And so I will say one thing, and I really kind of meant to say this earlier, we’ve also – I’m sort of happy to say that our trade core division, historically, HireQuest has really never done much as far as targeting skilled construction labor. And in the very last days of 2022, we spun up a division called TradeCorp. And we are – I’m happy to say that in 9 months, we’ve – it’s making significant, significant, I shouldn’t say significantly, I guess, it’s significant, it’s not 10% of our sales or anything. But I mean, it is doing nicely. It’s setting up to be hopefully meaningful in the future. And it’s one of the ways for anybody who’s even sort of investors, said, look, we’re not a one-trick pony. We’re not out there, just – let’s just go buy, buy, buy, buy, buy.
It’s not what we’re trying to do. Also, we still want to grow organically and skilled trades is one of those areas that we perceive, first of all, due to demographic reasons. It’s trades people are going to be harder and harder to find. And so we’re trying to position ourselves gobsmacked in the center of that, of that field. And like I said, we’re very happy with our progress. But I want, again, investors to understand as well, we don’t just – we’re not just out looking to buy people. We’re also looking to grow internally as well. And TradeCorp is a good example of that.
Kevin Steinke: Okay. That’s very helpful. And just talking again about the pending acquisition of TEC. Wondering if you could provide any background or color on how that deal came about? And is that a business that maybe was a little more financially stressed with the downturn in the economy? Or how healthy were they? Are they just trying to get a sense as to how that plays into the pipeline and…
Rick Hermanns: Yes. So it was not – no TEC was not a distressed company at all. The owner seller is – but is somebody who – he’s been in the business for 40-some-odd years. And so this was – and just clearly a retirement strategy. And so he is a pretty advanced age. So it was completely related to that. That said, we’re buying it going in sort of the $34 million that we put out there is what the TTM sales are that’s probably 15% to 18% off what it was what the TTM would have been, let’s just say, in January of ‘23. So the good news is the sort of the decline in sales has been sort of already absorbed within that. So that’s a good thing. And from that perspective, it is a – as far as how it was came about, it’s just basically our VP of Corporate Development, David Hartley, just out there sourcing deals.
We’re always out there sourcing deals. And so it was one of 10 different ones that we were looking at, let’s say, in April, May. And fortunately, we were able to come to a deal. It’s a very nice deal for us insofar as it’s very typical of the types of people that we place historically. So there’s no – it’s right down the fairway. And maybe for us, what I like about the deal as well is geographically, it strengthens our presence in the state of Arkansas. We’ve had a presence there, but it really fleshes it, it really fleshes it out. And we’re hopeful that some of the national accounts that we have are going to be able to be – are going to be able to access those in Arkansas, where TEC hadn’t in the past. And so we’re very bullish on it.
We’re very bullish on it.
Kevin Steinke: Okay, that’s great color. Appreciate that. And thanks for taking the questions. I will turn it back over.
Operator: Thank you. We have no further questions in the queue at this time. So I will hand it back over to management for their closing remarks.
Rick Hermanns: I want to thank everybody who has joined us. I realize that sort of the top line, at least if you count earnings is kind of the top line are less than what we would have hoped. I – hopefully, if you listen carefully to what’s being said, number one, it comports with what, really what I said for the last few years, which is an expansion even if it means that we leave one out of three open positions unfilled is better than a recession or better than a stressed economy. And so what you’re seeing really what started in Q1, but has especially become apparent in Q2 and Q3 is we are absolutely subject to the cyclicality of the economy. And the fundamentals of what we do haven’t necessarily changed outside of the workers’ comp, which, like I said, we believe that we will be able to rectify a significant portion of that, again, not promising that, that some of that may not be a little bit of an impairment, but it’s not – we certainly do not expect any more quarters like we did this past quarter.
We think that we will be definitely – we’re making progress towards sort of rectifying at least the bulk of those negative comparisons. So again, I want to thank our franchisees, I want to thank our employees, and I want to thank our investors and look forward to a great fourth quarter. Thank you.
Operator: Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This concludes today’s conference, and you may disconnect your lines at this time, and we thank you for your participation.
