Hello, and welcome to the Ashtead Interims Analyst call. Please note this call is being recorded. You will be in a listen-only mode throughout the call and have the opportunity to ask questions at the end. This can be done by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. I will now hand you over to CEO Brendan Horgan to begin today's conference. Please go ahead, sir. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our half-year results call. I'm here with Michael Pratt and Will Shaw in our London office. Today's update will detail our strong performance in the period, review our outlook for the balance of the year, detail the latest end market forecast, and cover, of course, the execution of our strategic growth plan, Sunbelt 3.0, which, from a timing standpoint, we're actually at the halfway mark. Before getting into the slides, I'd like to speak to our Sunbelt team members throughout the business to thank them for their engagement. We recently completed our latest engagement survey, which garnered an extraordinary response from over 18,000 of our colleagues throughout the organization. The response rate alone is impressive. However, more so is the cultural feedback around topics such as safety, family, belonging, and customer focus. Another example of engagement is the success of our 10th annual Safety Week, held across the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. This year was the week of October third, as I witnessed firsthand in many branch locations and through the countless posts via our internal engagement app, our people were not just present, they were engaged. Whether it's events like Safety Week or working together as a team to respond to natural disasters like Hurricane Ian or servicing any one of our thousands of customers every day, I am ever grateful for the way that you all show up. Thank you. Keep leading positively and safely out there and stay focused on people, people, customer, customer. With that, let's move on to highlights on slide three. Conditions are strong and the business is performing very well, delivering another period of strong revenue and earnings growth in end markets which I will characterize as ongoing high demand. When combined with a clearer and more improved outlook, ongoing market dynamics supporting structural advancement and our position of financial strength, these conditions are as favorable for our business as I've ever witnessed. In the half, group rental revenues increased 26%, while the US improved 28% on top of strong growth a year ago. These revenue gains are the principal drivers, of course, of PBT and EPS growth, which was 28% and 32% respectively. During the half, we continued to advance our Sunbelt 3.0 plan, doing so by executing on all our capital allocation priorities, beginning with nearly $1.7 billion in CapEx, a notable increase in pace from Q1, which fueled our existing locations and greenfield additions with new rental fleet and delivery vehicles. We expanded our North America footprint by 72 locations, 34 through greenfield openings and 38 via bolt-on acquisition. Further invested $609 million in bolt-on acquisitions in the half and returned $206 million to shareholders through buybacks. We announced today our interim dividend of $0.15 per share, which is a 20% increase on last year's interim. Despite these levels of growth, capital investment, acquisition, and returns to shareholders, we remain near the bottom of our net debt to EBITDA leverage range at 1.6 times. These activities demonstrate our confidence in the ongoing health of our end markets and the fundamental strength in our cash-generating growth model. With this performance and outlook, we now expect full-year results to be ahead of our previous expectations. Let's move on to the outlook on slide four. Recognizing the performance and momentum in the business, we increase our full-year rental revenue guidance versus last year as follows: We now anticipate the US to be in the 20%-23% growth range. Canada increases to growth of 22%-25%, and the UK improves to a flat outlook. Gross CapEx is unchanged, maintaining a range of $3.3 billion-$3.6 billion, of which $2.7 billion-$3 billion will be in new rental fleet. Also unchanged is free cash flow of circa $300 million. On that note, I'll hand it over to Michael, who will cover the financials in more detail. Michael? Thanks, Brendan, and good morning. The group's results for the six months are shown on slide six. We had a strong quarter and hence 6 months with good momentum across the business. This momentum drove strong growth in the U.S. and Canada, while U.K. rental revenue grew slightly despite all the Department of Health testing sites being demobilized in the first quarter. Group rental revenue increased 26% on a constant currency basis. This growth was delivered with strong margins and EBITDA margin of 47% and an operating profit margin of 29%. Adjusted pre-tax profit increased 28% to $1.243 billion and adjusted earnings per share were $2.12 for the 6 months. Turning now to the businesses. Slide 7 shows the performance in the U.S. Rental and related revenue for the six months was 28% higher than last year at $3.8 billion. This has been driven by a combination of volume and rate improvement in what continues to be a favorable demand and supply environment. The strong activity and favorable rate environment have enabled us to pass through the inflation we've seen in our cost base, both in general, as well as in the direct cost related to ancillary revenues such as fuel, transportation, and erection and dismantling, which are growing at a higher rate than pure rental. These ancillary revenues generate a lower margin than the pure rental business and represent a greater proportion of revenue this year. We continue to open Greenfields, adding 31 in the period, and complemented our footprint through bolt-on acquisitions, adding 32 locations in the U.S. Inherently, in the early phase of their development, greenfields and bolt-ons are lower margin than our more mature stores. As we discussed at Q1, these factors are a drag on drop-through, which we expect to improve as we move through the year and margins. This progression can be seen in the second quarter with drop-through of 49%, contributing to drop-through of 46% for the six months and an EBITDA margin of 49%. This drove a 32% increase in operating profit to $1.283 billion at a 32% margin, while ROI was 27%. Turning now to Canada on Slide eight. Rental and related revenue was 22% higher than a year ago at $341 million. The original Canadian business goes from strength to strength as it takes advantage of its increasing scale and breadth of product offering as we expand our specialty businesses and look to build out our clusters in that market. The level of bolt-on activity, particularly the MacFarlands and Flagro acquisitions, which have a higher proportion of lower margin sales revenue than our business, has been a drag on margins. This impact will reduce in the future as we reduce the level of outside sales of these businesses. Our lighting-driven lens business continued to improve following some market disruption earlier this year with the threat of strike action in the Vancouver market, which result in productions being delayed or transferred elsewhere. Again, it was a drag on margins. As a result, Canada delivered an EBITDA margin of 44% and generated an operating profit of $92 million at a 24% margin, while ROI is 19%. Turning now to Slide nine. UK rental and related revenue was 7% higher than a year ago at GBP 293 million. This growth is despite the significant reduction in work for the Department of Health as we completed the demobilization of the testing sites during the first quarter. As a result, the Department of Health accounts for only 8% of total revenue for the period, compared with 32% a year ago. The core business continued to perform well, with rental revenue 26% higher than a year ago. However, the inflationary environment, combined with the scale and the of the logistical challenge in completing the testing site demobilization over three months, and the significant increase in demand over the summer, particularly in the returning events market, contributed to some operational inefficiencies which impacted margins adversely. The principal driver of the decrease in operating costs is the reduction in the work for the Department of Health, offset by the additional costs referred to earlier. These factors resulted in an EBITDA margin of 30% and an operating profit margin of 13%. As a result, U.K. operating profit was GBP 48 million for the six months, and ROI was 12%. Slide 10 sets out the group's cash flows for the six months and the last 12 months. I will not dwell on this slide for long, but it does illustrate the significant change we've seen in the business over the last 10 years. Despite increased replacement expenditure and significant growth capital expenditure in the first half, this has all been funded from the cash flow of the business while still generating free cash flow of $154 million. Slide 11 updates our debt and leverage position at the end of October. Our overall debt level increased in the 6 months as we allocated capital in accordance with our policy, spending $619 million on acquisitions and returning $293 million to shareholders through our final dividend for 2022, and $207 million through buybacks. As a result, leverage was 1.6x, excluding the impact of IFRS 16, towards the lower end of our target range. Our expectation continues to be that we will operate within our target leverage range of 0.5x-2x net debt to EBITDA, most likely in the lower half of that range as we continue to deploy capital in accordance with our capital allocation policy. Turning now to Slide 12. One of the actionable components of Sunbelt 3.0 is dynamic capital allocation. An integral part of this is a strong balance sheet, which gives us a competitive advantage and positions us well as we take advantage of the structural growth opportunities available in our markets. In August, we accessed the debt markets in order to strengthen our balance sheet position further and ensure we have appropriate financial flexibility to take advantage of these opportunities. We issued $750 million of 10-year investment-grade debt at 5.5%. Following the notes issue, our debt facilities are committed for an average of six years at a weighted average cost of 4%. With that, I'll hand back to Brendan. Thank you, Michael. We'll now move on to some operational end market detail beginning with Slide 14. Our strong U.S. growth continued through the second quarter, delivering half-year growth of 22% in general tool. Specialty continued its remarkable performance, growing 34% in the half on top of last year's 23% in the same period. The strength of this performance continues to be broad, extending through every single geographic region and specialty business line. Consistent with what I've been saying in conjunction with recent results, the current supply and demand equation is as favorable as we've ever experienced. This effect continues to contribute to market share gains and record levels of time utilization throughout the business. This ongoing reality, which is now sustained for several quarters, makes incredibly clear the step change and structural change we are witnessing. Meaning, first, that rental penetration is deepening before our very eyes. Secondly, those benefiting from this increased rental penetration are indeed the larger, more experienced, more capable rental companies who can position themselves to be there for this increasing customer base, and therefore realizing a larger share of what is, without question, a larger market. With the ongoing backdrop and demonstrably improved discipline within the rental industry, it is warranted and logical that we are increasing rental rates and certain other aspects of what we charge to provide our service. These trends continue as our sequential and year-on-year rate improvement remains very good, something we believe will carry forward as we enter next year. Let's take a closer look at our specialty business performance on slide 15. The year-on-year rental revenue movement illustrated herein demonstrates the ongoing and compounding growth across all specialty business lines. Total U.S. specialty, as you see, rental revenues increased 34% in the half. As history has taught us, inflection points in the cycle create flashpoints or swift step changes in rental penetration. In this instance, three things are different than points previously, particularly when it comes to specialty, they are: one, there is now a reliable alternative to ownership in these specialty business lines. twT, today's undeniable and ongoing market dynamics of supply constraints, inflation, and labor scarcity. three, these three dynamics have not been transient and therefore we're not in an inflection point. Rather, we are in an inflection period. Together, these form as enablers and tailwinds to structural change and have contributed to our great growth in specialty over the last few years, and will continue to do so into the future. Further, as you'll see, I'm pleased to announce the recent acquisition of Modu-Loc, Canada's leading temporary fencing provider. This creates our 11th specialty business line in North America, which we see not only as a great addition to our Canadian offering, but a platform to expand into the U.S. with this new specialty business line. This level of activity in our specialty business serves as a proxy for the strength of our non-construction end market, which generates a significant portion of our specialty revenues and is an important part of our general tool business as well. As a reminder, let's move on to a non-construction overview on slide 16. Our specialty in general tool businesses services a large and broad range of non-construction end markets. When we describe the vast scale and diverse landscape of this component of our end markets, it seems some struggle to understand the relationship between equipment rental and non-construction. However, I do think it's becoming clearer, so we're going to keep at it. We commonly refer to an incredibly large component of this non-construction end market as MRO, which is the very maintenance, repair, and operations of the geographic markets that we serve, such as facility maintenance, which we've covered before, but worth saying again, clearly defined as a market in which hundreds of billions of dollars are spent annually running and maintaining facilities. As we have described before, from cleaning, to painting, to decorating, to planting, to temporarily powering, to cooling, to repairing, and so on, of the many, many types of facilities that make up the 100 billion sq ft of commercial space under roof in the U.S. alone. The rental of our broad range of specialty and general tool products will increase. As I pointed out when covering the specialty slide, this is very much a structural growth arena in the very early stages with a long runway for growth. That we've touched on specialty and non-construction markets, let's turn to slide 17 and detail the construction landscape. For a variety of reasons, and more importantly, tangible evidence, the non-residential and non-building components of the construction end markets are proving to be incredibly strong in the present and increasingly so in the forecast. To characterize them as resilient would, at this juncture, be an understatement. I'm gonna spend a bit of time on this and the next two slides as I think it's worth a fuller understanding and appreciation. Starting on the top left with the Dodge Construction Starts chart. You'll see at first glance the strength of recent starts and the forecasted growth through 2026. If you look a bit closer, beginning with the downturn in 2020, 2021. That's the first period highlighted with that dotted line you'll see on the slide. You'll recall that was a non-residential slowdown as residential construction, to most everyone's surprise, turned out to be a boon during that period, and thus was softening to the overall fall. Same chart now just a couple years down the line, the second period highlighted. Notice the swift uptick in starts in the very recent period. This is not a residential uptick as experienced in 2021. Rather, this is the actual happening, not forecast, but actual of what we have been saying would happen. Specifically, it is the early wave of new project starts derived from a combination of private investment and legislative-led federal project funding and incentives. Moving to the bottom left-hand chart, you'll see the Dodge Momentum Index is now at its highest ever level. To be clear, this measure indicates projects in planning, not projects that have started. What should your takeaway from these charts be? one, a whole pile of new projects has just begun, and two, a supportive wave is in planning that more than validates in our view, and Dodge's, these starts and put in place forecast. Moving now to the top right. These figures and dollars are in put in place values. In other words, spreading the cost of the project over the duration as opposed to all in one period, as is the case with starts. As you look at these forecasts for the heart of our construction end market, specifically non-residential and non-building, the strength over the last several quarters and recent spike in starts I've just covered translates into consistent growth and put in place for the next several years. As seen here, growing from roughly $900 billion in 2022 to nearly $1.2 trillion in 2026. Many have commonly held the opinion that as goes residential, goes non-residential. That is just not the case today. It is increasingly clear there is far less a correlation between residential and non-residential construction in this era of mega projects and larger than ever before seen federally funded initiatives, both of which we'll come onto. This backdrop should set up nicely the next couple of slides, beginning with 18. You'll recall in June, we introduced the details surrounding what we internally refer to as mega projects. Projects with a value of over $400 million, ranging from data centers to healthcare, to airports, to liquid natural gas plants, to electric vehicles, et cetera, et cetera. A key point we attempted to get across was the abundance of these projects and how much of the overall non-res and non-building construction market starts they made up. As listed here, these projects have made up roughly 30% of recent years' construction starts values. A number much larger than, in fact, more than double what it was in the pre-GFC era. Look at the trends. There are currently 200 projects in this genre with an average project cost of $1.2 billion that are ongoing. In planning and pre-bid phases, there are 300 with an average value of $1.9 billion, with estimated start dates by December of 2023. Projects of this scale and sophistication are ideal for resident on-site solutions, meaning we often have dedicated storage and working space on the actual project site, housing a very large and broad offering of our products and associated services. These services ranging from on-site maintenance repair technicians, telematics-equipped product, producing efficiency-gaining benefits to our on-site and remote teams, and of course, to our customers. Providing benefits such as reduced carbon emissions and of course, our mantra of availability, reliability, and ease, all of which are essential for the success of these mega projects. Solutions like I've just outlined require a rental company with the scale, experience, technology, expertise, breadth of product, and of course, financial capacity. I hope you understand this is a material contributor to structural change in our industry, which we are a certain benefactor of. Turning now to slide 19. Organized here are three major legislative acts that are just beginning to drive increased demand in overall market you have by now realized is already very active. Beginning with perhaps the act that has been covered and understood the most, specifically the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The headline figure of $1.2 trillion may be best understood by compartmentalizing $650 billion as a renewing of sort of ordinary run rate federal investments in roads, bridges, rail, utility, et cetera. The key to this Act is not only reassuring the baseline investment, but its delivery of an incremental $550 billion in new project spending throughout the U.S., with over 10,000 programs and projects identified, ranging from $100,000 in project cost to $3 billion thus far. Despite the fact that this Act was actually signed into law back in November 2021, very little has yet to translate into actual project starts. This is now beginning and will go into full effect with starts largely commencing between 2023 and 2025. You'll notice that $129 billion of the incremental 550 has been allocated from the federal government to states through October, which will begin seeing actual shovels in the ground, so to speak, in early 2023. This is just less than 25% of the overall incremental funds to be allocated, indicating the substantial and long tail inherent in federal infrastructure funding like what we see here. Next is the CHIPS and Science Act, a bipartisan bill swiftly passed through Congress and signed into law by the President in just August of this year. Putting in motion a revitalization of domestic semiconductor manufacturing. Whereas for decades, the U.S. actually experienced a decline from 40% of the world's semiconductor production to less than 20%. The overall act will invest $250 billion to progress American semiconductor research, development, and manufacturing. The act is designed to support directly or through tax credits, nearly $140 billion in new semiconductor manufacturing projects. A number of projects have already begun even before passage of the act, indicating what one could comfortably conclude is the beginning of a new era of mega projects coming to fruition. As you will see in some of the detail on the slide, these are more than a step above the run-of-the-mill mega project. Individual semiconductor buildings are underway, with more already announced to begin in 2023, with price tags as large as $10 billion per project. As you can imagine, these projects will take 3+ years to complete. They will consume an enormous amount of rental fleet and require very much of what I described earlier in terms of rental company capabilities. We'll be talking about semiconductors for years to come. Similar, if you will, to the way that we've been talking about data centers for well over a decade now. Finally, the Inflation Reduction Act also signed into law just this August. $370 billion of this bill will fund directly or by way of tax credits, a broad basket of energy production and manufacturing, ranging from solar field construction, which will triple the current U.S. capacity by 2030, to battery factories, to wind farms, EV production, and so on. What we have here is a trifecta of government investment equaling nearly $2 trillion in investment that will indeed create thousands and thousands of projects which Sunbelt is poised to take great advantage of. Let's now turn to our business units outside of the U.S. We'll begin with Sunbelt Canada on slide 20. Our business in Canada continues to expand and perform well as our brand increases and customers recognize the growing breadth of products and services offered. The growth is coming from existing general tool and specialty businesses, complemented by well-paced additions of greenfield openings and bolt-on acquisitions. Consistent with our last update, the conditions are not dissimilar to the US in terms of activity, demand, and the supply environment, and thus, we are experiencing equally strong performance from a utilization and rate standpoint. We are well underway executing on our Sunbelt 3.0 plans in Canada, and our runway for growth remains long. Turning to Sunbelt UK on slide 21. I'm pleased to be in a position to report our UK business is now fully made up for the lost rental revenue associated with the Department of Health testing sites that was a substantial part of our revenues throughout last year. This is no small accomplishment, signaling a combination of market share gains and a reassuring level of end market activity, particularly in infrastructure and industrial projects, as well as increasing progress in areas for us, such as facility maintenance being brought about by our unique cross-selling capabilities across our unmatched product and services portfolio. Live events have been an ongoing contributor in this post-pandemic period, which of course, was virtually nil through 2020 and 2021. The team was incredibly proud to provide our products and services surrounding the Queen's funeral, something that I'm sure those involved will remember for years to come. A consistent area of focus to improve our UK business has been on advancing rental rate and the associated fees we charge to provide service to our customers. Although progress has been made, the focus in this area has been significantly heightened in recent weeks as we work to rightfully increase rates in a more meaningful manner late this calendar year and into 2023. This is something the UK rental industry seriously falls behind in. Our position will be steadfast in making a demonstrable change in the face of notable inflation our business, and indeed, our industry has absorbed. This is not the last that you'll hear about our rate focus. I look forward to reporting further and material success in the periods to come. Turning now to slide 22. With October's conclusion came the halfway point in our three year strategic growth plan, Sunbelt 3.0. As we've done with every set of results since the launch, I'm pleased to give you a midpoint glance at our progress. For time's sake, I'll cover just a couple and what more tangible than our expansion. In just six quarters, we've added to the footprint of our business 195 locations in North America. 122 by way of greenfield openings, complemented by 73 locations from the bolt-on acquisitions. This combines for a nice mix of specialty and general tool locations, further advancing our cluster market progress. We actually achieved cluster status in an additional 13 of the top 100 U.S. markets, giving us 44 of our full 3.0 program target of 49. This is great progress, particularly when you look to years down the road as these new locations to the Sunbelt Rentals platform mature into larger contributors in terms of revenue and profits, and importantly, create more outlets to deliver the service to our customers Sunbelt is so well known for. Also worthy of a call-out is the inaugural issuing of our annual standalone sustainability report that we put out earlier this month. One could summarize by saying we are well ahead of our planned Sunbelt 3.0 pace. Turning now to slide 23. As demonstrated in the results today, our business has enjoyed a successful period of growth and execution against our plan. This has been accomplished despite a number of uniquely challenging dynamics happening simultaneously in the markets we all operate. We first introduced this slide in our Q3 results last year in an attempt to highlight the primary macroeconomic concerns and more specifically, our view on duration and this effects on our business. Understanding the dynamics of supply constraint, inflation, and skilled trade scarcity as it relates to our end markets and our business is really important. This version is specifically updated today with our views on anticipated duration. Taking this in, we now know that these 3 monumental factors proved to be not transitory. We do join the increasingly popular opinion that inflation should moderate in the quarters to come, at the very least given the lapping comparators, our view on supply constraints and skilled trade scarcity is far more of the same. We believe as it relates to our industry, we have several quarters ahead of tough access to supply of new rental assets and the associated parts for many in our industry. It's also vitally important that we believe this constraint to be a material preventive factor of our industry over fleeting. We're seeing no signs of excess availability in the precious commodity of skilled trade workers. The important thing in understanding the tailwind effect these have had in the recent past, will have in the near term, and we believe amounting to a real advancing step in structural change, one that will be in the near and long term favorably impact the larger, more capable companies in our industry. We'll update you on any change in views, particularly in terms of duration in the quarters to come. Moving now to our fleet plans on slide 24. Our CapEx guidance is unchanged from our Q1 update. As I've just covered, the supply constraint environment is still present. However, we are working well with our primary equipment manufacturers and the landings throughout the half have been strong, picking up pace through the second quarter and into November. With the component parts unchanged, we guide to $3.3 billion-$3.6 billion for the group in the full year. Let's conclude on slide 25. This has been a very good half year of growth and ongoing momentum. It's been a period that has added a significant amount of clarity to the strength our end markets are very likely to yield in 2023, 2024 and beyond. Some of this clarity came in the form of the recent passing of the CHIPS and Science and Inflation Reduction Acts, adding to what was already a plentiful level of end market activity, flush with day-to-day MRO, small to mid-size projects, and the very present and growing mega project landscape. The trifecta of market dynamics being supply constraints, inflation, and skilled trade scarcity remain very real. The ongoing presence of these come with operational challenges, however, are outweighed by the secular benefits to our business, resulting in the increased pace of rental penetration and considerable market share gain for businesses in our industry who again possess the scale, experience, equipment purchasing influence, and financial strength. Rest assured that our business is positioned to win in this reality. This update should demonstrate once again the strength of our financial performance and the execution of Sunbelt 3.0 well ahead of our planned pace. For these reasons, and coming from a position of ongoing strength, improved trading and positive outlook, we look to the future with confidence in executing our well-known and understood strategic growth plan, which will strengthen our business for the years to come. With that, we'll turn it over to the moderator for Q&A. Thank you, sir. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question or make a contribution on today's call, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. Our first question today comes from Rahul Chopra of HSBC. Please go ahead. Hello, good morning. Thank you for taking my question. I have a couple of questions. In terms of oneness of the mega project, and in terms of structural shift we are seeing in the industry. Just wanted to understand, just given the mega shift, what we are seeing, what's really driving the M&A pipeline from the sellers point of view? That's the first question in terms of, you know, what's really driving that. The second, in terms of the mixed fleet, I noticed that there is a decrease of mixed fleets, basically from 40 months to 38 months. During the supply constraints, just what is driving the mixed fleet? Is it because of... If you can give some sense of the older fleet versus new fleet in terms of the age dynamics. The final question is in terms of the free cash flow guidance. I noticed that CapEx guidance unchanged, and given the increase in revenue growth, maybe just what's driving the free cash flow guidance unchanged. Thank you so much. Sure. Raul, I think I understood your first question, but if I'm slightly off, just let me know. I think I understood it as, you know, what's the driving factor between Sunbelt Rentals being the benefactor of winning those projects? I understood it less to be what's driving the very presence. If it was the latter, the driving the very presence of it is the things we've been talking about. Things when it comes to, you know, this trend of onshoring, or reshoring when it comes to U.S. manufacturing, the advent of things like electric vehicles, batteries, the increased importance around liquid natural gas, just big, big funding to big projects further now complemented by the Infrastructure Act, the Chips Act, and the inflation reduction. I've covered that just in case. What's driving the very selling, if you will, of Sunbelt Rentals winning our sort of unfair share of these projects is just simply what it takes to do it, not least of which is just the fleet. You know, obviously, you see the CapEx guidance that we've given. You know, getting this level of fleet in this constrained market is no easy task. Simply what we're seeing is we are seeing winners, and we are seeing losers. Ourselves and, you know, a couple others out there are the real winners in that. We're just simply occupying a larger ration of what manufacturers can produce. The other bits and pieces are, of course, besides just availability, it's the experience. We have teams that are seasoned and experienced, operating and delivering on-site capabilities on these mega projects. It's the things that you have to have. They're table stakes in that environment. Telematics, reporting when it comes to telematics, and that broad range of fleet. I hope I've answered that one, but I'll allow you to come back if you need. In terms of fleet mix, you kind of answered it in your question. It's a combination of these increased landings at pace that we've recognized but also disposals of some of our oldest fleet that's out there, and I'll yield to Michael here for free cash flow. Yeah. On the free cash flow, you know, what we are seeing is a slight increase in working capital. The easiest way to characterize that is, you know, some of our debtors or the receivables are paying a little bit more slowly. That's a little bit more slowly than last year. The last two years have been somewhat exceptional in that our receivables book was as clean and as young as it's ever been, which is perverse given it was a COVID time. That's the way it turned out. Absent the last two years, I'd be sitting here and saying, our receivables are, you know, consistent with us or as good as they've ever been. That's not quite true. What we're seeing is a slight uptick in working capital from last year, which sort of mitigates the improvement that you're seeing from the performance of the business. I guess also the other thing just to bear in mind with free cash flow is, yes, it's around about $300 million, but we are at the moment landing the best part of $300 million of rental fleet per month. That's only got to arrive a little bit early or a little bit late, and that number can be somewhat different from $300 million, you know, $100, $200 million different. There are a lot of moving parts, but the main one is just a slight increase in working capital, but nothing that we wouldn't have, you know, that we haven't experienced before. Understood. Thank you so much. Thank you. We move on to our next questioner, which is Annelies Vermeulen of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Hi. Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. I just have a couple as well. Firstly, just coming back on these mega projects. You've been very clear about how the larger players like Sunbelt will continue to take share versus the smaller players. I'm just wondering, given some of the size of these projects and, you know, you mentioned some of these are taking up to 3 years, how confident are you that rental will be the preferred option, given the size of it? If it's a 3-year project, you know, there's more perhaps more of an argument to own the equipment. Is it a case of those supply chain constraints will continue and actually, even if you want to own it, you can't get hold of it? I'd love to get your thoughts on that. Secondly, on the As you said, you've added close to 200 locations, 18 months into your three year plan. Should we infer that you'll add fewer next year, or is it more likely that you'll come in ahead of target or ahead of schedule with regards to adding those locations? Lastly, you've mentioned an 11th specialty vertical in fencing. In the past you've very helpfully given color on rental penetration and potential market share for some of your specialty verticals. I'd love to hear a bit more about how big that market is, what the penetration is like and what the scope is to consolidate. Thank you. Thank you, Annelise. Let me take a stab. First of all, to be clear on the mega projects, it's not really some that could take up to three years. Most are gonna take three plus years in terms of the construction. It's a really good point you make, and it's what I'll use to add clarity to the step change in rental penetration. I mean, fact of the matter is, given the quantum of fleet that will be requisite in the construction of these sites, what we're seeing through very recent and active dialogue with customers is their propensity is to go even further rental. One of the reasons will be just the sheer quantum of capital that they would even be far less experienced or exercised in dealing with. Secondly, if you actually look at dealer stock levels, whether that be your traditional yellow iron or types like ground engaging trenchers, that sort of thing, pile drivers, light towers, that if you were an owner, you would be going through the dealer distributor route. Dealer distributor stock levels are at their lowest point in history, literally lower than what they were in 2009 when it was rather intentional. This supply constraint, I think one of the very important points we made during the call, and this picks up on your question here, you know, the very supply constraints is actually a governing or limiting factor or preventive factor from our industry over fleeting, which is very important, and I don't think many get. They look at the CapEx levels of ours and say our top two publicly listed peers. They worry the industry is over fleeting. It's quite the opposite. If you actually look at manufacturer production detail, manufacturers are still in most cases when it comes to servicing our industry. Like, if you take, for instance, aerial work platform and telehandlers, which makes up 40% to 50% of the original equipment cost of many of the fleets that are out there in the rental industry. We know that 2018 was their peak production in terms of manufacturing delivery into North America. For scissor lifts, booms or man lifts, as they're called, and telehandlers, we're still producing significantly below. 2019, it fell off, which was in the intention of the rental companies at the time. 2020, it fell off of a cliff. 2021, it kind of halfway recovered. 2022 is still below the peak of 2018. What the production levels today is only just about enough to satisfy replacement from 7, 8 years ago. I know that's kind of not directly answering that part anyway as additive to your question, but there will be more rental for those reasons and not ownership on these, mega projects. Your point about, yeah, we've done nearly 200 locations. You'll remember our full three-year plan for greenfields was 298. We said it would be augmented and added to by way of bolt-on acquisitions. No. Our full year greenfield add this year is gonna be about 90 locations, and we will be, you know, in the 100 or so range for next year. We're gonna satisfy both that whole greenfield program, but a bit more than that given the activity which has been great in that in the bolt-on domain. In terms of the 11th specialty, the temporary fencing, I promise you this. When we get to rolling out our next plan, and we give that great update, which would have been slide 44 in our capital markets deck, that would have given all the nitty-gritty detail in each of those specialties. We'll revisit that then. I can tell you this about temporary fencing. Here, you've got this great business in Canada with kinda just less than 20 locations. We've identified already 100 locations that we would target geographies in the US. You know, this is a $few hundred million rental revenue business for us in the not too distant future. You know, it's not something that we would do that's gonna be this little tiny specialty. It's a really nice business that also has great features from a cross-selling standpoint. I hope that answered your question, Annalise. That's super helpful. Thank you for all the detail. Thank you. Thank you. Up next, we have Arnaud Lehmann of Bank of America. Please go ahead. Good morning, gentlemen. Thank you for the very detailed presentation. A couple on my side, I guess related to slide 23, which, yeah, I will follow up on Annelies' question. Firstly, on the supply of new equipment, steel prices have come down a lot. I'm assuming this eventually should be reflected in the pricing of some of these new equipment or what you buy for replacement. How should we think about that? Could that have any influence on your CapEx spending going forward? Secondly, when I look at this slide 23, if everything comes to fruition, as you think it will, it should drive some meaningful wage inflation, right? If demand is good, there's still inflation in the system, there's not enough people on the ground. What sort of wage inflation are you seeing coming for later in the year? Thank you. Great. Thanks, Arnaud. The first one, I should bring you along with myself and some of our colleagues of, you know, Brad Coverdale, most specifically, who is in those negotiations with our OEMs. Look, you're right about steel. I would not all of a sudden, as well as some of the other commodity pricing. I would not all of a sudden wave the flag and say that our purchasing prices will be going down. What I think you will see or what we are seeing is some of the surcharges that would have been out there go away. The OEMs largely have gone through a period of kind of rebasing what they charge for producing their products, just as we've gone through a period of rebasing what we charge for rental and the associated services. You know, certainly the key to understand for us, I mean, so much of it comes down to dollar utilization. If things cost, you know, a bit more and our dollar utilization is at parity or better, that's a great capital allocation channel, which we will continue to pursue. However, you know, when you think about what this is going in the future, I do think we've taken the most meaningful pieces of the inflation of our rental assets, and that will begin to wane a bit. The key thing is this. You know, we obviously, with our spending size, we get the best pricing that's available in the marketplace. That delta between ourselves and others has not changed. What's really important when it comes to our, you know, ability to bring products to our customers at great overall value is making sure that our delta has the advantage, and that has not changed at all. When it comes to wage inflation, look, I mean, it's obvious. We're in an inflationary environment, particularly when it comes to skilled trade. We've made and we've telegraphed and we have shared very well the steps we've made back in October 2020, then June of 2021, and then May of the current year. You know, given the fact that this is a, you know, a call that I began by thanking our team about, I'm not gonna get into details of what we would expect wage inflation to be specifically next year. We'll address that early in the new year in conjunction with our Q3 results. Yeah, you know, this is an environment where we would see wages ticking up. Time will tell as to whether we made the turn in the size of the step change. I hope that's covered both your points or questions. Yeah, that's excellent. Thank you very much, Brendan. Thank you. Operator? We seem to have lost the operator for a brief moment. Please stand by for Saskia to rejoin. Thank you very much. Bear with us for just a moment. Any luck with the operator? There seems to be an issue connecting to the operator for a moment. Brendan, if you'd like to give any further remarks, and we give her a moment to just rejoin and allow the remaining people to ask a question, that would be brilliant. Thank you. Well, we can see here with Will that there are some questions in the queue. Correct, Will? I can, yes. Yeah. Why don't we just give it one, we'll give it one minute here, if everyone can hang on, and if we can't get the operator back, momentarily, I suppose everyone that's in queue for a question knows how to reach us. If anyone who's waiting in the queue to ask a question, if they want to email me the question, I can then read them out, and Brendan can answer them. Thank you. Yeah. Sorry, it's Will here. I've got a question from James Rose at Barclays. It's: remind us the% project spend that goes into rental. Same for is it the same for mega projects? Second question, is there a specialty cross-sell into mega projects, are you seeing this in customer requests? The mega project margin profile, are these consistent with 50% drop-through rates? I'll begin with the last. Yes, especially when you're on site, you get big benefits of scale there. you know, one thing we commonly refer to is, you know, deliver once, use many. If you think about some of those ancillary charges having smaller margins, you make up that benefit. These are very profitable projects. you know, percentage of flow through, if you will, in rental dollars in the projects, it's a wide range. Generally speaking, we would use kind of that 5% for your smaller commercial construction, and down to as little as kind of 1.5% or so for, you know, a mega project. By this I mean sort of a project like one of these semiconductors, you might be in that 1.5, or so range. It really just depends on the project. You know, a data center is gonna be more in the middle of those two points. Unfortunately, there's no, just specific all-encompassing answer, but that's kind of what you have. To put in perspective, if you think about fleet required for one of these semiconductors, you're talking about $100 million in rental fleet, and that's gonna be general tool as well as, to move into your second question, specialty. Yes, you're gonna see quite a bit of ask for specialty, whether it be the latest specialty we've just added of perimeter fencing and temporary fencing, or it be load banking is gonna be significant in virtually all of these. Power generation, of course, but so much so, more so these days, is taking diesel power and augmenting that with battery storage. Yes, very powerful cross-selling attributes with mega projects with specialty. Then a question on margins. Yeah, I answered that one first. This is from Dominic Edridge at Deutsche Bank. What percentage market growth would CHIPS IRA add to rental market growth? Does the 3% industry forecast include this? Second question, is there a fundamental difference in the fleet used or just amount of fleet used in infrastructure projects versus, say, other projects? Third question on U.K. rate improvement. Does this require a rebasing of rates or just yield management? Are you seeing support for rate increases in the market in spite of a softer U.K. market? Yeah. In terms of the industry forecast, that one, and you're referring to, of course, slide 17 there, where we show the IHS Global Insight. They tend to be a bit behind, and they tend to focus more on the closer years than the further years. I would say the answer is, there is a small amount of CHIPS and Science and Inflation Reduction that has been entered into those figures. I would fully expect those to go up. I will remind you that our cadence has been in the 2.5 or so times of what the industry ends up being in every, any given year. If you're 2.5-3 times the outer years of three, you know, there are worse outcomes. That's just the beginning, and they will move forward, I'm sure. Fundamental difference in fleet when it comes to infrastructure. No, not really. Much of it is very core. Whether it be light towers, of course, they're gonna migrate from diesel light towers to solar or hybrid light towers. You're gonna have much of the ordinary ground-engaging skid loaders, mini excavators, trench compactors. There will be a notable step change in some of the larger ground engaging, you know, 45,000 lbs class and above excavators. I'm probably getting too detailed here, which is something that we've been adding, but it's not something that we don't know. We're quite, we're quite good at it, actually, when it comes to some of the infrastructure projects we're working in today and some of the mega projects that we're, that we're, that we're, um, working in today. So very, very much in our wheelhouse. When it comes to the UK, uh, this is not yield management, this is rebasing. I mean, uh, you know, I don't know any better way to explain it, but the UK industry, when it comes to rental, has just been sort of this incestuous environment of everyone chasing everyone to the bottom. Um, and, you know, we are, we are, we are plain and simply making that change. Um, we've had very good dialogue with customers, um, thus far. Um, they fully understand it. I mean, if you think about our customers in the infrastructure or commercial side of the business or construction side of the business, every single other supplier has increased what they charge to supply them, what they charge, and here rental is just lagging behind. It takes leaders in the industry, number one, but number two or a tied at number one1, if you will, it takes a product portfolio and a level of service that warrants your increase. Our team between, you know, Andy Wright, Phil Parker, the MDs, Dave Harris, you know, our strategic sellers who are with these customers day in and day out, what they've done is built a much better business over the last few years, and we are now poised. We're in a position to actually charge what we should. Again, I think you will see results like what we've seen in the U.S. in the next 12 months. I'm hoping that we've got an operator back on the line now. Yes. The next question comes from the line of Allen Wells from Jefferies. Please go ahead. Hey, good morning, guys. Hey, Allen. Just a couple from me. I'd love to just dig back into the mega projects again. Two parts there. One, what sort of visibility do you actually have on work, i.e. contracted for 2023? Is it a bit early or are these big projects looking to get kit locked in quite early? On a typical large project, particularly ones I guess maybe have broken ground already, what sort of market share does Ashtead have on rental equipment? Is it in line or maybe slightly higher than the, I guess the 12% share you have in the broader market? Just moving on the drop-through. I think you talked obviously about improvements through the year. Full year target, I think was around kind of 50%-ish. You did a decent number in 2Q. Are you expecting a further decent step up in the second half? My very final question, just on interest cost guidance, which looks like it's obviously creeping up a little bit. What are the assumptions you've got behind the interest cost line for the full year now around that second half number? Thank you. Yeah. Thanks, Allen. I'll take the first, and Michael will take those last two. Visibility is remarkably clear. When you look at projects that, you know, have all the intention, ambition, and really the mandate from the payer here, whether that be, whether that be a semiconductor company itself or, you know, liquid natural gas company that has brought on these contractors to do it, you know, they have expectations when it comes to starts. The difference is today, in a way, as a rental industry, we've spoiled customers. You know, in the past, if you had a project that was beginning in March and you engage with the likes of us or one of our peers for a larger, a rather large order of, let's just say, $10 million, $20 million, $30 million in original equipment cost, we spoiled you because we could come through with that. Today it's a bit different. Maybe not so much on the 10, 15 sort of genre, but when you get into $50 million, $75 million plus $100 million, it's very different. These customers and the suppliers like ourselves, have to engage very early because really what you're doing is, yes, of course, you work down the line and you begin with replacement needs, and then you have anticipated growth levels, and we in turn, work with our OEMs for increased deliveries. In essence, as I've said today, it's increased rations. The customers now know better than ever before they need to work with who their supplier of choice would be or suppliers, in some cases, of choice will be, and they realize that they have to be working somewhat, several quarters out. I mean, just as a for instance, week before Thanksgiving, I was in two cities in sort of 24 hours meeting with two customers. Two customers alone have a need of about $1 billion in rental fleet. Not too terribly many SKUs. These are the key SKUs, things like telehandlers, light towers, skid loaders, generators, that sort of thing. You know, $1 billion worth of need. These would be suppliers in kind of the alternative energy space, and actually, semiconductor and liquid natural gas space. It gives you the ideas of the quantums that we're talking about. And in terms of average project share on these mega projects, in many cases, like data centers have been in the past, you may have a pure lion share. Like, you may have 70%-80% share, with the rest going to, you know, a few others here and there. When it comes to your typical, if you will, run-of-the-mill, you know, $200 million project, you know, it's gonna be a bit more than the overall market share, but not extraordinarily more so, 'cause those tend to be less the kind of on-site providers. I hope that helps on the first, and Michael will take the next two. Yeah. On drop through, as we've said, we expected to improve as we went through the year. So we would expect to have good drop through in Q3 and Q4 with a view that we'll be, you know, aiming towards that 50% for the whole year. I wouldn't expect as you know, the step change we've had from Q1 to Q2, I wouldn't be expecting to have the same step change Q3 and then through Q4, but we'd expect to see a degree of improvement. There'll always be a degree of lumpiness in it, but we'd expect it to continue to progress. From an interest rate perspective, obviously, most our debt's in dollars. We're expecting, you know, rates there to move towards or sort of by the end of our financial year, we're sort of more in the sort of upper 4%, 5% area for that variable interest rate, which compared with last time around at Q1, we thought it was gonna be, or, you know, curves would have said it was closer to four. Great. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Our next question comes from Karl Green of RBC. Please go ahead. Thanks very much. Good morning, team. Just a couple of devil's advocates questions from me, please. I mean, a lot of talk here on supply environments and the mega project side. Just looking at, you know, how potentially reliable some of the Dodge data is, I mean, we've obviously had a pretty weak print from the ABI in October. You know, how would you guys reconcile that with the DMI, particularly the DMI print, which is still pointing to all-time highs? The second question, again, just sort of squaring the circle around the very optimistic residential put in place forecasts from Dodge. You know, how that squares with the latest, National Association of Home Builders data points, which, particularly for the West Coast, have pointed to some pretty significant year-on-year price declines. Again, just how should investors be thinking about, you know, those very mixed signals that we're getting on the demand side of the equation? Thanks very much. Yeah. Thanks, Karl. I'm actually glad you asked both of those questions. One, let's go to slide 17, and let's take it into two pieces here, forecast and actual. If you look at the top left of slide 17, that second circle indicating the kind of now time of the solid line. Remember, the solid line is no longer speculation and no longer forecast. Those have begun. When projects like this begin, there are always black swans of events out there, but they finish. And 99% of the time, big projects which begin, finish. Certainly, when we've talked about the funding apparatus that we've gone through, i.e., legislative activities, et cetera. That is indeed finished. When you look to the top right here, remember that figure you'll see there footnoted, and I know this is getting quite granular. You know, that would be the update from September for Dodge. Wouldn't you know it, sometime around tomorrow or later this week, we will get the updated translation from the starts on the top left to put in place on the top right, where we will then update them. It's just in terms of our timing, where they haven't come fully through. You ask a great question about ABI, and I think ABI is not surprising at all when you think about the amount that has cleared the deck. When you think about the amount that has gone from being in that indexing of planning and preparation in terms of literally what architects are going through and that which has come through. Furthermore, when you look at the momentum, those projects are already in some cases, bidding phases and it's sort of post-pre-planning, but still planning, so a lot of that architectural work is complete for those projects, so it's not surprising to me at all. I would sit here on this call and say, "Dodge Momentum Index is soon to start going down a bit," which is what traditionally happens. When you go from in planning to start, you see that translate from one going up and one going down. What's unique about this printing is both the starts went up and the momentum went up, which means we're about to see even more starts. All that, I think, validates that point on the top right of what ultimately comes through. Your point on residential is a very important one because, as I just said. The residential figures that you see on the top right of slide 17, you know, for instance, in 2022, the $836 billion, that's still from the September figures. If you go to appendix slide 30, this is an important one. Here's what the update will have. This, as you'll see on slide 30, is represented in units. I'll remind everyone from sort of single housing, and as I would have said in my script, let's face it, what the capital markets we're concerned with when it comes to Ashtead primarily was this: residential construction is going to slow, therefore, so will non-residential. Why do they feel that way? Well, that's kind of been the tale of the tape since World War II, that's why. What we're saying is that's not happening this time. Furthermore, if you just look at what happened. I would draw your attention kind of the right third of those lines in this bar chart and look at 2021. We peaked in the U.S. at base 1,084,000 single family, the green component of that bar. 1.1 in essence, then single family home starts. That fell in 2022 this year as interest rates climbed. What's happened here is the forecast. That forecast for 2023, which is now 891, that number was actually about 1.2 million. That's how much we've seen that forecast come down. Now, would I bet the ranch on whether or not 891's right? I'd say it probably I'd be pleased if it was 891, but maybe it's something more like 825, 800. The point is in that, look at pre-pandemic. Basically, what we're saying is single family housing construction is going to be about what it was in 2018, 2019 pre-pandemic levels. If you remember, we were quite busy in 2018 and 2019. What we're seeing is because of the very fact that the U.S. doesn't have enough homes, there's still single family home production, and sometimes it's better to be lucky than good. Look at multifamily. Because of this, multifamily is going to actually grow into the forecast, but either way, it's understanding those dynamics. I think people are expecting far worse. This, I think is much more what it's going to be like. Karl, does that answer those questions? Super helpful. Thanks, Brendan. Yeah, very much. Great. Thank you. Thank you. We now move on to Neil Tyler of Redburn. Please go ahead. Yeah, good morning. two left for me, please. I wanted to circle back, Brendan, to your point on visibility and, you know, and the tightness of supply and demand and length of projects. I wonder if you've been able to more broadly alter terms of trade, you know, i.e., extending, you know, contractual terms, you know, not just on the mega projects, but elsewhere, given the, you know, the unprecedented supply demand balance that you've seen. Are the industry terms of trade altering in any degree? Secondly, when you think about the cross-selling on the businesses that you've bought, are you able to quantify in any way or help us understand how you measure the sort of, the cross-selling sort of contribution to organic growth in acquired units? Well, let me start with the second one, the short answer would be, yes, we could quantify, not so much on this call. That's a good kind of capital markets point to take. As our colleague who you would have met by way of, you know, virtually anyway, during our last capital markets day, Kurt Hinkle, often points out the common denominator to the businesses that we buy with our approach of bolt-on. I mean, just look at the bolt-ons that we've done through October with $610 million or so. I mean, that's an average of $25 million a bolt-on. These are not humongous deals. Instead, these are nice little businesses, and we like what they do, and we like precisely where they are. It's our kind of ingredient. The reason why I say this is Kurt always reminds all of us the common denominator in these businesses is they lack the capital to grow the way that they otherwise would be able to. What we do when we come in, besides having it integrated in almost every case on the day we close from a systems standpoint, is that we invest further to give their customers, which they've had, a broader range of products. That just happens. Therein lies the cross-selling opportunities, if you will, or realities that come following those bolt-ons. I hope you'll accept that as an answer to your, your second question there. When it comes to, you know, visibility, the tightness, et cetera, and how that relates to contractual terms, I mean, keep in mind, there's only some portion of our business that is on terms other than just what's on the back of a rental agreement. It's gonna be basically kind of 1/3 of our overall business that are these strategic customers that have something more than, you know, a pricing in a market for 30 days or something like that. In these contractual terms, you have a whole host of things, but most importantly, you know, you change over time as you get bigger and bigger and more important to the delivery of their project. The very spirit of engaging in negotiations, you're just taken more seriously. Therefore, the red lines you may have in your contract are more noted and easier to get what you're looking for, all looking for a win-win with our customers. Things come to mind like, you know, Michael talked earlier about, our receivables and the time. We get more significant when it comes to the actual agreement in terms of what those contractual terms are, and then the obvious things such as, rental rates. Another big one in that one would be, you know, what we charge for the other services such as delivery. I, you know, of course, one of the things we've highlighted on these calls is delivery cost recovery. If you think about just the progress we're making on that, if we just look at it from a year-to-date standpoint, you know, we're actually at 90% delivery cost recovery through October. You'll remember we would have said that was our goal, not even our budget as we turn the year. That's at 90% for the year versus 79%, you know, a year ago. Actually, October itself was 94%. All of these things are coming through in some of these, you know, agreements, if you will, given the unique circumstance that we find ourselves in from a visibility and supply chain standpoint. It's not so much from a change in terms of trade, but what you do find is people are hanging onto fleet for longer in the current constrained environment, whereby if they were gonna return it and re-rent in a week or two's time, they actually hang on to it because they wanna make sure they've got access to it. Yeah. There, you know, there could be some also... That is true. Furthermore, it's less top up. It's the top up fleet that is easier sent back and sort of exchanged, et cetera. It just shows this dynamic change that we're going through, as I said, under our very own eyes, of structural advancement. Hope that answers your question, Neil. Yeah, that's very helpful. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Our last question today comes from Steve Woolf of Numis Securities. Please go ahead. Hi, guys. Just one left from me as well. In terms of the CapEx guidance being unchanged into a, obviously a very, very strong market, is that really a question just of the timing, sort of the supply chains being able to land in the second half of the year? It doesn't seem like the bolt-ons have been particularly about buying the fleet itself, rather than just, you know, the locations and the synergies and the investment that's able to go into them. Just any thoughts around that. Secondly, on the M&A itself, how has the market been facing multiples at this point into an improving environment where, you know, supply chains are, you know, in short supply of kit, so to speak? Yeah. Thanks, Steve. First of all, from a CapEx standpoint, you know, we wanted. Look, our plan is what our plan is in terms of that $3.3 billion-$3.6 billion that we've seen. you know, Frankly, if we were able to say today that we could land, you know, an extra $few hundred million, in kind of February, March, April, then indeed we would say that. Our focus today, we really wanted to get across was this increased clarity in what our end markets are going to be in 2023 and 2024, and, you know, incredibly clearly. As we usually do, we'll give our first look at CapEx guidance in March. You know, I wouldn't be shocked if we do find from our primary OEM suppliers that some of our next fiscal year Q1 gear might be available. We might land some of that a bit earlier in, say, March, April. I, you know, I'd be understanding of that. But it's not easy to get extra rations these days, as I've been saying. M&A, I would just say more of the same. Nice pipeline, great little businesses. To your point, we're not buying businesses, just to get rental fleet. We're buying businesses because, you know, we like who they are, what they are, where they are, in the main. You know, there have been one or two bolt-ons where I do think some of the, some of the view on the deal was, "Hey, we pick up some fleet in some high utilized categories." In the main, these are businesses that I've said before, we have to put that much more CapEx into, which we look forward to. That's great. Thank you. Great. Thanks, Steve. Thank you. If there are no further questions, I would now like to hand the call back over to you, Mr. Hogan, for any additional or closing remarks. Great. Well, thanks for joining the call today. Apologies about that, little bit of a delay. I guess whenever you've got any sort of technology, even telephone involved, that can happen. Appreciate your time, and we look forward to speaking in our next update, come Q3. Thank you. Thank you. That concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation, ladies and gentlemen. You may now disconnect.