we have. Again, it gets back to what is the level at which customers' bills are no longer affordable. There are certainly programs that are evolving relative to assisting customers where in certain areas water services may be less affordable than others. State of New Jersey hasn't been as aggressive as some states relative to those programs, but I do believe there'll be more of those assistance programs coming in the not too distant future. Separate from that, it's really about the relationship you have with your regulators and your consumer advocates and your customers to ensure that they understand what the needs are, why those investments are being made, why those investments are critical for sustainability of service, for reliability, for water quality. I find when we get in front of a crowd, whether it's a public hearing or a public meeting, where we're portraying what the company is doing relative to the infrastructure, people get it. They seem willing to pay for things that they understand are going to improve quality and maintain quality. Where they have little or no knowledge of what your plans are, it's a little bit harder for them to get their head around why rate increases are necessary. You know, as you might expect, it's very difficult to spend a lot of time in person in front of people, given the size of our customer base, but we do it where we can and where we think it's appropriate. Excellent. Thank you. Perhaps just keep going here, if you don't mind. I mean, how do you think about M&A, right? I mean, you talked about it. I think you've alluded to it several times here. You know, how do you think about both acquisitions and divestments and sort of portfolio optimization? How do you think across state lines, et cetera? Just all together. I'll leave it to you to respond. Well, one of the things that I've been pretty clear on over time is we're not going to invest in businesses where we are not knowledgeable enough about how to make money in them, first of all. We're going to use the phrase, "stick to our knitting," do the things that we do best. That doesn't mean we're not open to other opportunities that would be complementary to the core utility business. We will certainly continue to evaluate things as we do on an ongoing basis that could be a good fit for us. Even though the footprint of the company presently is New Jersey and Delaware, we are open to other opportunities in other states where they make sense. If we don't have a competitive advantage or frankly, there's a competitive disadvantage, we're certainly not going to go into places where we would have to compete head to head with another entity who has a more substantial presence already, whether that be operationally, politically, regulatory-wise. We have to be really smart about it. That doesn't mean that we're not open to the ideas. Frankly, in the past, when we had looked at other ideas, we have looked at proposals. We've had proposals in place in a variety of states for different kinds of operations. California, Texas, Florida, Virginia, Maryland. We're no stranger to competing for business in different states, again, where it makes sense. There will probably continue to be consolidation across the industry. Many believe that there are many smaller systems that really need to be consolidated for both service quality and financial purposes. We're quite open to those opportunities, but they've got to be a good fit for our shareholders and for our customers. Now, you've talked about a long pathway for investment, and obviously you've seen that tracker could play out. There are a few new factors here that we're talking about. There's relatively new legislation in New Jersey, you know, relating to lead service lines, et cetera, as well as separately and discreetly, the prospects of having, you know, PFAS enter into the picture a little bit more. Now, again, I think at the outset, you identified that, you know, New Jersey has, you know, probably fairly meaningful standards already, and you're already addressing PFAS. Maybe can you tackle both, you know, what does this mean in terms of legislation writ large, especially the New Jersey piece? What does PFAS compliance mean, especially considering the compliance program that I think I heard you talking about, you know, sort of finalizing and putting together, at least in the context of the specific site in New Jersey? Well, when it comes to PFAS or any other contaminant, generally we can treat for just about anything if you spend enough money. You know, it really comes down to what the source of supply and how important is it to the total production profile. Again, we have one well field that is impacted by PFAS, which is not an inconsequential portion of our source of supply. We have a pretty substantial project underway to address that. We don't see it anywhere else in our system at any level of detection other than that one well field, and we're on it. We have a project well underway which will be complete by mid-2023 to ensure that we are in full compliance with New Jersey's recently enacted regulations regarding PFAS. You know, the rest of the infrastructure, certainly making sure that we are well aware of what, I guess the phrase these days is emerging constituents. It used to be emerging contaminants. Making sure that we're well ahead of where regulation is going to the extent we can be. Recognizing in New Jersey, we were ahead of it as far as we could be relative to what we knew and when we knew it. Given the source of supply and the size of that project, it was important that we start early. Again, it's a very expensive, very large project, which is taking many years to complete or several years to complete. When it comes to regulation, you gotta be ahead of it. We network pretty closely with the American Water Works Association, with the Water Research Foundation. We pay very close attention to what's coming down the road. As I indicated a number of times, no shortage of infrastructure needs relative to water quality and redundancy and maintenance of the distribution system. Absolutely. Thank you again, Dennis. If I can, how do you think about the sort of the non-rate sort of rate-based side non-regulated investments here? You know, I know that you've got a very small portion there. How do you think about that over time? I mean, we see all one of your you know water peers kinda make a move back towards becoming fully regulated here. Can you talk about what exactly that modest portion of your net income is? I think it was roughly, I think you said 6% or something. Can you speak: A, to, you know, sort of what that is and what your thoughts are as a composition of the business into the future here? Yeah. Great, great question. Well, we made a decision a number of years ago, and as you correctly stated, Julian, others in the peer group have made different strategic decisions relative to their involvement with contract operations, in particular, one element of the non-regulated business. We concluded a number of years ago, based upon our size, based upon our footprint, that it's important for us to be in that business. It's been quite profitable for us, frankly. We've got one 20 year long-term contract with a municipality which is the largest contract in that portfolio. We have another with the ten-year horizon. It you know, really depends on what the ultimate customer wants to accomplish. When we go and we have a conversation with a municipal entity who is contemplating their future or the future of their utility operations, we don't go in with any predetermined conclusion about what the business model needs to look like. We ask a lot of questions, and we try to figure out what makes the most sense for them. As you might be aware, and some of our viewers might be aware, that politically it can be very challenging to outright sell a municipal water utility to a for-profit entity, investor-owned entity such as Middlesex Water Company. That comes with a lot of political implications. It comes with a number of concerns raised by activist groups, and so that whole perception of public versus private, and should public utilities be in the hands of private entities like ours. The point of that is we go in asking, "What's the problem you wanna solve?" If it's not politically palatable for an outright sale, we're happy to do it under a contract. Obviously, the longer the term of the contract, the better opportunity to mitigate rate impacts, especially where there's a significant capital component required. What's also pretty important relative to the contract operations, we don't invest any of our own capital other than our own, you know, incidental things for vehicles and some equipment. Infrastructure upgrades and replacements are all the responsibility to be financed by the municipal entity. We certainly work with them. We manage their capital program for them for a fee, an additional fee, but it's theirs to finance. We make recommendations. We keep them in compliance with regulations, and we manage the day-to-day operations. The point of all that is we can provide a variety of options to a municipal entity, and frankly, but we also have to make sure that we can do it profitably because when you're doing it under a long-term basis, you have to have really good insight into your cost structure and your ability to maintain that cost structure over the long term, recognizing that the revenue increases to our company are based upon a contract. They're not based upon a regulated utility commission. We think it's a good fit in the portfolio. We're doing quite well with it, and we're certainly open to doing more of it. Excellent. Well, I mean, to that point, I mean, it sounds like that will remain a consistent part of the business. I mean, have you leveraged this non-regulated effort, if you will, in helping others manage or municipalities manage their business into eventually positioning and acquisitions? Has that been sort of a source of pipeline for small acquisitions at all, or could that be into the future as you think about it? Well, you know, it's interesting. It's I view it as a good news, bad news story. The good news is we're providing phenomenal service to these entities. The bad news is, because the quality of the service is so good, they don't see a need to make a change relative to the business model. The point being that those political issues relative to an outright sale don't go away, even though some have told me privately they'd be happy to have us own their system, but they just can't do it politically, at least not under the current conditions. Yeah, we just provide good service wherever we can, and if and when the municipal entity determines that they ultimately want to sell, we believe it's ours to lose because they know us, they trust us, and we've been providing good service for a very long time. Yeah. Indeed, I hear you. Can you talk a little bit more about this ReNew program and just, you know, how that fits into the capital budget at all? I mean, I know this is one of the programs that you were touting within, you know, your opening comments here. If you could speak to it a little bit more specifically here. Yeah. Well, we've been doing it for getting close to 50 years now, and it really is. Or I'm sorry, 26 years. It really is a phenomenal program in terms of investing year in and year out. I mean, many different utilities take a different approach to how they invest their capital in terms of how you time it relative to your rate increase requests. We do it year in and year out, based upon the need. Part of that need is now being further driven by things like the Water Quality Accountability Act relative to maintaining, you know, pipe, replacing pipe within a certain timeframe and with a certain age of pipe. But analytically, we look at it from a risk-based approach year in and year out. Where is this most significant need? What are the consequences to customers, potential consequences by not replacing pipe or doing main cleaning and lining? We just do it year in and year out. Every year, we choose where we're going to focus the program, how many miles of mains are going to be affected, how many fire hydrants are going to be replaced, how many service lines are going to be replaced. It's pretty disruptive to customers, frankly. We tear up the streets for a number of months and put many of them on bypass for a period of time, and so getting to and from their homes can be a bit disruptive. In the end, when we're all finished, it looks we repave the road, it looks beautiful, and we've been able to sustain their service for the foreseeable future. Excellent. Thank you. Maybe if I can just keep pushing on this one. You know, another consistent question is, you know, given how small some of the water companies across the publicly traded side still are, right? We talk about municipal acquisitions a lot. How do you think about public consolidation here, just given the number of smaller companies relative to the size of the other gas and electric peers out there? When you say public companies, you mean publicly traded companies? Yes. Sorry. I apologize. Indeed. Well, as I think most are well aware, the universe of publicly traded water and wastewater utilities is relatively small, at least certainly compared to when I joined this industry a number of years ago. You know, one of the things I always say is our company, being a publicly traded entity, has a fiduciary obligation to the shareholder. We work for the shareholder, and if and when someone wants to acquire our company, we certainly have to take it seriously. It's not about entrenching management, it's about what's in the best long-term interest for the shareholder. We take the same approach when we would look at other publicly traded entities. Again, being one of the smaller ones, it's certainly we are not likely to be an acquirer of something substantially larger than our company, but you never know how conditions can change, and it's all about valuation, obviously. You need to make sure that it's accretive to earnings. You need to make sure that you can manage it effectively. I expect there will, over time, be more consolidation in the publicly traded space. There has been some in recent years, but it's certainly not moving at any great speed. It's all about what's in the best interest of shareholders and obviously customers. Getting regulatory approval of those deals is no small thing. The regulators wanna make sure their customers are adequately served and protected. That comes with a fair number of requirements just to achieve regulatory approval. It'll be interesting to see how it evolves in the coming years. Indeed. I very much hear that. Well, listen, we're almost at time here. I wanna give you an opportunity to speak to anything else that, you know, frankly, didn't come up in the Q&A or that you would flag yourself. I mean, I think you've been pretty articulate about your own specific prospects, and the processes there and underlying it. Anything you'd wanna conclude with here? I'll just say thank you to those who are viewing for your continued interest in Middlesex Water Company. I've been with this company 17 years. I just think it's a great place to serve customers and serve shareholders. We believe good work for both. We continue to evolve just like anyone does, not only in the publicly traded space, but also in the privately held entities as well. We continue to learn and grow relative to ESG, relative to customers' expectations, shareholders' expectations. Again, I would point people to look at that 2021 corporate sustainability report, which has a wealth of information about our company and our philosophy and how we approach our business and how we approach serving customers and shareholders. I'll just, you know, thank the group for your continued interest in our company, and we look forward to delivering for you more and more into the future. Thank you. Excellent. Thank you, Dennis, so very much. For others viewing on the line here, do note that our 9 A.M. presentation was canceled. We'll catch up with you here in 45 minutes. Outside of that, thank you so much again, Dennis. We'll speak to you soon. Hopefully catch you next year or otherwise, if there's anything else that materializes. All the best to you, sir. Thank you, Julian.