Field Frequency

Blink Forward: Mike Battaglia on Building a Profitable Fast-Charging Future

Jason Cortes Season 1 Episode 12

In Episode 12 of Field Frequency, Jason sits down with Mike Battaglia, CEO of Blink Charging, to unpack what it takes to build a profitable, reliable charging network in a market that has moved from hype to hard truths. Mike shares his journey from the automotive world and JD Power into EV infrastructure, why Blink is doubling down on owning the software and operating profitable assets, and how driver experience, uptime, and disciplined growth are shaping Blink’s “next chapter” across Level 2 and DC fast charging.


Inside the Episode

  • Mike’s path to EV charging
  • The Blink leadership climb
  • Blink’s core DNA: owner-operator first
  • Vertical integration, refined
  • Driver experience: the simplest standard wins
  • Listening loops: CSAT + NPS + diagnostics
  • Fleets and OEMs: different needs, different playbooks
  • Reliability at scale: why partnerships matter
  • Blink by the numbers
  • Profitability: the industry’s overdue requirement
  • DC fast charging strategy
  • Policy friction and the permitting problem
  • Capital markets reality check
  • Vision: what Blink success looks like in 3 years

The EV charging industry is past the hype cycle and it's entering a discipline cycle. Growth alone isn't enough. Reliability, uptime, profitability, that's where the bar set. In this episode of Field Frequency, I'm joined by Blink charging CEO, Mike Battaglia to unpack Blink Forward. Blink's strategic reset focused on building a profitable fast charging future. In this episode, we get into what's broken, what's changing, and what it will actually take for public charging to scale and endure. and most importantly become profitable. Tune in now. Welcome to another episode of Field Frequency. I'm very excited to have Mike Battaglia with Blink today on the line. So very glad to have you, Mike. Thanks for joining. How's your day going? Good, good. Thank you, Jason. I appreciate the opportunity. It's good to be with you. Yeah, well, I've been looking forward to speaking with you and looking forward to having you on the show here. Before we get going, I just thought we'd start off with some origin story. I'd like to hear, you know, your background. you've been in energy and transportation sectors for years, but I'd like to know what drew you to the EV charging space and what has led to you sitting in the CEO chair of Blink today. So share that with me. Yeah, absolutely. So first of all, I never expected to end up in the energy transition space. It's actually maybe one of the last places I thought I would ever land. I spent almost my entire career in the automotive industry. So I graduated from Boston College back in 1993. And the summer before I graduated, I walked into a Honda dealership and I asked them if they had any jobs open. And they said, Well, what you want to do? I said, well, I'd like to wash cars. And they said, would you like to sell cars? And I said, sell cars. I said, sure. Right. was a punk in college. I didn't know what I was doing, but I loved the automotive industry. used to read car and driver cover to cover when it would come in. In fact, I remember it came in on Thursdays. I'd locked myself in my room. And so I've always been kind of a, bit of a car buff, a more of an industry buff. And from, so from that initial experience working in the retail car business, I went to work for Toyota. on the corporate side of the business in California. And really for the next, you know, I don't know what 20, 25 years I was in the automotive industry in some form or another. And for almost 15 years, I was with a company called JD Power and JD Power has a big automotive division. You know, those are the guys that give the awards for initial quality or dependability, reliability, things like that. so almost every automaker in the country is a client of JD Power. In fact, I think everyone. And we used to go meet with every, all of these clients back in, you know, 2019, early 2020. And the only thing they wanted to discuss was electrification. It didn't matter what we were going in for. We could be going in to talk to them about strategy or training or data and consulting. The conversations always came back to EV. And it really got me thinking, because at that point I'd been with the company for a while. I was kind of itching for something maybe a little bit different in my career. And I think I might be one of the only guys that ever got a job on, I don't know, Indeed or Monster.com or something like that. If anybody's worked there that's listening, I apologize. But I lobbed a resume in to Blink and sure enough, I got a call and in August 1st of 2020, was hired. Okay. All right. So how early were those conversations happening about EV where things were just EV centric? What year was that? It was really 19 that I saw like a really, really big uptick in client interest. you know, all of their product development plans, everything that they were doing from a, let's say dealership network training perspective, a product planning perspective, software development perspective, everything was being concentrated and focused on, on EV. was, was tremendously interesting. So, couple questions. How long at that point had you been with JD Power? And then when you came into Blink, what did you come in as? What world did you take? had been with JD Power for 14 years when, really those almost 14, when those discussions really started in earnest, I came into, I came into Blink as a vice president of sales. That's always kind of been my, my career background is on the sales side of the business. So, you know, started as VP of sales and I think SVP of sales and then chief revenue officer and then chief operating officer. And then, uh, I guess maybe it was a war of attrition, but, uh Then I guess they thought, well, you this guy's been around for a while. So how about how about we make him CEO? that that that I took that role. February 1st is when I assume the world. it's been quite an interesting ride. Yeah, wow. That has that. That's a cool background. know, someone very insightful when you walked in, wanted to sit to wash cars. Someone insightful saw something inside of you that's like, no, I got more for this guy. And it it tracked, didn't it? It tracked to bring you to. It's funny. It did. It's, uh, I've never thought of it that way, but, you know, it's great about it. I was like, uh, you know, I had worked cleaning golf clubs the previous summer, uh, at a country club and, me, you know, made the typical summer job wage. And, when I sold cars that following summer made more money than I had ever made, you know, in a summer job, I think I made three grand that summer, which was, you know, 2,800, three grand, something like that, which was amazing at the time. And important to a young student, I imagine very important for college. Yeah. I bet it did. I bet it did. Well, so you've sat in many roles, roles that have led you up to CEO today. Blink has been through multiple stages of growth. It's in the EV industry. Blink is a household name. And so you've, you, the company has went from an early stage, CPO to vertically integrated organization. So you've, you've been able to see some of that from the various different roles. and then probably from following the company even before you were at the company. But how has that transformation influenced all the transformation, the growth, all of that? How has that influence kind of Blink's core DNA and strategic direction that's went today, to where it is today? Yeah. Great question. So first of all, let me, let me talk a little bit about what Blink's core DNA is. And at the end of the day, when you strip everything else away, Blink is a CPO owner operator. We want to own and operate profitable assets in all of the markets that we participate in. So, you know, if you look back, You know, we tracked with the industry largely, if you look back to 2020, um, from 2020 to 2023, we had an absolutely atmospheric rise. The company grew tremendously. And obviously the industry was growing tremendously. There was a lot of, uh, euphoria about where EV was headed. And obviously today that's tempered. And what's interesting about it is that we've maintained our belief in vertical integration, as you, as you mentioned, but it's taken a little bit of a different flavor. So. A piece of vertical integration that we used to talk about a lot was the fact that we manufacture our own level two product. And we actually just recently announced that we've stopped doing that. And we thought about it. We said, you know, we can actually maintain vertical integration in the most important points of the value chain, which are network software development, firmware development and hardware design itself. But in terms of snapping it together, we don't necessarily need to be the guys that physically put it together. There are other companies that are better than that than us. So we recently made the decision to move to a contract manufacturing model, both in the US as well as overseas. So that's been a little bit of a shift for us recently, but we do believe that owning the tech stack, especially on the software side, is critically important to adding value to... uptime and reliability to trouble diagnostics for, you know, things that go wrong, all of those things. So we want to continue to maintain that. So the shift away from hardware and then of course the secret sauce you could say has been in the software and impossibly your network operations. That's where, but the migration from the hardware, is that somehow tied to maybe the commoditization of hardware that hardware has taken, specifically the chargers really? What's that look like? would think of it as if I had to kind of handicap it and weight it, I would say that's maybe that was maybe 20 % of the decision. 80 % of the decision was more driven about what are we good at? What is our core and who do we want to be? And being a manufacturer of equipment is not core to who Blink is. The core of Blink is owning and operating assets. is providing network services and high quality. reliable hardware out into the market if someone wants to, and this is the unique piece of blank, we go to market two ways. We sell charging stations and services into the market, but then we also own and operate. And so we wanna make sure that we provide the best experience we possibly can in those two arenas, but we don't have to be the guys to snap the hardware together. Yeah, makes sense. Makes sense. the hardware space is one that's spent a lot of time in the hardware space, both working for the manufacturer as well as a value added reseller of different brands of hardware. I understand where those nuances and it totally makes sense. And in the narratives of your core kind of identity to the market, both as an owner operator and then as a provider of solutions. Does everyone kind of understand that in messaging? Is that something that Blink has to kind of redefine or reemphasize on where you sit in the space or is that just kind of known based on? I think it's largely known. We've always talked about Blink being the most flexible EV charging infrastructure provider in the industry. And that's what we mean by flexibility. means if you want to purchase equipment, we can provide that. If you want someone to own and operate that equipment on site, we can potentially provide that, provided that there's a return on that investment. that's, know, I think we should talk a lot more about that as we, you know, as we kind of unpack this a little bit. But I think that it's clear on what we do, but the owner operator piece, let me put it this way, Jason, there are a set of customers that all they wanna do is purchase the hardware. Fleets are largely in that space. They wanna purchase the hardware, they want it on site. Then there's a whole set of customers that don't wanna own the hardware and they want someone else to own it and operate it on their premise, but they want that as an amenity or a... you know, as a benefit, let's say for workplace charging or multifamily or whatever that might be. So there are really two distinct sets of customers and we don't feel like we have to sacrifice one for the other, like some of our competitors. Yeah, no, that's a good call out and an important distinction because not everyone understands the business model of own and operate versus, you you're providing solutions. But thanks for that overview. And let's get into the driver experience and the relationship of Blink to the driver, we could for a few minutes. And I would like from your perspective, from a leadership perspective, what does owning that driver experience mean for Blink? What does that look like? There's got to be different kind of channels that you're looking at through, whether you're looking at through the perspective of fleets or auto OEMs or the site retail hosts locations. does owning that driver experience mean to Blink? What does that look like? Yeah, well think you characterized it well. So let's first talk about public charging. So in all situations, the driver is the tip of the spear. Nothing happens unless the driver has a good experience. Nothing happens unless the driver can successfully charge their vehicle. So that's a universal, it doesn't matter what channel we're talking about. But when we talk about public charging. You know, I think about this in a very simplistic way, and I think it helps us as a company to understand what we need to do. And at its most fundamental level, the public infrastructure driver wants to one, easily find a charging station. Number two, understand whether or not it's occupied. So if I drive up to it, am I going to be able to charge or not? And then thirdly, when I plug my vehicle in, it just works, period. That I don't have to do any gymnastics through the app, through my credit card, through my... RFID card, that it's just seamless. And it's this, it's the same analogy that we're all used to, which is when I go to pump gas in my car, I don't have to do back flips in order to get that to work. And the EV charging industry needs to move in that direction. And quite frankly, Jason, we're not there yet. We are absolutely not there. And we have to concentrate on it we have to make that much, better. And we listen to driver feedback. In fact, we just launched a customer SAP program. where we are getting feedback from hosts, from drivers, from an NPS, if you're familiar Net Promoter Score Feed uh perspective, but also diagnostic information. So hey, if you didn't like your charging experience, why? And we allow them to provide some detail on that. And then we're gonna synthesize that. We're gonna understand from a management team, and we're gonna funnel that back to the tech organization too. Very good. Very good. um On the kind of the checking, the CSAT, those surveys, are they going to the driver as well as to the site host or do you have different veins? Both. so that, you know, back to your kind of original question, the expectations and what's important are different for these constituents. When we talk about fleets, mean, table stakes is obviously I've got to be able to plug my car in and it's got to work. But that is more, you know, we start to get into more sophisticated things on the fleet side. We start to get into energy management services. We start to get into much more sophisticated reporting. you know, what time of day should I be charging my vehicle? If I do have vehicle to grid capability, ensuring that, hey, if I'm pushing electricity back to the grid, that vehicle is ready to go when I need it to be ready to go. So there's a lot of different things on let's say the fleet side than there is on the public charging side that you have to be aware of. Yeah, I don't know if I mentioned auto OEMs as well with your background from early on in your career as a young man getting started. Have you had a unique perspective of where Blink sits in support of the auto OEMs, whether they're charging into dealerships or rolling out programs? What's that look like? Yeah, yeah. So there's two big pieces to that. Number one is supporting the dealers. So we have done a tremendous amount of work across multiple brands with uh EV charging infrastructure at dealerships. And there's really a two... There's a two pronged approach with it. The primary reason why dealers have infrastructure on site is to charge the EV inventory that they have on site. And so that has to work. So if I sell an EV and I'm going to deliver it to that customer, I better be able to plug that car in and charge it to a hundred percent or 90 % or wherever they're going to charge it and deliver that car to them. it's, it's just the same principle as when you buy a car, you typically get a full tank of gas. need to have a full battery when you deliver it the car. So it has to be the reliability aspect there. But then also dealers are also understand understanding that there is a public charging aspect to this. That is a that they can monetize. It's a revenue opportunity. And so we see more dealers actually putting DC fast charging out front of the dealership and attracting EV buyers on site. And it does a couple of things. Number one is it is a revenue uh opportunity, like I mentioned. But the second is somebody comes into charge and maybe they get out of their car and walk into the dealership and start browsing inventory and pretty soon they've sold another car. So it's really interesting and I think the fact that you know we have several people at Blink that have grown up in the automotive industry we understand how the OEMs think and we understand how the dealers think. And on the OEM side the big opportunity for Blink is embedding the network into the navigation systems inside the vehicle. So we have a few of these, a few OEM relationships like Ford and General Motors, and I think a few others, where if you buy one of those vehicles and you're looking for charging, blink locations show up in that navigation system. So we support from that perspective, and then again, on the dealer infrastructure side. Well, going back to some of your earlier statements and the points that you were making about the complexities of EV charging, do I plug in and I get a charge just like it's so simple when you pull up at a gasoline fuel pump or a diesel pump? Kind of double clicking on that, the reliability aspects of that. And reliability, of course, is one of the defining metrics for credibility in this space, credibility to the CPOs. so kind of, if you could speak to where Blink sits into that consistency at scale, whether you're looking at it through the lens of systems or investments that are going into the company or cultural changes, however you want to answer that, or maybe you want to answer it from a number of perspectives. yeah, yeah, yeah. Thanks, I will. So first of all, reliability and the fact that the charging station works is absolute table stakes. The fastest way to lose trust among your driver base is that if they pull up a couple of times to a blink charger and it doesn't work, you've lost them, right? There's only so many chances that you get. And uh it's very, very competitive industry and you have to perform. So reliability in and uptime are enormously important. So the question is, how do you, how do you action that? How do you execute it? And in the earlier days of our company, we tried to do some of it ourselves and then we also outsourced it and we had multiple providers all over the country and it was very fragmented and sporadic. it didn't, quite frankly, it didn't work. And we weren't achieving the uptime that we needed to and wanted to achieve. And then what we decided to do is really coalesce that and say, who are the right providers that we wanna work with that have the capability to do this for us and do it on a basis and proactively let us know when a charger is not working or when we already know it's not working, fix it quickly, fix it right the first time, all of those things. And that's one of the reasons why we work with you guys at FieldAdvantage. mean, it's been a game changer for us because it goes back to what is our core? proficiency as a company and what is not. And maintaining the network ourselves is not a core competency. We can manage the charging station, we can provide great hardware and network services, but when it comes to the technical aspects of fixing those charging stations and having the scale and the reach to do that, we rely on partners like FieldAdvantage in order to do that. So final point to this is we are by no means satisfied with where our uptime is. We have to get better as a company and we have to get better as an industry and every single day we're working towards that. so we've spoken to reliability. Thanks for that overview, Mike. That's a good overview. Looking at, and thanks for the plug for Field Advantage. Appreciate that too. That was unscripted, y'all. But no, and we do appreciate the partnership that we have with Blink and have been glad to have a part in helping in some meaningful way. As you were talking, I thought of, I just thought of something. How many, how many ports is Blink up to today? great question. So we have 65,000 ports connected to our network currently, and that is within the US, the UK, and Belgium. And of that, we own and operate 7,000 charging stations ourselves. Now what's interesting about it, and this is maybe a little bit of a segue, but of those 7,000 stations that we own, roughly 6,800 of them are AC level two and about 200 of them are DC. And where Blink is moving into the future is more towards DC. You're gonna see us do a lot more DC work from this point forward. Nice, nice. Well, we've kind of talked about the background of Blink. We've talked about the driver experience. We've talked about reliability and skill. Maybe this is germane to your comments that you were maybe about the migration to focus in on DC, but let's talk about profitability and kind of the pathways to that. That's important in the space given all the things that we've seen and so... Obviously we've talked about utilization, charging experiences that need to be in place, using the chargers, they work, et cetera, uptime, cost containment's around what's important to the CPO, the economics of the CPO. But what else does Blink focus on in its pursuit towards profitability? Is DC charging a part of that or? Or what, you know, how does, how does all of this affect your growth and expansion strategy? What's that look like? Yeah. So first of all, Jason, I have a lot to say on this topic. It's, you know, the, my biggest criticism of this industry is that it did not focus on profitability early enough, often enough and fast enough. And I think everybody thought that the growth in the EV infrastructure business was going to outpace the cost structures that every company was seemingly setting up. So, and, and, you know, look, we w we're not immune to that. We were just as guilty as anybody else. but I can tell you that. There's a lot of good that's being done in this space in terms of pollution abatement and obviously CO2 emissions and things like that. And so we like that mission aspect of what we do and we can feel good about it. However, none of it means anything unless the company gets profitable and unless the industry gets profitable. And for Blink, the position that we've taken is that wherever, regardless of where the industry is, regardless of what the political headwinds are, regardless of what policy things get rolled out, we are gonna position this company and structure this company in line with where the realities of the market are in order for us to get profitable and get profitable quickly. Full stop. And what we did was at the beginning of 2025 in order to get there, we rolled out a corporate revitalization initiative called Blink Forward. And the overarching premise of Blink Forward was to achieve profitability. And the question is, well, how do you do that? And you do that by making really, really tough, difficult decisions that right size the business to where you are. And so we, you know, we have been, for lack of a better word, relentless on lowering our operating expenses, reducing our cash burn, and shifting the strategy. And the strategy was historically very, very heavily reliant on level two. And we like what we see in a big way. on the DC side of the business. So fast charging, know, high speed, high power, fast charging for your listeners. And, uh you know, again, you're going to see us as part of our march toward profitability, you're going to see us own and operate more DC fast chargers at the right locations around the country. You know, you alluded to some of this and some of the things that are driving towards profitability are really some of the, there's barriers to overcome. That's supply chain, volatility. There's just the evolving connector and protocol standards and just even hardware as it sits in the space. OEMs doing well, other OEMs not doing so well. And as you've As Blink has kind of migrated away from manufacturing its own hardware on the L2 and then focusing now on DC fast charging, there's got to be some resilience being baked into all of that to ensure, one, you're aligning with the right brands of hardware and you're going right forward, but also ensuring innovation is not inhibited in your move moving forward. Yeah. So, so first of all, blink doesn't build DC fast chargers. You know, we never really have, we built a 30 kilowatt charger for a while. ah But you know, really our focus is going to be on designing and contract manufacturing level two, and then sourcing DC fast charging hardware. Now, why have we chosen to take that road? Well, one, because on the level two side, you know, it's capped from a speed perspective. There are only so many features and different things that you can do on a level two. But DC fast charging is a much, different game. The technology is changing rapidly, the power levels are going up, the capability of what the stations can do is changing quite a bit and the prices are coming down. And so we choose to source DC fast chargers from about three different providers. and that we're concentrating on. And we choose those providers based on what segment of the market we're going after. So whether it is electrical distribution or whether it is us owning and operating that equipment ourselves that influences what type of hardware we pick for each of those situations. Yeah, that makes sense. Well, Mike, I've appreciated kind of the sharing of Blink, the Pathway Forward, all the areas that we've talked about thus far. I'd kind of like to zoom out and look at the industry a little bit, maybe from a higher view here. And as EV adoption has accelerated, we've been seeing policy and technology and capital markets collide in new ways. You know, just kind of speaking from a broader industry perspective, how do you see public policy, private investment, corporate strategy kind of converging or maybe conflicting as the industry is scaling? Well, you really gave the easy question, Okay, so let's see. Let's start with policy. Again, I'm fairly opinionated on policy. Okay, so first of all, what we've seen throughout the US and the States is that it's very fragmented. There's no really good universal policies out there. They're fragmented. And I'll tell you, my biggest criticism. is that regulators are doing things that actually are preventing the advancement of the industry. And the biggest, the two biggest things that are happening. are in certain states excessive fees for installing EV charging stations, which actually obliterate, for instance, in the level two framework, some of these fees can obliterate the profitability of an L2 charging station, flat out. And we see it in several states that legislation like that's being introduced. The second thing is imposing technology standards retroactively. So... There are certain states that are saying, hey, you need to have this certification or your station needs to be able to do this. And by the way, you need to do it for the stuff that's already installed. It's totally unrealistic. And in fact, it goes as far as... being financially unviable to do some of the things that the regulators are doing. So they really don't understand the fundamentals of the industry. And I think they're operating on where the industry was when it was stratospheric rise in 2021, 22 into 23. It's a much, much different playing field now. And regulators need to get kind of where the industry is and align. those policies with the realities of the industry. Because what it's actually doing is in the states that actually are the biggest proponents of EV adoption, they're actually working against themselves. So that's the first thing. The second thing is simply that when we look at the capital markets, money was flowing at will almost several years ago. And it's a very, very different landscape again today. And investors are being far more cautious and deliberate about where they put their funds. And actually I'm proud to, I'm proud to let you know, I'm not sure if you saw it, but on, on December 10th, last night. we actually raised $20 million. So we just completed a very, very successful capital raise, but it wasn't easy because their investors have invested in EV infrastructure in the past and got burned. And they want to hear that the right story this time. And the right story is when are you going to be profitable? How are you going to get to profitability? And what are you doing to run a disciplined company? So there's all these dynamics coming together right now that you have to juggle in order to make sure that you're one of the players left standing and not just left standing, but being a company that's exciting and that investors want to invest in and that's going to lead this industry into the future. know, Blink intends on being one of those companies. Well, congratulations on that investment. that's first time I'm here and I was traveling this week and, you know, to your comments about, uh, you know, policy and how that's affected. In I was this past week, I was with a kind of a policy co-creation group or kind of a think tank and it's represented by different stakeholders, OEMs and some CPOs and a few different, we were kind in a small room and We were in Colorado and Colorado actually has some legislation in the queue. That's one of the things to your earlier point of the complexities that are in place in some regions. One of the things that was kind of on the table and was being unpacked was not only the streamlining of the permitting process, just reducing the overall complexity of what it looks like to deploy chargers and where that... where private intersects with public sectors to either be a collaborator or someone that's almost against the process. Yeah, yeah, an impediment to it. I appreciate that. And again, congratulations on that. That's good. one thing, you mentioned permitting. We don't have to go into permitting, by the way, I'm not an expert, okay? But I will say, you gotta ask yourself, how long should it take to permit a Level 2 charging station? And it should be extremely quickly, quick, right? And we've been running into situations where it takes months in certain jurisdictions to permit a Level 2 site, and that's nuts. right? That's nuts. And that's where the industry, quite frankly, I think, is in a position now where it needs to really push back harder against some of these things that are happening. Because we all want the same thing. Regulators want the same thing. The states want the same thing. The industry wants the same thing, which is greater EV adoption. And we got to figure these things out so that we're not butting heads and that we're not it's not just working against us and being counterproductive and inhibiting EV adoption. And in many instances, that's happening. Yeah. Well, Mike, this has been a really good conversation and I appreciate you sharing these insights. Appreciate everything that you've had to say thus far. So we get ready to round out this conversation, kind of vision forward. Just if we were having a conversation or revisiting this conversation three years from now, what we've just talked about today, what does success look like for Blink? Clearly there's already success. There's some serious momentum going on for Blink right now, but What is that going to look like three, four, five years from now? What's the headlines that you want to see written about Blink's role in this space? Yeah, so Blink, three years from now, would have an extensive network of owned and operated DC fast chargers. We would be... leading in energy management, software and services. And that, that encompasses a lot of different things. It's not just load sharing, it's V2G, it's, micro grids, it's, uh, virtual power plants. We need to be not just working on those in three years, but live and going and thriving in that. And then finally, I would say three years from now, a company that's proven itself, consistently. in its ability to deliver for customers, in its ability to deliver the right hardware and services, and its ability to deliver for investors in terms of being a healthy, profitable company that will be sustainable over the long term. Very good. Well, Mike, this has been a great conversation. Appreciate you coming on Field Frequency. Any kind of closing comments, any wisdom to impart before we sign off? You know, I would just say it's funny, know, the, um, the industry over the last year to 18 months has taken its lumps. And you can look at that a couple of different ways. One is you can look at it and be pessimistic. Another way to look at it, which is the way I choose to look at it and the way we at Blink choose to look at it, is that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. And there's no question that the current industry conditions are making us a much, much better company. And it's positioning us and building uh and putting us on a foundation to really thrive into the future. Thanks for coming on Field Frequency. It pleasure to speak with you.