Conference Transcript - SWIM 2026-09-10

Operator

Good morning. Welcome to day two of the Jefferies Industrials Conference here in New York City. We are on the 7.30 slot here with Latham Group, Tickeria Swim, which is very nice. I like that. With me is, my name is Chirag Patel. I work here at Jefferies covering the machinery, multi-industry, and distribution spaces, along with Steve Volkman. Today, we welcome Latham Group. Presenters today are CEO, Sean Glad, and CFO, Oliver Glow. Good morning. You know, we'll do a bit of an overview here to start with, I guess. For those in the audience who may not be familiar with Latham as much as others, can you just give us a quick overview of the company, just how you would differentiate your key product categories and then just within where you kind of scale within the pool market overall?

Sean Gadd, CEO

Yeah, sure. So Latham is a company that's been around for 70 years. from my perspective we have a number of categories in which we participate in one is fiberglass one is vinyl pools which is an entry level pool for us and it actually also gives us replacement revenue and then we have accessories around auto covers so that's essentially the three parts of the business we do have what I we're leading market share in all three categories and we do have a differentiated product and differentiated approach in how we go to market with all three of those categories, all allowing us essentially to take share.

Operator

And the focus is North American-based at this point, but any thoughts on international exposures, things like that?

Sean Gadd, CEO

Yeah, we are in Australia and New Zealand and Canada as well. So we are quasi-global, but majority of our business, as majority of our revenue and EBITDA comes out of the U.S.

Operator

And as we think about the overall pool industry and the dynamics that have been kind of facing over the last couple of years here, how would you kind of characterize the market environment currently, some of the challenges that you may be facing, some of the opportunities that you see ahead of you?

Sean Gadd, CEO

Yeah, the market, we believe, is in trough conditions. So when you think about pool starts, estimation for the U.S. is around 58,000 starts last year. We planned this year to be essentially a flat market. I think that's kind of what we're experiencing. So we think it's in trough conditions. You know, you have to go back to 2014 before you saw 58,000 pull starts. So obviously after GFC, so we do think we're at the bottom and we expect it to return over time. For us, it doesn't matter really at this point. One, we're taking shares, so we're able to grow no matter what the market conditions are. which is a positive for us and two, we're trying to drive a lot of change and disruption in the industry so for me, you're able to do that in soft markets it's much harder to do it when the market's flying and people don't want to change because they're sold out that's not the situation today so dealers and builders are looking for options and we're able to provide them Gotcha, and I feel like one of the things that we look at is the idea of how consumers...

Operator

I still view the pool industry as a discretionary spend at the end of the day. And given that framework, affordability comes into a key metric here at this point. Kind of frame for us how consumers are thinking about where we are within the marketplace, what rates have done for them, and then how affordability kind of plays a factor into your opportunity.

Sean Gadd, CEO

Yeah, it is all discretionary spend. So it is... Affordability does play a part in the industry, no doubt. I think from our perspective, what we're seeing is essentially almost a K-type economy, right? So the 58,000 pools that are going in, most of those are cash buyers. So it seems like we've lost the bottom part of the market, which is essentially those who use finance. So there's no doubt interest rates are not helping and the macro is not helping. However, what we're seeing is, one, we're taking share. but two, I think people are getting used to the fact that interest rates are where they are because now they're sort of stable. They're not really moving up or down, so no one's waiting. So we are seeing more people come into, at least on our side, coming into the decision around building a pool. And the challenge you've got with the pool, so while it's discretionary, I mean, everyone knows when you build a pool, you've got like 18 summers with your kids, right? So you do have a time. And so that's still in the back of people's minds.

Operator

Gotcha. And that idea of, you know, moving everyone to the outdoor living and that, I do feel post-COVID that was such a big portion of the opportunity, certainly a pull forward during that time period. And now there's a more stable 58,000, a little bit lower over market kind of thing, but market conditions are soft. But at the same time, it does feel like your products themselves lend themselves to some growth that's outside of just the full construction of a pool and design nature?

Sean Gadd, CEO

Yeah, I think, like I said, I think we've got superior products than our competitive set. The reality is we are the only manufacturer of scale. And when I say that, and I'm particularly focusing on fiberglass when I say that, But our competitors are essentially private companies, mom-and-pop type shops that don't have the sophistication, they don't have the dollars to invest. And so the exciting part for me is everything I look at, when we look at marketing, when we look at TV ads, when we look at our approach to the marketplace, it's almost white space, right? So we're dealing with a pretty unsophisticated competitor. And I say it with respect, but it's just the fact is we've got scale, which is a significant advantage for us, and we've got a scale organization. So those two things allow us to outperform the market.

Operator

I think you characterized the recent pickup in the spring demand as a little bit of pent-up opportunity and some market share gains overall. now that we're a couple months past that we're and actually we're through the summer season now it's getting a little chillier outside how do you distinguish the durability of the share gains that you had and then on the other side also how does your flat kind of a outlook for the year kind of marry at this point with the conditions overall yeah I think the market conditions are what they are I think that's pretty much played out we've seen the summer obviously the season still is winding down at this point so the market hasn't really shown

Sean Gadd, CEO

us much we do feel good about taking share I think that's sustainable and I think will be sustainable for quite some time and we're taking share from both vinyl and we're taking share from in our vinyl category and we're taking share with fiberglass people migrating from vinyl up to fiberglass for a superior product and then obviously we're going into the sand states which we're taking on concrete and we're making some good progress in the in the sand states we've got pretty we've got pretty dialed in into what we have to go do there and we're we're seeing some of that come through so i think in general the market's not giving us much but we're seeing good good growth and that

Operator

penetration in the sand states uh where would you kind of characterize that currently what do you think the opportunity looks like longer term?

Sean Gadd, CEO

Yeah, so the opportunity for Latham is pretty large, and I say it's actually very large. Two-thirds of the pools occur in the sand states, right? So essentially the southern markets, and our penetration is much lower in the sand states than it is in the Midwest, Northeastern Canada, where Latham sort of began. So there's a lot of opportunity there. I think we're going after a category, which is concrete. concrete concrete doesn't have a brand so there's no one to point to necessarily it's an industry we're going after we do have the brand we're starting to see good traction with two years now into a marketing campaign we're starting to get some people saying I saw you on TV I heard about you I was no late them so those are all good positive things and then we're really early on how we go and attack the sand states, but we're making good progress and we're ready to sort of expand it across. We've been focusing on Florida, a little bit in Dallas, and now we're getting ready to focus across the whole southern markets because we're pleased with the results.

Operator

Excellent.

Oliver Gloe, CFO

If I can give you some stats to exactly the point, right? So in the U.S., you know, we estimate the fiberglass penetration to be about 25 percent, which means in the U.S., one out of four pools is built in fiberglass, right? It's significantly less in the sand states, so that's where the opportunity sits. It's a little bit more in the non-sand states, right? If you look internationally, Europe sits at 40% to 50%, depending on the country, and Australia sits at 70%. So that sizes the opportunity that is in front of us.

Operator

Excellent.

Sean Gadd, CEO

And beyond just cost and affordability, what are kind of the advantages of having the fiberglass and vinyl versus a concrete kind of, or I guess what's been known as a traditional kind of pool here in the States? uh i'll start with vinyl so vinyl is it gives you uh basically a custom pool uh that's very affordable okay so that's that's probably the number the number one thing that why vinyl exists today and why why that category still still has space uh allows essentially blue collar to get into the into a pool which affordable pool in the in ground so that's that's positive uh fiber Fiberglass, from us, from our perspective, the number one value with fiberglass is, well, one, it's a very durable product. It's sort of set and forget. Once it's in, you never have to worry about it. It's a lifetime warranty. When you've got concrete, you've got things you've got to concentrate on. And obviously, at some point, you've got to do an acid watch. At some point, you most likely have to do a resurface. We don't have to worry about that in fiberglass. And then we're able to get in and out of the yard in days, like three or four days, as opposed to three months. so when a consumer decides to get into the get into the world of pools and say I want to go they inspired and they say it's time for a pool they don't have to wait three months to get the pool they can get it within a week and so I think that's a massive advantage for us and and we're able to the advantage like when I look at that three to three to four days where you get into getting in and out of a yard no homeowner wants a contractor in the yard for six months And certainly when you get in a yard building a pool, you do fairly destructive work. And so, again, homeowners don't love that. So I think we've got good advantages for fibreglass and allows us to get sort of good repeats in terms of every three days. You know, when you think about a dealer who's putting in a pool or a builder who's putting in a pool, when you're putting in a pool that goes for three months or six weeks, whatever the period is but takes a fair amount of time, their cash flow is pretty tight. When you're turning a pool every week, we're able to deliver pretty good cash flows. And at the end of the year, a dealer's going to end up getting more money in their pocket.

Operator

Are there any size restrictions on the pool or anything like that?

Sean Gadd, CEO

Obviously, there are. Now, that said, we've got plenty of sizes and molds. The reality is what we're seeing as a trend is actually smaller pools. Everyone's moving to smaller pools. If you think about all the developments that occurred in the south, the master plan communities sort of 10 years ago, things have been getting smaller, lots have been getting smaller. So in reality, it's actually moving towards us. It's a bit of a tailwind. Size isn't a bottleneck for us. mould shapes and designs is actually coming our way as well so more rectangles is actually the trend not to say we do free form as well but rectangle pools are sort of moving towards us as well and then our pools we've got you know ranges from you know lifestyle pools where you've got sun shelves and you've got you know flat bottoms where people can just spend time with with their kids and with their friends and then you've got so pools are designed for exercise so we've got the full range uh that allows uh you know pretty much a homeowner to get anything that they like in fact i was at a builder conference yesterday and we asked posed the question about what designs are we lacking and you know we really didn't come up with much gotcha and it does feel like it's a in a softer market environment it always feels like there's a lot more competition for for any given sale what's the dynamics there how do you feel like you compete in that market environment and how does that affect your own pricing and dealer economics yeah in reality we're we're essentially a lower price product installed than concrete okay so when it comes to if someone's looking at a price context around price that isn't really a problem for us and then when we think about our specific pricing you know two-thirds of the cost of a job are labor and equipment on the job and one-third is our actual product so we're we're really not the driver of price and I think in reality when we if we take a price increase so we're putting a three percent price increase out, the homeowner, the consumer is only seeing 1% of that. So it's pretty incremental. I don't see that as a lot of drama. In fact, and I'll go back to the Sanstates, we have the opportunity and we are doing this because it's compressing the in-store cost, which actually gives us room for more pricing.

Operator

And then I had one more thought that was completely off of the top right here, but I've forgotten I'll come back to it at some point. But, Sean, you just joined nine months ago. So kind of what have you learned about the business and the industry so far? We see the greatest opportunities. What brought you into this opportunity in the first place?

Sean Gadd, CEO

Yeah, so a couple of things. I've been here for nine months. That's correct. I worked with James Hardy before that as the president of North American Business. You know, reasons for joining Latham were pretty straightforward for me. One, I saw a great opportunity around material conversion, which there's not a lot of material conversion opportunities available in the building product space. So that was exciting for me. I joined the U.S. business with Hadi when we were around $800 million. I left it when it was over $3 billion. So that period of growth was exciting for me, so I wanted to kind of get a repeat on that. And I see that as the opportunity. And then the material conversion in the south is very similar to work I had done when we were trying to convert vinyl to fiber cement. And so I thought I could bring a fair amount of, I guess, knowledge around how to do it, what market development looks like, how to do market development in an effective way and build a market from scratch. And to be quite honest, I see it playing out. So it's exciting. The industry is a small industry, yes, but it's a little less sophisticated, which actually provides the opportunity. We can definitely bring in some sophistication into the industry that no one else can. It is wide space because, like I said, unlike, I guess, the competitive space is very disjointed and doesn't have the dollars to invest like we would. So when we run an ad on TV, there's no other pool manufacturer you're going to hear about. You're only going to hear about Latham. So when we do our work in a neighborhood, and I'll talk about our neighborhood approach, there's no one else doing that work, right? And it's not like they can't do it, but they're not sophisticated enough to put it together, and they can't do it at scale. So we have nine factories around, I'm going to talk about fiberglass, nine factories around the U.S., so we're close to our market. We can get to pretty much any part of the market within two days. So we've got a scale advantage. The next closest is going to be, like, two. So it's a very different type of scale. And then when I think about, like, our neighbourhood approach, we're going with a very specific approach to go and attack a neighbourhood. So we think about the demographics of a neighbourhood to figure out where is the most likely place where a pool should go. So we're not waiting for the market to come to us. You know, we're talking about segmentation, So we're looking at household income, age of home, price point of home, size of home, size of lot. And then we're basically pinpointing, okay, this is a good neighbourhood for all the right reasons. And then we go in there and we actively work that neighbourhood. And when I say actively work that neighbourhood, we start with a builder who comes in with us. So that typically means they're going in with an agreed price for us. And we're trying to get to a place where a consumer doesn't get a choice to go to concrete. because that is the standard. Everybody there is on concrete. Concrete's the majority of what happens in the south. So we're trying to intercept that and we're doing that with a build-up. So when a builder gets a sale and we help them get that house, the first house, we then market very heavily around the house and we're doing these events that basically brings the... Because the beautiful thing about neighbourhoods is all your friends, your neighbours, you've got a connection. so that you have influence on them, right, as a homeowner. So when you bring them to the house, which is what we do, we basically have a pool party and we basically show them the pool. We're there, we explain to them why lath and why fibreglass. The builder's there, he describes why him. And then we do this, like we do three different versions of that on that one pool. And then we basically, this concept of two to ten, once you get to ten pools in that neighbourhood, the neighborhood will move to fiberglass, is the belief. So that's kind of the approach. It's playing out quite well. We've done two events so far, and out of those two events, we've got five pools per event sold, which is way better than I would have thought. And quite honestly, the cost to acquire is really, really low. I think the first event was around $250. Yeah, so super low. And so we're now putting scale to that, right? So we were at an event yesterday, had 15 builders. Basically, we were trying to get them into the program. All of them signed up for the program. We've got now seven events on the books. So each of those events is going to drive a new neighborhood for us. And then once the neighborhood's got to 10, that builder will get referrals for life. And that's the magic, right? So referrals close at 50% to 70% of the time. They are the best lead you can get. And so if their brand and our brand gets into that neighborhood, and we get to 10, then essentially we own the neighborhood.

Operator

And you mentioned the cost of it, to kind of put it on. In the back of my mind as you were speaking, I thought to myself, man, that sounds like a big push on marketing and SG&A and that structure. But just speak to the opportunity and the capital investment that you think overall.

Sean Gadd, CEO

Yeah, I mean, so I get asked this a fair bit. We run a national campaign, okay? And we want to continue the national campaign because it lifts all markets, so that's good for us. You know, a core market is ultimately our bank. It is our biggest book of business today. It allows us to do all the things we want to do in the south. It also, you know, when you've got national brands, there's a natural tailwind where people are moving north to the south. So people who do move north to south already know fiberglass. So we don't have to educate a homeowner about fiberglass because in the south we do have to do a lot of education, right? Because cement is the solution down south and we're trying to change that. So that overarching marketing is, you know, it's more than anyone else in our space can spend, but it's not extremely large cost. And then when you think about the investment around a job site, it's hyper-local, right? So essentially you're targeting that neighbourhood. And, again, I say you target in the neighborhood. You and the builder are doing that, and then you can take that as far as you like. So we had one in Jacksonville, which basically the builder wanted to go out an hour, an hour drive. That was his choice, and he actually had people driving it. But, again, relatively low cost.

Operator

And I guess from that standpoint, the builders that you're bringing into the program, have they historically been concrete, and now they're kind of making that switch over, see the opportunity there?

Sean Gadd, CEO

Yeah, there's a bit of both, but, yeah, we're seeing more and more people coming from concrete moving to fiberglass. So they're seeing the advantage of cash flow and the market's not giving them anything, right? So they're seeing us driving leads, and leads are the currency in the space. They see us doing the marketing. They're seeing us driving the market and allowing them to get support, which they're not going to get from concrete, they're not going to get from anyone else. So we're definitely seeing builders moving across from cement and trying fiberglass. So it's not a switch. Like, they built their business model on cement. The approach is different, what you have to do, how you think about a job that's going on for three months versus a job that's three days. So we do a lot of training when a builder comes across. We've got boot camps that we run, and then we have people in the field that can help them get the pool set. And so, you know, typically three jobs or thereabouts, and they get it, and then we go off to the races. And we've got a number of examples now where someone who's doing, let's say, 50 pools starts out doing two or three fiberglass, and now are, you know, 15, 20. And so we're slowly moving the market across, and we've got some that now are only fiberglass. So it's a bit of a mix.

Operator

And one of the other leadership changes that you've kind of made here is adding a chief commercial officer. Just speak to that process, the opportunity that you see within that, what it kind of means on that side of the business.

Sean Gadd, CEO

Yeah, so when I got into Latham, what I'd say is we've got really good people who care and work really hard. And I say that because it's important. It is a small industry, and it's relationships matter. You're always going to do business with people you trust. And so our people have that. There's no doubt about that. I think they are good relationship sellers. But, again, I came from Hardy where we built what I would argue is a world-class commercial organisation. So we want to basically take our sales organisation and move it to becoming world-class. And for that, what it means is, you know, I think about, one, we need a commercial leader that knows how to drive market development, which is Todd Antonelli, who we've just brought on. So he's just joined us. He's sort of three weeks in. But, you know, sales strategy, which is, from my perspective, is someone who's looking at a market, understanding the dynamics, and sort of putting a game plan together to go and execute. And then you've got sales operations, which today doesn't exist in Latham. And sales operations is about taking that game plan and putting it into tactics and actually driving efficiency and effectiveness. So just getting the organization to be much more efficient, much more effective at selling and getting standardized sales processes in place, which, you know, it's interesting to me. We don't have all that yet, and yet we're able to take share. So I'm very excited by the fact that when we build a commercial organization that covers all those things, which most organizations do have, you know, we should just see acceleration when that happens.

Operator

And we've covered a lot about the fiberglass and the vinyl side of the equation, the market opportunity there. You do participate in other parts of the market at the same time, right? There's automatic pool safety features there. There's also pool liners and covers. So let's speak a little bit about those products and where you see that opportunity, how you kind of go to market there as well.

Sean Gadd, CEO

Yeah, so I'll start with pool auto covers. So auto covers is essentially a safety device for your pool, okay? So it's a good addition to the pool. I think I saw a statistic last week that said there's been no drownings of any kids or any people with a pool that has no water cover on it. So it is an important device. It also gives the benefit of less evaporation, less chemicals and all those things. So it pays back in about five to six years. So it's a good addition to the product. The number one thing there is awareness. It's still a really low-awareness product, even though it's been around a while. And, again, when I think about the industry, there's not a lot of marketing that's off-scale. So you start seeing, even this year, all our advertising would go through a... You'll see a pool, and then you're going to see an auto cover. So we're trying to get that attachment together. Today, in the U.S., about 24% of all pools end up with an auto cover. We think that should be closer to 80. so we've got an opportunity to grow we do it we got a unique model we sell through bars bars essentially someone who because it's a technical install they'll do the install for the builder okay so we sell through them and then we also sell through distribution so we open up the distribution arm we're enabling and training distribution to utilize the product and they become the install for the dealer or the builder and so that's time to take off as well So we see quite a lot of growth ahead of us, and a lot of it comes to awareness.

Operator

Can you frame the size of that at the end of the day, the size of the business as well as the opportunity as you see?

Sean Gadd, CEO

Yeah, if you want to give the numbers of the business. Yeah, you know, so it's the majority of our cover category.

Oliver Gloe, CFO

About two-thirds is auto cover. About one-third is winter safety covers. And it's, you know, for us, it's strongly growing. It has been growing especially because of our three recent acquisitions in the cover stuff. field this these are the bars right so we own about half of the of the country when it comes to to bar coverage and you know we see organic growth being being the excess of market right one one interesting attribute an auto cover is it is the better safety device right so we we call it the garage door for your pool right you can always you know jump a fence open a gate right and especially your loved ones if you have toddlers they aren't protected by your fence right They can just go through the kitchen door and run into the pool area. So actually having an auto cover in a lot of jurisdictions in the U.S. gets you out of the need to build a fence. And suddenly the auto cover, the investment in the auto cover, which admittedly isn't a small investment, suddenly competes with the investment in the fence.

Operator

And, yeah, that does make a difference. One is just right out of the pool. The other is your entire yard. So it can be a very big difference.

Oliver Gloe, CFO

And this is a better safety device.

Operator

Gotcha. And I guess, how does VAR operate within the builder kind of community? What's their way to kind of go and kind of penetrate into that market environment?

Sean Gadd, CEO

Yeah, so I think they, as a VAR, you've got the opportunity. You can sell directly to the consumer. And so now you have the ability to be on any pool, right? So it doesn't have to be a fiberglass pool. It doesn't have to be a vinyl pool. It can be on a concrete pool. So they in themselves are small marketing businesses that basically sell directly to consumer and then as well as so they do the installs and then you know if you build a if you're a builder and you're saying you say to build a you know what's your revenue today on a job this says no $90,000 we can get it up to 110 if you start adding that device into your sales pitch and and you know the the reluctancy typically is it's a very different install to the pool it's much more technical so you don't have to worry about that all you do is call the and they'll install it for you now obviously there's been some that's one avenue and then there's also builders themselves who say no I've seen it installed enough it's not that complicated we'll bring it we'll do it ourselves so that's essentially how how we see the connection and what's the competition like in that space for you guys yeah I mean we have competitors we again we have the we have the majority share and we are taking share it's kind of the same sort of story We are the ones showing, raising awareness of the product, and we have the best product. So, you know, when you ask the industry, you know, what products are the best, you know, they typically say CoverStar, which is our brand. So we have the best product, and, again, we have, you know, the largest sales organization as well. So we definitely have competitors, but we have majority share and continue to take share.

Operator

I wanted to move a little bit towards the operations and the margin outlook that you guys have kind of provided here. at the end of the day. The gross margin trajectory is kind of one of the first things I was looking at. You're still targeting 35%. What's the steps to that? Where are we currently? What's the outlook?

Oliver Gloe, CFO

Yeah, we've done a great job growing margin levels to, let's say, 33%, driven primarily by lean manufacturing, value engineering, to programs that pay quarterly and annual dividends for us, and general cost discipline, right? Obviously, volume growth helps cost leverage, right? And then 2026 will be another step towards that 35%, and again, driven especially by lean manufacturing, value engineering, and cost leverage.

Operator

Gotcha. And how much, you know, you hear lean nowadays so much across a lot of businesses and like that. Where do you feel like you're in the process?

Oliver Gloe, CFO

What's the, how do we continue along that journey? where do you see that opportunity lending itself to you up is there some sort of a annual target 50 basis points on is there anything like that or is that so just you know starting off lean lean is working on the process very engineers working on the product cost is one element of the exercise but it's also making our product better high quality easier to install it creates capacity and so forth right you know the annual contribution is is somewhere 8 to 10 million so every quarter and we've been it's almost like clockwork two to a half million I expect that to continue for the foreseeable future lean is a little bit more mature you know we've been added for a number of years we have a small central team but then we have really lean lean trained folks and in all our facilities we're about 160 70 Kaizen events every year and then we multiply the learnings and the findings across the plan network right so very stable contribution low-hanging fruits are gone but it's project after project adding to it right and I don't see that that that decreasing value engineering we are I'm gonna say in the beginning of the journey but you know we have probably three four years in we have a handful of PhD level material scientists in a central department that go out and you know change the the attributes and quality and price of our products still some low-hanging fruits a lot of excitement a lot of traction and what I'm especially proud of is you know sometimes you have these central groups wanting to do good for the business and they somewhat see resistance in the plant. That's not the case. We probably have more plants calling us than the other way around, right? So there's a lot of excitement and I think there's still, especially in the world of value engineering, some exciting projects ahead of us.

Operator

Gotcha. And then just given the overall, you know, you are outgrowing the market. Any thoughts on cost for ramp up to meet that production opportunity? Where do you see that kind of going in the next six, nine, 12 months kind of situation?

Oliver Gloe, CFO

You know, so we have the rooftop capacity, right? We had capacity, sufficient free capacity when the market a few years ago and the peak of COVID was at 117,000 pools. Now we had half of it, right? And since that period of time, we obviously took out some redundant capacity in the aftermath of COVID, but then we also built capacity, especially in the world of fiberglass. We now have a big plant in Canada, and through lean we've created capacity. So I would say rooftop capacity is not our issue, right? You know, we did, especially in Q2, had some challenges ramping up fast enough to the demand in, you know, earlier this season. It's a good problem to have, some good learnings for next year. But I think the business as it stands can supply far in excess of we are currently supplying. So capacity is not of our concern. again we got a we got a staff go prepared into the next season but I think you'll see given the footprint that we have especially on the capacity side you you'll see the benefit over time from cost leverage right a through the the share gains that we that we have achieved so far and that we're gonna achieve in the periods to come but also ultimately the market is this is gonna rebound right the long-term average in the market is a hundred thousand pools long term is my stats go back 45 years it's a little bit more than a hundred 100,000 pools, and today we had 58.

Operator

Right, and I guess we talked a lot about the organic initiatives that are being taking place, the things that you guys are doing internally. Let's talk a little bit about the M&A opportunity. Where do you see opportunities across increasing product sets or in that avenue?

Oliver Gloe, CFO

Yeah, we're excited about the M&A opportunities. We have, looking back, bought about a company a year for the last one and a half decades. We look for adjacencies, right? We bought the Radiant business, which is partially above, partially in-drawn pool if you're on a sloped yard. We bought the VARs. We've just earlier this year completed an acquisition of an Australian business, the Freedom Pools and Spa business. So we're excited about that. There are about 20, 25 companies on our radar screen which have a similar profile, getting us into a new geography, an adjacency in terms of product lines or targeting a competitor. We are the consolidator in the industry. We know all those companies, right? They are private companies. Most of their acquisitions, they're all self-sourced, self-funded. Most of the acquisitions come to us because there's a milestone birthday of the owner. The next generation is not as interested, right? And, you know, they're exciting companies on our radar screen. And, again, we've thought about a company a year, and, you know, hopefully that's continuing. But there are ample opportunities to continue their journey.

Operator

I look up, and I see that we're already at time. So I do appreciate you guys coming through. Thank you guys so much.