Welcome everyone to the Vulcan Materials Company 2026 Investor Day. My name is Mark Warren, Vice President of Investor Relations. We appreciate your interest in Vulcan and your participation in today's event. Vulcan is entering its 70th year as a public company, and we've been winning in aggregates since the beginning. Today we're gonna share with you how we're positioned to win the future in aggregates. Before we get started, a few housekeeping notes. First, please be reminded that today's presentation may include forward-looking statements which are subject to risks and uncertainties. These risks, along with other legal disclaimers, are described in detail here and in other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures are defined and reconciled in this presentation and other SEC filings. Additionally, on your table there's a QR code that you can use to submit a question for the Q&A portion we'll have at the end of the presentation. Take a look at that and go ahead and get your questions submitted. With those two housekeeping things out of the way, let's get started. My pick is VMC, Vulcan Materials. Among the stocks leading the momentum to the upside is Vulcan Materials. I think momentum is the upside. It's a name in the materials space that I like. Vulcan Materials. Options team has been watching Vulcan Materials. Vulcan Materials is a great small cap investment. Good morning. Wow. All right, there we go. I'm Ronnie Pruitt, CEO. I recently celebrated 31 years in the industry, and the past four years with Vulcan Materials. I am proud and privileged to be leading the men and women of Vulcan Materials into the future. I am confident you will leave later this morning with a better understanding of the talented team, the innovative approach, and the financial strength that will drive Vulcan Materials to win the future in aggregates. What you will also hear is why we are the industry leader, why we're going to continue to pursue our proven strategy, and how we will strategically grow our business. The roots of Vulcan Materials date back to the early 1900s, a family business called Birmingham Slag. A public company since 1956, we have now begun our 70th year of trading on the New York Stock Exchange, and we're glad to be here at the Exchange today to share with you more about our future. Just like a Vulcan management presentation said from the 1980s, we decided what we wanted to do, and we concentrated it on doing it better than anyone else. We have long been the premier producer of aggregate in the aggregates business, and we're now focused on winning the future. Vulcan Materials is the most aggregates-focused U.S. public company. We operate over 420 aggregate facilities and shipped over 227 million tons last year to 23 states. On average, we generated $11.33 of cash gross profit per ton, which drove adjusted EBITDA of over $2.3 billion. With over 16.5 billion tons of permanent aggregate reserves and a very strong balance sheet, we're well-positioned for continued growth. Why aggregates? Why rocks? Aggregates enjoys the strongest fundamentals and lower risk through the cycle compared to other construction materials. That is because aggregates have durable pricing, and we are the pricing leader. Aggregates pricing has been consistently growing over the last 40 years despite demand cyclicality. Let's talk about why. Just think, aggregates are used in all forms of construction, both public and private. There are limited substitutes, and the barriers to entry are high. Crushing aggregates is a mechanical process, so it can easily be scaled, you know, no matter what demand's doing. Rocks are heavy, so this creates wide logistical moats, which means location is key. Vulcan has built a unique and irreplaceable asset base over the last 70 years. We have a diversified revenue mix from 23 states and 35 of the top 50 fastest growing MSAs. Vulcan is in the right markets. Even more importantly, in those markets, our positions is advantaged. Approximately 90% of our revenue comes from markets where we hold a number one or number two position, which is key in our pricing leadership. Quality assets offer a very strong foundation, but maximizing the value of those assets means having the right people to manage them. Our leadership team is experienced and aligned, entrepreneurial and agile, and deeply committed to driving continued growth and value creation for all of our stakeholders, our customers, our employees, our communities, and you, our shareholders. I'm looking forward to you hearing later from some of this team today. The collective leadership of Vulcan that I just presented, our predecessors and our board of directors have fostered a safety culture at Vulcan that is profoundly dedicated to proactive engagement. We strongly believe that using forward-looking metrics to proactively engage, influence behaviors, and reduce job risks is key to keeping our employees safe. When it comes to safety, no backwards-looking metric is ever good enough unless it's zero. Safety will always be and has always been fundamental at Vulcan Materials. Our employees and their safety will always be our number one focus. Our two-pronged approach to growth is key to driving sustainable value creation. The men and women of Vulcan Materials are dedicated each and every day to growing our underlying business through improved profitability. We call this enhancing our core. We also have entrepreneurial division leaders that partner with dedicated business development teams to continue to grow and optimize our portfolio. We call this expanding our reach. I wanna quickly share with you what we've been able to accomplish on both sides of our strategy since the last time we stood here in 2022. We've remained dedicated to our strategic disciplines that drive how we run and continuously improve our underlying business. The Vulcan Way of Selling and the Vulcan Way of Operating are ingrained in our culture and are fundamental to our organic growth. Since 2022, we've made numerous enhancements to our strategic disciplines on both the operational and commercial sides of our business. Process intelligence and daily labor scheduling have been key focus areas for Vulcan Way of Operating. A new CRM platform with robust project leads as well as a full implementation of our proprietary pricing tool have been big wins for Vulcan Way of Selling. The innovative mindset of our employees, the strategic deployment of our technology have underpinned these achievements and helped drive a 45% improvement in our aggregates cash gross profit per ton. We've supplemented that organic growth with meaningful expansion of our franchise over the past 3.5 years. Through strategic acquisitions and complementary greenfield investments, we've added over 36 aggregate operations in seven of our top 10 revenue states. We've also optimized our portfolio by divesting of some downstream assets that were more strategic for the buyer than they were for us. Before we move on to what lies ahead, let me quickly recap to you what we've delivered since our last Investor Day in 2022. Most importantly, we've already achieved our aggregates cash gross profit per ton that we established of $11-$12, and on far fewer tons than the 260 million -270 million tons that we framed with that target. This achievement is a perfect example of our commitment to controlling what we can control. Look, we cannot control demand, but what we can control is how we execute to maximize the value of our products and minimize the cost it takes us to produce them by leveraging our talent, our technology, and our strategic disciplines to expand unit profitability on every ton we sell. I am proud of what our team has accomplished with the $11.33 per ton that we delivered in 2025. Why should you care about aggregates cash gross profit per ton? Because it is fundamental to our best-in-class earnings growth. Look, over the last three years, we have outpaced our industry peers. Our overall revenue, EBITDA, and cash generation depict the powerful combination of our two-pronged growth strategy, and you can expect continued compounding unit profitability improvements and earnings growth as we go into the future. I see several catalysts that are gonna influence how we win the future in aggregates. First is a focus on innovation and technology, second is an improving demand environment, and third is an advantaged footprint. Technology to date has played a key role in enhancing our strategic advantages. In 2022, we began to reimagine what IT should look like at Vulcan. We hired a new CIO, you're gonna get to meet Krzysztof after a while, and we made organizational changes to support the vision of our IT group. A vision focused on optimizing our business by leveraging digital technology to build and sustain competitive advantages and to win with our strategy. Our advances since 2022 have been noteworthy. Some of them I've already talked about with Vulcan Way of Selling and Vulcan Way of Operating, and you're gonna hear a lot more about that today. We have built a scalable foundation of people, process, and technologies that enables us to quickly evaluate and adapt new capabilities that can further accelerate our margin improvement. Innovation and technology are core to how we strategically run our business, and the first catalyst I mentioned on how we will win the future. The second catalyst is an improving demand environment. Although still weak today, fundamental support an eventual recovery in residential construction. For three of the last five years, actual housing starts have not even kept pace with household formations. In our footprint especially, demographic trends support the need for additional housing. The good news is, whether, when residential growth does occur, it's going to also spur other non-residential investments, like traditional commercial and institutional projects. While those traditional non-residential categories have lagged recently, industrial categories have shown some strength. Data centers has been a tailwind. Warehouses have bottomed and are poised to grow again. Reshoring efforts support growth in manufacturing, and energy investments are gonna be critical to feed data centers and support the age of artificial intel ligence. Our footprint positions us well to benefit from growth in private non-residential construction. Our scale within that footprint gives us an advantage to serve large, complex projects. You're gonna see a couple of videos today and hear directly from our customers how that advantage plays out every day. The same is true on the public side. As a result of IIJA, contract awards in the U.S. are at record levels for both highway construction and public infrastructure investment. Our Vulcan states, as represented in blue, have significant momentum advantage over other states. The good news is, we expect public activity to continue to grow in the future. Look, with only 50% of the IIJA dollars spent to date, we are already well-positioned for healthy highway construction into 2027 and even into 2028. We fully expect a reauthorization of highway funding, which, if history tells us anything, will be at greater levels than the prior commitments. I'll remind you again, for both public and private demand opportunities, our footprint is advantaged. It's the third catalyst of our future growth. Growing demographics equate to the need for new construction. Vulcan states are projected to far outpace the rest of the country in terms of population, employment, and household growth. This backdrop aligns with 2/3 of public spending and 70% of private dollars being awarded in Vulcan states. We are in the right markets for superior growth as demand improves. Of course, regardless of the demand environment, what we are most focused on is controlling what we can control and delivering superior unit profitability growth. Now I want you to hear from some of my colleagues on how we're going to do that through Vulcan Way of Selling, Vulcan Way of Operating, and Vulcan Way of Talent. We're gonna start with Jamie. He's gonna talk on the commercial side. Then Brent Goodsell's gonna come up and speak on the operation side. Then Mitesh is gonna come up and talk about our approach to talent. Before the break, we're gonna have a fireside chat, so I'm gonna bring the three of them up, along with Krzysztof, our CIO, and we'll dig into how we're enhancing our core. After that, you're gonna hear from Jerry on how we're gonna grow this business. Mary Andrews will be the grand finale on our new financial targets that I'm sure all of you are waiting on. With that, Jamie, the stage is all yours. Thank you, Ronnie. Good morning. My name is Jamie Polomsky, and I'm the Senior Vice President of the West. I've been at Vulcan for nearly 20 years in a variety of roles, ranging from sales, logistics, and general management. I also was on the original team that defined the concept and the vision for the Vulcan Way of Selling. The Vulcan Way of Selling is our sales culture. The Vulcan Way of Selling ensures we are the supplier of choice. Today, I'll provide a high-level overview. I'll showcase Vulcan Way of Selling in action, highlighting our customer experience, followed by a discussion on recent technology enhancements. Again, the Vulcan Way of Selling ensures we are the supplier of choice. It integrates our people, our customer-focused sales organization, with a foundational process, a defined sales playbook that guides our approach to the market, combined with a technology platform that enhances efficiencies for our internal teams and provides customer engagement. The ultimate goal is to position Vulcan as a supplier of choice and to secure long-term customer loyalty. Let's take a look at a video that showcases Vulcan Way of Selling in action. Across from the Hyundai plant in Hope Hull, Meta's artificial intelligence data center is now under construction. Construction began for the Meta data center here in Montgomery, Alabama, in 2024. Over the past 18 months, our company has shipped 600,000 tons of material to this project with more on the way. To service a project of this size, you need the right material quality, production capacity, inventory, and logistics. This project really demonstrates the strength of our logistics capabilities and the connection we have at our company between our operations and sales teams. Our quarries, even at extended distance, can service this project effectively because of our size, structure, and capabilities. Our delivery tracker ensures our customers have the technology to track their orders so trucks don't stay idle. This real-time tracking enhances our order fulfillment capabilities and our customers' productivity. I've never had to worry about sleeping at nighttime 'cause of Vulcan. I'm gonna tell you, y'all been on point ever since I've been in this industry. I can pick up the phone and call my sales guy, and I've had to do it in emergencies, and he's put in 5,000 tons in the next day for me, and it's been here on time. I mean, all the competitors, they can't do it. They don't have the capability of what y'all do. You just heard the quote from one of our largest customers. "Of all the competitors, they can't do it. They don't have the capabilities you all do." Becoming the supplier of choice starts with the Vulcan Way of Selling. The Vulcan Way of Selling is a more strategic approach, and it ensures we have the right people in the right seats to win. The sales service center is where analysts use a data-driven approach to determine the project strategy and overall pricing. In the video that you just saw, our analysts are looking at our network of plants and proposing the combination of supply points based on logistics, inventories, and profitability. Our sales reps then take this recommendation and convert it into a project win based on their knowledge of the market and their customer relationships. This model is scalable and repeatable, and we know that is delivering superior execution across our entire footprint. Vulcan Way of Selling is a cultural transformation that differentiates us from the industry and provides us with a competitive advantage. This journey began in 2017, and as I told you in my opening, I was on the original team that defined the concept, and I was one of the first sales analysts in our very first sales service center in Chicago. Over the years, we have developed key components, including a sales playbook, performance metrics that focus on key sales activities. We've established and scaled the sales service centers across our entire footprint, and we've adopted internal and external sales technology. The Vulcan Way of Selling is no longer an initiative for us. The Vulcan Way of Selling is our sales culture. We are committed to the continuous investment in the Vulcan Way of Selling. With a strong foundation in people and process, our focus is squarely on technology enhancements. These technology investments accelerate our internal team's efficiencies and solidify an industry-leading customer experience. Since 2022, we've developed a pricing tool and a mobile platform for our sales organization. We continue to invest in our customer portal and the development of job site productivity tools that directly improve our customers' efficiencies. Let's take a look at another video that will demonstrate these tools in action. Let's take a look at our digital tools in action. It starts with being early in the project timeline. By seeking construction leads directly into our pipeline, we identify high-value projects before the competition. Value selling to our customers starts earlier in the process. Data drives our bottom line. Our pricing tool analyzes real-time market variables to ensure we quote for maximum profit without losing our edge. By incorporating existing spatial win-loss data, market intel, and logistics information, we can quickly and effectively develop pricing strategies to compete. Smart follow-up is all about location. Using Around Me tool, our sales reps visualize their territory in real time and quickly follow up at the right time to close the deal. Through the MyVulcan portal, clients have 24/7 access to their account to find active orders and request material delivery instantly. MyVulcan provides our customers ease of access to more effectively plan at their job site with secure processes from ordering to bill payment. Vulcan customers paid more than $2 billion in invoices through MyVulcan. From the plant to the job site, our tracking tools keep everyone informed, ensuring the right material arrives exactly when it's needed. The sky's the limit. Who knows what we'll discover next? It gives us a very forward-looking peek into the future to stay a step ahead of the game and be in front of our customers' needs, not chasing them. This video illustrates how the seamless integration of people, process, and technology is the core mechanism that delivers the exceptional customer experience that is expected. We have over 28,000 users on our customer portal who submitted over $2 billion in payments, and we expect this number to grow as more customers become familiar with the portal. Our commercial teams in 2025 followed up on over 14,000 jobs and converted 38,000 quotes to orders. Most importantly, though, the Vulcan Way of Selling is delivering results. We've had superior performance. Our aggregates price growth has outpaced our peers and the overall industry. The Vulcan Way of Selling is working. It's not just a concept, it's a proven commercial model that is delivering financial results. Now I'll turn it over to my colleague, Brent Goodsell, who will discuss Vulcan Way of Operating. Good morning. It's great to be here today. My name is Brent Goodsell, and I joined Vulcan Materials five years ago as a division president. Now, my career and background has been leadership and operational focused in a similar industry. Today, I'm responsible for Vulcan's Eastern operations. That's Illinois down to Alabama and east of the East Coast. I'm excited to talk to you today about the Vulcan Way of Operating. It's our operating strategy, discipline, and model. It's how Vulcan Materials differentiates itself from its competitors. Now, shortly, I'll walk you through a few examples of that differentiation, and I'm also gonna discuss the journey of what we've accomplished, where we're at today, and what's next. The Vulcan Way of Operating, VWO, consists of three important pillars, our assets, our people, and our customers. What underpins our success in the Vulcan Way of Operating is the Vulcan culture. Now, Ronnie talked about the strength and success of our safety program, which is driven by our safety culture. That same culture is the cornerstone of our operations, which is built by our people. Now, our operations and our industry is focused on two things, assets and people, those first two pillars. As Vulcan focuses on those first two pillars, it helps us create pillar number three, winning our customers. That's how VWO ties to what Jamie just talked about with VWS. Where have we been and what have we accomplished? Our journey has been machine-focused. Our assets, the first pillar on that last slide. More specifically, our implementation of process intelligence within our assets. Process intelligence, we refer to it as PI, is Vulcan's digital technology platform that produces 75% of our aggregates. It's dynamic. Now, others in our industry utilize automation technology, and it's dated and it's static. Now, I'll walk you through the differences in greater detail in a minute, and I'll talk about why that's important. Now, as you can see, our journey from 2019 to 2024, we scaled and accomplished the installation of process intelligence within 125 of our top plants, and we created 11 operation support centers. Now, this was not an easy plug-and-play process. As you can see, this took some time. It took about five years. Why did it take us five years? That's 125 outdoor site installations. We're not in buildings, warehouses. We're not in climate-controlled environments. This is outside. It's technology in tough environments, all weather conditions, dusty and dirty conditions. Now the point here is this is not an easy plug-and-play process. This is not technology that you're just gonna pull off the shelf and easily replicate. Vulcan Materials is ahead of the industry with plant technology. You can see today we're making great strides, and we're well ahead in utilizing this dynamic technology with process intelligence. Like I said earlier, 75% of our aggregate is produced with process intelligence. That's over 7,000 plant assets connected to PI. Today, 90% of our plants installed with process intelligence operate with what we call high utilization. Now, high utilization means our plant operators are proficient in using this technology. What are we focused on today? Our people. Pillar number two on that first slide, developing our plant operators, the employees directly engaged and utilizing this technology. To effectively maximize the benefits of process intelligence to drive the results, it's about developing our plant operators, having the right behaviors, developing the right skill sets. Plant operators demonstrating critical thinking capabilities and them being comfortable interacting with this technology and being self-driven because we're always looking for that next opportunity to drive efficiencies. It's about the right person in the right seat driving the results. As I just talked about, it's been a lot of work. Why is it so important? Results through differentiation. I'll describe how Vulcan's process intelligence platform is superior to automation technology. Now, that automation technology, that's what the industry and our competitors utilize today. Now what you see here, this is automation. It's the same technology that's been utilized for over 25 years. Just think about that. Think about the cell phones that we all have today. What if those were the same cell phones that we used 25 years ago? Now, like I said, in our journey, Vulcan moved away from this technology or started moving away from it in 2019. Why did we do that? Because automation is static, and you can't interact with it. Now, looking at the screen here, what this tells you is which components in your plant are running, the green lights, and which components in your plant are not, the red lights. Automation is a digital on/off switch, and it has limitations. Now, sure, digital's replacing paper, and it's a guide, but it leaves plant operators guessing at what the plant can really do. With the limited ability to interact, operators are gonna operate at their own comfort levels. They're gonna be hesitant to push the plant. Why? Because they wanna keep the plant. They wanna keep the lights green. They want to keep the plant running. They don't want to shut the plant down. They're not focusing on what that plant can actually do. The problem is we found this created inconsistencies among our plant operators. More importantly, it creates inconsistency among your plant's performance. Maximum throughput within the plant is gonna remain unknown because you can't see it. Now, you can see this screen looks very different than the last. This is Vulcan's process intelligence. The heartbeats that you see on the screen show real-time performance and any deviations in those heartbeats, that allows the operators to troubleshoot on the fly, make instantaneous adjustments, minimizing those inefficiencies. Now, green isn't always good because those deviations, they show you where you have opportunity. Process intelligence allows for target-setting capabilities. Set stretch goals to maximize your plant's performance. Again, focus on those deviations to find opportunities to increase your throughput. It also connects the plant operator, managers, and those operation support centers all in real time. Those 11 operation support centers I referenced earlier, they can monitor multiple sites at the same time from a remote location. They're coaching, offering feedback, and supporting those plant managers in real time, all day long. I like to think of those operation support centers as kind of like an offensive coordinator sitting up in the play box, looking down, surveying the plants, communicating directly with that plant operator. Now they both can look at the screen, see what's going on, relying on each other for help to make us better. The whole team is now connected on the same page. Everyone knows the play. Everyone's executing that play. Process intelligence is dynamic. Now I'm gonna show a short video. This is actual footage shot in real time. You're gonna meet Roger. Roger's a 10-year Vulcan employee and a plant operator out in San Antonio, Texas. Notice how he is interacting with the technology and making immediate adjustments. Here's Roger. I've been with Vulcan for 10 years. I'm a plant operator here at Helotes. This is where I make all my decisions when I'm running the plant. Right now, we get a lot of fines going towards the water plant. Hey, Antonio, you got a copy? Yeah, go ahead. Hey, man, keep an eye on the water plant just 'cause we're getting a lot of fines going that way. All right. 10-4. Right here, we're still. We have a delay in the truckload, so probably can make a call in a little bit, see what happens, how it goes the next couple of minutes with the trucks, and see what's going on down in the pit. Right here, we had some pretty good material. That's why we were hitting the 900 tons per hour, and then we got into some really bad clay, wet material. We're gonna try to get then blend some material, so we can get that back on top to at least to get over 900, close to it. You can see our feeder right here adjusting. It's not maxed out, but it's staying where we need it. Having seen our technology in action, now we get to talk about the good stuff. Let me share some of the results that we're seeing due to our differentiation through process intelligence. We produce more of the products that our customers demand. We saw an increase in yield, more production tons in less hours. We experienced a decrease in overtime hours. By the way, that's our most expensive labor. We produced more tons. We saw an increase in throughput. This allows us to put more tons through the plant at a faster pace. You put all these together, we produce the right tons in less hours. Well, personally, I think that's a great slide, but where's the cash? This graph shows the difference in production cost in 2025. Sites utilizing process intelligence experienced less than a 1% increase in year-over-year production costs. Guys are beating inflation. Sites without process intelligence and those utilizing the automation system that I referenced, they experienced a 2.6% increase in year-over-year production cost. Like I said, 75% of our production tons are produced with process intelligence. Now, we're not done with plant operator development or our technology. We expect to continue to further drive results with our digital platform. What's next? What's the future of Vulcan Way of Operating? As we continue to refine process intelligence to drive efficiency, we're focusing on pit development. This is the beginning of our production process, creating the most efficient size material before it even enters the plant. On the screen, the picture on your left, we're utilizing 3D imaging to achieve the most efficient mine plan sequencing. It allows us to better understand our geology to lay out more efficient shots. Helps us create more efficient blasts, minimizing that oversize material that requires secondary breakage, which is an additional cost. Second picture from your left, you'll see we're utilizing autonomous drills within our fleet. It gets the operator out of the cab into a better work environment. Operators now have more access to technology. They're operating these drills with tablets instead of joysticks. We're geocoding drill hole locations to be more accurate and precise with our blast patterns. Drones are assisting us in the setup and the preparation process. Now, I have one more video to show you. This is gonna show how we're utilizing all the technology I just talked about with pit optimization. At Vulcan Materials, our work goes far beyond rock. Here in Kingsport, Tennessee, this quarry has supplied critical aggregate for decades. Now it's the site of one of the most unique blasts in its history. In just seconds, more than 450,000 tons of material will be safely released, the result of months of planning and innovation. As the Central division drill and blasting manager, my role is the responsibility of all the blasting in Central. We also incorporated remote controls on our drills. First time it's ever been done by anyone, using GPS technology and remote at the same time. The 3-D layouts and the GPS drill kept our drillers at a safe distance. The remote technology allowed us to operate from several hundred feet away. For Vulcan Materials, this is what progress looks like. Engineering expertise, innovative technology, and a commitment to the people and places we serve. I assume for most of you, that's probably the first time you've seen a shot go like that. I was just watching your faces, and it was pretty cool. The only thing more exhilarating than that is being able to push the button. If you ever tour a quarry sometime, make sure you ask to do that. You know, when I look at that video, the first thing you think about is, you know, all the technology I talked about, we're using it there. Because of the size of the blast, and it was one of the unique ones in our company history, right afterwards, I called our operations leadership, just to ask a simple question. "How'd the blast go?" I was expecting to hear about the technology and all that. This isn't what they talked about. What they talked about is how efficient that blast was, the size of the material. The quote that came back from one of the operations leader was, "That shot pulverized that stone. It is the perfect size, and it's gonna run efficiently through our plant." That's what we wanna see with pit optimization. Now, if I can take you back to that first slide, the three pillars of the Vulcan Way of Operating. Assets. We're utilizing our assets with process intelligence. People. We're developing our people to be optimal users of this technology and make products at the lowest possible cost. Winning our customers, making the right products at the right time, ensuring availability of quality material. This is how process intelligence allows us to cater more effectively and efficiently to our customers. This is how process intelligence differentiates Vulcan Materials. I appreciate your time today, talking about the Vulcan Way of Operating and really talking about our journey of where we've been, our assets and our PI. Where we're at, plant automation, people development, and where we're heading next, our relentless drive to increase efficiencies. Now I'll turn it over to Mitesh Shah to talk about our people. Thanks, Goody. Great job. See you, buddy. Yeah. Good morning. Still kinda asleep, I got it. My name is Mitesh Shah. I'm privileged to serve as Chief Human Resources Officer of this great company. Got a chance to meet with a lot of y'all last night. It was great to see you there, and excited to talk to you today about our people. Now, I've been with Vulcan for almost a decade. I've gotten to take my experience out of many roles, both as Division President and as Deputy General Counsel, and now as CHRO, lead the Vulcan Way of Talent as we drive the growth and development of our people. I'm thrilled about the opportunities ahead of us, and I'd love to talk to y'all about what Vulcan is doing better than anyone else and why this is a competitive advantage. Look, at the end of the day, the Vulcan Way of Talent is the connection between the Vulcan Way of Operating and the Vulcan Way of Selling. It is the behaviors that are ingrained in our culture that make these disciplines work. We've had years of success executing on these behaviors, and we're getting better every single day. The Vulcan Way of Talent is what drives these outcomes, and it's based on three pillars. First, exceptional talent. We hire the very best in the industry. We're the brand of choice, and we hire based on our core values. Second, we offer world-class training through our proprietary Vulcan University platform. Third, we have a culture of performance that drives ownership and accountability. Look, we have high expectations of ourselves and of each other. Talent, at the very beginning, is how we hire, and it's focused on who we bring in to the Vulcan family. At Vulcan, we hire for character and we train for skill. We seek folks who are driven, curious, team players. Driven because they're more likely to be self-starters. Curious because they're more eager to learn. Team players because they focus on lifting up others. Look, these aren't some ambitious goals or fancy buzzwords we use at Investor Day in New York. This is an intentional process at Vulcan. It's a specific system in how we pull these qualities out of each of our applicants. Folks, I'll tell you, if we have somebody who's got skill and experience but does not meet this standard, we'll take a pass, and we're better for it. If you look at the challenges in the market that you hear about across many industries around challenges in finding skilled labor, recruiting and retaining labor, Vulcan has solved this problem by building our own. With our operations trainee program, apprenticeship program, supervisor development program, we have partnered with the best trade schools, the best universities, and taken solid talent from within, and we've put thousands of people through our programs for supervisors, electricians, mechanics, and much, much more. These graduates are now on a path to a long and prosperous career at Vulcan. Finally, we stretch capabilities early. Look, we don't believe in this mantra that you gotta wait your turn. If you're a high performer and you produce exceptional results. You will have early opportunities at Vulcan because we know that the best way talent learns is through early experience. Now look, now that we've hired the very best people, we train them using our Vulcan University platform. While other companies struggle with brain drain, retirements or experience leaving their ranks, we have captured decades of knowledge and made it instantly available on an application right on your phone. The training is an archive of our very best practices in all of our disciplines with VWO and VWS. These classes are meant to expedite the learning curve, and it is proprietary to Vulcan. Now, we marry these exceptional tools on the Vulcan platform with field-based training. We have on-site trainers that focus on critical skills across every division. These critical skills are the skills that have an outsized impact on the P&L because they drive plant availability and throughput. This training allows us and continues to allow us to be the most profitable operators in the industry. Now, we've taken the very best, we've given them elite training. We ingrain our culture of performance. You know, we all know that leadership is paramount to the success of any organization. Vulcan takes this and puts it in three programs. The first, before you can lead your others, you've got to lead yourself. Our leadership journey starts with personal accountability, ownership and discipline. Now, as you grow in your career, as you start to have direct reports, you're gonna start looking at more of the performance coach model, not the boss model. We're trying to help our team that has now got people that they have to lead to develop new talent, develop young talent, and help them excel. Finally, as you continue to grow in your careers, you continue to grow in your rank and your expertise, the focus now turns to strategy, entrepreneurship, innovation. It helps us excel faster, move with speed, and have a greater impact across our enterprise. All of this is focused on a servant based model of leadership where we focus on lifting up and building others. The process of growing and developing our talent at Vulcan is what makes the VWO and the VWS model work. Because no matter where you go, we have enterprise wide consistency. We have one language, one culture. You can, whether you're a plant operator in California, a sales rep in Texas, or a mechanic in Florida, you know the expectations and the behaviors that are demanded in your discipline. It's why we can stretch folks early, and it's why we can move them seamlessly, and it's why we can integrate an acquisition faster than anybody in the market. Because we bring our culture of performance immediately and we see results faster. You know, they say the employee experience is a leading indicator of the customer experience. These awards show how our people feel about what they have built. We did not ask for this recognition, but it's proof that the market is paying attention. We know that when our employees win, our customers win. When our customers win, our shareholders win. Now, I'd love for you to see a video and hear from the very best in the business. I think there's a lot of potential out there for folks to come into this company and make a name for themselves and to have a great career and provide a great living for themselves and their family. I'm proud to be part of a company who cares about the environment as much as I do. There is opportunity to grow in Vulcan, and the reason why is because there's great people that actually see potential in you. I think I learn something new about myself each day, each week, because there's numerous challenges that are presented to you and that you have to rise up to the occasion. It's more than just a job. It's actually really fun and it's really cool. It's just a neat atmosphere. Going home and seeing my little ones running up to me, hugging me, kissing me, that to me is my therapy. That's what pushes me to keep coming and keep showing up. The main thing I like about working here at Vulcan are the people. I'd do anything for the group of guys over there. Those guys are some of the hardest working guys I ever seen. If it wasn't for them, it wouldn't be no plant operator like me. What excites me most is that I finally found a career, not only just a job. This is, in my opinion, the best job in the world. Lucky to have just come into this industry, period, and then to end up working for Vulcan is just icing on the cake. They will give you that opportunity to learn, grow and develop to the highest of your abilities. Vulcan employees here with us today and many more watching live. Folks, this is how we all feel about this great company. It's an honor to work here. This is the team that will win the future of aggregates. Thank you for your interest in Vulcan. I'm going to ask my colleagues to come up here and we're going to do a Q&A or excuse me, a fireside chat with Ronnie. All right. Thank you, guys. We're approaching the halfway mark. The first part of our two-pronged strategy is how we're enhancing our core. I hope you got some good insight from this team that's leading on how we are enhancing our core. We're gonna have a little fireside chat here. First I want to welcome a new guy to the stage. He hasn't got to introduce himself yet. Krzysztof, why don't you tell our group here a little bit about yourself? Sure. Thanks, Ronnie. Good morning, everybody. My name is Krzysztof Soltan. I'm the Chief Information Officer for Vulcan Materials. I've been with the company for four years now. I have the privilege of leading a dedicated and extremely talented technology team. A little bit about myself. My career started in the United States Marine Corps. I've had the privilege of working in lots of different industries, starting with life sciences, aerospace, capital markets, transportation, healthcare, to name a few, and now construction aggregates. I've had an opportunity to deliver digital experiences for customers and employees, drive digital transformations, support acquisitions, dispositions, as well as utilizing asset data to drive and deliver business outcomes. I've had an opportunity to do that at companies such as General Electric, ABB, Johnson Controls, and now Vulcan Materials. Thank you. Well, we're lucky to have you. Thank you. Let's start with, look, we talked about the journey with Vulcan Way of Selling and the Vulcan Way of Operating. You know, we are beginning to open up more and more around, you know, what that journey's looked like, what it means to us, and how we're gonna continue to lead this industry. We get asked often, like, "Okay, well, when you start opening this up, I mean, there's lots of technology out there. People can just copy this, and how are you gonna sustain those advantages?" Jamie, why don't you start with how important this culture side is, and how this journey has been, are people driven just as much as the technology we've invested in? Yeah, thanks, Ronnie. Great question. As I mentioned in my remarks, we've been at Vulcan Way of Selling since 2017. It's not about the technology. It's about the people and the process, and it's really trying to get the right behaviors in your organization, and that takes time. As much as we wanna believe that a new process, a new technology will be adopted overnight, it just doesn't happen. So from 2017 to now, it is ingrained in our culture. It. We have the right behaviors, and with the right behaviors, now we can really focus on the technology. Yeah. Outstanding. Brent, how about Vulcan Way of Operating? Yeah, you talk about those first two pillars, assets and people, and I talked about the difficulty of the assets, and it took us time to get that technology installed. When you talk about the people and the culture, I mean, there's another hurdle there. I mean, you can plug the technology in, but how do you get people to utilize it the right way and to be efficient with it? I think the advantage Vulcan has is, you know, we started this five years ago. We're ahead of the industry. We've already seen the challenges, and we put the processes in place, especially on the training and people side. As we continue to further expand our technology platform, I think we're set up really good for it, and I think we're, you know, we're years ahead of the competition in doing this. Yeah, yeah, it's great. If you remember back to the video with Roger, our plant operator, I mean, you saw on the screen our process intelligence, but you also saw in the background plant automation. All the things that we said to own an off switch. We call it cutting the cord. We're out there every day training our operators to rely on process intelligence, and it's hard. When people say, "Yeah, we've got the same automation," they don't. It's hard to train these folks, but when they grasp it, they're pushing us. I mean, the great thing is once they buy into it, they're really pushing the plants. To Brent's point, it's not how much of a comfort zone you can run in, it's how do we integrate these and really optimize our plants. Mitesh, talk about the culture side of it. How important is that? I mean, people talk about culture a lot. I mean, this has been a journey. It's been a journey. Listen, big picture, you've gotta have buy-in, right? I mean, you've gotta have your folks that are buying in to the very value premise of VWO and VWS, and that's where we are. It has been a journey, but if you look and see what they've gotten out of it, I think the entire team sees the value in what this offers. It's not just what they see, it's the fact the entire enterprise speaks the same language. I mean, that one enterprise, one language, one culture is necessary. When you look at, you know, the sales team and the operators, yes, they speak that language, but so do the support teams. Your QC techs and everyone else across the line from environmental to safety, we all speak the same language. You don't get there overnight. It is a journey, and you marry that with both the training that we offer as well as the on-field expertise that's there on site. That's hard to replicate, and we're, you know, years ahead of anybody else. Yeah, that's outstanding. As we talk about the journey, Krzysztof, you started in 2022, kinda right in the middle of it. I mean, you inherited a lot of installations going on and connectivity. We talk about all these things, and Brent described the difficult conditions. Talk about how hard it was. It's not easy to get these plants connected. It's very difficult. First and foremost, I'd say everything that we do as a technology team always aligns to the company strategy of enhancing our core and expanding our reach. That's fundamental and first and foremost. Second, you know, process intelligence whether it's process intelligence or Vulcan Way of Selling tools, or you've noticed you know, capabilities like telematics that we're working through and piloting or other capabilities, they all rely on lots of data and connectivity. One of the first things we needed to address is the connectivity, making sure that we have the bandwidth, technology, and scalability to enable capabilities like my colleagues have mentioned throughout the presentation so far. That was very difficult, but very fundamental to everything that we're doing today. The other thing I'll mention is, you know, as my colleagues have talked about Vulcan Way of Selling, Vulcan Way of Operating, Vulcan Way of Talent, all those things are all related to people, process, and well, how we enable technology. What I mean by that is we have to simplify processes, we have to standardize processes, and putting the foundational pieces like that in place from a culture perspective, from a people side of the house, is fundamental to enabling capabilities for the future. Which I'll mention also, all those components that I just talked about set us up perfectly in the use of AI for the future, which by the way, we're already using. Yeah. No, that's great. I would tell you, I mean, I'll give Krzysztof some kudos. You know, when Krzysztof first came to the company and we would have meetings about what we wanted to do and how we were gonna get there, Krzysztof would start the meeting with, "What does it mean to the business?" Not what was the investment or what new systems do we need to buy or a cloud or this or that. It was like, "What does it mean to the business and what can we do with it?" It's been very refreshing. Krzysztof looks at it, like he said, this two-pronged approach in enhancing our core and expanding our reach and how this technology strategy supports that. Thank you. Let's talk about, look, one of the things I talked about earlier on how we're gonna win the future, and I said an improving demand environment. I followed it up with, we're also focused on controlling what we can control. The last three years, demand has been muted. We've done a really good job of continuing to accelerate our price and also controlling our cost. As we look at these process procedures, the evidence that it shows with our sales service centers and our technology hubs and, you know, what we're doing with our control centers. Talk about the assurance that it gives you, this team, on our ability to control what we can control. Yeah. I'll start. As you mentioned, we can't control demand. What we can control on the commercial side of our business is staying disciplined to the Vulcan Way of Selling. This is the point of Vulcan Way of Selling, is ensuring that we are selling to the entire market, small customers or large customers. We don't rely on the big home run mega projects. What we rely on is the day in and day out customers. The framework of Vulcan Way of Selling allows us to have the right rigor and the right discipline on a weekly and monthly basis to ensure that our sales reps are following those procedures, and it's the same throughout the entire company. If we're doing it in California, we know that we're doing it in Tennessee. That repeatable and scalable process is really ensuring that we are engaging with all segments and all disciplines on every project. Yeah. Remember, 36,000 quotes transformed to orders last year. Impressive. Yeah. Thank you. Brent, how about you? How we control what we can control. Yeah. When we talk about, you know, what we can control, and we always talk about, you know, what you can't control, which is demand and weather, and that plays into operations, too. But what we can control is our production and our hours, right? Two big important inputs for us. With the use of process intelligence and the technology, it helps us solve that equation faster. We can start scaling. Whether demand's up or down, we can scale much, at a much faster pace our production, which then goes with your hours, and we have the tools already and processes already in place. Not only can we set those plans up, but we can go back and monitor them and see how successful we were. Yeah. That's outstanding. Mitesh, when we talk about controlling what we can control, how important is that one language? How important is that consistency? How important is it the way we train, when we train all of our people the same? How important is that? You know, I mean, when you look at that stat we put up there, we've had 43,000 classes completed since 2022. You know, the ability to get people to buy into that, use those learnings across our enterprise and drive consistency, it's mission critical, right? It's our ability to roll out new products, new systems enterprise-wide and get buy-in and impact immediately. We've got those two mechanisms to do that. This digitized platform for us, this Vulcan University, is pretty exceptional. I mean, we've taken a lot of knowledge, lots of historical knowledge, and we take this new information, and we're able to push it out immediately. Our folks can get in front of hundreds of classes and take those learnings and immediately apply them to the business. When you marry that with these on-site trainers across our enterprises that help them just. We move with velocity. I mean, we're able to move the business quicker. Real quick, I mean, you know, we'll take a break here in just a minute, and then we're gonna come back, and we're gonna talk about how we're gonna grow this company. Growth for us is, it comes in a lot of different forms, but a lot of that is through acquisitions. How important is it with these tools when we acquire someone, how we integrate? I mean, that's a big piece of this, is how do we Vulcanize them? That's what we call it, Vulcanize. That's a good word, isn't it? Jamie, how do you talk about when we, I mean, you've been through a lot of acquisitions. How quick is it? Yeah, I mean, it's. We've done a lot of acquisitions in California over the last couple of years and these Vulcan Way of Selling and Vulcan Way of Operating are essential for us to bring on the new employees, and it's a great framework. Having that framework knows that we're having the same conversations with our new employees that we are having with our legacy employees. Starting with that, getting the people right, having the same language, having them have a framework of how they join the company, they're appreciative of that. They know what to do. It just accelerates the way that we can integrate our new acquisitions. That's really all it's about, the speed. We can integrate faster than anyone. Good. How about on the operations side, Brent? Yeah, I think the same thing. I mean, you know, we have the roadmap. We've done this. We've successfully installed technology in 125 plants. We have the framework with our plant operator development. When we look at acquisitions, and acquisitions may come with, you know, maybe one quarry, maybe a handful of quarries. That's a lot different than 125. Right. Since that framework's already there, we can quickly replicate what we did in the past. Yeah. That's great. Ronnie, if I may add. Yeah, go ahead. You know, a lot of effort that goes into an acquisition is integrating technology and realizing synergies as a result of it. You know, somebody mentioned earlier on the presentation the point that we do it better than anybody else, and that's because we've built a consistent, repeatable playbook on how do we integrate technology very quickly and get live on day one, and that's key. Yeah. No, it is, definitely. We'll wrap up with winning the future. I mean, that's one of the themes today, and I talked about our investment and continued investment. You know, we get asked a long time like, "What inning are you in?" We're not in an inning, and we're gonna continue to invest in these tools. As we talk about the future, Krzysztof, why don't you start with we've said data centers have been a big tailwind to us from a consumption standpoint and demand, but you know, everyone wants to hear about AI, what's AI gonna do, and how's AI gonna affect our industry. What is your thoughts on how AI is gonna change the way Vulcan does business? Well, first and foremost, I'd say AI is here to stay. As I mentioned earlier, we're already using AI to drive efficiencies and productivity within our company, and providing tools and capabilities to make our employees better, more efficient in the tasks that they do on a daily basis, and that's fundamental. Second, I would say we have to prioritize. You know, we can dabble with a lot of different things, but if we focus on two or three big rocks, no pun intended. No, I like it. You know, for Vulcan-- I like big rocks. Really just focus on, you know, what are the ones, what are the use cases that are gonna drive growth and EBITDA? That's where we're gonna go after and that's where we're gonna, you know, pilot and scale where we see success. The other thing I would just mention, and as, you know, some of my colleagues have mentioned earlier, is AI is only as good as the data that we have. Every company has lots of data these days, but we have good data. With the platforms of Vulcan Way of Selling, Process Intelligence, all the capabilities that we've put in place over the past few years, that is fundamental, and that will set us apart for the future and it'll be a competitive advantage for us, and we will continue to be a market leader in the industry. Outstanding. See, I understood all that. See, that's good. I like it. Mitesh, you and I talk about AR, and it's not accounts receivable, it's attract and retain. When we talk about our people, how are we gonna continue to do that? How are we gonna put Vulcan in and continue to be the leader when it comes to people? Yeah, it's something we talk about every week. Look, we look at it from two perspectives. One, our employee value proposition. We have a very strong brand and a lot to offer anyone looking for a career. We continue to offer opportunity, prosperity, stability. You can get a career and a long path at Vulcan and join a family. The second piece of it is engagement. You know, we got division presidents here with us today. They do an exceptional job, them and their teams across the enterprise, engaging with our people. Their focus every day is get in the truck and go, and they go see folks, engage with them, focus on ways that they can help them grow in their own careers, and the relationships that you build just through those interactions show that you've got a path at Vulcan and you've got an opportunity, and there are people invested in your success. We look at success as both personal and professional success, right? I mean, we all work for the loved ones at home. Our folks do as well. We wanna make sure that they find satisfaction, not only professionally, but what we provide them gives them an opportunity to be successful at home as well. We've got a strong employee value proposition. We've got a strong brand, a lot of opportunity, and we engage with our people, and I think that really sets us apart. Yeah. No, outstanding. Jamie, what about Vulcan Way of Selling? Are we done? No, we're not done. First though, we need to stick to the fundamentals, and maintain the culture that we've built over this several years. I think the opportunity is really how we utilize the data that we have to accelerate the decision-making of our teams, and that's both just within Vulcan Way of Selling and Vulcan Way of Operating. I also think the real opportunity too is where those two come together. How do we use the data to drive the business? Not just sales, not just operations, but when we come together, what are those business units? How are they using the data to improve the speed and make the right decisions? Yeah. Outstanding. Brent, are we done? No, we're not done. I think-- Good. Good answer. There's gonna be a lot of technology, a lot of new technology coming at us, and there's gonna be technology coming at us we don't even know about today. I think the really important piece is how we've demonstrated how we can scale and implement that technology, train people, but more importantly, it's that Vulcan culture. Being able to enable with all that new equipment and technology. I think that's gonna be the strength of our operations going forward as, you know, we sit down with Krzysztof Soltan and his team and really decide which technology's gonna benefit us. From there, we can scale it because we've already done it. Yeah. Outstanding. I hope this has been helpful and give you a little more deeper dive into Vulcan Way of Selling, Vulcan Way of Operating, and our Vulcan Way of Talent. We got another short video to show here before break. After the video's complete, we're gonna take a 15-minute break. I'll remind you that your QR codes are on your tables, and if you have questions to submit, please do that so that when we wrap up, after break, Jerry's gonna come up and talk about how we're gonna grow the company and what that growth looks like. As I said, Mary Andrews will come up and give us our new financial targets. We'll watch this quick video, and then we'll take a break, and then we'll come back and wrap up the day. Thank you. Appreciate it. The Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel Project is the largest infrastructure project ever in Virginia. What you see behind me is a portion of the nearly 10-mile corridor on Interstate 64. This Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel Project adds twin two-lane bored tunnels under the harbor from Hampton to Norfolk and includes the widening of four-lane segments. Serving a major project like the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel requires Vulcan expertise. What sets our team apart, particularly in this area, is the way we connect operations, sales, and logistics. We are using trucks, we're using barges, and rail, all to get this product on time right where it's needed on the job site. Our technical services team worked closely with our customers involved in this joint venture to develop a proprietary blend of material that met the right quality and specification standards. I don't know that anybody else could have put this kind of blend together. Combining material from several of our regional locations, we have shipped over 330,000 tons of this blended material by barge from our Puddledock facility to the job site. Our Havre de Grace quarry in Maryland has shipped 265,000 tons of riprap and Armor stone by barge. Our custom material from Havre de Grace was used for the project to fortify the north and south islands. It was our ability to make and move the right products at the right volumes at the right time that helped us win the work and meet the customer's needs. All in from our first shipments in 2020, we have shipped over 1.3 million tons and are projected to ship 1.6 million tons by the project's estimated completion in 2027. To date, we've shipped 500,000 tons by truck and 800,000 tons by barge. Our capabilities set us apart. From the technology we use at our operations to the network we have within the markets where we operate, we are well-positioned to meet customers' needs. Whether it's residential construction, community-based non-residential construction like data centers, schools, and hospitals, or major transportation and infrastructure projects, our teams are built to move with speed and scale to outpace our competitors and win the work in the markets where we operate. All right. Good morning. I'm Jerry Perkins, Chief Administrative Officer at Vulcan Materials, and it's a pleasure to be with you today. Over my 25-year career at Vulcan, I've had the opportunity to work on a range of acquisitions and growth projects. First in corporate as an M&A attorney and general counsel, and then later out in the field as a division president and a senior vice president. Recently, I led the acquisitions of Wake Stone in North Carolina and Superior Industries in California. I'm privileged, and I'm honored, and I'm excited to lead the future growth efforts of Vulcan with this new management team. Earlier today, you heard Ronnie lay out our two-pronged strategy, and Jamie, Mitesh, and Brent talked about the Vulcan Way of Selling, Vulcan Way of Operating, and the Vulcan Way of Talent. Those are the engines that enhance our core and make us a superior performing company today. My focus is on the future, the second prong of our strategy, how we expand our reach and grow our operations and our asset base. Our growth strategy is built on five guiding principles. First, we are focused on acquiring aggregates. It's who we are. It's what we do. It's our expertise. Second, we target acquisitions where we can win, where the market structure is favorable. For bolt-on acquisitions in existing markets, that means expanding our footprint and our presence to drive more opportunities and to drive synergies. For new markets, we focus on a path to being number one or number two. That's the kind of structure that drives profitability. T hird, we don't passively wait on opportunities to come to us. We are proactive in our approach, and we build trust to get deals done. Fourth, our acquisitions come with synergies and not just the easy cost-cutting kind. We leverage our scale and the Vulcan Way of Selling and the Vulcan Way of Operating to enhance margins and operating performance. Lastly, we constantly evaluate our portfolio. If an asset is better in the hands of someone else, we're not afraid to sell it or swap it. These five guiding principles support a powerful two-part approach to expansion. M&A and greenfields. Look, our priority in Birmingham right now and across all of our divisions is simple. It's to grow our footprint. It's an expectation, and it's a priority. We're focused on having high-touch interactions with acquisition targets to build strong and lasting relationships. Our goal is to have the head seat at the table when an owner is ready to sell. If you look at the past four years back to 2022, over 80% of our acquisitions have been the result of a privately negotiated exclusive transaction. That's unique. That's special. Why? Because our industry reputation means we are a buyer of choice. We don't depend on competitive auctions. When family companies choose to sell, they often choose Vulcan because they know their legacy, their operations, and most importantly, their people will be in good hands. Look, M&A is in our DNA. It's how this company has been built. Let's go back 70 years to 1957. Vulcan had just gone public right here on the New York Stock Exchange. We had 51 aggregates locations and a modest $91 million in revenues. Don't we all wish we could go back and buy the stock? Halfway through that 70-year journey, we reached the monumental $1 billion in revenue mark. We had 179 aggregates locations, mostly in the South, the Midwest, and Texas. Here we are today. We're the largest producer of construction aggregates in the United States with 425 aggregates locations, $8 billion in revenue, and an unmatched coast-to-coast footprint. This is the direct outcome of a strategic commitment to growth that started 70 years ago and continues today. When you look at that timeline, you see a rhythm, you see a discipline, you see the construction of a best-in-class network and footprint that simply cannot be replicated. Let's zoom in on our growth activities from the last four years. We've been busy. We've acquired 36 aggregate operations, all in key markets for us. We've also complemented that growth with the completion of greenfields, seven. Even more so, we have continued to optimize our portfolio. We will have divested 149 ready-mix plants after we close on the sale of our California ready-mix business. As a result, we will have reduced our ready-mix footprint by almost 80% from where it was just five years ago. Now our strategy in action, beginning with our entry into a new market, the high growth Raleigh-Durham market. When we acquired Wake Stone, we became the number one producer of construction aggregates in Raleigh on day one. Look, Wake was a top pure play aggregates producer on the East Coast. It was a true gem in a high growth market. But the Bratton family chose to sell to us because we had developed a decades-long relationship with them. Vulcan's culture, rich history, and strong reputation were key with the Bratton family in trusting us with their operations and their employees. In the 16 months since we closed this transaction, we have fully integrated the operations, and we are leveraging the Vulcan Way of Selling and the Vulcan Way of Operating to enhance margins and drive long-term profitability. Next, a classic example of a high value bolt-on acquisition in an existing market. Southern California, specifically San Diego. We already had a nice presence in San Diego. With the acquisition of Superior, we solidified our presence as the number one producer of both aggregates and asphalt in San Diego, and we will be for a mighty long time, given our reserve base, the locations, and the barriers to entry. Like Wake, this was a privately negotiated transaction built on our lasting relationship with the Brower family. We've also fully integrated these operations, and we are reaping the benefits of our expanded scale and market presence in San Diego. The aggregates industry remains highly fragmented. Vulcan's the largest producer, but we represent less than 10% of the total market. Over 2/3 of the U.S. market is controlled by private companies. That leaves us with ample opportunity to grow. Looking at all the opportunities on this map, we've identified priority targets totaling 350 million annual sales tons. More than half of that is outside our footprint. Look, the last 20 years, we've been focused on acquisitions and growing inside our footprint, and that's been critical. We have irreplaceable positions in key growth markets. As we move forward, expect us to grow not only in our footprint, but seek attractive opportunities out of it. We will remain disciplined and selective, but the opportunities are vast. What lies ahead is truly exciting. It's a unique time in our industry. Many family-owned companies are undergoing generational transitions, creating many opportunities for us. At Vulcan, our growth engine is not just powered by M&A. It's powered by greenfields too. Why? Because where the growth is occurring, there may not be an acquisition candidate or target. We go where the growth is, not just where the sellers are. This map of greenfield activity shows you that it's significant and widespread. We currently have 17 projects in flight, and many of those will be operational in the next several years, generating incremental margin at very attractive returns. To be clear, greenfields are difficult. They take time, they take discipline, they take local market savvy, and that's why many of our competitors avoid them. We believe our commitment to greenfields is a strategic lever that sets us apart. The South Carolina coast is a powerful illustration of our greenfield strategy at work. A decade ago, our presence in Charleston and Myrtle Beach was limited to just three distribution yards. Given the projected growth in its coastal area and the limited acquisition targets, we prioritized greenfield efforts to build our own network. The results have been impressive. By the end of this year, we will have added three sites in Charleston, two in Myrtle Beach, and in 2024, Wake Stone's quarry was added. That's six sites. Three to nine. This solidifies our position as the number one producer and seller of aggregates on the South Carolina coast. In closing, this company was built on growth. It's in our DNA. This management team has a relentless focus on growth. With that, I'll turn it over to Mary Andrews. Thanks, Jerry. Good morning, everyone. I'm Mary Andrews Carlisle, Chief Financial Officer. I'm approaching my 20th anniversary at Vulcan later this spring, having served in numerous finance and business development roles before stepping into the CFO seat back in 2022. As Ronnie alluded to earlier, now that you see me standing on this stage, you know we're making our way to the punchline. I stood before many of you 3.5 years ago at our 2022 Investor Day, and I kicked off my comments by sharing that our adjusted EBITDA had grown at a compound annual growth rate of 11% over the preceding five years. I'm proud to stand here today and tell you that our consistent strategic focus and solid execution delivered average adjusted EBITDA growth of 13% and average operating cash flow growth of 16% over the last three years. As you've heard from my colleagues this morning, our teams have been very busy, continuously leveraging our strategic disciplines and thoughtfully optimizing our portfolio. Over the last three years, our adjusted EBITDA margin has expanded over 700 basis points, and our return on invested capital has improved over 200 basis points. Delivering on our aggregates cash gross profit per ton target of $11-$12 has been the key to our success, and it's the foundation of our attractive cash generation. At $11.33, our aggregates cash gross profit per ton has increased 45% since 2022. Coupling that profitability improvement with a stable cash conversion cycle, operating cash flow, as you saw on the previous slide, grew to over $1.8 billion in 2025. We prioritize reinvesting in our business and consistently spend about 6%-6.5% of revenues on operating and maintenance capital expenditures. To complement our M&A growth, as Jerry just described, we also invest in greenfield and other growth projects which have varied between 1%-4% of revenues over time. Net of those total capital expenditures, free cash flow surpassed $1.1 billion in 2025. That is more than double just three years ago and positions us well to continue to pursue our disciplined and balanced capital allocation strategy. Over the last three years, we've deployed almost $6 billion of capital, or approximately $2 billion annually on average. Our capital allocation strategy has not changed, but the level of cash generation supporting capital deployment certainly has. The average capital deployed over the last three years was 38% higher than the preceding five. Over that entire timeframe, we balanced reinvestment in our franchise, growth through M&A, and capital returns to shareholders. Given the growing free cash flow, we have been able to increase average M&A spend by 29% over the last three years and to accelerate capital returns to shareholders. Jerry already shared with you about our acquisition focus and execution, so I want to spend a couple of minutes elaborating on our CapEx investments and shareholder returns. Operating and maintenance capital projects come in all shapes and sizes, from new mobile equipment, to screen replacements, to partial plant upgrades, to full plant rebuilds. Regardless of the project size and scope, our goal is to deliver incremental value on every dollar we reinvest, improving customer service, productivity, and sustainability. In Tennessee, at one of our Nashville area plants, we recently made an investment to change our wastewater handling, and this project allowed us to avoid costly settling pond cleanup, to recover additional sellable product, to recycle 90% of the water used in the plant, which enabled us to limit our dependence on and the cost of a municipal water supply, and to reduce electricity consumption from pit pumping. This investment ensured that a key location with long-term reserves in a growing market could sustainably operate and more efficiently meet our customers' demands. Another example in Georgia, at one of our busiest and most profitable Atlanta area quarries, we're currently making a much larger investment to relocate and rebuild the processing plant. This will allow us to expose additional long-term reserves and extend the mine life by over 20 years. This facility is ideally located to reach multiple high-growth counties, to service our key fixed plant customers, and to participate in mega infrastructure projects. The new plant will have an increased production rate, an improved water management system, and an enhanced customer load-out facility. These are just two quick examples of operating capital in action, delivering tremendous business value and attractive returns on investment. Now we have long said that after reinvesting in our franchise, that our priority use of capital is for growth through acquisitions. That remains true today, and with an attractive pipeline of opportunities. Even so, given the level of cash generation, there's also an opportunity to more consistently return excess capital to shareholders. We've returned more capital to shareholders in the last three years than we did in the preceding five. We are committed to continue to steadily grow our dividend and to return excess cash to shareholders through share repurchases. Our investment-grade balance sheet is well-positioned to support these capital allocation priorities. We have worked hard over time to craft and maintain a debt structure that is appropriate to the asset base and through the cycle. Our target leverage range of 2x-2.5x keeps us importantly investment grade, which ensures that we have access to capital at every stage of the cycle, that we have a reasonable cost of capital, and that we have the opportunity to place longer-dated debt that matches our long-lived asset base. With net leverage currently at 1.8x, our balance sheet gives us the financial strength and flexibility to pursue the growth opportunities that Jerry just defined for you earlier and to consistently return capital to shareholders. Now I wanna go back for a minute to one of my earlier comments, which was this, that growth in aggregates unit profitability is the key to our success and is the foundation of our attractive cash generation. What is that gonna look like going forward? Let's first look back at the compounding improvements the business has delivered over the last eight years. Aggregates cash gross profit per ton has grown from $6 in 2017 to $11.33 in 2025. For the last three years, in what has been a muted demand environment, this highly important metric has grown at a compound annual growth rate of 13%, considerably higher than the preceding five years. We believe structurally higher. Vulcan Materials' execution has reached new heights as our teams continue to improve our underlying business through their shared commitment to our strategic disciplines. We thought it would take us 260 million -270 million tons to achieve our previous $11-$12 target. But as you know, we reached that target on just 227 million tons. We now believe we have a line of sight to deliver $20 per ton of cash gross profit on those same 260 million -270 million tons. two-zero. $20 per ton. Let me tell you how we're gonna get there and what that could mean for overall earnings. Ronnie described for you earlier the key dynamics that we see surrounding each of the end-use markets. Our expectation is that overall demand will grow at low single-digit in the medium term. Against that backdrop, we expect to deliver high single- to low double-digit improvement in aggregates cash gross profit per ton. Our Vulcan Way of Selling and Vulcan Way of Operating execution will allow us to grow revenue faster than the market and deliver operating efficiencies to help offset inflationary cost increases. This expected aggregates performance equates to $4.5 billion-$5 billion of adjusted EBITDA, double where we are today. That's our organic growth opportunity, which leaves acquisitions, which we are well-positioned to execute on, as upside. Vulcan Materials has a stellar track record of compounding profitability improvements, attractive earnings growth, and value creation for our shareholders. We have the assets, the team, and the strategy to continue to deliver and to achieve an exciting $20 per ton of aggregates cash gross profit. Now with that target set and what you all came to hear today, I'm gonna pass back to Ronnie for a few additional remarks before we move to Q&A. Thank you. $20. Wow. That's pretty impressive. Look, just 2.5 years ago, our average selling price was less than $20. Think about that. That's what we sold aggregates for. Now we see a path for $20 of adjusted EBITDA of aggregates cash gross profit per ton. Look, what Mary Andrews described, and I hope you've got from our discussion today, was a better understanding how Vulcan Materials is positioned to win the future. I referred to an earlier quote from a presentation back in the 1980s. I'm gonna change that quote up a little bit. We know what we wanna do, and we're gonna concentrate on doing it better than anyone else. That focus is going to be on aggregates, and that focus is gonna be on us being the industry leader. Look, I'm proud of the team you got to see today. We may not be Wall Street presenters, but we're rock crushers, and we're damn good at it. Thank you. Thank you for your time and interest. I'm gonna turn to Mark, and Mary Andrews and I will get to answer your questions. Mark. Fire away. Fire away. Okay. Got a list of questions here. I try to group them together. I think maybe a place to start is to talk about demand environment. Maybe we try to talk about demand environment and how that supports the targets that we just presented. Maybe just give them a flavor for that. The targets we laid out were, I mean, I think a pretty conservative look at demand. You know, as we went into 2026, we had insight into seeing that we were gonna be in a state of recovery after three years of muted demand. We said, "Look, public was probably our clearest line of sight." We still got good funding going on. IIJA dollars are still being spent, still some left to be awarded before the expiration of the bill. Public's good. And then we talked about private non-res, and we talked about data centers being a tailwind. We also talked about some reshoring efforts happening. And I think we're in a good spot as we see 2026 playing out, that we are starting to see the signs of recovery. It's gonna be slow, but as we look at these numbers that we presented and what Mary Andrews just talked about, I mean, we're not talking about double digit growth that we need to get there. I talked about earlier about residential and, you know, the statistics around three of the last five years, and housing starts not even keeping up with household formations. If you think about where our footprint is where demographics are gonna be. I think we see a path of improving demand environments, which we've said will be a tailwind to both our pricing and our cost. As we continue down along this two-pronged approach, and focusing on enhancing our core, that demand environment, it really plays well into the things we talked about today with Vulcan Way of Selling and Vulcan Way of Operating. Mary, you wanna add anything? No, I think you hit the demand. Good. On demand, a little more narrow, near-term focus. If the guidance and the volume we expect to return to growth this year in 2026, what would be the things that would put us more towards the higher end of that range? Like, what has to happen? Is it the recovery in private construction is really the swing factor? Yeah, I mean, again, I think, you know, we track a lot and we talk about all the data that we get in with our Vulcan Way of Selling. You know, I said on our last call that going into 2026, our bookings and backlogs were in really good position. A lot of that's tied to both public and private non-res. A lot of that's the data centers we've talked about. I think we've got really good insight into what that piece of the market looks like. I mean, the unique thing about the data centers, typically, when we talk about quote to booking, it's about a six-month lag. When we talk about public work, and really typically private non-res work has been about a six-month lag. What we've seen lately with some of these data centers is a lot faster conversion rate. From time of quoting to time of shipping, we're seeing that six months shrink down to two or three months. You all are, you know, tracking the same stuff we are with all the data centers that are announced and all what that's coming with. I would tell you what we're starting to see is now the talk of where energy is going to have to be invested in to meet the demand of these data centers. When we start talking about energy projects, you really start ramping up the aggregate intensity of those projects. I think that's a potential tailwind, Mark. I mean, look, residential. We don't have it in the guidance we gave. We don't have residential going back to flat, maybe stopping the decline, but not really growth. Is there potential there? I mean, we all could guess on what interest rates are going to do and other things that are gonna happen to address affordability. I think residential for us is more of a longer term play. We need it. I mean, the industry needs it. But again, we're focused on controlling what we can control. I think with the public backdrop, private non-res, some of the other projects we've talked about, we're in a good position to start seeing demand recovery starting this year and then moving into the future. Very good. Just to put a finer point, kinda wrap up the data center discussion, there's a couple of questions here about, we showed a video that talked about the Meta project, and Montgomery said we'd ship 600,000 tons. Is that kind of a way to think about data centers, or are they all shapes and sizes? How would you address that? Yeah, I mean, I think it was a good illustration of what that footprint can look like. I mean, it really does vary from geography to geography, and it really starts with where are they building it at and what was there to begin with. I mean, some of these projects are literally a farm field with nothing. When they start those kind of projects, they're scraping the ground, and they may go down a couple of feet to build a foundation for what they're gonna construct on top of that. Obviously, in Virginia, I mean, if there's a mature definition of data centers, but Virginia's a very mature market, so when we see construction in Virginia, they're not the same as a construction in Monroe, Louisiana, or in Huntsville, Alabama, or in Abilene, Texas. It really is based on, you know, what are they starting with? How much ground are they gonna cover? I mean, some of these things have been gone now to, you know, phase V, phase VI, phase VII. But it's also what we're starting to see is energy tied to the data centers, which is creating another opportunity for aggregate intensity with some of those projects. Because when they have to start literally building 100% redundancy for these power plants or for these AI plants to get approved, it's gonna be another tailwind to our demand environment. Okay. Maybe one more on the demand side. I thought you said that was it. That was the data center. They're coming in. Okay, I give you-- This is the Q& A. A couple of questions on renewal of the highway bill. We talked about continued growth. Maybe kind of set the table for volume growth continuing on the highway side of things and the prospects for getting a new highway bill. Yeah, I told a couple last night that we were talking about that. I worry about a lot of things and our board and our shareholders pay us to worry. That's what we get to do. Public is not something that I worry. It's at the middle to the bottom end of my worries. I say that because, look, we've got a good tail. We've got a good tail to IIJA, so we're gonna still be spending well into 2027 and even into 2028. Remember, a third comes from the federal side, a third comes from states, and a third comes from local measures. The states and the local measures are very healthy, and so we see that continuing on. I would tell you know, we've been in a lot of meetings with representatives on the transportation committees. I think both the Rs and the Ds are very supportive of getting a bill. Will it be before midterm? I don't know. Will it be before expiration? I don't know. I can't call that. What I would tell you is no matter what that looks like, whether that's in the form of a continuing resolution that continues to spend at the same rates that we're spending at today, and so we've done that a lot. What I said earlier in my presentation was, what history will tell us is that the next bill will be higher than the previous one. The conversations we've had with both Republicans and Democrats, those numbers are higher than the previous bill when it comes to highway and infrastructure spend. Focus on that, what's gonna be highways and what's gonna be infrastructure. I think some of the other stuff may not make it through a bill, but some of the other stuff didn't include aggregates, so I really didn't care about that. In the end, I think we have a lot of confidence in where we're at on reauthorization. Again, I think public is one that leg of our stool is gonna continue to be very strong going into the future. Very good. Maybe one for Mary Andrews to kick off. This is kinda moving to more on the price cost side. Just talk about the price cost assumptions that support the targets. We talked about cash gross profit per ton growth, maybe just g ive everyone a little bit of color on that. Yeah. You know well why we talk about cash gross profit per ton growth, because fundamentally, what we take to the bottom line is what is most important. You know, we've said we expect that to grow at high single-digit to low double-digit rate, you know, in the targets. There are obviously, you know, a number of different price-cost combinations that would get you that kind of earnings growth. What I'd tell you is our assumption there is that if we think about historically what we've been able to achieve from a real price growth standpoint and from a real cost increase standpoint, we believe that we'll be able to deliver more real price improvement and that our cost increases will be lower than our, you know, historical real cost increases. Obviously, both volume and inflation will have some bearing on what the top line number looks like and what those two key components look like. Overall, what our targets imply is our ability to outperform history on both price and cost and to deliver that high single- to low double-digit unit profitability improvement. Very good. Maybe this is a good place to insert the oil question. Oil, what's up? I say that more from the way it might impact it with prices of oil, recent rise in price of oils. Talk about how it may impact on the cost side, but also the opportunity on the price side. Yeah. Obviously we're paying attention to what oil's doing and, you know, it's a very short history right now on what it's doing, so we're not panicking about that. You know, 10% of our cost on the aggregate operation side really is what diesel represents. Then we obviously have asphalt operations in several key markets as well. We have different ways. We have an asphalt terminal in California. Jamie and his team are here. So we have ways of controlling the fluctuations in asphalt pricing and on the asphalt side. But look, in the end, I mean, I'll take you back to 2022. You know, we came out of COVID, and we had record inflation. And it came from all sides. It was fuel, it was parts and supplies, it was labor. What'd we do? You know, we raised our price. What are we gonna do next time? We're gonna raise our price. Our ability to react to this, and again, we got mid-year that we're going to be announcing here soon, and we're gonna evaluate that. Again, I still think it's really early in saying where's this gonna settle out at? But if we haven't proven anything to you at all, I hope the one thing we've proven to you is that we can take care of cost increases. We've been very diligent at that for a long time. I said 40 years of history that aggregate pricing has been accelerating. 40 years. I don't know, Monday morning quarterback, hindsight's 2020, whatever y'all wanna say, that's a pretty good track record. Of all the things I worry about, I mean, if cost increases are something that's gonna hurt, be a headwind for us, then we'll turn it into a tailwind. I mean, I think we always say, right, most fundamentally two things, you know, create a good environment for aggregates pricing, visibility to demand and inflation. If what oil is doing now, you know, is something that causes inflation, like Ronnie says, to us, you know, a near term, you know, challenge on the cost side, you know, within the walls of our plants, but ultimately a bigger opportunity and one that we can catch, you know, pretty quickly. I think it took us a quarter back in 2022. Yeah. Maybe along those lines and kind of tying it into VWO and VWS, kind of how do we think about the benefits of VWO and VWS and their impact on price and cost? Yeah, I mean, it gives us-- Behind kind of what's going on with inflation? It's definitely tools, and as Krzysztof and Jamie and Brent talked about, it's tools that we have that give us more insight and more analytical ability to make better decisions. You know what we do with that, and Krzysztof made the point. I mean, first you gotta have really good data, and I think our teams have done an excellent job of making sure that the data we have coming in, both on the commercial and operational side, is really good data. Then it's up to us to make those decisions. I would tell you, the analysts that we have in each market and the sales service centers and those controls. I mean, we're looking at all that. I mean, we look at our costs, we look at that opportunity, we look at our inventories. I mean, we're analyzing so many different things and really trying to drive the profitability of every ton that we ship. I look at those tools as these are the times when the tools are gonna pay great benefits because we're gonna beat our competition on cost, and we're gonna beat our competition on price. Beating our competition on price means we're gonna sell it at a higher price, which some people would say, "Beating your competition means you cut." No, we're gonna sell it at a higher price and at less cost. That's the beauty of what we're doing with these tools. I say we're not done. We're gonna continue to invest. I said technology's a big piece of where we're going in the future. We're gonna get smarter. We got a lot of room. I mean, we're just rock crushers, remember? Speaking of a lot of room, so, you know, we gave some color on some of those KPIs, yield, throughput, less overtime, those kinds of things, right, for that time period. Kind of where could you see those metrics going over the next few years and how that impacts cost? Yeah, I mean the yield, the throughput, actually, you know, making the products that are our high value products. When we talk about the targets that we set targets on our products that we're making, each plant has a specific target on the sellable products. You know, I mean, if you're just running a plant, and you're just gonna run it wide open, you know, in the end you're gonna make maybe 75%-80% sellable products, then you might make 10% of something over here. We have our plants defined, and we know exactly what products we wanna do and what do we have to do to maximize that plant to get the throughput of our most valuable products. That's the way it's set up. We start talking about plant uptime, and when you talk about plant uptime is really our ability to predict and plan for maintenance events. I would tell you the better we are at predicting and planning what's going to happen to us in our plants, the less it's going to cost us. I mean, I think that goes for anything in our lives. If you plan for something, your hope is that I was able to control that because I planned for it versus react to something. Our plant uptime is a big focus for all of our operators on what are we planning, how are we doing our preventative maintenance, where are we spending our capital? Mary just talked about capital. Her and I are like, every day we wake up and go, "How do we spend our capital wisely? How does every dollar we spend, no matter if it's termed maintenance CapEx or not replacement, how do we drive those dollars to say we're gonna get a return on every dollar we spend? I wanna do it better." The beauty of this is with the analytical tools that we have and the data that we're getting, our operators are now like, "Hey, if I can just do this different, if I can replace this screen with this, if I can rebuild this hopper, make it this size, here's a pinch point." I mean, we are literally driving efficiencies with our maintenance CapEx, which historically that's not something. You know, in big industrial companies, they said it's like for like, just spend maintenance CapEx. We don't wanna do that. We wanna drive better efficiencies in every dollar we spend. I think one thing too that's important to remember is, you know, we talked a lot today about the journey of VWO and VWS, and the investments that we've made, particularly on the operating side, when the demand environment has been going, you know, the other way. I think that gives us a huge tailwind as we actually have volume opportunities. You know, that's when you really get the benefits of those efficiencies in the plant. Throughput more tons through the plant quicker is great, but if we don't need more tons, right, we're holding the plants back. As we, you know, get more volume, I think that we have a great opportunity to continue to see benefits in our production cost. You know, Brent showed today what 2025 looks like from a production cost standpoint. There's a good runway ahead of us to continue to execute on that front. There's a question here about how you're thinking about the risk that peers or competitors could duplicate, right? We talked about this long journey and very difficult to replicate competitive advantage. On the flip side of that, with AI and the data we're collecting, is there an opportunity to widen that gap from a competitive advantage standpoint? Just maybe talk about the future of that. Yeah, I mean, I think during the Fireside Chat, you know, what we were trying to come across with was the difficulty of not just installing the equipment, not just getting. Which has been a very long process. As Brent talked about, 125 plants and all kinds of different outdoor activities going on at those plants. Trying to install equipment, trying to get them connected, trying to keep that stuff running, I mean, it changes your maintenance practice. It changes what we do in the plants. I mean, it changes our daily habits of when we're going out there. Now you gotta keep these sensors, you gotta keep them clean, you gotta do that stuff. The investment side of it is one thing, but to me, it gets down to the culture. When we talk about our confidence in continuing to lead the industry. You're gonna hear from our peers about optimization. You're gonna hear about them talking about their way. They're gonna use the word way, you know, because that's a popular thing to say. I would tell you again. I mean, look at our performance. I mean, just judge our numbers because our numbers speak to themselves. I think we continue to do that. I mean, when we talk about AI, I mean, the beauty of what Krzysztof and his team have allowed us to do is we look at these opportunities, and Krzysztof said, we gotta be very disciplined. We can't go chase 10 different things at once. We'll spend a lot of time chasing, and we'll spend very little time executing. We limit that down, and we have all kinds of industry folks coming to us today with the latest and greatest ideas. We've probably seen the majority of them, and some, there'll be some new ones to come. I mean, that's great. I'm excited about what those things are. The beauty of what Krzysztof has done is like, okay, well, let's just go try this at one plant. Let's go test it. Let's put it in. Let's run it for a couple of months. Let's see if it works. Our ability to scale, we've got the ability to scale, but we don't wanna do is go out and say, "Hey, let's bet the farm on some new technology. Let's go out and put it in 400 plants," and then go, "Oh, crap, it didn't work." We're just not gonna do that. We're gonna be very disciplined, and again, lots of opportunities on the mobile side as well as the fixed plant side. Mark, I would just tell you, I think the culture that we've built and what our teams have already been through and their willingness to change and think about the way they operate our plants gives us that leg up that when we bring something new. Well, quite frankly, they're bringing stuff new to us. I mean, our operators are calling me and Krzysztof and saying, "Hey, what about this? What about this?" Like, great. I think we're gonna continue to extend that lead, and I'm in a great position of confidence in our team. Very good. One more quick one on that and we'll switch to growth. So we've got it in 75% of our production. Why not go to 100%? What's the -- What's the trade-off? That's what I say. Why not go to 100%? I mean, look, I think you saw both sides of that. You saw less than 1% on the PI plants, 2.6% on the non-PI plants. You know, total average of well less than 2%, about 1.1% on our variable production side. I mean, if you think about that, 2.6% on non-PI plants, that would be best in class all by itself. That would beat the majority of our peers in our industry. Without PI, we would've beat that. What's happening out there on a daily basis, and our division presidents are back there in the back of the room being as quiet as possible and wondering what we've committed them to next. Jeff has his head in his hand, nervous. What our division presidents have done is they control all the plants. We don't look at our plants and go, "Okay, we're gonna go host a meeting over here. It's a PI plant. We're gonna change our language. We're gonna go over here to this plant. It's a non-PI plant. Let's change our language." We have the same language. Mitesh talked about one language, one common. What we're seeing is behaviors that our PI plants are driving because of data that we've captured and the way we operate those plants. We're beginning to operate non-PI plants in a very similar fashion. We have the same focus on labor. Labor scheduling, it doesn't require PI to schedule labor. We have the same labor scheduling efforts at all of our plants. I look at it, I say it's really hard to go out there and spend the amount of money we had to spend on the PI side for a 200,000-ton plant a year. What I can do is change the behaviors of those people. The plant operators are all speaking the same language. Our maintenance people all speak the same language. Our supervisors all speak the same language. I think you're gonna see all kinds of degrees of good when you combine all those together. Look, when we acquire, we talked about it. You know, the Wake operations that we acquired, we already put PI in. When we acquire plants, if they're of that size of nature, I mean, it's plug and play now. I mean, we're in a good spot to continue to adapt to PI where it's needed. Okay. Very good. Let's switch over to growth. We talked about targeted growth opportunities from an M&A standpoint. Maybe characterize what that looks like. Small or medium, new geographies. What does a new geography look like? What makes it attractive? Existing footprint. Yeah, it's interesting. Jerry framed it up really well. You know, one, we're gonna be aggregate-focused. I think we've proven that strategy through both the acquisitions that we've done, but also optimizing the portfolio. I mean, you saw what we did on the ready mix assets. You know, we decided that wasn't the best, we weren't the best owner of those assets, we choose to sell them. You're gonna continue to see, overarching, you're gonna see that. We're gonna be very aggregate-led, we're gonna be very disciplined around that. Second, I wanna go north, I wanna go south, and I wanna go east, and I wanna go west. Outside of that, if there's another direction, let me know. What's important to us is, you know, and Jerry pointed this out, is we wanna be in a position of leadership. Now, you will not see us go to a market and enter a market, and then five years from now be number four or number five in a market and just sit there and operate. We cannot be in a position of influence from a number four or number five position. If you see us go to a new market, just know that there's probably gonna be another one, and there's probably gonna be another one. Just what we did in San Diego, just what we did in northern California, just what we did in Tennessee, just what we did in Georgia. I mean, that's the footprint. For us to remain disciplined in being aggregate led, aggregate focused, and picking those markets, we're gonna have to expand outside of our everyday footprint. I would tell you follow data centers, you see where data centers are going. Follow public spending. Public spending has been healthy in a lot of the middle parts of the country, a lot of the Northwest. There's opportunities there, but it's also our ability to go and be in the right position. That's gonna be aggregate focus, the right markets, and the right position within those markets. Very good. Maybe one for Mary Andrews in terms of, how we think about returns for acquisitions and how we think about returns on that capital spending that we reinvest in ourselves to get better. Maybe just kinda frame how we think about those types of things and the benefits. Yeah. I mean, I think the two projects I talked about earlier, you know, are a great example of operating and maintenance CapEx that, you know, the returns on those are far in excess of our, you know, cost of capital and, you know, even the smaller investment, you know, in Tennessee, $5 million project, there's a, you know, close to $1 million of annual benefit right out of the gate, right? Accretive to our, you know, returns on invested capital too. Ronnie mentioned something important earlier, which is, you know, one of the added benefits of process intelligence is the visibility that it's giving us into how to most optimally deploy capital in our plants where, you know, the data is telling us what the opportunities are. I think that's giving us, you know, even more confidence in what the returns are on some of the, you know, the operating and maintenance, capital projects. From, you know, from an acquisition standpoint, obviously, you know, we're looking at each and every acquisition, as Ronnie said, being disciplined about, you know, why it makes sense for Vulcan, what are the unique synergies, that Vulcan brings to the deal. We look at them on a 20-year DCF model. I think if you look, you know, over time, you know, we're showing that we've been able to continually, you know, improve our returns on invested capital. You know, my view is that maintaining this balanced, enhancing our core, and expanding our reach, you know, strategy, I think you'll see us be able to continue to move our returns, you know, higher over time. It may be a follow-up to that. I guess we talked about cash generation resetting higher. Like, does that change anything about the way you or we think about capital allocation? Yeah. Well, you know, as I said earlier, I don't think it changes. Our capital allocation strategy is no different. Because the cash generation has reset higher, you know, I think we have an opportunity to more consistently deploy capital to each of the priorities that we've long talked to you about, right? Historically, whereas, you know, share repurchases have been more episodic for us and dependent upon those growth opportunities, growth is still our number one priority. Given the level of cash generation, I think that, you know, you'll see a more consistent opportunity to also return excess capital to shareholders. All right. While you're on a roll, I'll give you another one. Okay. There's a couple of questions here about timing on the target. Could you kinda talk about time versus tons and kinda how to think about that? Yeah. You know, in a compounding business like ours, profitability improvements, earnings growth, they're a function of a combination of tons and time, right? We've laid out what our expectation is about demand growth kind of in the medium term, you know where we are today, you know the tons that we gave with the target. You can think about, you know, kinda what that horizon, you know, looks like. What I would say too is, you know, if demand is better than we expect, great. You know, we'll take every ton that we can get, and I could play you a scenario where we'd have an opportunity to get to the overall earnings before we got to the unit profitability number, right? Conversely, I could play you a scenario depending on what demand, you know, looked like where, you know, and consistent with what you've seen before when demand was as muted as it has been, where we'll get to that unit profitability target on fewer tons. I think, you know, we give you the targets with the tons because volume is an important part of it. It is, you know, fundamentally in a compounding business, it's really the interplay and the combination of tons and time. In that target mark that we did set, and we had a lot of discussions. This wasn't $20 sounds like a nice round number, and like, okay, you just pulled that out of. We did not. I can assure you, we had a lot of conversations around this. The framework we laid is a very conservative demand scenario. I mean, we're not talking about we need double-digit growth in demand. It's very conservative. I think it's very factual based on where we think we are with residential, where we think we are with private non-res, and where we think we're going to be with public. I think the numbers, like Mary said, we're gonna miss either the volume, timing. We'll miss one or the other, but we have proven this no matter what that looks like, whether demand doesn't make it or the price is not as fast as what we said, we're gonna get there, and everyone on our team is dedicated to that. That alignment is critical on this. I think it'll be a combination of both, like she said. I think we've got really good, you know, forward-looking insight into an improved, and not something on steroids, an improved demand environment. That's a good place to wrap it up. The rest of these are, I think, around demand and some of the other things that we've talked about, so. All right. Well, thank y'all. Thank y'all for your interest in Vulcan Materials. Look, I hope today you've got a better understanding that we have the right strategy, we have the right focus, but most importantly, we have the right team. That's gonna be critical to our achieving these new targets that we set. Thank you for your interest in Vulcan Materials, and we look forward to seeing you whenever Mark tells us we gotta do this again. Thank you.