We have good relationships with the customers in these countries. And we continue to manage our pipeline being very disciplined around projects that we pursue and looking forward to continue driving strong sales in that region.
Operator: Our next question is from Brian Drab with William Blair.
Brian Drab: Just wonder if you could make any comment as you look into next year around what you expect for sales volume in the various businesses from utility, the highway pulls to international and domestic irrigation, just even a rough range, where do you think these businesses are going to be in terms of sales volume next year?
Timothy Francis: Brian, it’s Tim. I’ll take that question. At a high level, it could be a very dynamic market environment as we have seen this year. So I’ll start with infrastructure. We expect to see the strength in the 2 utility product lines like we’ve seen this year. But we do see continued muted demand in the telecommunication market and then the commercial piece of L&T. In agriculture, we expect to end this year with a more historical normal backlog, so lower than the global backlog we saw in 2022, although our recent order rates in North America have improved year-over-year. We will provide, of course, a comprehensive outlook in February on 2024 when we release our fourth quarter earnings. Another key aspect I would say is the USDA will release our net farm income projections in December. That will be a key component of that outlook that we do provide in February. As Avner just alluded to, we do see a solid pipeline of international projects.
Brian Drab: Okay. On the infrastructure side, I mean, in the utility poles business next year, my understanding is that lead times are still very high in that business. There’s basically more demand than supply. Are you doing some things to free up some capacity? Shouldn’t that be a growth business in terms of volume in 2024?
Avner Applbaum: Sure. Let me add a little more color on that. Absolutely. That is a very strong growth business for us and not only for the next year but for the next decade. We’ve taken specific steps to actually improve our lead times and actually were able to — during this quarter to get them below 30 weeks, which is which is a really great spot for us to [indiscernible]. And of course, we have different product lines and different — within that business. So some of the lead times are greater than others, but in our main kind of steel area, we’ve been able to drop it below 30 weeks, which really keeps us supporting our customers being very competitive in that area and keep on trying — finding opportunity to capitalize on this very strong market.
If it’s anywhere in the transmission area to the distribution, the substations where we’re seeing tremendous growth, when we really have great products in that area that can support a lot of the energy transition. So absolutely, we’re very excited about the utility space with our flexible footprint, with an amount of products that we have, the innovation we have going on there really to help support these utilities as they look forward to harden the grid address the load growth, the electrification, the connectivity to other renewable sources. So overall, yes, we’re very excited about the utility space.
Brian Drab: Okay. I guess I’m just trying to get — I’m trying to get a sense for what you have in your mind right now about next year in terms of volume growth for the business because I get that telecom will be muted probably down again next year, commercial stuff. These aren’t huge parts of the business. I mean highway infrastructure, utility, international Ag, I mean, I think those are up. Domestic Ag is more of a question mark. I mean overall for the business, I mean, nominal sales growth to be volatile steel price to some extent. But is this a portfolio that you think going into next year grows in terms of volume or not?
Timothy Francis: Yes. This is Tim. I would say for the — on the infrastructure side, there will be the growth in TD&S and the transportation piece of L&T. So I would tell you, I would expect based on what I know today, that we would see seeing low single-digit volume growth in 2024 in the Infrastructure segment.
Avner Applbaum: And maybe I’ll just broaden a little bit of the conversation around the agriculture. And we will provide a lot more information during our next earnings call as we provide the outlook for the year. But we’re really now looking at the trends in agriculture. I mean if we just take a step back, we had record years for the farmers. Net farm income was at record levels going into ’21, ’22. The farmers made a lot of money. The commodities were elevated. You’ve seen core was around 7% and which is the main crop for the U.S. soy was around 17% or 18%, which is the main crop for Brazil. They had tremendous years. Now as we move into this year and as we move into next year, overall, globally, I’d say that the farmer is getting a little bit squeezed because interest rates are higher, there’s higher inflation.
Commodities are a little bit at lower levels. So he’s being squeezed. He always look at — compared to prior years. But overall, they made really good profits. They made good money. They have very strong balance sheets. And now the question is, are they going to continue to invest now for the future? Are they going to be a little more muted. We have seen. We’re very encouraged by the increased order rates in Q4, but we’re really as we’re — as it’s been a very dynamic environment, we’re just going to wait a few more months. We’re going to see how they end up the year. We’ll have the new USDA report coming out in December. We’ll see how the impacts Brazil. So there’s just a lot of moving pieces and over the next few months, we’ll have a lot more visibility, and we’ll be able to give our analysts and our investors a really good feel for how does 2024, how it’s shaping out.
Operator: Our next question is from Ryan Connors with Northcoast Research.
Ryan Connors: Glad to hear your employees and family are safe and sound there. Wanted to go back to Prospera and talk about that from a bit of a different angle in terms of process. What was learned in the process? What went wrong in the process? I know you mentioned that was a partnership. So I assume it was a negotiated deal and not an auction. I mean what was — talk about the price discovery part of the process that got you to the $300 million valuation. And just anything you can tell us about the process, due diligence valuation and what was learned and what can change, what can be improved going forward on capital deployment?
Avner Applbaum: Thank you, Ryan, for your question, and thanks for your comments as well. Overall, when we went and acquired Prospera, like you mentioned, we had a partnership that went back to 2019. It was a transformative acquisition. It was a company with minimal revenue, a very exciting technology, very exciting value proposition with really a tremendous amount of potential. And we still believe there is tremendous amount of potential, although some of the assumptions regarding some of the growth in the adoption rate of growers in general didn’t pan out. And it’s a new space for us. But in general, I would say that tech in agriculture is an evolving space for us and for the whole industry, and we made some assumptions at the time that really didn’t pan out.
