Steve Blanco: Yes, Rob, I would add a couple of things. So if you think of the Middle East, and I was there, as Nish said, last week, the team is very, very optimistic, met with some of our key customers, and they look at the project work and what’s coming forward very positively. I would share that it’s a little unique. I think and maybe we’re in a different time because certainly, the oil and gas needs will continue, and we know that that’s the case, and there’s some strong investment going on there. But the clean energy investment on top of that like hydrogen, which we play in that as well is a real positive that we believe will be a nice tailwind to our business, especially in fixed gas and portable gas detection. So they’re very bullish on that, a lot of investment, a lot of discussions going on, on further investment.
And it’s not just the Middle East. If you think of the energy market and we look at where we play, certainly the Middle East, but we also believe Latin America and North America will continue to be critical areas for energy needs going into the future.
Rob Mason: Excellent. If I could squeeze in one last one, just around the balance sheet. Deleveraging has been pretty rapid this year-to-date. Just curious where your priorities are from here on that metric? And any commentary around what you’ve seen around valuations in the M&A side. year-to-date?
Nish Vartanian: Lee, why don’t you take that?
Lee McChesney: Yes. So I appreciate the question number one. So obviously, very consistent in what we do here, we invest in the business, the core organic business, whether that’s NPD, how we go to market, that’s our first objective. Certainly consistently pay our dividend, been doing that since the 1940s and then paying an increasing dividend for over 50-years, no change there. And then, obviously, this year, we have focused on some debt pay down and haven’t done our normal share count maintenance, because I just wanted to get the debt levels down, but that’s something we’d always do as well. So that then leads to, well, what do you do? Because we do generate a lot of cash and we’ve done that for — consistently for decades.
That’s enabled us to do four deals in the last five years. I think we’ve shown that we have the ability to do those deals. I do think a big part of that is we’re highly selective in what we do. It’s got to be tied to our strategy. It’s got to hit the financial hurdles we’re looking for. And obviously, as we continue to have more success, those hurdles actually go up. They do not go down. So with that said, hey, the market is active. I definitely say we’ve had the normal post Labor Day surge of activity. I think prices have maybe a two-year mindset on, they have come down a bit, which is good because the cost to do a deal has gone up. So that should enable. Again, if the financials hit for some things to happen. Chris, Stephanie, Bob are certainly very active in the marketplace and making those connections.
We are having those conversations. But again, we will do something if it makes sense and only so…
Rob Mason: Very good. Thanks again.
Nish Vartanian: Thank you, Rob.
Operator: There are no more questions in the queue. This concludes our question-and-answer session. I’d like to turn the conference back over to Chris Hepler for any closing remarks.
Chris Hepler: Thank you. We appreciate you joining the call this morning. If you missed the portion of the call, an audio replay will be made available later today on our Investor Relations website and will be available for the next 90-days. We look forward to updating you again on our continued progress again next quarter.
Operator: Conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.
