00:00Mark, I just wonder, look, this conversation itself highlights the fact that there is demand for these types of deals
00:06and for these types of companies.
00:07What do valuations look like right now?
00:11It's interesting. I used to say, having covered this space for a long time, that all defense is treated equal,
00:17meaning that historically you've seen defense valuations trade in a relatively tight range.
00:24Now what you've seen is a pretty, in the current environment, there's a pretty wide disparity in terms of valuations.
00:31You have the large caps that typically trade in the mid-teens on a forward EBITDA basis.
00:36You've got the platform agnostic mid-cap defense suppliers that are trading in the, you know, call it high 20s,
00:44low 30s,
00:45and that are projected to grow high single digits on the top line for the next couple of years.
00:49And then you have this emerging group of defense tech and space tech companies that are trading at 40, 50
00:56-plus times EBITDA
00:57and are projected to grow it at 20 to 30 percent.
01:00And so the valuation paradigm has changed dramatically, which has really created an opportunity for public market opportunities.
01:11So IPOs, for example, we saw three defense IPOs last year that raised a little over $2 billion in North
01:18America.
01:19This year we've already seen one in North America.
01:22We've seen two in Europe.
01:24Our pipeline of IPOs for defense and defense tech companies has never been as high as it is today.
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