Thrilled To Up-Size IPO: UL Solutions CEO

Bring us to the reasoning of why right now was the right time to take UL Solutions public. There’s a lot of people wondering about the reopening of this IPO market. Well, we’re really excited to be here today at the New York Stock Exchange and we’re 130 year old company. We have been planning this IPO for a fairly long time and while it hasn’t been an ordinary time in the market, we’re pretty extraordinary company. So as soon as we believe the market was ready, we were ready. Well, you also delayed this IPO to this year and I’m so curious about how you think about the market volatility as you go public. Obviously it’s a tough tape out there today, but you’re plowing through, you know we’ve been around 130 years and we are in this market hopefully for another 130 years. So the rise and falls of today’s market is not concerning to us. But as we looked for the right timing for the IPO, we did look at some longer term trends around in general where investors who were seeking high quality assets when they were ready to take on the IPO risk and jump on board with us. We were thrilled to be able to upsize the offering. How do you think about the state of innovation right now? You think about the the rush of investor money that has come until the Fed hiking cycle into into the technology sector. But outside of the Magnificent 7 in recent years, it’s been a tougher time, but you do work with a lot of these large companies here. How do you see the future of innovation here? The future of innovation is really what fuels UL solutions. We’ve 80,000 customers across 35 sectors and those customers are each looking at the ways in which they can bring their innovations to market safely, securely and sustainably. So the megatrends such as the electrification of everything, address the needs of both our industrial and our consumer customers, and we are right there by their sides for their innovations. You know, it’s interesting. I’m curious about how you think about your presence across the United States and in Chicago as well. Jennifer, if you think about the future of talent, do you see any changes in the upcoming workforce as you go to hiring and think about expanding your base? You know, over 2/3 of our workforce are highly technically skilled. We have 15,000 employees globally and the majority of them have some type of technical accreditation all the way up to our engineers and our scientists with multiple pH DS. We have to do everything that we can to continue to attract and retain that talent. We believe that being a public company will help us do that and we’ll continue to make investments in the right markets all over the world to attract that top technical talent. Well, Speaking of all over the world, let’s talk about kind of the home city here, Chicago. There are a lot of questions about the changes on the horizons in the Chicago Public school system and what would this mean about your ability and the city’s ability to be attracting talent and nurturing talent within the city. You know, we’ve been in Chicago 130 years. We were founded there when the World’s Fair was addressing the safety issue of the technology of the day, which was electricity. We fully intend to be in Chicago for another 130 years. We opened a second office in Chicago downtown last year to attract that talent because Chicago is a great city for young kids to move to. It was the number two city and will continue to be in any city that attracts that type of talent that we need.