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Becker Business
Private Equity: The State of the Deal Market 10-11-25
00:33:45
In this webinar-turned-podcast, Scott Becker hosts Geoff Cockrell, Holly Buckley, David Greer, and Matt Wolf for an in-depth discussion on the state of private equity.
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- [00:00]
A
This is Scott Becker. This is a special sort of edition of the Becker Business, the Becker Private Equity podcast. We've got four great panelists today. I'll ask each of them to introduce themselves in one second. Those four panelists for our session on private equity are David Greer, one of the leaders and I believe founders of Keystone Capital, which works in the lower middle market. Tremendous track run that they have had. Jeff Cockrell from McGuire woods, who heads up sort of the healthcare private equity area and has built an incredible practice around healthcare and private equity. We have Holly Buckley, who chairs the healthcare department at McGuire Woods. Tremendous leader, lives at the intersection of healthcare and private equity. And then finally Matt Wolf, who's a brilliant analyst who works now at Elliot Davis. I've known Matt for several years, one of the smartest people I get to visit with regularly. I'm going to ask each of you to start with taking a moment to introduce yourself, talk about the core trends that you're watching in the private equity space. And, and then I'll ask you finally. Third, you know, is there an area or a place that you're most excited about in private equity today? I'll ask you to start with just a 30 to 60 second introduction. David, let me ask you to kick us off with a quick introduction of what you do and what Keystone Capital does. Sure.
- [01:17]
B
Thanks, Scott. Appreciate you having me today and appreciate everyone joining in the seminar. As SC mentioned, Keystone Capital, we are 30 years at this as a traditional control private equity investor based in Chicago. I've been here for the last 20 plus years as one of the partners. You know, we would define the area that we invest within lower middle market as, you know, starting with a platform that would be between 5 and 20 million of EBITDA with an intent to, you know, work alongside our partners to create a foundational business that has sustainability. And at some point we're not the right partner anymore. And that's often when it gets to 40 or 50 million in EBITDA and they find a bigger version of us to move on.
- [02:08]
A
And David, just for the moment, can you tell us some of the sectors that you spend time in? I know I've seen you work closely with a couple of really large consulting firms and businesses, but you work across a lot of industries. Can you give us a sense of the different industries that you spend some time in?
- [02:25]
B
Yeah, for sure. And it, it has evolved and tightened with regards to our discipline over time. So I would say 20 years ago we probably every business that we had made something and I would say today, 80% of what we do is in services sectors. So we will participate in what we'd call engineering or technical services, largely around infrastructure or the built environment as one area. Tech enabled services, which are going to include systems integrators, consultants and tech enabled marketing services firms. Commercial industrial services, again, often in the built environment, but not exclusively so these could be industrial services in production and manufacturing and then last, as a vestige of some things we've done historically, we do a fair amount in the food space as well, which is the one kind of continues to produce tangible product for us.
- [03:26]
A
Fascinating. Thank you. At some point we'll ask you how you ended up narrowing more fully on the services area and how that became the focus of the firm Bus Foods as well. Jeff, you've built this incredible practice around the intersection of healthcare and private equity. Represent some of the best known funds in the world that invest in healthcare. Can you take a second and introduce yourself?
- [03:46]
C
Sure. I'm Jeff Cockrell, a partner at McGuire woods and I've worked with Scott for a couple decades now, learned most of what I know from Scott, but I represent private equity funds and, and platforms that have been backed by private equity funds and all versions of healthcare and life science transactions.
- [04:09]
A
Thank you. And Jeff, was there a specific period of time because when, when you came over to McGuire woods, which was a couple decades ago, I think now you were a general private equity lawyer. At some point you ended up specializing almost like David Greer did in the services area, you in the healthcare area. How important was it to ultimately really know an industry well? And do you still do some work outside of healthcare as well?
- [04:34]
C
I think specialization, this is probably true in a lot of different contexts. So many things. You're competing against a lot of different people and in our universe you're competing with a lot of other lawyers and a lot of other law firms. And if you can combine kind of good core technical skills with some very specialized knowledge, it really helps you cut through a lot of the competitive noise. Kind of coming in contact with you and slowly learning kind of specialized knowledge in healthcare and healthcare services has been really transformational in building my practice.
- [05:11]
A
Thank you. No. And Jeff can give me praise, but the reality is he and Howie built practices that eclipse the practice that I built originally. Over the years, they've just done an amazing job of growth and building fantastic healthcare driven private equity practices. Howie, can you take a second and introduce yourself? And Howie today is the chair of the department and the leader and so I have to be nice to her all the time. She's my boss now. But Holly, could you take a second and introduce yourself?
- [05:41]
D
Thank you Scott and glad you realized that. So totally kidding. So as Scott said, I'm a partner of McGuire Woods. I'm in Chicago with Jeff. Jeff actually arrived while I was a summer intern back in 2008. So we've got a long history together. I'm very focused on the kind of all kinds of healthcare providers. I do a lot of private equity work, both on sponsor investments as well as private equity backed portfolio company work and I assist on the regulatory side of the transactions as well as ongoing regulatory and compliance work for the platforms. I also work with more traditional healthcare providers such as hospitals and health systems, another non private equity backed health care providers. And so it's certainly been an interesting few years and look forward to the discussion today.
- [06:33]
A
Thank you. We'll come back in a moment to see where things are busy, where they're not as busy, where they're exciting and interesting and what you're seeing. Matt, can you take a moment and introduce yourself and talk about what you follow and watch?
- [06:46]
E
Yeah. Thanks Scott. So Matt Wolf met Elliot Davis newly at Elliot Davis. I was recently at RSM where I was there for 15 plus years. I led the healthcare valuation practice at RSM and was essentially one of the healthcare economists. So same role working at the intersection of healthcare and private equity from evaluation and overall transaction perspective. New firm. So I really enjoy my role, getting to ride kind of shotgun in the sort of total deal making, funding financing environment of private equity and private credit.
- [07:21]
A
Matt, I guess the question of course that you'll know the answer is a health care economist, are rates coming down and will that lead to a lot more exits more quickly?
- [07:31]
E
Yes and no. Right. So the, the current path of rate reductions have been priced into the macroeconomic policy. Right into rates. You know people, some people talk about hoping for massive reduction in interest rates over the near term. You know, when you come down 50, 100 basis points. I've heard people say the reality is is if that happens it will be because of underlying weakness in the economy which will increase the term premium and will do very little if anything to lower the cost of capital that we're seeing in private markets. So we'll really do little if anything to bolster that. We'll know more a week from tomorrow. We'll get the September non farm payrolls report. But generally the answer is no, it won't. It will not be the boom like we saw in the zero interest rate environment.
- [08:24]
A
Right. Because your point is it's already priced into the stock market. And in terms of the private market environment, if it goes down a lot, it's because the overall underlying economy is in more stress and more challenging spot. So it's not necessarily going to lower interest rates, at least private interest rates. Like it might lower the fed funds rate. Is that your sense of it in terms of.
- [08:44]
E
Exactly right. And there is no longer a sort of one to one relationship in for example the five or ten year treasury with the federal funds rate that there used to be because there is this term premium that's been introduced into the market which existed for a long time but did not exist when rates were super low.
- [09:03]
A
Thank you. I'm going to come back around the turn here and I'll start with Holly and then go back to Jeff and David. Holly, what are you seeing in the private equity deal environment? I. I know that your group is fairly busy but, but the environment itself seems to be still in some stress. What are you seeing out there in terms of deals and what people are looking at and what they're excited about and what they're not?
- [09:22]
D
Yeah. So I think we have seen an uptick in deal volume through kind of a little before the back half of the year started. I think sponsors are really focused on good assets. So assets that have really good infrastructure, kind of compliance operations that they're kind of real businesses. We are seeing I think downward pressure on valuations. Kind of curious what Matt seeing there and David, but certainly from our end it seems like valuations are certainly lower than that a few years ago. But platforms that are well scaled with good infrastructure, good relationships, tech enabled efficiencies and the like are still pulling in robust valuations. I think the regulatory climate has been super interesting of late. We're seeing a lot of state level interest in private equity transactions. We've seen a proliferation of new laws from states at the AG and other divisions looking to approve and receive notice of new transactions. We're also seeing some new laws around things like corporate practice and PPM models that are certainly creating some. I'd say, well the, the notice and consent laws are creating timing delays. We're not really seeing them actually prohibit transactions. But then on the CPOM laws we're starting to see folks contemplating avoiding particular states such as maybe Oregon and California where it can be more difficult to get deals done and the future of those models could be a little more uncertain.
- [11:02]
A
Right. And for those that are not healthcare centric on the call cpom, corporate practice of medicine either allowing business entities to own Physician practices or not. Before I go back to Jeff and David on trends that you're watching, let me tee them each up on the valuation question for a moment. David, you're an investor. You're also an owner of a lot of assets. What are you seeing on valuations? I mean, I tend to see that we don't see the sort of exuberant valuations we saw a few years ago. What are you seeing in terms of valuations? And then Matt, I'd love your comments on the same question before I go to Jeff.
- [11:38]
B
Yeah, I think Holly hit on a consistent theme which is quality businesses are still going to be in demand, right. A assets that have a number of the characteristics that she walked through. I would add elements of a recurring revenue stream or reoccurring revenue stream to the business model. Again, what's a high valuation? It's, it's subject in the eyes of the beholder. But you know, an asset like that at the right size, it's going to trade in a mid teen multiple. Right. Which I would still call a really frothy kind of business. I think if you have a B asset or one of those elements is missing, you know, you might be a turn or two below where that might have traded. I think that's in this environment. I do agree. Deal volume down, year to date, challenging market. But that supply, demand imbalance, there's still businesses that need and want to trade and there's still a trillion dollars of undeployed capital that's got to break. So you know, similar, I think deal volume, Lower Middle Market Q2 this year was the lowest since Q2 of 2020 and then 21 was an explosive year for deals. And you might see a similar kind of environment kind of coming out of this kind of period of softness.
- [12:59]
A
And David, let me ask you one more question about the services side and the recurring revenue side. Everybody over the last four to five years has picked up on the concept that we want subscription or recurring revenues versus transactional revenue. Or how do you see that evolving in the businesses that you hold? How many of them are able to actually move to a recurring revenue type of business? I mean the software as a service business is often that many services firms are not. What do you see as the mix out there? Because it seems like to be the, you know, the golden ticket is that great recurring revenue.
- [13:33]
B
I don't know if there's any investment bankers on the call, right. But they've been clever enough to introduce the concept of reoccurring revenue. Right. There's this middle ground between transactional project based work and truly a subscription kind of SaaS model. Right. And so whether you want to be able to point at, you know, a protracted period of backlog, you know, contractually obligated revenue that's going to come from clients and that revenue we know you can pause. I think we've kind of gotten comfortable in our businesses where there are strong regulatory drivers. So the using the service the company provides is not discretionary for the client. Using our firm as the provider, maybe.
- [14:16]
A
Right.
- [14:17]
B
So illustratively, we're in a business that does inspections of elevators. That's not, you know, JLL does not have discretion as whether or not they do that. But it has to happen right. In City of New York, it's got to happen every six months. You need to inspect an elevator. So I see that as a regulatory demand driver for that business. And to the extent we own, you know, a top three market share player in that market, I feel pretty good about the recurring nature of that revenue. Even though it's not SaaS under contract.
- [14:47]
A
Right. Even though it's not contract for the long term, you don't have a 10 year contract with somebody. But you know, they got to go back to one of the few of you in that business, one of the, one of the companies. Jeff, let me go to you before I come back to Matt. Jeff, what are some of the trends you're watching currently and what are you seeing out there?
- [15:04]
C
It feels like the market is opening up for some of the larger platforms and it's true that A assets could always transact, but there's lots of B and C assets and private equity funds have now held those assets for 5, 6, 7, 8 and they're ultimately not built to hold them forever. So there's kind of some forced sale pressure on part of the market and then there's a fair amount of distress as well with companies that within the four corners of the business are not kind of operating at a loss, but they have a lot of very expensive debt that has become difficult to service. They have balance sheet problems. But all of those pressures are kind of pushing more assets into the market. And you combine that with some rationalization on pricing and it feels like more things are going to transact, either because they have to or the other pressures. So the larger end of the market, we're seeing things come more alive. And then also kind of the flipping that around for some of the larger platforms that had grown through doing a lot of acquisitions that, that for two years that had gone to close to zero. And we're seeing those opening up again. Platforms that hadn't done add ons for quite a while. They're now back in the market ramping up their, their, their BD functions. And so the, some of that is just kind of rationalization on pricing and some of that is you can sit for a little while, but you have to ultimately build something. So we're seeing a lot more kind of Lois coming across our desk than we had for quite a while.
- [16:48]
B
I would just jump in on that real quick. I think that's all right, Jeff. And then the other piece is we've seen a little bit more forward lean from some of the limited partner community around desires for distributions.
- [17:02]
A
And that's what I wanted to touch on real quickly because Jeff, let's talk about, as David talked about A versus B assets and aside from them in trading, when a private equity fund is holding them, they're now at a spot where they might be four to six years or longer into the hold period. If they're an A asset, even if they're not selling, they are doing certain kinds of things to get limited partners capital. And I wanted to have you talk about that for a second. And then if they're a B asset, they've got more pressure on them because it's harder to go back and recap and do special purpose vehicles and so forth. What are you seeing there in terms of assets that are being held a little bit longer? And can you divide it between A and B assets?
- [17:42]
C
Yeah, the A assets probably have greater access to doing debt related recaps. So that's a vehicle for getting, getting some dollars back to the LPs as you kind of move down into the B and C assets that maybe have constrained balance sheets already, that ceases to be available. And a lot of these have just been kind of parked. But eventually they can't keep doing that. For the LP pressures and just the administrative burden of doing that. There's often a private equity fund has got some anxiety about posting a less than desirable return on a particular asset. But eventually those things are going to have to post and they may be now two funds removed from the fund that had that investment. So some of that pressure mitigates. So ultimately that huge backlog of port codes that have been held for a long time is just going to have to clear.
- [18:42]
A
David, take one moment on that as well. When you're holding a variety of different assets, at what point do you say we can't take a loss since we will Take a loss in this and so forth. Then Matt will come back to you on that because you do valuations, mark to market and so forth. David, how do you look at some of that?
- [18:57]
B
Well, try to never take a loss. That's, that's one. But you know, I, I do think, you know, a couple of points, you know, Jeff made there. You know, if you're looking to extend the clock, there's one or two reasons, right? You have a fantastic asset that has a great future. It was hard to build, it's unique, it's differentiated, like why get rid of it? If you have some like minded LPs, you know, some folks might want liquidity. You can pursue a liquidation, I'm sorry, a continuation vehicle or a debt related recap if you want. I think you got to probably be north of 40, 50 million in EBITDA to start thinking about something like that in terms of a size to think about in spv. The other reason you're looking to run out the clock is you haven't executed on your value creation and you're going to have an underwhelming exit. Right. And then, you know, the bar goes up for LPs to be patient with that. You know, give me three more years. I'm not going to seek an exit. I'm going to bring in a new leader. We're going to pivot to a new strategy. Sometimes they'll say, again, to Jeff's point, you've raised two funds since you did that deal. I want full time and attention on the dry powder to cut your losses, move on.
- [20:11]
A
Matt, you get charged with helping private equity funds mark things to market and constantly have to do so talk about that, the art and science of that and what that looks like and how people feel about that.
- [20:25]
E
Yeah, happy to. It's become much more difficult. There's so much more noise in the valuation multiples. Right. We try to look at market data to help build credible valuations, of course, as an opinion of value. But there's so much more noise now because of the way consideration is structured for new deals. Right. So it used to be, you know, maybe you'd have 70% of the purchase. Consideration would be cash. Call it $70 million, $20 million of rollover and a $10 million earn out kicker that maybe the seller could realize over three years. And that mix has become very different. Half or less cash, higher rollover percentages, more and different types of earn out. So as you think about what makes up that valuation multiple, we don't really understand what's in the numerator for all of these deals. We don't really understand what was being paid. So as we try to say, well, okay, this company exited at 14 times EBITDA, it's always been a question of what do they call ebitda? Now there's a question of what do they call purchase consideration, what do they call enterprise value? And so making that comparison has become much more difficult.
- [21:34]
A
And how much pressure is there? I get the updates periodically from funds that we're an investor in that show. You know, we're up this amount, we're up that amount, but of course it's not liquid, so you don't really know until they actually exit on it. How much pressure do you get from funds? And I know you have to be careful in what you say here, but how much pressure is there to sort of like have a number out there that doesn't scare LPs away from reinvesting with that fund?
- [21:58]
E
Yeah, I mean, you know, there's. There's no pressure if it's going up. Right. The value is creating. Right. To David's point. But I mean, really, I think part of the process is very beneficial because we're working through arguments and Data points that LPs will bring to the table or others might bring to the table as we're helping to mark these things to market. And so it is sort of a robust. It's not really a price discovery process. Right. We're not buying into anything, but it's about as close as you can get working through it. And it's some. Contentious isn't the right word, but, you know, we're all a bunch of math and Excel geeks arguing about numbers. So, you know, people get heated and passionate and it's a good discovery process that I think leads to the best outcome possible for LPs absent a truly liquid market.
- [22:45]
A
Right. And still a lot of uncertainty about truly values until you start to see distributions and see things come back and so forth.
- [22:53]
E
There's a difference between the value and the price. Right. So the value is sort of a hypothetical construct, and then the price is. Well, whatever you end up exiting at.
- [23:02]
A
No, absolutely. I'm going to ask each of you, starting with Howie, what sectors or areas you're seeing the most excitement in or what you're most excited about as you look towards the end of this year, into next year. Holly, let me start with you in terms of areas that you're seeing the most interesting that you're most excited about.
- [23:20]
C
Yeah.
- [23:20]
D
And so I really live on the Healthcare provider side. There's kind of a whole other world out there with respect to life sciences, pharma services. And so there's going to be a lot of activity there and I'm excited for it, but not as personally excited for it. So within kind of my own practice realm, the things that I'm excited about are I'd say women's health and fertility. I think we're finally starting to see some interesting opportunities there. An area that as a woman, I believe is underserved currently. And I think it's exciting to see the opportunities and it's exciting to see the deals coming. We'll continue to see activity in the behavioral health space and I think more on the tech enabled and AI side there. So I think there's going to continue to be exciting and fun things happening on behavioral health. We'll continue to see movement of care to less expensive care venues. And so this is going to hit a number of areas within health care. I've been personally very busy with hospice this year. That's a big one. Infusion is another one where there's really a movement to get people out of hospital and into either the home or infusion suite setting. And we expect to see a lot of continued activity and then just in general tech enabled services. And it sounds so generic and there's so much within there, but we will continue to see a lot of activity in tech enabled services. You can't get very far in a given day without people talking about AI. But AI is a huge part of this. And so I think those are the big areas for me. And then just in general, again, companies with really strong infrastructure in those areas I've talked about are going to be the AI assets and we're going to see a lot of competitive their processes with respect to them.
- [25:06]
A
Thank you. It's fascinating to talk because it's a wide variety of areas that there's interest in and that you're seeing movement in from women's health, behavioral health, infusion therapy, things moving to lower cost venues, tech enabled services. Of course there's a broad area, as you said, hospice and so forth. I mean it's a lot of different areas you're seeing. Jeff, let me go to you and talk about what you're seeing and where you're most excited and focused. Then I'll come back around to Matt and then David to finish us up. Jeff?
- [25:32]
C
Sure. And I also spend a lot of time in kind of provider services like Holly and one kind of different cut on the areas that she described is to describe them from the negative perspective. Meaning the areas that are getting a lot of interest now as opposed to three, four years ago, are areas that are not retail, that are not multi site, that are not doctor led and those are some of the characteristics of the provider services that are seeing a lot of interest. So that's part of what I'm seeing a lot of the other is a lot of investors are still services investors, but they're migrating in different directions. So there's a lot of interesting investment thesis that we see in different versions of payer services or thesis around kind of employer based healthcare where there's just massive opportunities for large employers and sometimes even midsize employers to change their cost spend because the rate of growth of just traditional insurance has gotten unsustainable. And so people are scrambling for other ways to go about that. So different business models that are built around that kind of cost containment for larger employers. That's been a fascinating and pretty expansive area that we see a lot of activity.
- [26:58]
A
Right Nate, And a lot more movement towards things like direct primary care are the ways of trying to cut those costs. I know the average employer cost for insurance have gone up to 25, 26,000 a year and I know at our firm it's even more than that. But you end up with an of that 25,000, 18 to 19,000 paid by the insurer, 6 to 8,000 is paid by the family itself. And those costs have just become very, very high in a world where the vast majority of people make less than 100,000 a year. So lots and lots of interest and fair enough, there are real ways to cut the cost of health care delivery. Matt, what are you seeing focused or excited about what are you seeing there?
- [27:37]
E
Yeah, agree with all the healthcare stuff. I guess I'll take a little bit of a different broader spin which is corporate divestitures. So now that we're in a higher real positive interest rate environment, we're seeing a lot of companies, particularly health systems, but across industries look at what are their core assets, divest of non core assets. And to Jeff's comment earlier about specialization, we're seeing more a sort of small group of sponsors emerge as is, you know, very good at taking that corporate divestiture, creating value and then exiting in some way or hoping to exit in some way. So I think that'll be a really interesting corner of the market to watch as, as corporations divest themselves of business units. What is private capital's role in that? I think there's a lot of opportunity for Value creation.
- [28:22]
A
You know, Matt, I couldn't agree with you more. I'm so thankful for you saying that. It's almost a return to something we saw a lot of, a lot of focus on 10, 20, 30 years ago. Were people really looking to take parts out of big corporations that are trying to narrow what they do and sell off assets that they're not as focused on? Businesses are not as focused on it. I think it's a great point. And we're seeing more and more private equity funds that really focus on exactly that and independent sponsors quite frankly too. David, what are you most focused on and excited about as we head into the end of this year, in the start of next year?
- [28:56]
B
Yeah, I'll give you a couple of examples, Scott, and I apologize. We do less around healthcare, so there'll be a little bit outside of the purview of some of the other inputs. But you know, I think I would characterize both as being kind of froth adjacent or tailwind adjacent. We have, we've had a long history of and we had a couple successful investments around infrastructure, particularly transportation and water infrastructure. That's an incredibly active and well invested area these days. So we're trying to avoid that in terms of directly participating there just because the price of entry on a net new platform becomes prohibitive. But then it's looking around the periphery of that. Right. So something that might be what we call a CMPM construction management project management firm in the water transportation infrastructure space that's adjacent to that, that's going to benefit from that, the, you know, bipartisan tailwinds and the dollars that are going to continue to flow into there. But try and come in, as I said, at a less frothy kind of valuation as an entry point for a platform and build from there.
- [30:01]
A
And then the second, David, just give us an example of what a company looks like in that space. Just so that you know, this is not intended to be healthcare centric. Some are healthcare, some are not a broad audience. But, but give us an example, I understand the elevator example from earlier. Give us an example in that area of what a company would look like.
- [30:20]
B
Yeah, so there's a business that we're partnered with now that again CMPM is construction management, project management. If you've ever done something at your house, you know what that might mean. Right. Like it's an owner's rep who's going to oversee a high ticket project. There's a business we partner with, it's kind of one level above that, it's called epm or executive project management that operates in the aviation space. So they're gonna, they're gonna renovate, you know, Terminal 1 at O' Hare once every 20 years. And that's going to be a $4 billion project. And there's no one at O' Hare that's done that or had that expertise at the executive level to kind of oversee that. So we have a business that has a team of talented senior executives who say, you know, we're going to come in, you're going to do this project. I'm effectively going to sit sidecar with you while you go through this project and, and help you get through it. Right. It's a CYA risk mitigation. It's a, it's a huge project. There's a lot of reasons they want to do that right now. That's aviation centric. But it's the exact same issue as people on this call would know to do, you know, a major new, you know, 500 bed hospital. You know, that happens, you know, once a decade in a hospital system or a marine terminal that's doing an expansion in Long beach. Like just large ticket big items to kind of play not in the meaty AECOM Jacobs, you know, area of that on the five billion dollar project. But if we can take a 30 EBITDA margin, you know, 20 million dollar fee on that, like I like that.
- [31:49]
A
Yes. No, a great, a great business of projects that have to be done over the next whatever decades are going to get done and somebody's got to help manage them side by side with it. Where the actual operator of that terminal, the operator, whatever it is, doesn't have the expertise to do so, at least to, to watch it closely. Manage ghostly fasting. Any other area that you're really excited about, I mean to cut you off there.
- [32:08]
B
No, no, no. So I think data centers and again adjacent to it. So you know, anybody that has any technical or engineering capability around data centers. You look at the billions of dollars that are being announced to be spent just in calendar year 26, the world of service providers around that are choking on the new construction. I think there's a whole market of renovating and retrofitting existing data centers that are largely on. Not to you know, get into the details, but a largely air cooled systems and you can retrofit them to being water cooled. And you know, anyone with technical expertise really isn't paying attention to that because they're all busy building new ones. And I think there's a, you know, a huge opportunity there.
- [32:55]
A
Well, and there's got to be a shortage of people that really know how to oversee and watch those things. They're just there's such an explosion and building. There can't be enough people out there that actually know what they're doing and doing that. And there's no way I'm going to.
- [33:05]
B
Go buy a business that's doing new data center construction because I'm not going to pay that price. But we could probably start with a couple small regional players to do data center retrofits and come in an area where people aren't paying attention.
- [33:20]
A
Thank you very, very much. I want to thank each of you Holly Buckley, Matt Wolf, Jeff Cockrell, David Greer for joining us on this session on private equity sort of trends focuses into more. Jeff, David, Holly, Matt, thank you so much. Can't tell you how much we appreciate you joining us and sharing your expertise this afternoon. Thank you very, very much.
- [33:41]
B
Thank you.
- [33:42]
C
Thanks, Scott.