thousands of wells in the field. Now, will we get there one day? Maybe. Will it be a straight line up and to the right? Absolutely not. It'll be fits and starts. Customers will have varying opinions on this because it impacts not only their operations, but also, you know, potentially thousands of employees. So we're in the middle of it. We are making progress at our own pace. We also see a lot of opportunity to take the early success of the ESP technology that we are today using for remote monitoring and intervention to help with that commercial collaboration as operators change the phase of lift over time. So from ESP to gas lift to plunger lift, can you use the same technology platform to help the customer not only monitor the well, but also have predictive analytics on when a well needs to have a lift change out? So that's our ambition. That's the effort that we're on internally, and we've got some very interesting case studies with customers where we're seeing success there. So, stay tuned for our version of this, but we're really happy with the progress that we're making. That's great, Keller. Thank you.

Our next question is from Keith Beckman with Picketing Energy Partners. Please proceed.

Hey, good morning, and thanks for taking my question. i just wanted to get a sense around um you know we've seen vru sales tick down a little bit here i think over the last quarter uh i just wanted to get a sense maybe on what the upcoming catalyst could be for growth in that business i think a little bit about pipeline capacity takeaway increasing is potentially one of them but anything shorter term or longer term around uh you know potential growth in natural gas technologies yeah keith the uh the growth story there is still very much intact.

Almost to a pad. Well pads, particularly in the Permian Basin, have VRUs as standard equipment, specced into the facility's design before any pad gets constructed and certainly before it gets turned on. So we're seeing that continue in the Permian. I think you mentioned pipeline takeaway capacity. That has been a concern of some customers that we've talked to about longer-range plans for installation of VRU. We are starting to see that be alleviated with more takeaway capacity, so that's good. I think the in-basin power theme that a lot of oil companies and service companies are starting to highlight is going to be a tailwind as well for increased VRU adoption. Every molecule that you can capture, that you can send, even if it's just in-basin, to in-basin generation is one less molecule you have to go find. So, yeah, I think the tailwinds for VRU are very much intact. Any kind of slowdown you see in VRU sets or sales, I'd say, is really just consistent with the lumpiness of the quarter-by-quarter growth trajectory. But we have continued confidence in our ability to deploy more VRUs, either by the way of selling them to customers who want to own them or building them and putting them in our rental fleet. Awesome.

No, that's really helpful. And then my second question is a little bit twofold. So I think about kind of the six-month look ahead y'all do for CapEx. And just wanted to get a sense into if you guys have a good feel for operators' plans into early next year and what that could mean for growth for you guys into early next year. And then the second one, just thinking about, I think we've seen a lot of private operators kind of start to ramp here. I think if you guys is having more of a blue chip customer base, larger customers, but I wanted to get a sense on if you're seeing any adaption of any of your technologies onto some of these smaller privates here at all.

Listen, to answer the second one first, yes, absolutely. The small private operator is still near and dear to FloCo's customer base. We work with a wide range of operators just by the law of big numbers and what's happened to the customer base via consolidation. Sure, our top customers are the blue chip customers, but there are a plethora of either private family-backed businesses or private equity-backed businesses that FloCo works with. As it relates to your first question around longer-dated growth expectations, look, we've seen, as you have, rig counts increase, right? I think we're up 50-some-odd off the bottom, which is great. Every one of those rigs is being put to work to make new wellbores, and the question is, are operators building ducts, or are they turning those on? And at some level, we don't really care because every one of those well bores that gets constructed needs to be produced for 20 years. And so we view the current uptick among our customer base in drilling activity as really just fuel in the fire for future growth for us. So hard to put a number on it for 27 at this point, Keith, but we're feeling pretty good about the early signs of growth that customers are starting to lean into.

I really appreciate it. I'll turn it back.

There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the conference back over to Joe Bob for closing remarks.

Thank you all for tuning in and look forward to talking to you in 90 days. Appreciate it. Have a good summer.

Thank you. This will conclude today's conference. Friends, you may disconnect at this time and thank you for your participation.