Silver to Zoom If Dollar Weakens, Here’s Why…

Mike Maharrey: Greetings. I'm Mike Maharrey, a reporter and analyst here at Money Metals, and I'm here today with Stefan Gleason. Stefan is the president and CEO of Money Metals Exchange, aka my boss, and happy to be talking with you today. How are you doing, Stefan?

Stefan Gleason: Hey, Mike. Happy New Year.

Mike Maharrey: Happy New Year to you.

Stefan Gleason: It's great to be on your show.

Mike Maharrey: It's great you have a show that we can be on. I really appreciate it. It's been fun. It's been a learning experience for me, talking to different people, so that's the beauty of being an interviewer. You learn as much as the audience does when you're talking to folks, so that's pretty cool.

Stefan Gleason: Yeah, we're getting a lot of great guests on, and thanks to you we're really covering a lot of ground with the guests all year, all last year, so looking forward to it. I know we got a few people booked for the next few weeks that are going to be really interesting, some new people, and looking forward to that.

Mike Maharrey: Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's dig into the topics of the day, and since we're heading into a new year, we're right here at the beginning. Looking back, we had huge increase in the price of gold, big bull run. And I'm curious, just from a dealer's standpoint, how has that translated to the business side from the perspective of physical demand here in the U.S? I imagine it's a mixed bag when you get prices going up. I think that may create some benefits and then create some headwinds as well.

Stefan Gleason: Yeah, it is a mixed bag like you said. I mean, the reason for the price going up was not because of U.S demand or even Western demand. It's been central bank demand. It's been Asian retail demand, institutional demand, mostly outside of the traditional Western parts of the world, meaning Europe and the U.S. We did see a lot of retail and general demand in the U.S in 2020, 2021, 2022. It really slowed down starting right at the end of that bank run situation we had early 2023 with the regional bank crisis. There was a lot of interest in the U.S for gold and silver, physical gold and silver, both from a retail standpoint, from ETFs and so forth. But really just the year and a half since then, which is when we really saw the big price moves in gold and even silver, was not driven by Western demand.

So, we saw a big run-up in prices starting at the beginning or the end of 2023 and going into 2024, and then an acceleration in the second half of 2024. And those led to, believe it or not, actually more selling than we'd seen. More selling from retail investors. Even the ETFs and so forth, they finally started seeing a net inflow of buying, I believe, last fall on the ETF side. Of course, we still have a big flow of new customers coming in, but there was a lot more selling. And I think it was a result of people who were sitting on gains, especially in gold. And I should mention it was mostly gold selling, not silver selling, but it was more gold selling than we'd seen.

We were still selling to customers more than we were buying, but on the whole, it was more selling back than we saw. And I think it was people sitting on 30- 40% gains, maybe some impatience or frustration over the several years where the expectations were high but the price wasn't really moving, and then it moved big time, and people were going ahead and taking some profits or they needed the money.

So, there's lots of factors, but I mean it's been a very different environment for dealers in the last year here in the U.S than it was say in 2020 or 2021 when it was just overwhelming demand shortages, higher premiums. I guess the upside of the higher selling that we've seen back where people are disgorging of some of their holdings is that's caused the premiums to come back down. Mints have caught back up. In fact, mints are quite slow right now because there's so much metal that has come back, and therefore the secondary market is fully supplied, and that's caused premiums to fall, which has led to some really great deals.

So, now we're finding that people who are entering a position in gold or silver at least are paying a really very modest spread above the spot price, and that means they're putting most of their dollars into the actual metal. We have seen a little bit of a shift again since the election.

Mike Maharrey: I was going to ask.

Stefan Gleason: So, I mean, that's another factor that's potentially a new economic environment or certainly a new perception of where things are heading. We saw a little bit of, I would say, a two to three month run up in demand going into the election. Especially with the assassination attempt and so forth, there was a lot of anxiety. There were more bigger buyers coming in. We still saw more selling than usual, but we saw two or three months of really strong buying.

And then since the election, I would say it's been quieter. We still have very high transaction volume, but the dollar amounts have been a little lower. And I think that the edge has come off and people are in a wait and see mode. And, of course, we have lots of crazy things happening in the economy, we have rampant ramping up of war drums, lots of things. But I think there's a little bit of a sigh of relief among many of the traditional retail investors with the election of Trump. And then we'll see what happens as we head into 2025. But one thing we've learned in this market is that pretty much anything can happen that changes the dynamic, that it's almost like a light switch. Things will happen, black swans, unexpected things, and then everything changes quickly, and it can be tough to manage, frankly because the flows are so dramatic and shifting.

Mike Maharrey: I think a lot of people with the election, I think there was a lot of anxiety about are we going to have a hung election? Is this going to draw out? And when it was relatively pain-free in terms of just the election process, I think that was a big sigh of relief for a lot of people.

Stefan Gleason: I think we were all just kind of like, "Wait a minute, where's the controversy around the result we were all expecting?" So I think that caught a lot of people off guard, which is interesting.

Mike Maharrey: The other thing that I think is interesting is you mentioned the big drive of demand being from the east and from Asia, and that slacked off as we got into the late summer and into the fall. And that was, I think, a lot due to price sensitivity over there. And now we're starting to see a little bit of a shift back to where I just did an article today about Chinese demand has really picked up starting in November, and we've seen that the Chinese central banks start officially adding gold to their reserves. And, of course, we know that they're adding plenty of gold outside of that. But it's interesting that it's almost like it's rotating back to what we were seeing in early in 2023.

Stefan Gleason: Yeah, I think some of it, China was a little bit cute about their accumulation. Our investigative reporter, Jan Nieuwenhuijs really dug into the import experts statistics, and he found that, in fact, China had been accumulating pretty much all along, even though they weren't really publicly disclosing it. But what would be really interesting is when you have, and if you have, both the voracious demand in the east and from the central banks, which is huge, and obviously that's driven these big price moves in the last year, especially in gold, and obviously silver's a little different, but if you add the retail in and you add the west in and now you have everybody buying, that is a combination that we haven't really seen. And so if that were to happen, then that's I think when things get really, really interesting, because that's pretty rare.

Mike Maharrey: Yeah, I agree completely. So one of the big things for us here at Money Metals over the last year is finally able to open the new bullion depository, and I guess the best way to describe it is big. Can you tell folks about that because I think it's a really, really exciting thing?

Stefan Gleason: Well, it's a culmination of a multi-year plan on the part of my business partners and just response to the overwhelming demand that we've seen from our customers, but not just for physical gold and silver, platinum and palladium, but also for storage, and even in some cases, people who want to borrow against their gold and silver for business purposes, it's a much smaller thing. Most people don't do that. Most people aren't even eligible necessarily. But the storage business and people accumulating gold in a safe place outside of the banking system, outside of Wall Street, outside of New York, in Idaho where our facility is, where there's a freedom-minded citizenry, there's a lot of armed people, there's low crime, and it's away from a lot of things that people are worried about, i.e. Washington D.C, and the politicians. And so we've had just a tremendous amount of demand for storage space in our facility, and that's what drove the decision to build this massive 40,000 square foot depository.

And it's the largest facility outside of New York basically in terms of a private facility. It's twice the size of Fort Knox and the vaults at Fort Knox. Unlike Fort Knox, our gold is audited. We have both independent audits and internal audits all the time. We know it's all there. Our customers can come and even view their holdings. They can do that remotely via Zoom or whatever, but also come and see their containers. Everything in traditional accounts is in segregated physical containers. So I feel like we've really built a tremendous integrated depository system that allows people not just to have low-cost storage that's highly secure and so forth, but also the liquidity of being able to sell it back and get good pricing directly from Money Metals if they want to sell back to us.

They don't have to. If you store with us, you can sell to anyone. You don't have to sell it to Money Metals, but it's pretty convenient and fast if you do. And the pricing, of course, is pretty much at the top-notch competitiveness. The whole combination has really been successful, and we're excited about the future of that. We have a massive amount already in our facility, but the amount of space that we have, especially when it comes to gold, it allows us to get into the hundreds of billions of storage if it gets to that.

Mike Maharrey: Yeah, and like you said, it's really nice in terms of just making it easy to do transactions if you want to buy and sell quickly. Or even we've talked a little bit about, and I've written about, folks who might want to lock in crypto profits, and you can do that easily because Money Metals does accept payment in various cryptocurrencies, so you can easily move in and out of gold and cryptocurrency and use that as a way to hedge your earnings and mitigate some of the volatility you get in this crypto market. So I think that's a real big plus of having that in-house storage.

Stefan Gleason: Part of the problem that we saw in the industry, and part of the reason that we built our depository, which we originally built in 2017 in a much smaller facility and integrated everything from a system standpoint is that most dealers, you're dealing with multiple parties, and the customer is really in a tough spot because they're talking to the dealer, and then they call the storage company, and then they're figuring out the storage company's not talking to the dealer, and they're trying to coordinate, and it's very inconvenient. It's slow, and it is the same thing when you sell. It's the same rigmarole.

And so having everything under one roof, dealing with a cluster of companies that's providing this as a service is just very convenient. And it's amazing. Our competitors, well, of course, it's not that amazing. It's not easy to build your own depository, but it's certainly a service to the customer, we think. And we feel like we're doing a very good job with just making it seamless. Now, obviously if you're holding physical metals, you shouldn't really be trading those. I mean, there are transaction costs, and if you want to trade metals, I wouldn't recommend meaning buying and selling frequently. I wouldn't recommend holding physical because the transaction costs do end up, even though it's efficient, it's not that efficient. That's where you use the electronic platforms and ETFs and so forth, which isn't recommended for a long-term hold, but there is some convenience there. But putting that aside, we're very smooth. The whole process is very smooth because we're integrated.

Mike Maharrey: And you're also eliminating the shipping middleman. And that's particularly poignant to me right now because I sent a package to Canada right before their postal strike, and it is still... So who knows where it is.

Stefan Gleason: I know. I sent a check to Canada to a business counterparty up there, not related to Money Metals, but on the personal side, and, boy, it hasn't arrived. It's been five weeks. And they seem to be perfectly fine with that up there. They're like, "Oh, yeah, the strikes happen all the time." I guess the unions have even more of a stranglehold up there as they may have here.

Mike Maharrey: I guess, so. Well, it's not all right when you're in a hurry to get your package to someplace. So let's shift gears a little bit as we move into 2025. And we just published a pretty cool article at moneymetals.com/news that people are going to want to check out. But I wanted to touch on some of these things because they are five precious metals tips for 2025. And I think it covers a lot of important ground. And I wanted to go over those with you and get a little bit of your insight real quick on some of these things. And one of the first things that you say, and this is almost counterintuitive, I think, to a lot of people, but avoid precious metals dealers who are advertising on TV and using a celebrity spokesman. Now, you might think, "Well, hey, celebrity spokesman, they're trusted. Why would we not believe our beloved celebrity?"

Stefan Gleason: Well, unfortunately, this is almost without exception. This is a business model that a certain sector of our industry has, and that is to go on TV with celebrity spokespeople that they pay big endorsement fees to because these people aren't cheap. These are celebrities. They're former actors, they're talk show hosts. And get them to be your pitch man for gold and silver, use that trusted relationship that they have, trusting relationship with their viewers or their fans, and then encourage people to get a free investor kit on gold and silver and set up a gold IRA and so forth.

I don't really fault the spokespeople. I mean, I do, and I don't. They're not experts. They don't know the industry. They don't know that some of these folks are bad actors, really bad actors in some cases, and they're trying to monetize their name and their fame. And, of course, there should be some due diligence hopefully. And some of these folks have at times pulled away as they find out. On the one hand, I'm obviously very much in favor of people being told about the benefits of gold and silver and the wealth protecting and inflation hedging benefits and so forth and the type of investment that's outside of the financial system that doesn't have counterparty risk and all that.

And that's all great. So the messaging is fine as far as it goes on TV, but when you get into these sales funnels for these firms, you find that you get turned over to a commission-based, very aggressive sales staff that will hound you and try to get you on the phone, try to get you to commit, try to sell you on something. And usually, unfortunately, what they're doing is putting people into high premium marked up rare coins, proof coins, special commemorative Polar Bear bullion coins at 100% over the price of gold or silver. And this is a self-perpetuating problem because the margins are so high that the profits are therefore so large, and the commissions paid to these very aggressive salespeople are so large.

First of all, they're successful. And second, the celebrities, that's how they get paid. It's not cheap, number one, to advertise on Fox News, and it's not cheap to have some famous person as your spokesperson. The only way you can do that is if you're taking a huge pound of flesh out of your investors quite frankly. And this is how we launched Money Metals in the first place in opposition to this. We saw this happening. This has been going on for longer than 15... We've been in business for 15 years, and I saw this thing happening not just on TV, but other variations of this with celebrity spokespeople, high pressure salespeople, boiler room operations.

And bullion, which is the coins, bars and rounds that are priced based on basically the metal value, the melt value or the spot price and with a small premium. And it does vary from item to item, but it's not extreme. And in some cases it's nil, but these are the things that people should be buying. But the margins for the dealers are very small. The dealers that sell those are very small. The margins for these TV-based proof coin selling rare coin dealer type people are massive, 50%, 100%, 200%. And we've unfortunately seen a lot of negative blow back on the industry from regulators, from law enforcement and lawsuits, from private parties and so forth. And it gives the whole industry a bad name because a lot of people are getting ripped off. So anyway, I'm not saying that every single dealer on TV is doing this, but I think as a general rule of thumb, if you see somebody advertising on TV with a celebrity spokesperson, do not buy from them.

Mike Maharrey: I think the other thing people should be aware of too is just that whole bait and switch thing that you get. They'll advertise something, maybe a Gold Eagle or something that's real common and a low premium, and then it gets you on the phone. And they upsell you to, like you said, the Polar Bear coin that they're going to make this big markup on.

Stefan Gleason: And we see this stuff come back. So somebody sells it out of their IRA later, and I've seen these invoices that have come. They send, "Here's what I bought, here's what I paid." It's like, "Oh, wow. Geez." Yeah, there were some 10 ounce bars in there that were reasonably priced, but these Polar Bear bullion, one and a half ounce Polar Bear, special run, Royal Canadian Mint coins that you paid a hundred percent over spot. Gold has gone up about a hundred percent since you bought those, so you're going to get your money back, but you didn't double your money.

And, of course, most of the time there's losses because the margins are so wide, it takes so much of a gain in price to break even. And it's heartbreaking what is being done. And we encourage people, learn how to figure out what the melt value is. What is the spot price? How many ounces are in this, and what is the difference between what you're being asked to pay and that spot price? And as long as you're paying a relatively close margin above that or occasionally below, but usually not, but understand what that delta is and also ask the question, "If I were to sell this back to you today, what would you pay me?" And then you know what the spread is, and obviously you can't hold them to that because market conditions change three years from now or three months from now it may be a different price. But you should be able to find out today, if I buy this from you for X, X minus what is how much you're going to pay me when I sell back today.

Mike Maharrey: Right, exactly. And there's nothing wrong with if you want to buy the Polar Bear coin because you think it's cool, but you need to understand the purpose of why you're buying this particular product. That's the one good thing about the folks at Money Metals is they can help you make those determinations about what's going to be the best that we can do? Because they're not trying to upsell you to some crazy thing. Another thing that was in this article that I thought was interesting is don't overlook the benefits of fractional gold. And that's something that I honestly don't know a whole lot about. So what are the benefits of maybe getting some fractional gold products?

Stefan Gleason: Well, I think one of them is that you can get gold without having to buy a full ounce. And a full ounce now is $2,700. So it's beyond the reach of many people, especially if they want to buy very often or buy now. Of course, silver's there, and we can get into that too. But in terms of gold, you can buy a half ounce gold round or gold bar or one-tenth ounce silver or gold coin at a reasonable price. It's going to be more percentage wise over the spot price than a one ounce bar or a one ounce coin. Certainly more than a five or 10 ounce bar of gold.

But it allows you to actually get your money out of Federal Reserve notes quicker, sooner. And when you sell back, typically the fractionals will have a higher premium, meaning they'll pay you more than spot when you sell it back. So that said, I wouldn't put big money in fractionals because if you have bigger amounts, you should buy one ounce coins and bars or five and 10 ounce. But if you have smaller amounts, fractionals are fine, and it allows you to accumulate it more quickly. Other people look at it also as a potential barterable item.

So, in a real difficult scenario where you're actually having to spend your gold, it has the benefit of being a smaller increment. Again, silver plays a role there as well. There's also something called the gold back, which is using a technology that highly fractionalizes gold into these bill or note shaped objects that you can put into your wallet. And so that's an interesting fractional product. The premium is not that high given the technology and how small. But that said, it is there. So, for example, a one gold back, which is one one-thousandths of an ounce of gold, so that's about $2.70 cents of gold, you're going to pay almost $5 for that. So you see that that is a pretty big markup percentage wise, but the benefit you're getting is a highly fractionalized form, and you probably can sell it back for way over the spot price.

Mike Maharrey: The cool thing about those two is I had actually somebody pay me for something in Goldbacks.

The Goldbacks that I received from that are worth a good bit more now than they were when I got them a couple of years ago because the dollars keep devaluing. I mean, the moment you get that dollar bill in your wallet, you're losing purchasing power. So definitely something to think about. And you mentioned silver, we'll wrap it up with this. You said, "Don't forget about silver," and I think a lot of people do. I mean, I even do it when I'm writing. I tend to focus on gold, gold, gold. How do you see the silver market playing out in the next year?

Stefan Gleason: Well, I think one thing way of looking at silver is leveraged gold, and leverage in the sense that it goes up more than gold in a bull market, and it goes down more than gold in the bear market. It's a smaller market, so it's more volatile, and the leverage in the market allows for increasing that volatility even more in the futures' market and so forth. A little bit of money can move that market. It's not nearly as big a market globally as gold is. That said, silver, I believe, is more undervalued than gold. You can see from the ratio between the two, which is in the mid-eighties, almost, it's even higher than that. It's near 90. That's a historically very high ratio of the price of gold to silver.

And typically in a bull market as it matures or develops halfway through or thereabouts in a bull market, silver will start slingshotting much faster up. And we haven't not seen to the extent that we're in a bull market in gold, and we definitely are in the last year with the breakout above 2000, and we have seen silver move during that period of time, but it's barely kept up with gold, and that tells me that the bull market is still very young because silver starts outperforming later.

I really like silver because of the other variables around it. Number one, it's one of the lowest priced commodities compared to what it was in 1980. I think it's the lowest, it's actually done the worst. So maybe that's not good for silver. But in terms of its potential, I think it's highly undervalued. There's some interesting supply-demand characteristics. One is it's supply inelastic and it's demand inelastic. And most of its production comes from a byproduct of other metals. And so a higher silver price does not really necessarily bring out more silver because most silver is produced by copper mines and zinc mines and gold mines and lead mines. And those are the economics that drive those mines, not the silver price. So you could have silver go to $50 or $100, and it won't make hardly any difference in the financial incentives around silver mining because 80% of it comes as a by-product.

So, that's one thing that makes it very interesting. One of the reasons it could be such an extreme reaction when it finally does take off. Another is just the utility of silver and all the different things that it's being used in from solar to electronics to medical uses because of its properties as the best natural biocide. It's the best reflector of light, it's the best conductor of electricity. It's money, which is coming back as the idea that silver's slowly being re-monetized, or at least in an investment sense, maybe not in terms of being added to the currency again. But it has both the monetary qualities and then these incredible industrial benefits, and it makes it so metal gets whipsawed around a lot. All these things make it very volatile, but I think for longer term money, you definitely want to have exposure to silver.

And so, there's been a lot of talk about gold. Gold's at all-time highs. Central banks are accumulating gold hand over fist. Silver, we just don't think you should forget about it. And I would say about 30% to 40% of our total sales volume in dollars is in silver, so it is dominated by gold. But I do see that changing, and I think as it really starts performing up to the expectations that people have and then maybe even exceed those expectations, we'll see a lot of new demand come in. We haven't seen that yet, but silver's been holding its own.

Mike Maharrey: Silver's my apocalypse, I guess, hedge. That's the thing that I think that if we did have a scenario where you had a true meltdown in society, and I'm not saying that that's necessarily in the cards, but you can't ever rule it out, I definitely want to have silver because I think that's going to be the easiest thing to barter. And as you mentioned, it is money. It is fundamentally money just like gold is. And I thought it was interesting a few months ago, Russia announced that it's going to be holding silver in its reserves, so it'll be interesting to see if other countries maybe follow suit on that.

Stefan Gleason: Well, it's a strategic metal because of these properties, and even if it's not a monetary reserve, it has vital uses. It's not easily replaced. And I think with the emphasis around high technology and AI and solar and all these things that are developing, silver is a big part of all that.

Mike Maharrey: And it's huge in defense as well. I mean, a lot of weapon systems and missiles and all of that type of stuff are pretty silver intense. I'm bullish on silver as well. So let me get you out on this one last question, and you can make this pretty quick, but what is something that you're eyeballing as we move into 2025 that you think a lot of people are missing in terms of the gold and silver market, or maybe even just the economy in general?

Stefan Gleason: Yeah, I think that interest rates, I think we've had a little bit of a cooling in the markets because of a concern that the fed is not going to cut rates. I personally believe that they're going to be cutting rates like crazy, and I think that that's going to just put fuel on the fire for inflation and gold and silver prices. When it becomes clear that they're going to continue cutting rates and cutting them dramatically and that they're willing to accept high levels of inflation and they're willing to accept higher long-term interest rates, they're willing to accept the consequences of cutting on the short end, which might mean that the long end goes up. I think they're perfectly comfortable with that.

I think they're right now posturing that they will be less aggressive on rate cuts, but I think that's out the window. The amount of debt that has to be financed, inflation is the only solution to this. And once people realize it's all a charade, this whatever hawkishness that they're trying to put out there, I think that's going to be a switch flipping towards hard assets in general, just going crazy, and gold and silver will probably be the biggest beneficiaries of that.

So I think that's what I look to see by the end of the year. I'm not necessarily saying we're going to see big rallies here in the spring, although seasonally you do see gold and silver do well in the spring, but I think a lot of it's being driven by the fed, unfortunately. And I think a misunderstanding that they really have no choice. They're going to have to inflate, and they're going to have to cut rates, and hard assets are going to boom when that happens.

Mike Maharrey: Yeah, I'm in complete agreement. I tell people all the time that we have a debt riddled bubble economy that is addicted to easy money, and you can't take the drug away from the drug addict without doing serious damage, and I think they're aware of that. So they're trying to jawbone and make everybody think, "Oh, yeah, we're worried about inflation." But I think you're right when it comes down to that choice, they're going to pick inflation every time.

Stefan Gleason: Yeah, and just one aspect of that, there's been a lot of optimism around the cutting of the federal government and the idea that we can make it more efficient, and obviously there are some opportunities and hopefully some things will be done, but I think that the optimism is way over blown of what can be achieved there. I spent 15 years working in Washington in public policy, and it is a road with no turns from the federal bureaucracy, the federal spending. It's a one-way street. They can't stop it. The bureaucracy is completely uncontrollable. You have bad laws, and then you have people that are big government people managing those bad laws, and there's many layers of entrenched bureaucrats all the way down. Even if Trump and all of his politicals got all in place and they were all in sync, to be able to change the direction of that with all of these people undermining you at every step, leaking to the press, cutting your throat, absolutely refusing to do what they're told to do, they can't be fired very easily if at all. Civil service protections, unions.

Anyway, so that's another maybe aspect of this in terms of the federal budget problem and the deficits. I don't think that we're going to be that successful in reducing government. We may slow the increase, but unfortunately, I'm pretty cynical about the potential there.

Mike Maharrey: Yeah, I'm with you too. And I've said that to some people, and they get mad because they say, "Oh, you don't believe in Trump." It's not even that. It's as you say, it's the structural integrity of the system. It is what it is. I like to use this analogy. You've got a car that's broken down on the side of the road and the battery's gone and the tires are blown out, and you're not going to fix that by putting a new driver in the driver's seat. The problem is more fundamental than that, I think.

Stefan Gleason: And, again, as much as I'm very enthusiastic about what he stands for when it comes to pushing back against these things and with Musk and Vivek and all that, I mean, I am rooting for them, but I'm keeping a realistic view, I guess is a good way of putting it.

Mike Maharrey: Yeah, absolutely. Same here. Well, I appreciate you taking the time out of your busy day to chat with me. And normally at this point, I ask people to point where they would like people to go, but moneymetals.com is the place,

Stefan Gleason: That's the place.

Mike Maharrey: You'll want to check out our news section. And we have great articles on there every day, just like the one I referenced. I did not go through all five of the tips, so you'll want to go to moneymetals.com/news and check out all five of the tips as we move into 2025. And then also, of course, you can buy gold and silver online right from moneymetals.com and learn more about what we're doing. I appreciate you, Stefan. I appreciate the work that you're doing and the integrity that you bring to a business that can sometimes be a little bit shady let's be honest. It's an honor for me to be able to work with the great team, and so appreciate that.

Stefan Gleason: Thanks, Mike. And we're looking forward to 2025 and what it brings.

Mike Maharrey: All right.