Aaron Edelheit: Okay. So I guess what I hear — thank you for all that. What I hear is the pipeline is still full. There’s lots of opportunity. You’re staying disciplined. There may be more opportunity if things weaken from here and you’re seeing a bunch of cross-selling opportunities in addition just to the accretive nature of MRI just cross-selling and incentivizing MRI to sell some of your existing offerings is a big opportunity as well. Is that a fair summary?
Rick Hermanns: No, that’s a fair summary.
Aaron Edelheit: Okay. So I want to go to just your comments about the economy. As you’re seeing things right now like right now on the ground you’re latest from what you’re seeing your franchisees are saying. When I think about a slowing of the economy or just more openings, et cetera, but you have been suffering from not having enough labor and yet also your labor, the wage rates are going up. So you’re just from wages going up. I believe your system-wide revenue again excluding MRI for the year was about $470 million. And in terms of where we are now and I’m not asking — I’m asking a hypothetical if things just kind of stayed economically and wage the way it was. Do you see excluding MRI that $470 million is flattish going up a little bit?
How would you see it? I’m not asking you to predict the economy. I’m more looking for how things are going so far through Q1 just in the balancing of well, hey, you now have more access to labor to fill more orders, but there may be less orders, but wages are also going up. Can you give some color to just those dynamics?
Rick Hermanns: So I would definitely say, we’re obviously almost halfway through or half the work practically through the first quarter. And I would simply say that the market is flat. And so it’s hard to tell in some instances have the increase in wages offset an actual decline in demand, it’s hard to tell. We’ve also had — and I literally had a conversation this afternoon with a franchisee, who’s experienced a relatively difficult first quarter. But his first response in essence was the weather has been really bad. And I — you’ve probably never heard me once say on any call that whether — I don’t like quoting weather as being an issue simply because people tend to forget that that can create a favorable — people like to sit there and say, gosh, aren’t we great, because they’re comparing it to a crappy quarter from the prior year that contained 15 blizzards in the space of six weeks, right?
So it’s easy to do that. So, I don’t like to do that. But clearly there’s been some really bad weather. And so it’s very, very difficult to draw strong conclusions from what we’re seeing right now and I realize that’s not a very satisfying answer but it’s.
Aaron Edelheit: No, no. I think that’s very helpful. I know and I appreciate just the — Rick , so when I think about like that — and again, I want to exclude MRI just for a second. And I don’t know in this transition year, because MRI is such a big kind of acquisition and it’s going to be — there’s going to be some kind of messiness to it. If there’s a way to just be like, hey, here’s our original kind of system-wide revenue. And here’s kind of plus — just some way for this year just to simplify. But when I think about that $470 or so, and I take your traditional — again, I’m excluding MRI. And I’m just making sure that the business — because there’s going to be some messiness just so I understand, I’ve always thought, that that’s like 3.5% to 4% net margins on that $470 or so?
And is that the right — is that gets the depending on what your system-wide revenue is like 4%, it’s like around $1.25 kind of earnings power is how I personally have thought about it. Now obviously there’s going to be — you have the economy or the weather just you’re acquiring companies. But excluding MRI is that still the right kind of way to think about kind of a normalized earnings power for, let’s just — I don’t know what to call it the legacy business or the existing business?
Rick Hermanns: I do think that that’s a reasonable way of looking at it. Perhaps maybe now it’s 3.25% to 4% because we’ve got more amortization than we have historically. So it’s possible.
Aaron Edelheit: But that amortization really is like
Rick Hermanns: maybe that’s harder to up at that level just because of the amount of amortization we have. But…
Aaron Edelheit: Amortization is — it’s not a cash expense, right?
Rick Hermanns: Correct. Yeah. Yeah. That’s right. That’s correct. And just say on the $470 — and I would say on the $470 is that clearly, now mind you that $470 million includes two weeks’ worth of — it does include two weeks of MRI. So it’s not — I’m saying, it’s not a clean comparison realizing you got to back out a certain amount of money a certain amount of for MRI. Let’s just play per ton that is $450. And I’m not saying its $450 I’m just — let’s just say it was $450 million. In fact, its $460 is actually.
Aaron Edelheit: Well, you exceeded my number, because I was expecting $443 or so.
