We’re looking for domain expertise, for groups of clients that we think that we can grow more quickly and for technology capabilities. Those things really all remain unchanged. From a leverage perspective, we’ve said you know for M&A we are comfortable taking our leverage up as high as 3.5x, may be even higher and it feel that with the strong free cash flow generation of this business, as well as the acquiree, we would be in a position to delever very, very quickly, and get to €“ you know get very quickly under 3x and keep pushing down towards the low twos from a net leverage perspective. Right now, given the current interest rate environment, as we think about the strong free cash flow we’re going to generate in 2023, you know obviously we’re still looking for accretive M&A, that’s a priority supporting our dividend.
It’s certainly a priority and then from a share buyback perspective, I think you’ll see us be modestly active there. We do want to offset dilution from share issuances. So that will be a part of the program and then some amount of opportunistic share repurchase, perhaps after that. But right now, in the current interest rate environment, you know delevering, creating more fresh powder for accretive M&A would be a higher priority for us than what I would call kind of large-scale share repurchase.
Ruplu Bhattacharya: Okay, thank you for all the details. If I can just sneak one more in, Chris, can you talk about the sales cycle. You know is it lengthening, shortening; is it, as you would have expected in this environment and if you can make any comments on attrition rates, both in the catalyst business as well as in the base business? Thank you.
Chris Caldwell: No problem Ruplu. So just in terms of the sales cycle, what I will tell you is that discussions that clients feel a deal starting to form are taking a little longer, right. So clients are kind of going through this debate internally about do they outsource more, do they consolidate more. How is that going to look and what’s their strategy based on what they’re seeing from a volume expectation perspective? But once the decision is made to say, yes, we’re going to do this, then frankly the sales cycle has not changed. It’s actually maintained some of the speed that is coming through. On complex deals, which we’re doing more of in the obviously the Catalyst business, it tends to be a longer sales cycle. We haven’t seen that necessarily extend any further.
It’s just been €“ it’s just a longer sales cycle because of more kind of moving parts and more integration into their IT systems and infrastructure that we have to deal with. From an attrition perspective, our catalyst attrition frankly is down fairly significantly. You’ve seen a number of companies kind of looking at resizing their technical talent opportunity. So that has really sort of somewhat cooled the market and driven a lot of stability within it. In a general attrition perspective in our operations business, it’s still lower than pre-COVID and it’s starting to trend down a little bit more. It had trended up a little bit through the course of 2022, as the job markets have kind of heated up in a lot of different regions that we operate in.
We’re now seeing it sort of trending down a little bit, but still not back to where it was pre-COVID levels and so we’re comfortable with what we’re seeing, hence our common and prepared remarks about sort of a more stable labor environment and more predictable labor environment.
Ruplu Bhattacharya: Okay, thank you for all the details. I appreciate it.
A – Chris Caldwell: Thanks Ruplu. No problem.
Operator: One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Joseph Vafi of Canaccord Genuity. Your line is now open.
