Dave Storms: That’s very helpful. Thank you. And then one more for me, if I could. You mentioned kind of industry-wide as your levels coming down. Just curious as to how you think about industry-wide capacity going forward and how you see that changing through the rest of 2023 and maybe even into 2024?
Rick Marabito: Well, if you take a look at it from 2 sides. So from a mill capacity, we see more product coming online in the carbon side, second half of the year, some of the mills that have been a little behind in getting up and going seem to be in much better shape today. So we will anticipate that there’ll be more product available in the second half of the year. On the stainless and aluminum side, domestic mill is performing really well. You’ll see certainly some imports and the same thing on the aluminum mills. Aluminum mills are producing very well. and we’ll see a little bit more on the import side of it. From the service centers and from the customers, you’re going to see pretty much the way that it is now with the customers on the supply chain issues that we’ve seen. It’s probably more labor today than raw material, but labor is certainly an issue. And the industrial OEMs are having challenges trying to eat into their backlogs.
Dave Storms: That’s very helpful. Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. The next question is from the line of Chris Sakai with Singular Research. Please proceed with your question,
Chris Sakai: Hi, good morning.
Rick Marabito: Morning, Chris.
Chris Sakai: Can you shed some light on the margin expansion in tube and pipe and what drove that?
Rick Marabito: Yes, Chris, great question. And our pipe and tube business, and we’ve been commenting on this for several quarters, but the investment in more fabrication-type value-add assets are really starting to yield the results that you’re seeing in the gross margin. So it’s really the result of a very intentional strategy over the last several years to continue to expand the value-add equipment. Also, I might add, our stainless portion of the pipe and tube business is growing, and it tends to have a little bit of a higher return. So those would be the two primary reasons.
Chris Sakai: Okay. Great. And can you comment on your appetite for more acquisitions after the Metal Fab acquisition?
Rick Marabito: Yes. Yes. Thanks, Chris. Certainly, we continue to look at acquisitions as one of the pillars of our growth strategy. I think as Rich mentioned in the prepared remarks and I did as well. The good news is even after the Meta Fab acquisition, we’re now at record availability have an exceptionally strong balance sheet. So we’ve got plenty of capacity to do that. We continue to look at strategic acquisitions. It’s just part of what we do strategically and every day in our operations right now. So you should expect us to continue much on the path that we’ve been over the last 5 years going forward on acquisitions. Obviously, Metal Fab was a big one. So we’re very focused on the integration aspects of Metal Fab, which, by the way, is going tremendously.
It’s really after 3 or 4 months, it’s been a very, very smooth transition. But acquisitions are going to continue to be a growth driver for us, together with organic growth as you’ve seen in some of the projects that Andrew highlighted earlier.
Chris Sakai: Okay, thanks for the answers.
Rick Marabito: You’re welcome.
