Warren Kanders: That’s a great question. We have an extraordinary management team, led by Brad and Blaine. As you know, they have an operating model background; and so whatever we look at — those opportunities, we’ll need to benefit from the operating models which we’ve been developing for our own business here over the last number of years. And where you’re seeing — we were all seeing the benefit of that right now. So the transaction that we talked about earlier, that’s right on top of everything that we do. Today we would be looking at adjacencies in areas that could involve electronics, we have some capabilities in house on that, and Brad in particular has had personal experience in those types of things; industrial safety and so on.
But again, we are looking for those businesses that can benefit from the operating model and discipline that we have. And I think also, we spoke previously about the types of margins that we would want to experience in those businesses. So, we are looking only at opportunities where the margins are in excess of 20%, and where — there is not a lot of CapEx required to maintain and grow those businesses. But there seemed to be more today available than there have been; I think we’re going to see — and Ron, you probably know this from talking to a lot of your companies you cover, there’s going to be more internal thinking about what [indiscernible] larger companies and what they have, what the mix is, and divesting certain things that don’t fit in.
And so, it’s pretty ripe for us. Also private equity, as you probably have read, it’s very difficult for new funds to be raised, even for the largest firms. And now there are a lot of firms out there today that are orphans, and with higher interest rates; that’s a problem. And so that is forcing a lot of private equity firms to re-evaluate what they have, how long they can keep it, what they need to do with those assets. So we are as encouraged as we could be right now about who we are, what we do, our balance sheet; as you know, we’re very careful about that. And Blaine is very focused every day, not just on the operating aspects of the business but also on our balance sheet as well. And so, these disciplines take forward with us as we’re looking to buy [ph].
Ron Epstein: Super. Thanks.
Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Mark Smith with Lake Street Capital Markets. Your line is open.
Mark Smith: Hi, guys, sorry, if I missed this earlier in the call, but can you discuss kind of new products, how those are performing, especially a lot of those that we saw kind of introduced early in calendar 2023?
Brad Williams: Hey Mark, this is Brad. So new product-wise, what I talked about little bit earlier, we’re really proud of the progress we’ve made. And I know you’ve seen some of those HyperX product, XpertFit 3D body sizing, the SafariVault line, and then we have a whole host of consumer holsters that we’ve launched. And most notably, our INCOG X holster, just won guns and ammo holster of the year. So we’re really, really proud about what we’re doing from a new product perspective. When you look at the growth overall, for the consumer side of things, we, in our remarks showed a 5% increase on duty gear, on the consumer side for us. And then HyperX has reported 40%, 45% [ph] growth on the HyperX side of things. So, we love engineers, the world would be a better place with more engineers, quite frankly.
And our team is having fun with innovation, and quite frankly, spending a lot of time with customers and just understanding pain points, and where we can continue to improve things and make their lives better and continue to uphold our mission around saving lives. So, I’m really proud of the results we’re seeing.
Mark Smith: Okay. And you bring up the consumer side of the business doing well; any commentary? We’ve seen higher demand in October following the events in the Middle East, even domestically for some of those products — any insight you can give us in maybe October, what those trends look like on the consumer side of the business?
Blaine Browers: I think October has been consistent with our expectations, which I think is kind of the framework we’ve seen all year now. Our expectations are probably a little bit different than what you’d expect in the market. And that’s really driven by these new products that, as Brad mentioned, have had great success. So yes, I think when you look at the statistics, the consumer markets, generally kind of — certainly in this kind of space, kind of down to maybe flat — flattish to down. Whereas with those new products we’re able to continue to expand our share and grow in those markets; so what we’re seeing kind of early part of the Q4 as well.
Mark Smith: Perfect. Thank you.
Operator: And there are no further questions at this time. Brad Williams, I will turn the call back over to you.
Brad Williams: Thank you, operator. I’d like to thank everyone, again, for joining us on today’s call and your continued interest in Cadre. Thank you.
Operator: This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you, and have a great day.
