APi Group Corporation (NYSE:APG) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Russ Becker: Yes. I don’t think you’re going to see us – I’m going to answer the latter half of your question first, Stephanie, and then Kevin can add any color that he’d like around our balance sheet and the flexibility we have there. But I mean, I don’t think you are going to see us strayed outside really of the most recent adjacency, the elevator and escalator space. I mean we – we are kind of a – I don’t know, we are going to show The Street and our investors and folks that we have got the capability to execute in this space before we really get too curious about straying outside of, say, the fire and life safety, security and now the elevator and escalator space. And I think that’s part of our – we have always been pretty disciplined from that standpoint.

I think we need to stay disciplined and execute on – inside this new vertical that we have brought into the APi family. And I think we will show you that we have the capability and the capacity to do that. And we have got some interesting opportunities that we are looking at. Nothing that I would say – I would say we have got some opportunities that we are looking at that are, so to speak, bigger than a tuck-in. But we are not looking at anything that is – I don’t know Chubb [ph], I don’t know if that’s the right way to put it or not put it, but we are – so we have got some things that – like we have a $100-plus million revenue business in the fire and life safety space that we are looking at. And that would be interesting and a good fit that wouldn’t increase our leverage.

I mean so we have really good flexibility. I mean with everything that we have – the moves and the decisions that we have made around our balance sheet and with the equity raise and even the Series B and now with the term loan, I think just gives us just great flexibility and optionality to just continue to take advantage of the opportunities as they present themselves. And we are going to be smart. We are going to be disciplined and we are going to make good choices for the business long-term. Kevin, if you want to add any color?

Kevin Krumm: No, I think just a little bit. Russ said it well. When we think about M&A, there is sort of both bolt-on, then there is that mid-low platform and then there is the larger ones like Chubb. As we finance these, we actually are looking forward to make sure that we remain nimble enough to do what we need to do over the next 12 months. And I think he said it well. If there was something out there, we can fund bolt-on, tuck-in through ongoing cash flows, anything in that mid-level we will flex up. We have the balance sheet to do it pretty easily. And I think we have the sort of history to pay that down and to get back into our targeted levels pretty quickly. And that’s kind of how we are going to manage things that allow us to be as opportunistic as possible.

Stephanie Moore: Understood. Thank you. And then just as a follow-up, and again, congratulations on the Elevated deal. It does seem to be a fantastic fit here. I wanted to ask on the maybe medium to long-term cross-selling opportunities of this business. If you could talk a little bit about the sales force within Elevated and then the ability over time to kind of cross-sell opportunities from the legacy – your legacy fire and safety side and then obviously with – on the Elevated elevator services, too. Again, thank you.

Russ Becker: Yes. So, I mean again, the cross-selling opportunity is real. It is significant. And I would say we have taken one step – even though the transaction hasn’t closed, we have taken one step forward by just introducing sales leaders and getting people acquainted with each other. My experience tells me that this will take a little bit of time for us to really execute on this cross-selling strategy. And it’s funny because you want your people to open up their customer relationships to their peers. And if they really don’t know their peer and they really don’t trust their peer, it’s more difficult for them to open up that customer relationship. And so it’s easy for me to say we should do this or you should do this or anything like that.

But the more we bring our branch operations together and cohabitate, the faster we will be able to achieve really momentum as it relates to cross-selling. Do I think that a sales leader in our business can walk into a customer and sell fire and life safety inspections and sell elevator inspections, I do. And I think that there is the opportunity for us to educate our sales force. But that’s going to take some energy and effort and for us to really kind of develop a plan here over the next couple of months as we work towards getting the transaction closed. I have got a great – we have a really great real-life example that in Omaha, Nebraska, in our branch office, we have a fire and life safety business that cohabitates the space with one of our Specialty Services business.

And each of those branches has like absolutely thrived by kind of living in the same quarters. And they drag each other to the same customer sites and it’s like, hey, we have got customer ABC. And do you guys do any work for him and no, come with me and it’s really – it’s accelerated because of this idea that they are in the same space and living under the same roof. And that’s really the work that we need our real estate people to start working with the leaders of our life safety businesses and in Elevated’s business to execute on that. And there is a total willingness to do it. We also think that there is an opportunity, especially in the Elevated case, to basically organically open up shops in some of the branches that we have existing footprints already.

So – but it’s going to take some effort, and it’s not going to happen overnight. And so we have to just – I want to make sure that we are being realistic about setting expectations with everyone about the energy it’s going to take for us to really execute on that.

Stephanie Moore: Great. Thank you so much.

Russ Becker: Thanks Stephanie.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Jon Tanwanteng of CJS Securities. Your line is now open.

Jon Tanwanteng: Hi. Thank you for taking my questions. I was wondering if you could drill down into the elevator and escalator market a little bit more on the longer term potential there for acquisitions. Do the assets there come up to sale frequently? Are the multiples similar to the ones you have seen in your core business? Are the margins and business models more similar to what you see at ESS, or is that more of a unique asset? Any more color there will be appreciated.