Welcome to the My Private Network Podcast!
What if you could earn a steady 9% return and help power the planet? 🌎💡
In Episode 18 of the My Private Network Podcast, we dive deep into the Skyline Green Energy Fund with President Robert Stein—a unique investment opportunity focused on clean energy and stable, institutional-quality assets.
Unlike many publicly traded companies in the clean energy sector that rely on new overseas projects and market shifts, Skyline Group of Companies invests in reliable, commercial-grade assets with government-backed contracts. This focus on steady cash flow and unit value growth sets them apart from the volatility seen elsewhere in the market.
Additionally, Skyline is able to secure favourable debt arrangements with major Canadian banks, allowing them to match debt terms with their contracts, which further stabilizes the investment.
With Skyline's CFO reassuring investors that they can sleep soundly knowing their investments are safe and growing, this is a conversation you won’t want to miss.
Today's Expert Guest
Robert Stein
President
Skyline Green Energy Fund
Today's Questions of Interest
2:54 Rob, tell us about your background and your transition into Skyline.
5:53 Why should somebody choose Skyline if they're looking at getting into clean energy?
8:46 Tell us about the fund and how it is constructed.
12:04 Could you tell us about the level of operational duties and risk involved with this fund?
12:41 Where is green energy today in terms of progress?
15:48 Is green energy more of a local strategy rather than building a massive production plant?
17:55 Could you tell us about the massive commercial sites for solar?
20:21 What should an investor expect in terms of returns?
22:22 Could you explain the cashflow and capital gains process?
24:28 What are the biggest risks for investors in this fund?
27:55 Final thoughts.
Transcript
Bob Simpson: Welcome to the latest edition of My Private Network Podcast, where today we will explore the future of energy and the innovations that are transforming our world. I'm your host, Bob Simpson and in this podcast, we will delve deeply into the exciting and rapidly evolving world of clean energy and how to invest in this exciting new asset class.
From solar power to wind farms, electric vehicles to smart grids, clean energy is no longer just a vision. It's becoming our reality. But what does this mean for our planet, our economies, and our daily lives? In this episode, we'll open the door for you to hear from one of the leaders in connecting clean energy opportunities with Canadian investors.
Whether you're an energy enthusiast, a sustainability advocate, or just curious about clean energy and how it is shaping the world around us. This podcast is your guide to understanding the trends, technologies, and challenges that will define the next era of energy. So plug in, power up, and join us as we embark on this journey into the heart of clean energy revolution.
My guest today is Rob Stein. Rob is responsible for the operational and financial performance of Skyline Energy portfolio. This includes overseeing acquisitions, dispositions, financial budgets, and implementing and monitoring capital expenditure projects and monitoring the assets functionality. Prior to joining Skyline, Rob spent 10 years with a renewable energy contractor and developer.
Hey, Rob, thanks for joining us today. How you doing?
Robert Stein: I'm doing great. Thanks for having me, Bob. Appreciate being here.
Bob Simpson: Yep. So you're up, you said as we were discussing this earlier, you're up north today.
Robert Stein: Yeah, it's a started a long weekend and a weekend before the kids go back to school. So we thought we'd, we'd start the weekend a little earlier, but I still happy to talk to you and we'll go out and play on the water later.
Bob Simpson: Yeah, no, that's great. Now I was watching a video that, from a couple of years ago when you talked about Japan's first electric bullet train, how Warren Buffett's invested over a billion dollars in solar and how Tesla was developing a million mile battery. Now I did a bit of research on that and it looks like now they're up talking about a four million dollar battery, right?
Or four million, four million mile battery. Which I guess that's pretty exciting. And that means if you're mostly driving on the Don Valley Parkway, you probably get a million miles anyway, right?
Robert Stein: Yeah. Yeah. Technology's really booming on that side of things. That's for sure.
Bob Simpson: Yeah. It's cooking. So tell us a bit about yourself, about Skyline, maybe your background and you know, we're interested is how did you make the transition over to Skyline?
What, what drove that decision?
Robert Stein: Yeah. So I went to University of Waterloo, in business and finance, and I had a couple of co-op terms with a couple of hedge funds, was lucky enough to be a part of, BMO's, , equity rotation program, where I saw different facets of, you know, trade, institutional equity and sales.
I thought that was what I was going to do, had slated to, you know, go down that route. And someone I met in the, , public market space said, "Hey Rob, I just bought a construction company, a development company up in Walkerton, Ontario, with the goal of really developing renewable energy across, across the globe."
So that's pretty cool. So he sent me the New Green Energy Act that the provincial government sent out at the time. Said, read this over the weekend. Came back on Monday, said, this is something I want to be a part of. So moved up to Walkerton on a fully 100 percent commission basis. And he said, ah, start selling solar systems.
And, , through that tender, I, I started, , really in 2008. And worked for the organization for 10 years, started as a commission sales guy, and ended up running the business for the last 4 years that I was there. And I really got to see every facet of the renewable energy and construction market. So, you know, we were developers, we built, we owned, operate, we disposed of assets, we bought of assets, we did operations and maintenance on systems.
And so really, it was really lucky to have that experience in an organization that I could grow through. But by the end of 10 years, I was on the road, , five days a week. I'd leave Sunday afternoon, come back Friday night. I had a young family, and my wife's like, ah, we gotta do something different. So I met the Skyline guys, back in 2009, really saw them as an opportunity to deploy a bunch of solar on their rooftops.
They had this big apartment rig, with nothing on the rooftop, said, let's, let's put some solar, put another revenue stream up on that rooftop and create a new revenue stream for them. So they were all keen on that.
So helped them develop about 75 solar assets on their apartment buildings. And through that, got to know the founders, really liked what they were building and just stayed in contact with him from 2009 to, 2017 when I was about to make the switch outta my, my past organization. So I met with the CEO. He said we'd love to build a renewable energy fund. We have this big demand from our unit holders to sort of commercialize the, the renewable energy space. And he said, you know, most renewable energy, that was constructed in Canada was really only for massive developers.
You had to write a check for a hundred million dollars or $200 million to get involved. But it wasn't for Mrs. and Mr. Main Street. And so really with Skyline investors, we were really looking to, you know, commercialize this renewable opportunity for our unit holders and start a fund around it. So 2018 made the transition to Skyline and really that was the start of the Skyline Clean Energy Fund that was really complementary to the other, to the other REITs.
Bob Simpson: Yeah, so you've, you've kind of touched on that, but you know, one of the first things that we like to take a look at is why Why should somebody choose Skyline as their investment partner if they're looking at getting into clean energy?
Robert Stein: Yeah, we're quite unique in the sense that, you know, if you want to get into clean energy, you can invest in a couple, you know, pretty good publicly traded companies out there.
But they they're very much dependent on the market and the next big project they're building overseas. So there's a lot of volatility to, their unit value, , with us, you know, we're buying the same quality of assets, these commercial grade assets, we understand what the underlying value of those assets are.
We have steady unit value growth, and if there's a big shift in the market, we're not seeing a big depression in our unit value. Our unit value is based on potential gas flow. And so, you know, as we continue to generate cash on these assets, our unit value continue to increase. And so where Skyline is a really good fit is, you know, retail and class F investors really can get involved in our product. They can buy our product.
We're buying the same institutional quality assets. And, , you know, there's a lot of stability in our, in our cash flows, we have government backed contracts, we have consistent cash flows, and, you know, we see really steady unit value growth, which fits really well into a lot of people's portfolios.
So, you know, Skyline as a whole, really, the mantra was buy in markets we understand, we're usually in secondary and tertiary markets, our backyard, where we have apartment buildings and retail buildings. We also want energy infrastructure because it's essential to, providing the energy for that, that infrastructure.
And so buying the markets, we understand, operate them really good. Get guys like me that are boots on the ground, have constructed projects, know what quality projects look like and really operate them as efficiently as possible. And you're really packaged up into a nice ball where our investors can invest and really benefit from the fruits of, of those assets generating.
Bob Simpson: Yeah. Yeah. One of the things that we like about the private space is the reduced volatility for investors. You know, we've seen that in a lot of the REITs where, , you could compare a, a private where it's a nice smooth ride where, you know, in COVID, some of the, the public REITs dropped 35, 40%. It's they're exactly the same thing, but the price dropped 35 or 40, which is great.
If you're an investor getting in at negative 35 or 40, but it's tougher, tougher if you bought it and then watch it drop 35 or 40.
Robert Stein: Oh yeah. Our CFO always says, you know, what our investors do is focus the next morning on reading the sports section or any other thing, but the finance section. Cause you know, your investment is when you went to sleep that night before is solid.
That's important to us to know that we can sleep at night. We've invested in quality assets that still have the same value the next morning.
Bob Simpson: And you may, for a while, you may go through and look at it every day for the first three months and say, but the price only goes up a little bit every day or every month and it's pretty steady.
Robert Stein: Yeah, for sure.
Bob Simpson: So Rob, just tell me a bit more about the fund. Let's let's dig into what is, how's the fund constructed? What are the goals of the fund? How did, what kind of distributions and things would investors look at their?
Robert Stein: Appreciate. Yeah. When we, when we set up the fund to your point there, we wanted a really stable and consistent product for our unit holders.
We didn't want the volatility. So we really based it around an equity growth fund, that we really focused on cash flows. But instead of, you know, distributing those cash flows, reinvest those cash flows into new opportunities. And this has a secretive, you know, compounding effect to our unit value, which we're really comfortable with. You know, we, we have the product that's underwriting, value is in its contract itself.
So we have our average maturity to term on our contracts about 12 years. These contracts are all backed with credit worthy counterparts, like the provincial government, Ontario or Fortis, you know, gas producers, things like that. And, the benefit with that is, you know, we have the, the, the equity like returns without the volatility of the public markets.
So we have these really stable cash flows, which is really important for us. And, you know, with sustainable infrastructure, we, we, we really want to make sure that we're, Surfacing as much value as possible for our unit holders. So we might buy an asset that has been around for 8 years or 10 years on a fixed contract.
We like knowing that what the operating history of that asset is. Oh, how did it perform? What was the capital expenditures? What was the operations of maintenance of that asset? And so when we underwrite it, we're not buying something new saying, let's try and figure this out. We're buying an operating asset, saying now we can really utilize Skyline's value of having this 8 billion or 9 billion organization with shared services to say, how do we maximize the value?
So we renegotiate insurance and oftentimes we pool our insurance. So we get really great insurance rates because we're connected to the REITs. You know, we look at, you know, reduced costs for operations and maintenance companies, and we go and really look at the underlying costs and try and make them as efficient as possible.
Then all we have to do is is look at the assets and really go and put great debt on them. And so we go to all of the major banks in Canada. We said this is a pool of renewable energy assets. This is the length left on the term on the contract. What will you turn it out? So most of our debt is coterminous with our contracts with provincial government last 6 months.
And so we can really set debt and forget it. Our average, you know, contract length is 12 years. Our average debt is just under 5%. And that's fixed for the life of the asset. So really, what we then do is we put our operating hat back on and say, all we have to really do is make sure those assets are up and running when the sun shining. And our value of gas producer is producing gas when we're able to, and so really just focuses all on operations.
How do we refine operations? How do we improve those assets with better technology? How do we maximize the generation? So, really, you know, we built a fund around that. It's an equity growth fund. It makes, you know, quarterly, we revalue the units and, we see steady cash flows. We see consistent returns.
And, you know, our assets are really, you know, It's set, forget them for the longterm, quite passive assets.
Bob Simpson: Yeah. It sounds a lot. One of the things that investors on private equity has, has liked is the idea of music royalties. This sounds pretty much the same thing, right? Go buy a music title. And then just take the cash flows.
There's not a lot of operational, , risk or involvement in that. Right?
Robert Stein: No, exactly. Yeah. We're not, we're not collecting checks where we're just operating the assets. And if the sun shining, we want to make sure those assets are up in the sun shining. It's as simple as that.
Bob Simpson: Yeah. And investors today, you know, a lot of investors are looking for that long term stable, stable growth.
So I, I, you know, I liked the idea of, of what you're doing there. Now, where are we in the transition of clean energy? In the one video I watched on your website, you talked a lot about the grids and how they're changing and that sort of thing. Just go, go deep with us on, on, what we're really seeing in the world today, , in clean energy.
Robert Stein: Yeah, you know, I'm careful when I get to answer that question, not to greenwash stuff, because it's easy to say we're doing this just for sustainability and our carbon emissions. We're not. We're doing this to make a really good return for unit holders. Our product happens to be a renewable product. So it checks that box immediately.
It's a simple. It's a sustainable product that fits in a lot of people's portfolios, but we're doing it largely for return, but we're in this energy transition. It's happening right now. You know, you see how many, you know, electric vehicles are on the, on the roads right now. You're seeing, you know, that this need for, you know, more and more energy, the industry is just consuming more and more and more, and our infrastructure isn't keeping up with it, right?
We add 500, 000 new immigrants every year. They need places to live. But they also need the energy to power, you know, the, the industries that, that, , that allow this growth in, in population. And so this, this, this is where everyone talks about this housing crisis, but it's also an energy crisis we're going through.
So what we're seeing in this energy transition is most governments have come and said, we know we have to reduce our emissions worldwide, right? We, we love this planet. We want this planet to continue to be here. So we got to reduce our emissions. So we want to be net zero by 2050. That's a 2050. That's a really lofty goal, and that's serious emission reduction in that period of time.
I'm not sure we'll get there, but we're working really hard to do that. Where we see the real transition to clean energy is, we need more power in this country. And so, you know, can you go and build a coal facility, or in addition to a nuclear facility, or do you expand on clean energy? And the goal with clean energy is it's the cheapest form of power out there today.
We can build a brand new solar system with battery energy storage for less than 7. 5 cents a kilowatt hour. Right now, to have your lights on in your office there, you're probably between 12 and 18 cents a kilowatt hour. So we're drastically reducing the cost of power, which is great. So as we need to add more and more power, let's not do it with, you know, high carbon emission power.
Let's do with low carbon power. Because it's also the most, cost effective way to do it. So really, this expansion is happening. We're seeing government regulations changing to adopt clean energy. We're seeing corporate strategies chops adopted to add more sustainability initiatives and and, you know, clean energy to it.
And really, there's just all centered around this need to reduce our carbon footprint. And 1, we need more power. Let's do that in the most cost effective way and the most energy efficient way. And that's all through clean energy. So we're riding this wave right now and, and it's pretty exciting. Clean energy is the most adopted energy source in the world right now.
There's more, you know, solar and wind and water, , power generation being built than any of the other forms combined. And so it's really quite an awesome place to be. And we're really lucky to have the fund at this time, because there's just a ton of opportunity for growth and in our fund.
Bob Simpson: And clean energy is really more of a, a local strategy too, versus by building a massive, our energy producing plant, right?
Like, building a water plant, building an atomic plant, it's. That's just not the way of the future. The way of the future is, is to do it locally.
Robert Stein: No, you're right. You know, we're, and we're in Ontario. So half of our power comes from three nuclear facilities in Ontario. Half of the power comes from that, but it's highly subsidized.
The Canadian government or the Ontario government spends about 6 billion subsidizing our power in Ontario alone. And so, you know, the, the, the original thought process when we're building out infrastructure, electrical infrastructure in Ontario was, you build these massive facilities, that were all over Ontario and then distribute the power.
That's an old antiquated way to do it. You know, you need to build the power where the power is being consumed. And so it's this decentralized model. Don't have a nuclear facility up in, you know, Bruce on the Lake Huron, and then send power, you know, 200 kilometers to Milton. Don't do that. That's inefficient.
It's going to be billions of dollars just for poles and wires. Build those power generators where the power is being consumed. So you're seeing more and more of that. If you ever drive on the 401 through Milton, there's a big building on stilts and it's actually a natural gas peaker plant. And the goal of that peaker plant is, when everyone gets home from work and wants to cook dinner and do their laundry and turn on their TVs, there's this massive surge of power need.
And so this peaker plant runs for about seven hours a day. It ramps up for four hours because it really has a lot of heat that comes out of it. It operates for an hour peak load and then it ramps down for three hours. What an inefficient way to generate power. And so, you know, you're seeing more of this, but you're seeing that in our backyard.
You're seeing that natural gas peaker plant in Milton, where that power is being that that population is growing. So big fan on decentralized power and build the power where it's being consumed. That's why it's great. We put them on rooftops of our industry, industrial buildings. We build them in farmers fields really close to cities that we're providing.
So. You're really seeing this, this, this change, a shift from, you know, centralized power to decentralized power, which is going to reduce the cost of power, reduce the cost of transmission for everyone. And you get aware of all these old antiquated pole and line centralized locations, which we're a big fan of.
Bob Simpson: Yeah, I was driving back from Lake Placid in August, and they have these massive farms that have just been turned into solar, right? Instead of rows of peaches, you've got rows of solar in there. Yeah.
Robert Stein: Yes. Yeah. We're seeing, we're seeing more, you know, big commercial sites. For solar really strategically located to where they need power.
So, you know, if you drive out to Leamington way, they, they have a huge power demand out there. So there have, , you know, tenders out now for power production out there, build, build the power out there. You know, wind got a bad rap in Ontario, when it first came out, they were building it in farmers fields. And, you know, 1 farmer would get the wind turbine and get a lease check out of it, get 20, 000 a year and the other farmer wouldn't and say, I got to look at this thing.
It's an eyesore. There's a little flicker from the light when the, when the turbine goes around, and it really got, you know, a lot of negative publicity. It's a healthy technology. It just was sort of the wrong way to implement it opposed to, you know, maybe give everyone in that community a benefit for having that.
So, you know, for a while there, we saw. A bunch of a bunch of issues that came out of this adoption of clean energy, but they're really strategic and where they put them. Now, they make sure there's visual screens. They make sure they're not going to be an ice or discount people's property. So they're doing a better job of it.
But that's that's, you know, any new industry. There's that evolution and we've seen that evolution. You know, now we're taking a program. We're not even on government subsidies that Clean Energy Fund has, you know, 82 assets on government subsidies. But anything that's expanded from now is all based on, hey, what can I sell power to a person that needs power for, you know, so they're called power purchase agreements.
So I'm going to build a 10 megawatt facility and a Skyline apartment needs 10 megawatts of power. Now it's a business to business transaction saying, Skyline apartment, what do you pay for power? I pay 12 cents a kilowatt hour. Okay, we can build this facility, make a reasonable rate of return for 11 cents a kilowatt hour.
Now let's go in an agreement for 20 years that we'll provide you power at a discount to market. That's good for your investor. Good for our investor and eliminates, you know, government subsidies. So we're able to stand on our own two feet because we overspent during that period of time, expanding renewal, but we gain that knowledge.
And now we're running with that knowledge, which is which is a fun place to be.
Bob Simpson: Yeah, no, it's great. Now let's turn our attention just back to the fund. So as an investor and investor comes in and quiet, you know, becomes an investor in the clean energy fund. What, what will they see? What kind of cash flows will they see?
What kind of returns are expected? What if, what are some historical returns that they, that current investors would have experienced.
Robert Stein: Sure. Yeah. Since inception, , we've delivered about, just over a 9% return. We target between 9 and 12%. You know, we're not taking any risk with these contracts.
So the assets we're buying are, are with, you know, really credit worthy. , we're not looking for these huge, you know, risky, , assets that have, you know, You know, 25 30 percent returns. We're not doing any development in the fund right now. We're really buying stable operating cash flows is what we're looking for.
So we see typically returns between 9 and 12%. You know, last year, I think our annualized return was about 10%. And that's great for our unit holders. So, you know, what we look to do is, you know, really, you know, low risk, low volatility product. We want to beat inflation. That's important for our unit holders, our average unit holders between 65 and 85.
And they don't want the volatility, don't want the risk. They want to know their money's growing. They're, they're, they're beating inflation, which is important. And that has continued growing. So it's all equity growth. Because we don't make a distribution, it's a really tax efficient product. You know, because we reinvest in assets, we, we kick off the taxable consequence for the fund.
Eight, nine, ten years. So the only taxable consequence is when a unit holder sells a portion of the units or the units. There's capital gains at that period of time. But, you know, we've set up a product that's going to continue to grow, sustainably at around nine to twelve percent. And, we, we've typically seen that and we continue to see that, when we buy an asset, we buy on a discounted cashflow model.
So we know what the cash will look like till end of life of the asset. And, we're really comfortable with the stable growth of our unit value.
Bob Simpson: Yeah. So I think you made the comment that a lot of the investors are more the baby boomer 65 to 85, as opposed to some of the equity investors who are 65, but they feel like they're 85.
Robert Stein: Yeah, exactly.
Bob Simpson: So no cashflow. It's just, you buy the units, you hold them. When you sell them, it's a capital gain. And, and they, they, , you know, compare it compared to...
Robert Stein: On a quarterly basis, we reevaluate our units. And, and, since inception, we've had quarterly unit value increases. And so, you know, a unit holder will see growth through unit value growing.
And so, yeah, we're not, we're not distributing yet. We'll get to a point where we generate more cash than we probably can spend. And we have a distribution model worked out. And as soon as we hit that number, well, we may start making a small distribution. And then the rest will go to unit value growth.
But right now we have so many amazing opportunities. We saw this appetite actually, when we started the fund, the REITs, the 3 other REITs made distributions. But about 50% of our investors had set up for the dividend reinvestment plans, the DRIP. And so they were DRIPing it. So they said that half of our investors were already DRIPing back into the funds.
So when we sort of, this is a forced DRIP, we, we have a lot of investors coming and saying, "Hey, we're investing, we're going to invest with you for a three, five plus year hold." We're comfortable with that money growing in a really tax efficient way. And if life happens and we need to redeem, no problem. We can, we can, we can manage the redemption in a, in a really meaningful way and, and yeah, they have to be cap games at that time.
But, it's just, so it was a really clean way to sort of set up a product product that was complimentary to the Skyline REIT because we're part of the Skyline family. If you're looking for a distribution, that's important for your cash flow.
Maybe you have to go to one of the other Skyline products, but if you're, you have a, you know, a little bit of cash that you want to grow at a greater rate and a really tax efficient way, we're a great product for a lot of our unit holders there.
Bob Simpson: Or if you are an investor and you have a capital loss carry forward.
This is, this is a great way to, to get tax free returns in a fund like this.
Robert Stein: Yes. We have a lot of business owners and class F investors that come in as well. And you know, they have a fairly good year and they want to sink a couple hundred thousand dollars in. It's a great way to sort of sink it in, watch it grow without the taxable consequence.
So we, we see a lot of different reasons why people come into the fund.
Bob Simpson: Yeah, no, that's great. What do you think? Are the biggest risks for investors in this fund?
Robert Stein: You know, , when we, when, , when the Ford government got in, they came and said, ah, we're going to cancel all these really expensive clean energy assets.
The contracts are just so solid, , that they basically have make whole provisions that we have to generate power for the provincial government for as long as our contract exists. So, you know, at one time it would have said the government was the biggest risk. But, you know, last week, the Ford government came out and said, Hey, we have a power problem.
We have this huge demand coming up that we need to hit today. And so, although the Ford government was probably the biggest naysayers of clean energy, they're probably our biggest advocates now. We have about 5,000 megawatts of renewable energy in Ontario. And the Ford government need another 5,000 megawatts added and then by 20, 2034.
And so, you know, everything that we've just built over the last 15 years, it's been awesome. We have to double it in the next 10. And so it's an amazing place to be. And, you know, the biggest, the Liberal government in Ontario launched this program. So we knew we had their support and the Conservatives got in.
We thought, oh, this might be a little bit of a blip for the clean energy space, but it wasn't. They're a contract state solid. Been good. Now, the Conservative government are our biggest advocates to expand the market by double. So, you know, that's been a positive. That was our biggest risk for us at one point.
Now, it's probably our biggest positive. In my honest opinion of, risk for us is, is the asset manager, my, and my team's ability to operate, is the biggest risk. If, if we have an asset or a storm that comes through, you and stuff like that happens all the time and takes out a system. How quickly can we get that asset operating because our contract doesn't extend by the 3 months we're done.
It's done at a fixed date. And so really, our ability to perform is the most important thing. And we've assembled a great team with real boots on the ground. We have master electricians on staff. We have, you know, real, technicians that look at are on these sites every single day and we do have assets that go down and we have them quickly if it's possible.
Through my construction experience, we know what the biggest fail points on systems are. Usually it's the electrical infrastructure, like a transformer or an inverter. And so we spend a lot of money making sure we have spare parts and inventory to address any, any downtime issues. But I would say with any clean energy product, you really, it's yields would drastically depend on the ability to keep that system operational. Just like a car. You know, if you're, if you're doing oil lube and filter changes regularly, the car will generally be performing and once in a while, that car will have something goes wrong, breaks or tires or whatever and you just have to make sure you're constantly maintaining it.
So we have a strict process where we're operating assets. We want all our systems to have eyes on them in a full annual check before June, because that's really when we start making the most amount of money. And so we do, um our oil lube and filter changes in the spring and make sure these assets are fully ready to, to generate for the summer.
So, you know, generation our ability to to operate the assets and the biggest risk for the fund.
Bob Simpson: Yeah, well, we made the, personally made the shift to solar for pool heating years ago, I remember the guy that, our pool guy, I said to him, I think we're putting in solar and he said, well, solar heating for a pool is really good when you don't need it because it doesn't, you can't save it for over time.
Anyway, just, , wrapping up any final thoughts on, . On our discussion today.
Robert Stein: Oh, and I appreciate getting to know you a little bit better and what you're doing there. You know, we have an appetite. A lot of our, our REIT's have we have 6000 retail investors in Skyline and that's 25 years of our founders really hitting the streets.
Going to introduce people, sitting at kitchen tables, getting to know Skyline product. And, the next iteration is we want to continue to have those relationships with retail investors. But we also need relationships with people like you, Bob, that, you know, talk in the class F space and I space. And really for the next growth chapter of Skyline, we, we need more relationships with our advisors, to know that we have a great product here.
So, you know, over the next little while, we're going to be spending some time trying to get on, you know, all the major bank shelves. We want Skyline to be a household name and that's really important for us because we know the value we've brought to our unit holders over the last 25 years and we're really excited what we can do for our unit holders for the next 25 years.
So we're looking for institutional investors, class F investors, and our retail investors to continue to grow. So we're excited about what we're doing and we want to preach it from the hilltops there. So just appreciate the time there.
Bob Simpson: Yeah, well, I attended the, your talk at the Windermere house a couple of weeks ago, and, , it was interesting just talking to some of the investors and the guy sat beside said, yeah, I've been investing with Skyline for the last nine years.
It's been really good. Right. That's, that's kind of what you want to hear. So.
Robert Stein: Oh, I love it. Come, come to our Christmas party. We'll have, we'll have a thousand people at our Christmas party and you'll hear stories like, Oh, I've invested since 25 years ago and I retired early because of it. And you're like, those are real stories.
They're not just, you know, marketing materials. There are people that have told us that. So it really, you know, feels the, well, what we do is hard. It's stressful and it's a real honor managing people's money, but it's stressful. And so it's great hearing those, those stories when people are like, ah, man, I did incredible with your product.
I feel like, oh, that's awesome. So that's the kind of stuff we like, and we're going to continue to do it.
Bob Simpson: If you're building a portfolio, find great assets that you can tuck away and just kind of forget about and, , and, you know, check your statement once a quarter if you want to, , but knowing that, , you're in good hands, so we appreciate you coming and joining us today.
