Hi, welcome to Power of the Network. I'm your host, Tim Locker, Vice President of Broadband here at CBM. Today we've got a real special guest, Mr. John Gagge, Vice President of Business Development Network Infrastructure Solutions for EnerSys Batteries. You know, our relationship with EnerSys goes back to 1988. We've been with them a long time and we really value this relationship that we had. And it's great to get John in here and have a discussion with us. So follow along. we'll get into our conversation. John, thank you so much for joining us today. Quite a struggle getting in, I guess, huh? It was a little bit of a long ride, but 24 hours from Philadelphia to Chicago to here is, I could have been anywhere in the world for sure. That's a pretty good run. Well, thank you for the dedication. So 30 years at EnerSys, first of all, congratulations. That's quite the accomplishment. I don't know who this old guy in the mirror is I look at every day, but apparently it's me. Yeah. I mean, you played a lot of different roles there with EnerSys. Engineering, operations, you different leadership roles throughout the years. What's the one thing that sticks out to you that's made you successful? Yeah, so I never thought I'd be doing this. I mean, who knows back in eighth grade when they say, what do want to be when you grow up and who has any idea? And then before you know it, it's a diploma and they go, good luck, go get it done. So I always thought I was good with lawyers. So I could argue with people and have discussions around that. I thought a doctor would be cool. And then I was really good at taking things apart and fixing things. So I became engineer and I just kind of came into that. But when I graduated, I wanted to be a car guy, an engineer. I worked at Ford for about a half a day. And I was working on the reflector for the new F-150. And I scratched my head and I went, what? Like, what about the whole car? The guy goes, I don't know. I've been here 20 years. Yeah, you got one little I can do the bumper now. And I'm like, yeah, I'm out. So it was my wife at the time. And we drove all the way back from Detroit back to Pennsylvania. And I said, all right, we'll figure out what's next. And then this company called Yuasa Xide called me and said, do you want to come in? And I took three interviews. And I had no idea what a battery was. And I really didn't care. And they offered me a job. And then here I am. So it's been great to me, literally, for 32 years is my 32nd year now. And it's really been fun. I don't think, I always use the analogy with any people who work for me, is nobody jumps out of bed to go to work. But if you can do something that's kind of fun, you can work with good people, and it doesn't suck, then it's cool. And I've had that freedom. I've had some really good bosses through my career that have been mentors to me and told me what to do, what not to do. I had one who said, make a decision, kid. Any decision. And I was like, I don't know what I'm doing. He was like, it doesn't matter, just own it and go forward. But through that whole thing, my safe space, if you will, has always been the people, right? If you can look somebody in the eye and really make the right decision or explain it to them as to why you're doing what you're doing, then I think everybody gets it. It may not be what they want to decide, but it's a lot easier to go, you know what, that makes sense. We should do that. Whether it's through sales and meeting great guys like you and the team there at CBM, or if it's the operations side of things, everybody's got to go home and they got to sit across from their spouse, their kids, their dog, and just say what their day was. And if you don't know what you did that day, and nobody wants to say, I did 50 emails today, or I did something else, I hit the button nine times. What's a bigger picture? So when you put that together, I think it makes it a lot easier. And there's two things I haven't done. which is finance or HR, and I definitely don't belong in HR. there's people who are smarter than you're in HR, you're on the other side of Yeah, I'm on the other side of the table, and that's happening. So yeah, it's just been fun, and I've worked with really good people. I work with really good people, and it just allows it to be fun. So it gives you something to do. You know, I've got a son. He's 24, just got married. You know, so many kids. don't know what they want to do. There's a small percentage that are like dialed in and they're like, I'm going to be X when I grow up and I'm going to do this. And I admire that. But for most of us, I mean, you kind of just fall into it. You make it into what you want it to be. And we've got five kids between us and my 26 year old. I can't put my foot far enough up him to get him motivated and moving. And then we've got others who just fall into it. And it's natural for them to do what they want to do. So it's, it is, it's really interesting to see what the motivation and drive is, but who knows? You know, 30 years in a battery career, I want to be an automotive engineer. Who knows where it got there, but look what we Yeah, for me, I knew when I was young, I wanted to be in sales. I knew that. My dad was a salesman. He worked for Ditchwitch selling Trenchers. And I watched him for 20 years and I knew that I was going to do something like that but you know, you just take a path and you fall into this and you do that for a while and you know, for a young kid I think it's kind of tough. I don't know, I guess I'd ask this, do you think it's easier for a young person to get into sales today versus 20, 30 years ago? So I think easy is all relative, right? I mean, when people were counting in their mind and they came up with an abacus or then they came up with a calculator. and then it was a phone or otherwise. It's all different. So on one side, I would say it's easier because the world's at your fingertips. Right now, you don't even Google anymore. If you're going to copilot or Gemini, you're going to get anything you can want. You can full dossier on your customer when you go in. But the other side of it, you have to know the people skills. And I do think COVID hurt a lot of people, like the kids. Whether it just be people are a ruder. People are socially awkward. People think it's okay to just call somebody or text somebody when it's important to spend 12 hours in Chicago getting out to see you guys. That's the important part to make that personal connection. So is it easier? Maybe technically, right? But everybody, nobody goes and pulls down their McMaster car book and starts thumbing through for the quarter 20 washer they need. They're going to buy that from somebody they know or they're going to search it on the internet. And hopefully it's internet and then I call the guy that I know. So I think it's arguably easier, but there's a science behind it that is not well refined. My challenge back then was just the age. And so I remember a specific job I was applying for. It was construction equipment. it was come down to two candidates, myself and... another gentleman, was an older guy, know, pointy cowboy boots and, you know, shirt button down part way, you know, kind of, you know, look like he fit the mold, you know, but, you know, I think he was there six months and, you know, I'd moved on, you know, but my, yeah, my struggle was just getting somebody to give you a break and let you run with it. So I think there's new ways to do things. So, you know, a name from the past here, but Joe Kenny, right? He worked for me, but he was another mentor in the industry of just teaching how to navigate a crowd, how to read a room, how to look at people and understand what's happening. He would never leave without saying, so you got a purchase order for me? Oh, okay. And they give something. But he had one that for years we had, and it was you make it look easy. And some of the old timers do, right? But they could be struggling. He might go back to his car and pulls out his date timer to figure out his next appointment where everybody else has got it on their iPhone and it's telling them what to do. So I think it's just different, but you do have to let the younger generation come in. They've got a different perspective on things. And there's certain things that I think the old timers, I'll put myself in that, you feel so passionate about that's so important to do, and it maybe doesn't matter. And so it's that balance of how do you feed it and where you get the benefit from that stuff. And I'm one, I love having a very diverse team around me. Um, as quick story, we did an escape room the one time and it was a leadership team for enterprises and everybody's excited and now they get a dinner and a free beer and we're going to do the escape room. And I look at the team, there's two teams and they get all the women on that team. I'm like, I'm not leading a team of guys because they're not going to know what to do. So we mixed it up a little bit and we won. But the reason we won is there was just, there was a woman there that was, that was on our team and she just thought differently about it you need that. So I think whether that's, you know, age or. or race or sex, it just, you need different perspectives because not everybody thinks the way you do. And you get stuck in that group think, and then before you know it, this is the best thing in the world and the world is flat. It's like, no, no, that doesn't work that way. Well, then how do you keep an open mind to that too? Because it's one thing to have all those perspectives, it's another thing to be accepting to them. So I think there's multiple facets of that. The first is you personally. as an individual, being able to say, you know what, I got to slow down now and make sure we're okay. It's kind of like being lost. Like, I think if I go a little further, we're going to make it. Sometimes it's like, stop, let's take a look at this and figure out what's going on. The other is for your people to, when something like that happens, and whether it's a breakthrough or otherwise, if people are... on their phone or doing multitasking in a meeting or a Zoom or Teams or whatever to actually stop and call it out and go, hey, listen, Billy just came up with a really good idea right there and we would have never thought of that if we weren't. Oh, that's a good idea. it's like training a child or a dog or a pet or something, just making sure that that positive reinforcement comes as well as the negative reinforcement. When somebody laughs at it and says, that's a stupid idea, is it? That could be a new market for us. So that could be a new way of getting into this and you never know. So we all get busy, especially as leaders, that you're stuck in the grind if there's no time for this, but really clearing your mind, clearing your calendar to sit back and go, okay, are we doing this the right way? And you guys are part of this. We do quarterly business reviews with all our strategic reps and partners and associates and et cetera. Quarters go by quick. And before you know it, you skip one and you're like, oh my gosh, I haven't seen you in nine months. You really need the formality of sitting down and doing it. And I live my world through analogies because I think people get it a little better. They don't care about batteries or ditch witches or otherwise. it's like, you may go to dinner six nights a week with your spouse, but if you don't go to dinner for a birthday, you're in trouble. So you got to formally go, hey, we're going out for anniversary. We're going out for the birthday. We're doing it. It puts a different, you know. Context around it. So it's really important to really stop and reflect and plan and understand exactly what's going on Yeah, and we've got some we've got some new folks a lot of new people on the team here at CBM and and This you know the younger generation is kind of moving in and taking over and it's been incredible to see what they can do and you know, there are some new fresh ideas and it's kind of humbling as one of the old guys now to kind of sit back and let go of some of the old ways and let them kind of take the way. We've had one. artificial intelligence is the big thing. So how are you using AI? What's going on with that and et cetera? I would say in the past four to five months, there's been a transition, a revolution, if you will, just in my mind. And it's competitive. So we work. I've got two counterparts. One is in three, actually. But one runs a comms business in the US. John who and I get along well and that's great and we're the biggest lion's share of the business. And so we're, we're continually driving, driving, driving. And he has somebody in Asia and we have somebody in Europe and the Europeans, it's a smaller, smaller group and everything, but they put their slides together for their monthly review and they just look good. And I'm like, what? So I watched it and then that matters. Doesn't it? Well, they got in trouble because they didn't follow the format. Right? Well, the format is like this, this, you know, Papaya based paper that's etched in stone. It's just old. And theirs looks fancy and sexy. And they got in trouble because they didn't use the right template. And then the next meeting, I'm like, but man, their information is pretty good on that. So I gave up. I finally, and I know these guys a long time, I went over and I said, hey, how did you do this? They're like, I'm going to send it right to you. So they sent me an email with about five lines of prompt to put into the co-pilot, right? And it spits out all this stuff. And I looked and I said, you are saving me. I'm not kidding you. My Saturday mornings when everybody else is having coffee and figuring out what's going on in the house or my Friday afternoon, everyone wants to figure out where I'm buying the next beer. It's saved probably eight hours of work. And you're just floored. Like you can't believe that it's happening. And my team now does it. We have weekly updates. call them items of interest, IOIs. Send me that. It's a chore. Back to what we just spoke about. How do you go back and say, what did I do this week? Was there anything that was good? You could do that now in co-pilot. Say, give me the weekly updates for what I do this week that's important to tell somebody who are on my team. It summarizes it, and it does a better job than I do. So it is. I would have never done that until I had the pressure that somebody was doing it better and not the arrogance to say, hey, I know what I'm doing. Just leave me alone. Get out of here, kids, and my cowboy boots are good. Well, it's hard to change years of habit. I'm still the kind of guy that would, if, If you might have an answer that I wanted to know, you know, if I had a question too, I mean, I would call you and say, hey, you know, what do know about this? When, you know, newer folks today, they're like, oh, just type it in and they have it before I've even made the phone call, you know? So I'm working on changing those habits, if you will. So there's a big question on that though. So I see it on both sides. One is you can go, you know, search it on your phone and have the answer, but you don't know if it's right. OK, so as an engineer, I had a teacher who gave us a final exam test and put it all together. was a 12-inch span. And you had to see when you put weight on it, how much did it deflect, right? The answer came out to be like 25 feet. It can't, right? It's just impossible for it. So it's like, oh, I have to get to California. And I need to be there. It's 2,000 miles. And I've got to be there in an hour. OK, so I need to do 2,000 miles an hour. Start the plane. It's like, can't. It's impossible. So I think there's part of it, and I go back to the relationship. If you don't have the relationship to be able to call and ask somebody or say, hey, can we do 2,000 miles an hour? It falls apart very quickly. So it's that humility and that humbleness to say, hey, I can get the answer, but it's better to ask somebody because that person feels good. like, imparted some knowledge on somebody that works. Well, as long as they don't feel like, hey, you're wasting my time. You should know that. Well, there's a little bit. Sometimes, no dumb questions. There's a bunch of You should know that already. Get out of here. I mean, obviously technology and so on is changing like crazy, but what's one thing that's been consistent with the enterprises over the years? So I think change has been the big part of it. We're in an industry that's not sexy. If you look at our divisions that we have, and we just rebranded them. So used to be motor power, which was forklift trucks. Now it's industrial mobility solutions. We put an Odyssey underneath that and a lot of the... airplane moving around, the ground tuggers and things of that nature. They're all in there. So stuff that moves. And that's been pretty stable, right? You see a lot more automation that's coming into that. So you don't have gigantic forklift trucks moving things around. You've got smaller stuff. Amazon's a huge driver in that whole thing where, you know, a little refrigerator comes out, it spins around, puts a light on it, tells people what to pick and how it all goes together. So that one has been stable. And the more people buy, we... we trail that market. it's a consumer price index type growth on that side. And the flip side is what we're really running. So whether it's communications, data center, industrial, and utility, and it's been OK, but there's not been huge resurgence or a huge surge in anything except for the data center side. it's interesting for us because we're doing our earnings release today. And people look at us and say, well, data centers are huge and Vertiv's growing by X percent, double digits. And what are you guys doing with that? We're a subset of it, right? And if you go through some of these huge data centers that are out there, people are saying, you know what? I don't even need backup anymore. It's so smart or it's so resilient. Or the fiber, when you drive down the highways and all the construction that some people may have got stuck in this morning. It's all fiber backhauls, what they're putting out there. So the orange tubes on the side of the road, it's a nice right of way, you do it. And it's so fast that some of these operators are saying, you know what, my site in Kansas City went down, but I'm going to reroute that processing task to Dublin. Or I'm going to reroute it to Singapore. I'm going to reroute it to Allentown, Pennsylvania. So they can move that all around. It's so quick, the latency is there. And they don't need a backup. So that's OK. However, when you dig deeper into it, there's other stuff that needs backup. So it's utility side. It's I got to back up the air conditioning. I got to back up the cooling pumps. I got to do everything else. So change has really been the biggest thing that we've seen over the years is watching this industry grow. We're seeing a resurgence now in nuclear power. So love it or hate it. I personally love it. I think it's a great, great technology. But That's Westinghouse. My daughter lives in Pittsburgh, and I would drive by and see the gigantic Westinghouse palace that was there outside the road. They closed it because there was no future in this. And now it's 10 new nuclear power plants that are coming in by 2030. So it's interesting to see what the next step is. And people who are against data centers or for data centers and how it all works and what happens to it, I think with everything else or like anything else. When we went from water-powered mills to, you know, coal powered and everything evolves and it gets better for the environment, for the society and everything else. But for some of those people who are against the data center, they sure are going to complain when their ways doesn't work and they get stuck in traffic someplace else. you know, so much of it too, I think you've just got such division on that, you know, two different sides. And so anytime you have that, what's really true? It's exactly, everybody's got their own facts. We talked about people are going to, you know, they're going to Google how to fight against a data center. They're literally using a data center to prove their own point. But there were some bad characters in there. You know, if you're 250,000 gallons of water in a day, week, a month in a data center, that's probably not right. But you know what? There was nothing against it. So I think the responsibility comes in on both sides to say, hey, if I can take my camper and I can... dump it on the side of the road someplace and the gray water's out and the brown water's out and nobody says anything, is that okay? If no one cares, it's fine. You gotta have those rules and make sure that it's guided in how that stuff grows. Powering the network starts with strong partnerships. At CBM, we connect broadband, utility, and commercial industrial customers across the Midwest with best-in-class manufacturers and solutions. As a 100 % employee-owned company, we're invested in every connection and every success. If you need help with a project or looking for a quality rep firm in the Midwest, reach out to us here at cbmrep.com. I know you guys have just released some new data center products and I want to get to that. I was watching your, you've got some new marketing videos that are out on that, which are very cool by the way. I caught one line I caught in there. I don't want you to touch on this. Power doesn't just fail. It's ignored until it's too late. Yeah, I make that one simple. So this is an old guy analogy. when I was a kid, used to keep the police mag light in your car or your truck maybe, or it had 4D batteries in it and it so it was really bright at night or case something went wrong. When do those batteries fail? When you went to use them. There was no predictive on that. was never anybody at 16 years old going, okay, we're going to go out in the woods tonight. Let's make sure my flashlight works. It's always when you need it is when it falls off. And that's a big part. So I think this goes back to our old guy conversation is, The old guys might go out there and look at it. Your grandfather may have checked the oil in the car before he left or checked the oil in your lawnmower before, but they had experience and they knew what would happen for that. Somebody knew, my zero turn, my kid doesn't check the oil in it. He should, because there's an issue that I haven't fixed. But that's my preventive maintenance to make sure that it's working. If these large installations, whether it be utilities or any of them, and no one's looking at it or know that they have to look at it, It's a huge risk for everybody and you say go and it doesn't go. So the flashlight analogy really works well. But I think it brings up tremendous opportunity for everybody that exists in that ecosystem for preventive maintenance, predictive maintenance, for you know what, let me do this and I'll make sure that it's okay. And you can kind of see it coming through and even in the new cars where there's subscription services or you buy a car, it's got included maintenance. Included maintenance is great. Because I've got a buddy, he doesn't know when he needs to replace his brakes. Thank goodness there's an Expection program in Pennsylvania. It tells him, hey, dummy, you got to put brakes on it. But it also improves that dealership. They'll probably buy that car back. Now they can sell it to you certified because all the maintenance has been done. And they've got a better resale on the back end. So I think it's what we said earlier. It's that reframing of what are you really looking to do? Do you just want that sale? Or do you want that stickiness and touch point that for four or five years somebody is going to be sticking with you and go, you know what? I'm going back to Billy Smith car because I had no problems with it. Well, you paid for it. You just didn't know. Well, and that particular quote stuck out to me too, because that it kind of ties in. That's one of the things that's really never changed. That's been a constant. But it was a good reminder and I think also a good message just for our customers that they need to be aware of all the maintenance and all the different things to. to continue to have good service, you so. You use the word that's huge and I've fought this for years, which is maintenance, okay? So we've had, in this industry, we've had maintenance-free batteries from the early 90s, okay? They're not maintenance-free. They might be less, okay? But the risk is still there that if you don't, it will. Yeah. So every time we go through, whether it's an IEEE standard or even IEC and all of the other things else, there is no maintenance-free. It's just different of what would happen in the past and that different becomes a new norm and then you build on that. So let's talk a little bit about it. Data centers, every manufacturer that we touch, it's data center, data center, data center. What are we doing with the data centers? And you guys just launched the new data safe, NuR, which I haven't dug into deeply other than I watch your marketing videos, but it looks pretty awesome. Tell us about the new offering here. Yeah, so NuR, we've... We've got to manufacture this. And we think there's a niche, especially in the US market. So the US market, if you look at data centers globally, everything really starts in the US. I can say that as a proud American, but it's also factual. So it's cool to have that there. But this is where the drive is, where the demand is, and where it's really growing. So whether that be on the OEM level, so Vertiv, Schneiders, Eaton's, et cetera, they're driving it. but also from the colocators or the hyperscalers, the likes of Digital Reality, Equinix, Stack, Meta, Google. They're all doing stuff here in the States because we got a lot of land, power's pretty available, was pretty available, and they can build it all out. So that's neat. But what we saw is some of the incumbents that are out there today and they're I'll say it semi-boldly, but their focus was on the automotive side. And what was left over, they said, hey, we can repurpose this and make it into a data center solution. And it works. There's not a question on the technology or otherwise. But I would boldly state that they're kind of asleep at the wheel. And they were not looking at the end users and true needs. So one of the big things that we have going on right now, and with the new president we have, Sean O'Connell stepping in for the past. year, year and a half is voice of the customer and understanding what the market wants. Don't... We're not Apple. We're not going to give you an iPod. You're going to love it. We need to understand what you need and then we'll help jointly develop those solutions. So what we did is for the past year or so, we were listening to what customers are complaining about. So it was post-sale support. It was warranty. It was technical support. It was, the footprint's not right. Boy, could you do this? You know what? I don't need 15 minutes of runtime anymore. If it doesn't work in five minutes, I've got a bigger issue. So that's really what we did is we looked at that. And at a very high level, it was much greater footprint. So instead of less than 200 kilowatt hours in a cabinet, we can give you 500 or 600. So you take a one megawatt application instead of having five or six cabinets, you can do it in two. So there's a tremendous space savings on that. And I'll come back to that in a minute. And then it's really geared towards that five minute. Because when you sit, and one of the first data centers that I ever went to, was a Charles Schwab place back, this is 25 years ago. They had five two megawatt generators, plus all these flooded DX batteries and, and, and, and, and they were running for two hours in case something went wrong. Those same sites now are under five minutes, right? Because if they don't have backup power, if they don't shed the load to someplace else, it doesn't matter if it's seven minutes or eight minutes, it's gotta happen instantaneously. And many of these places, they're looking at sub one minute. They get more revenue from a GPU than they do building a battery room. So that whole infrastructure, and we talked about earlier with latency and how fast the network is and everything else is that. So our solution does that. you've got the, we're talking old guys today, but it used to be one throat to choke, right? You can't say that. Now it's one hand to shake is the way it works. The one hand to shake is, is EnerSys and the people that we bring to the table with our approved service partners and salespeople and et cetera, in the network like, like you guys, where we'll help you, we'll take care of that. So we will help you organize it, we'll help you size it, we'll help you install it, we'll make sure that's there for, for the life you have, the predictive and preventive maintenance stuff on the other side. And we'll just help assure the confidence that ultimately results in the runtime that you need at the end of it. So that's cool. We'll do that in sometimes 75 % space savings. We'll do it with better ROI, total cost of ownership. All that stuff is in there. And just make it a simpler approach with somebody who's local. Hopefully, it's a name that they know and like and trust. And through our network of people, we can make it happen and be a preferred solution for those customers. Yeah. So I kind of grew up in the telecom space. been in and out of a couple of data centers, not really had a bunch of experience around those, the big backup systems. But I understand that power smoothing is obviously one of the big key things. Explain that, what is power smoothing and why is it important? Yeah, so I don't know for anybody who's following along, if you've ever been camping or you've ever been in, an old school RV or really archaic cabin someplace and the power quality is bad. And you say, okay, well, what's the power quality? It's like the lights will surge down or maybe the refrigerator won't turn on or it's just, you know, it's a dirty signal. So if you think of AC and it's a nice little sine wave that comes through, the more, if it's out of sync or otherwise it's hard on a motor, the motor will get hot or it's like a long extension cord. You've got a lot of resistance through that. It's dirty power. So another way to look at it is if you've got a personal generator and maybe it's some, know, Bobo brand and it's 3000 watts and you start it and it sounds like you know, a Mack truck running in the background versus some of the newer ones that are really small and quiet and good. The power quality that comes out of that is they're not the same. And that has impact on the electronics that you put on it. And nobody likes that. So these... These servers and these GPUs that are coming out and all the processing power that they have, they need very clean power coming in because they cannot take that level of noise. If I pause on that for a minute and go back to the old days, the old days were you would have flooded batteries in a telecom application or flooded batteries in a UPS application. there's some difference between it, but the flooded batteries for telecom will run longer. three to eight hours. The flooded batteries for a UPS application will run maybe 15 minutes to two hours on it. Thickness of the plates for those following along at home. But they all do really well at putting AC in and getting real nice DC out the other side. They're a huge filter for everything that happens. And I had that with another old mentor in the industry. And we were going through, and we just had chronic, looked like this thing was horrible. Hundreds of strings of batteries, and they all looked the same. And I was like, what the heck? This old guy goes in and pulls out an oscilloscope, puts it on, and we're at a 480 volt DC, and there's AC running into it. I'm like, that doesn't work. That's not right. What happens there? And the guy goes, oh, yeah. We pulled out the filters because your batteries do better than that. We were like, aha. So was a huge warranty thing for us, but they looked at us and said, well, yeah, but that's what we're using it for. OK, now we can change it. And in many cases, that's why these 20-year batteries are lasting seven years, because there were unintended use for that. Back to the point on lithium and data centers and power quality and everything else, that's what they need to do. So there is such a strain on the grid. And in certain cases, you look at Ashburn, Virginia, there are hundreds of data centers that are going in. And there's a lot of power that happens there. So if they get out of sync or something happens, you lose a GPU. And that's big money. So they need to condition that power, make sure that it's good going into it, and that it's consistent across the way. That's what they use it for. Our solution is designed for that. Many others have looked at it and said, look, I'm going to have good power. It's expected. Years ago, I was in India. And the guy said, you have 20 minutes for your presentation. We said, OK. We start. My laptop was literally surging. You could just see it going off. Like, the screen was on and off because the power quality was so bad. And this guy's looking across. He goes, you have three minutes. I thought he was being a cocky young guy at the time. I thought he was just telling me to hurry up. No. Power went off. He goes, goodbye. That was it. was end of meeting. There was no power for the next three hours, and it was over. So that stuff exists. And if you don't design a system that can incorporate that, so making sure that it's robust enough to handle what it's going to be under. I mentioned voice of customer and the market information. Really understanding how it's going to be used and saying, OK, this will work. So at a very broad statement, my legal and then technical team will kill me for saying it. what you put in will guarantee that it's smooth on coming outside. So it'll protect the equipment. It's very good in AI loads. And as old battery guys, people used to talk about cycles. How many cycles can it do? And otherwise, this is hundreds of thousands of cycles. It's constant. You can't catch it. It's just so much noise back and forth. But you need to take that wiggle out and make sure it's smooth on the other side. And that's the other benefit that this is not just a product. It's not just a cost. It's a solution of saying, Here's what you can do. And so much so, know, data center dynamics and some of these other conferences that are out there. The next thing you'll see beyond our noir, you know, avoid the black, eliminate the dark series is targeted material around AI data centers and how load smoothing, load conditioning and ensuring that it's good for everything in the ecosystem works. So that makes sense to me, like, you know, how that protects the equipment in the data center. how does that transfer outside of the data center and affect the power grid? So the power grid, most of the data centers now, they don't care on what's going out to the power grid. They're just caring about what's coming in. OK, yeah, I guess that's more my question. does that, what your batteries are doing to help that equipment on the inside, how does that affect? the grid coming in. Yeah, so there's certain places where if you don't have, as an example, I live in Pennsylvania, Three Mile Island is a very famous nuclear power plant that they shut down and they're restarting that again. Microsoft worked with the utility to say, we're going to restart this thing and we're going to put power out. it's OK, great. So they're starting that. Hundreds of millions of dollars get it going. Meanwhile, the PJM interconnect is like, hold on. I don't have an extension cord to get that to someplace. So what do you do? And power quality and power factors, the further you get from it, you need boosting, you need all the other stuff. So they're talking now, putting a data center very close to where that nuclear power plant is. Now you get to the other part. People are like, well, hold on. I don't want a data center in my backyard. What does that mean? So what our solution allows you to do is, regardless of the power quality that's coming to you, this should work. So there are places who are prime power and they're using natural gas or propane generators in megawatt configurations. Any noise or hiccup in that power supply coming into it, this solution will say, that's okay, we can figure that all out. It's designed to work in those environments and be successful in the end users application. Awesome. With that said, outside the data center space, I've heard this question before, but is lead dead? So I love that. I was hoping you're going to bring that one up. I gave a back on paper many years ago and I said, lead is dead. was in the room was crowded of, you old guys and looking to hear what's happening. And when you go through the technologies, so at that time we had some hydrogen fuel cells. had some nickel zinc products. Of course, lithium was on the, on the forefront of what's going on. I don't think lead's dead at all. I was with a big customer of ours, a big supplier to the industry, and they said the same thing. They're like, you're kidding yourself. think lead's dead. It is robust. It works. It's driving down the road with your family and like, all right, fine, we'll stop at McDonald's. It fits the need. It works what it has to do. And there's room for other technologies. If you're in the utility space and you're in a off-grid oil platform, lithium may not be the solution for you, right? There's other products that come into it. But I think lead's got a good home because it is robust. It's proven. And look, it's not dead from the technology standpoint either. We're launching new products which are higher power, more energy dense. It's the most recycled material in the world. So it's got a good ecosystem, everything that happens there. And it's safe. I always say, the engineer in me, if you look at the lithium, potassium, all that stuff that's in that end of the periodic table, There's a reason they make flares out of it. And if you've ever, maybe in your earlier days, lit a flare, right, and thrown it into a lake, it doesn't go out. So those, the safety aspect of it, it really comes down to that rubric of what's important to you. And I'll go back. My solution that I said I can take six competitors lithium cabinets and do it in two. If your building is already built, that may not be the right solution for you. So I think really getting everybody educated on, and I like to make it simple with a good, better, best. Sometimes good's okay. There's no reason for that, right? My rental car is a Volkswagen Atlas. That's also a Bentley and it's also an Audi and it's also a Volkswagen. It depends on what you want, right? It's just, some people do not want to spend that money. It's the option of what's the right solution for you to ensure that it's meeting your need and your costs that you need for it too. Yeah. And we still use a ton of the SBS and the thin plate pure lead products in where they just last. It's tried and true. you talk to some of my other customers, they're like, I wish it didn't last as long. There's a big service portion of the end of it. If you're expecting three and you get five to seven out of it, people get different. I think it's, is definitely not dead. We build a good product. Our manufacturing locations, they've got pride in what's going on. And back to what we talked about earlier too, bringing those stories back to tell people that that's what this does. When you're driving through Kansas City and you see a big building going up to say, hey, that's us, that's backing that up on the inside or in a Home Depot and you see a battery go through on the side, that's us, that's happening. Everybody wants to know what they do and can be a little proud of it. Yeah, years ago, early on when I was here, I had an interesting SBS story. A customer called up and he'd bought, I think there was 32 batteries for eight different telephone cabinets. And the previous manager had installed half of them and the other half sat on the shelf. And he says, I got these 16 batteries sitting here and they're almost all good, but there's two of them that the voltage is low. I said, well, let me come up and we'll take a look at them. And they were 26 months after manufacturer date and 14 of them were good and the two were low voltage and EnerSys, you know, warrantied the two. And I mean, that guy's a customer for life. He's like, these are the most awesome batteries, you know, and that's all he's bought ever since, you know, in the last 15 years. It's great here in those stories. And it's in certain cases, it's painful. You said what's different about EnerSys and you know, what's changed. The industry has changed. The competitive landscape has changed, whether it be through private equity or people selling, combining, mergers, et cetera. We pride ourselves that we've been there throughout through the whole time. And there's acquisitions that we've done in the past. So I'm on the telecommunication side of things on the battery side. And we say, look, we're just buying the brand. We don't want any warranty obligation. We're not going to do anything. And people come back and they're like, well, come on. And he's like, OK, fine. So I feel like we're constantly digging in our pocket for those shekels. But while it's frustrating to honor warranties that probably aren't a warranty, it does build that relationship with those customers for life. It really springboards us to write into our noir. Why are you guys doing that? Who are you to do this? Well, look, we've been here. We're going to help you out with it. And some people, it's funny, they've said, thank God, Gagge, you're finally in this. All right, let's talk. And other people, six months ago, literally had the Heisman handout. Like, I'm not talking to you about lithium because you don't know what you're talking about. So I'm like, ooh, I'm ready to talk about it. I OK, I'm not going buy it anyway because lead really works well for mine. I'm like, well, why are you playing with me? Come on. So let's talk a little bit more about lithium. I didn't make the last sales meeting, but I did make the one prior. And we talked about a new lithium plant here in North Carolina. Yep. Are we still on track with that? We are. So we just had a refreshed release on that. So that's going to go in Statesville. I always mix it up. I think it's North Carolina or South Carolina. And it's on. So no secret that I talked about two divisions earlier. Industrial Mobility, IMS, Industrial Mobility Solutions, NIS, Network Infrastructure Solutions. That's a legacy motor power and the legacy energy systems business. Then we had specialty or aerospace and defense, A &D. We've rebranded that as PPS, which is precision portable solutions. They do crazy stuff. Okay. So let me talk first about lithium ion. I think at last check, we do 15 chemistries of lithium ion, all kinds of exotics, anything from you know, pain management to space shuttles to lunar rovers, James Webb space telescopes, crazy stuff that these guys do. Other stuff, know, defense applications for Patriot missiles and et cetera. So when you lay that up and you go, okay, well, what's going on in the world today? And I won't take any political stance on this whatsoever, but there's two things that are going on. One is drones and the other is anti-drone. So. We manufacture some stuff that stops drones and we manufacture some stuff that powers drones. That's really what this is for. So there's, you can read the articles that are out there. Some of the, some will say that the coffers of US ammunitions is going low and they need help rebuilding that. And of course we want to build that in the States and we want to go forward. So what Mark Matthews has done with his team is they've gone in, they work with the lobbyists in DC and the people that are there and say, we could be this person, right? We do. a lot in our footprint today for the aerospace and defense industry, we could set up a platform, we could set up a plant to build these type of products. And that's what they've done. So it's on. But it's really geared towards that government approach. So it'll be 18650 and a few other versions of that. But really the intention is the US government and it's no secret that it's drone-based applications. So that's where it'll start. And again, I said I'm an old guy, back in the desert storm days, was the $10,000 toilet seat or the $500 screwdriver. those are under very, these batteries will develop are under very strict government guidelines and programs so that they have the confidence that if you need it, works. And then once we get that scale, then we'll evaluate, this have any commercial application? So that's really it. It's really intended as a government application, a government. sponsor and solution over there. And then once that develops, we'll say, okay, now how does that make its way into... It's pretty awesome for a company like this to have that big of an impact on everybody's daily lives. Whether it's Homeland Security, defense, but I mean, everything we touch comes back to something that we do at EnerSys. Yeah, to your old telecom story there. We build an armor safe battery right here in Warrensburg, right? And it's got a two year shelf life on that. And we say, OK, because it's two years, you can recharge it, the battery's still good, et cetera. There's some that'll say, when you look at an amphibious deployment team, they pack those things up. The MREs, the ammo, the diesel, everything else, that's all geared around that two years. They can pack that thing up and be deployable inside of two years before they have to go back and refresh it. It's it's that enters this battery inside that allows that to happen. And then, yeah, then you go to, you know, Patriot missiles and drones that are predator drones and et cetera. It's really, really cool stuff. Years ago, the first time I got to visit the plant in Warrensburg, they were, they had big nuclear cell batteries. They're, you know, bigger than this table. That was pretty cool. Some neat stuff. So you say, is lead dead? No. There's a lot of applications that it's, I like to say, arrogantly humble. Those two are against each other, but it's really that. You could be very, very proud, but humbly proud of how the product works and where it's being applied. I just wanted to say thanks again to John for joining us today. I had some struggles in the airports yesterday getting to us, but he fought through and came in in the end. So thanks so much for your efforts. It's great to have you. The conversation was awesome. And we're proud to be part of your organization and look forward to continuing this mission. Remember, if you need help with a project or if you're looking for representation from a high quality sales team, Look no further than CBM. You can find us right here at cbmrep.com. Remember, give us a like, comment, subscribe. We'll probably have two parts of this episode with John, so remember to come back and catch the second half of this. So let us know what you'd like to see in the future, but thanks again for joining us at Power of the Network. And as always, until next time, we'll see you next time.
