But you had some language to fall back on for that revocation, and that's with the county's data center ordinance that was adopted, what, Tom, was that last year? year or here the last couple of years that was implemented? What is that ordinance and how long has that been in place? That's right.

We started discussions in 2024 and it was adopted in early 2025.

The ordinance, the real essence of the ordinance is to protect surrounding properties if a data center goes in, in particular residential property.

So it establishes requirements for buffers, setbacks, building height, generator use, water.

And most importantly, the commissioner was just mentioning, it requires a conditional use permit.

So any new data center proposed in our county is going to come before our board of commissioners for a public hearing.

and also the possibility that if it is approved, it could be conditionally approved.

Tom, are you seeing other counties having similar ordinances to what we have here?

Is, is it just, just getting going in your opinion? Or is this a, a short-term catch-up trade that's gonna turn into a long-term catch-up trade?

Yeah.

We'll, we'll see.

I mean, it, it's been a long time coming.

As a guy who's spent most of his career managing small cap funds, um, you know, the last 10, 15 years haven't been a lot of fun for us in, in small cap land.

Um, we've been kinda left behind.

But, you know, coming into this year, I think we saw four things where we thought there was a pretty good opportunity for small caps, um, to, to, to catch up some, right? Is number one is small caps tend to be more focused on the US economy than large caps are.

Where are you looking for under-followed, undervalued, and underappreciated?

certainly some stiff competition for global producers there as china becomes more and more sophisticated as a as a chemical producer thanks for that john i i'd like to bring tom in now um could you bring us up to date on some of the some of the other important chemical news that i mentioned such as the iran sanctions waiver and musk's decision to start reusing the series canal because this is going to add to what john said about pressure on the chemical sector particularly in europe i think

yeah absolutely thank you well and also really interesting john i'd like and with these things about about the ets scheme and about china moving further down the cost curve it's hard to escape the notion that In comparison to Europe, China has a plan for the industry, whereas there's been a lot of white papers right now about how Europe's kind of sleepwalking into extinction when it comes to, say, the auto sector, a few other sectors kind of thing.

Yeah, it's interesting that after years of lobbying and the idea of the new parliament being kind of cognizant of the challenges facing the sector, there's still this idea that it's not very joined up kind of thing in the way that China can do so well.

But yeah, as you said, in terms of the news this week and the last couple of weeks, on one hand, it's kind of some undeniable geopolitical good news with the ceasefires being holding despite strikes by both sides.

conditions easing to the extent that we're starting to see some major operators such as Maersk announce the return of shipping along the Suez route instead of much longer Cape of Good Hope route which you know shows I think an undeniable you know vote of confidence that this may be moving in the right direction now.

And, you know, despite the unease and uncertainty around the ceasefire, there's been a noticeable uptick in Strait of Hormuz shipping traffic through June.

Like at the start of the month, the seven day moving average for the number of vessels passing along was about two.

Any thoughts, John or Tom, on this?

[laughs]

AI slop, those two things come in together as, like, part of the vernacular in the industry today.

Slop has been around for a long time, and AI's just kinda been bolted on, in part because the tools allow so many people to create a plethora of content.

And so there's just more opportunity to put out work that is maybe not really designed.

There's no real craft or direction.

There's not a story arc.

People haven't really invested in the idea itself.

I'm curious, how are you using AI in your process at Original Model and like what guardrails or quality criteria do you have in place to achieve quality and make really good decisions while also still remaining competitive in the agency space, in the AI-powered marketplace?

Essentially this, there's a kind of driver to i- if the, you have enough people purchasing it, that brings down the cost to make it more c- more economically viable compared to what, uh, uh, to c- c- compared to the, the alternative, right? Maybe you could talk a little bit about that part there, 'cause I think that was something that you've done some previous research on, and that has bearings on getting to those last few percent, for, for example.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It really, really does.

So I mean, obviously, if you're hourly matching a data center, then you're not consuming fossil generation in that cold winter period with low wind and solar, 'cause you've made this effort to cover that demand.

That's the kind of profile effect you were saying.

But actually, because you've been now investing in new technologies, so batteries are not particularly new, but, uh, if you're trying to get to 90 or 95%, you might have then made an investment in a longer duration storage.

... investing in here instead of yet more gas might make more sense and eco... fr- from, from a kind of longer term economic perspective, for example.

Do you see that translated to those sales year on year of your stuff?

stuff?We do.

We're, we're perfectly placed to, um, not only capitalize on the growth of darts as a sport, but also to drive it.

I mean, it...

Our, our company has been around, um, making equipment for over 100 years.

Um, we actually, uh, have a long history of innovation going all the way back to 1919.

And in 1933, actually w- it was our company that invented the first ever bristle board.

Tom, I just wonder for you, in terms of those sales, has there been an area that's maybe surprised you with the growth in recent times? 'Cause we hear the headlines of Luke Littler, but where does that actually filter through?

Yeah

... who are currently playing tier two.

And, and that's probably one of the big... sort of struggles I'm having.

The, the men's program is very simple.

There are 18 counties.

We play against the counties.

If you do well, we'll act as a sort of de facto agent, get them an opportunity.

Mm