The Searchers Building a $10m EBITDA Powerhouse

I mean, you'll have to, you know, it's basic stuff you'll do to maintain it, but de minimis, kind of what you call maintenance capex de minimis in the industry. So that's very attractive where you can just kind of over time, as you fill it up, you know, the 200,000th box is pure free cash flow. You don't need to hire any more guys to manage your record center.

Maybe it's you hire three guys to manage an empty one and 20 to manage a full one. There's no difference from 200,000, 250,000. And you know, it all just kind of drops the bottom line, which is similar to really any storage business.

Hey, to play devil's advocate a little bit on a previous point there about not actually building a business that is bespoke for a certain buyer, I think you it out eloquently and I think there's a strategic rationale in either direction. But what you're saying is we're building the best possible business we can. We're opportunistic, perhaps with regards to the things that come our way.

And we're trying to build a business that we are happy with as forever shareholders. However, every public company in the world always has to build with regards to a narrative. Right. And the narrative is, you know, how do we maximize the stock price?

And when you talk to a banker, they will give you a range. You know, I don't know what it is in your industry, but let's say 25 million of EBITDA if you get there, I have to imagine it's going to be well into the double digits.

And they will say something like, oh, your business will be 12 to 16x, but within that range, if you have been more random in your selection of priorities versus very specific about, yep, we ultimately want 16 DX from Iron Mountain. It can affect your decisions and so wouldn't it be your duty to maximize shareholder value to have an eye towards that?

Yeah, absolutely. And I like the 16x multiple. Just in case, again, the CFO of Iron Mountain is listening to the phone call.

I'm going to personally find his email address and send this episode to him.

Just like link it to him. No I know Barry, we've talked to him a few times. Very nice guy. He's done a tremendous job at Iron Mountain.

But look, I think that's absolutely right. However, all types of buyers want to see certain characteristics that we also want to see in the business. So for one thing, we're creating a lot of value every time we buy a business because we pay, call it 4 to 6 times EBITDA for these businesses.

We buy them with leverage and we know we're worth materially more than that. You know, even if you were to say conservatively, hey, I think your business is worth eight to 10 times. Well, right off the bat, you create a ton of value every time you do a deal.