I’ll highlight one, and albeit we’ve always talked about how the impact of copper to us is lesser than it was, say, five or 10 years ago, just because of a shift in our product. If you look at copper in the last 45 days, it’s increased commodity pricing by almost 15% or 20%. So that’s not necessarily resident in the quarter, but a reflection of something that we’re watching very closely and we’ll continue to monitor. But I would say there’s not really many puts and takes in the quarter per se. It’s just the concept that inflation is not gone and certainly one potential driver of future pressure is evident, I would say. The other thing I would highlight is that, again, from a quality perspective, we’re extremely pleased with our product and our product quality focus.
But as we continue to accelerate the growth into more technology-oriented products, just by default, having nothing to do with the underlying performance of the product, but just by default, there are higher carrying costs, or support costs, if you will, associated with electronic products, or more technical products than when you’re just dealing with some selling mechanical meters. So I would say that’s an item to factor into the equation as well.
Rob Mason: Okay. That’s very helpful. Just as a follow-up. On the flow instrumentation side, I know we don’t talk about that as much, but the revenue in the quarter did appear to maybe pop back up from where it had been trending the last two or three quarters. Have you seen any shift in the business momentum in that area? I know you call that the water-related products, but just from a — perhaps a cyclical or industrial perspective maybe presents more of a growth perspective in that business this year?
Ken Bockhorst: Yes. So in the water-related areas like wastewater or the HVAC building sustainability, we continue to see extremely positive trends that we’re excited about. When you really parse out the rest of flow instrumentation, all of the different pieces that we have in industrial or auto or all those pieces we don’t really, I think, have a large enough slice in any of those to give you any type of clarity across the market. They’re small in nature, so it can be uneven, as we say, about the business in general. But water-related markets, really excited about the rest probably don’t know enough to help you with that question.
Rob Wrocklage: And we are certainly now looking at our dashboards and reading through to other, any parts of the industry. Just given the small scale, I mean, flow instrumentation now is 15% of our revenue book. And to Ken’s point, the non-water markets are highly fragmented and not all that sizable.
Rob Mason: Fair enough. Okay. Thanks so much.
Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Nathan Jones from Stifel.
Adam Farley: Good morning, this is Adam Farley on for Nathan. Can you provide…
Ken Bockhorst: Good morning, Adam.
Adam Farley: Can you provide an update on the water quality — hey, good morning. Can you provide an update on the water quality pressure and network monitoring solutions portion of the portfolio? Are there cross-selling opportunities from recent acquisitions, maybe driving increased wallet share from customers?
Ken Bockhorst: Yes. So we have been over the past four years now with adding s::can and ATi on the water quality side following that with Syrinix for pressure monitoring, now adding Telog with remote monitoring and RTUs. The water industry moves slowly. We as Badger Meter with our 119-year history and brand, I think we’re able to affect that a little faster than other people. But yes, we’re thrilled with the feedback that we’ve got in the field and some of the tangible results that we’ve had in share of wallet by bringing these other pieces into the portfolio and selling the whole value.
Rob Wrocklage: And that was everything we expected to be from the state of initially looking at some of those acquisitions early on, that was the strategy. And I think of course there’s always the ability to go faster, right? But we are seeing the fruits of what we anticipated to see in terms of how those more comprehensive offering helps us to more completely respond to RFPs as well as how the influence of decision-makers and the ultimate buyers are very closely related and it’s not hard for us to reach them.
Adam Farley: Okay. And then, you know, I want to take a stab at the forward outlook. Understand that there’s tougher comparisons for the remainder of 2024, but how should we think about growth for the year, balancing the tougher comparisons coupled with your resilient end market trends?
Rob Wrocklage: Yes. Well, I think you prefaced your question perfectly, take a stab at it. But given that we don’t provide guidance, we’ll probably not get close to where you want to get to. I guess, I would just come back to some of the prepared remarks, which is over our strategic planning cycle, which again we define as five forward-looking years, we believe we can grow the business high single digits in the aggregate. That doesn’t mean that it’s going to be high single digits every year. Some years it’s going to be mid-teens, and other years it might be mid-single-digits. So the point of signaling the tougher comps is that we just put up 23% growth against the easiest comp. The rate of growth is likely to moderate from that as we move forward. But, yes, we can’t certainly, and we won’t certainly size that or put that percent on a piece of paper or even in the commentary here.
Ken Bockhorst: Yes. I just think the thing that I would add is that what we didn’t have in the quarter was significant one-offs. So what we’re excited about is it’s been a broad-based, you know, demand profile that we feel good about.
Adam Farley: Fair enough. Thank you for taking my questions.
Operator: Our next question comes from Nathan Jones from Stifel.
