Frequency Electronics Inc (FEIM) Q1 2027 Earnings Call Transcript

Greetings and welcome to the Frequency Electronics First Quarter Fiscal 2027 Earnings Release Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. Any statements made by the company during this conference call regarding the future constitute forward-looking statements pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements inherently involve uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements. Factors that would cause or contribute to such differences are included in the company's press releases and are further detailed in the company's periodic report filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. By making these forward-looking statements, the company undertakes no obligation to update these statements for revisions or changes after the date of this conference call. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Thomas McKelland, President and Chief Executive Officer.

Thank you, Paul. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining Frequency Electronics' first quarter fiscal year 2027 earnings call. With me today is our Chief Financial Officer, Steve Bernstein. I'm very pleased to report first quarter revenue of $23.5 million, an all-time record for FEI. up 70% year-over-year and up 52% sequentially. As we told you on our fourth quarter, 2026 earnings call in July, we expected to return to growth starting in the current fiscal 2027, and this first quarter is a strong proof point of that. further the increasing confidence in our ability to meet or exceed the 150 million or more in annual revenue that we guided to by fiscal 2029 which ends April 30th 2029 I'll have more to say about that target right additional financial commentary later in the call but I'd like to highlight a few items On our July call, we established three-year minimum margin targets of 50% for gross margin and 30% for operating margin, again, by fiscal 2029. In the fiscal first quarter we're reporting today, we generated gross margin of 45.8% and operating margin of 22%, substantial improvements, and solid progress on our path towards our minimum target. As I've mentioned numerous times over the past few years, we do not expect our progress to be perfectly linear on a quarterly basis, whether in revenue or profitability. But the trends we see in revenue backlog and pipeline, as well as the internal improvements we've made that we discussed last quarter and the operating leverage we should generate with increasing revenue position us well to meet or exceed those minimum targets. As for backlog, it grew to a new record of $129 million, up approximately 82% year-over-year and 16% sequentially. This continued increase in backlog gives further support to our ability to add meaningful growth to FEI in the years to come. As we've discussed before, we expect continued growth in our core space and defense markets, while also seeing additional growth coming from new markets such as space, proliferated satellites, quantum sensing, creation, and alternative position, navigation, and timing. Today I'd like to provide some additional color on several of these markets, all of which build upon our core timing and frequency generation capabilities. So I'm sure you're all familiar with GPS satellites, part of the traditional space business we have sold into. On April 21st of this year, the final GPS-3 satellite was launched, which included FEI's newly developed Digital Rubidium Atomic Frequency Standard, or DRAPS, atomic clock. This enhanced DRAFs clock is currently operational on the GPS satellite, is on order for use on other global navigation satellite systems, and is targeted at future GPS satellites, including the upcoming GPS-3F, or follow-on, launches. This advanced atomic clock is an example of the company's important capabilities, not just to provide the precision time and frequency devices that we've been delivering for the last 65 years, but also our capability to deliver state-of-the-art products with capabilities fueling future technological innovations. You've no doubt seen the news flow over the past several months about the critical need for missile replenishment with government plans to significantly expand production by 2030. And we've spoken with you before about our content that goes into missile batteries for programs such as Patriot and FAD. We expect to generate revenue from those programs in 2027 and for years beyond that, coming from existing orders. More orders to come and additional orders to meet the needs of allied countries. In addition to this missile battery-related work, we're also now bidding on additional missile programs with components that go directly onto the missiles themselves. In some cases, we're being asked to bid on these on-missile programs in order to potentially displace incumbents. For the military that we're producing, that is a good example of both the higher rate production we're talking about and the push by our customers to deliver more sooner. In this case, we're working on a production, in addition, asking us to increase monthly production by more than 50%, while also promising additional follow-on orders. In other words, we're expanding the total size of an already high rate. For example, of our ability to use internally developed technology for expanded use cases, we're currently exploring potential uses of our mercury ion atomic clock for naval applications. Strategic submarines are a potential use case for advanced atomic clocks because they need to be underwater for months at a time, and their timing cannot be updated from GPS satellites while they're underwater. So they'll need a different technology for certain use cases that require very highly accurate timing, and our advanced mercury-ion clocks may be the solution. We believe this is also a good example of our ability to participate in long-term programs for higher-priced systems and to do so with external funding. In quantum sensing, we're making rapid progress in the development of advanced sensors for magnetic navigation in GPS-denied environments. We just recently delivered a sensor and associated electronics to the Army Research Laboratory for additional testing. Development is ongoing at FEI to make smaller, more capable magnetic sensing systems for ALT-PNT applications. Finally, I'd like to discuss the capital raise that we completed right at the end of the first quarter and how that may impact our long-term view previously that we have sufficient capital in place to meet the minimum $150 million revenue target in 2029. Numerous customers are asking us to do more for them. To meet this customer-driven business expansion, we decided to pursue a secondary offering of our common stock in July, which raised approximately $73 million and also brought several excellent long-term oriented new institutional investors into our shareholder base. Approximately $14 million of the labor ended as the green shoe was exercised. We remain debt-free with a very strong cash position, and we anticipate being a free cash flow generative on an annual basis going forward. We would like to thank Morgan Stanley, our lead bankers on the transaction, and Craig Hallam, who served as book-running managers for their hard work transaction. The capital we raised will allow us to pursue capacity expansion to help meet these additional customer requests, which may have the effect of our both reaching the $150 million minimum target sooner and making that target a substantially larger number by Fiscal 2029. We also expect that we will pay for capacity expansion in certain cases. We expect this additional revenue growth from capacity expansion to be organic, and it is likely that if we were to make any acquisitions, they would be small tuck-ins to add to our vertical manufacturing capabilities. We do not intend to buy revenue. Frankly, because we don't need to, given the strength of our backlog, pipeline, order book, and prospects, to be gained by focusing on what is in front of us. Without getting distracted, we should be able to super-serve our customers with this extra capital, resulting in additional profitable growth that should benefit our shareholders as well. with that I'll turn it over to Steve for some financial commentary and I look forward to taking your questions in the Q&A portion of the call Steve thank you Tom and good afternoon as Tom highlighted it's a great start to a fiscal 27 and a strong start to achieving our three-year targets for the

After three months ended, July 31, 26, revenue from commercial and U.S. government communications satellite programs was $11.8 million and accounted for approximately 50 percent of consolidated revenue compared to $6.5 million and approximately 47 percent of consolidated revenue during the same period in the prior fiscal year. Revenue is recognized primarily over time under the percentage of completion method. Revenue from the satellite market are recorded in the FDI New York segment. Revenue from non-space U.S. government Department of Defense customers, which are recorded in both the FDI New York and FDI Zipher segments, were $11.1 million and accounted for approximately 47% of consolidated revenue for the three months ended July 31,26, compared to $6.9 million and approximately 50% of consolidated revenue during the same period in the prior fiscal year. Other commercial industrial revenue for the three months ended July 31,26 and 25 accounted for approximately 3% of consolidated revenue and were $605,000 and $439,000 respectively. The revenue for the three months ending July 31,26 was significantly higher in both segments and in consolidation by approximately 70% or $9.6 million over the same quarter of the prior fiscal year. Revenue from commercial and U.S. government communications satellite L.A. programs increased $5.2 million and over 80 percent, and revenue from non-space U.S. Government Department of Defense customers increased $4.2 million and over 61 percent over the same period in the prior fiscal year. For the three months ended July 31, 26, both gross margin and gross margin rate increased compared to the same period in the prior fiscal year. The increase in gross margin is attributable to the $9.6 million increase in revenue compared to the same period in the prior fiscal year. The 9% improvement in gross margin rate is attributable to higher production levels driving efficiencies in labor, overhead allocation, product mix, and also partially due to efficiencies recognized as programs mature. To the three months ended July 31, 26 and 25, selling general administrative expenses were approximately 18 percent and 26 percent respectively of consolidated revenues, a decrease of approximately 8 percent, however the actual expenditures increased by half a million. The increase in SG&A expenses during the three months ending July 31, 26 related mostly to compensation expenses. SG&A as a percentage of revenue decreased 8 percent over the same period in the prior fiscal year, demonstrating positive operating leverage given the higher revenue base and because the prior year included strategic headcount additions and process optimizations that were implemented to support growth in fiscal 27 and beyond, which caused SG&A as a percentage of revenue to be higher in fiscal 26. Research and development expenditures represent investments intended to keep the company's products at the leading edge of time and frequency technology and enhance future competitiveness. Fluctuations in R&D expenditures will occur in some periods due to current operational needs supporting ongoing programs. The company plans to continue to invest in R&D in the future to keep its products at the state of the art. For the three months ending July 31, 26, operating income was $5.2 million or 22% of revenue and increased significantly compared to the prior fiscal year period's $364,000 operating income due to the higher revenue, gross margin, and operational efficiencies as described The majority of the approximately $0.1 million of investment income for the three-month end of July 31, 26 was from interest income and unrealized gains on assets held in the Frequency Electronics Deferred Compensation Trust. This yields a pre-tax income of approximately $5.2 million for the three months ending July 31,26 compared to approximately $557,000 pre-tax income for the three months ending July 31,25. Consolidated debt income for the three months ending July 31,26 is approximately $4.2 million or 41 cents per share compared to $634,000 or 7 cents per share for the same period in the prior fiscal year. Our fully funding backlog at the end of July was approximately $129 million, a new company high, compared to approximately $111 million for the previous fiscal year ending April 30, 26, and compared to approximately $71 million in the year-ago period. The company's balance sheet continues to reflect a strong working capital position of approximately $90 million and a current ratio of approximately 5.3 to 1, helped by the company's stock offering and which increased further following the exercise of the green shoe after the quarter Additionally, the company is debt-free. The company believes that its liquidity is adequate to meet its operating and investing needs for the next 12 months and the foreseeable future. I'll turn the phone back to Tom and we look forward to your questions.

Thanks, Steve. We're now ready to take...

Thank you. At this time, we will be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. And the first question today will be from Jeff Van Rie from Craig Holland. Jeff, your line is live.

Great, thanks. Thanks for taking the questions, guys, and congrats across the board. Just looks like a fantastic quarter here. Maybe a few for me. Tom, maybe touch on Turbo. I know, obviously, you know, interesting form factor, a lot of useful applications.

Can you just give us a little update in terms of what you're seeing there, in particular from the new bookings side, strength of bookings, any quantification of where revenue is going, maybe insights into the use cases just how it's being deployed just sort of a broader update on turbo would be great yeah yeah sure Jeff we're just starting to beginning to deliver production rate turbo units at this point in time relatively small quantities still but we anticipate things will be picking up in the near future we currently the applications are all aircraft applications manned aircraft applications although we have discussions with some companies regarding applications which is one of the areas that we're most excited about. We are also starting some initial efforts in terms of updating the development of the turbo units for use in space, primarily that involves radiation hardening of those devices.

That's helpful. And then maybe just a couple quick on the numbers front, Steve. The percent of the backlog, that's 12 months, and then also, if you could, just any color around funded. I know you only report in total backlog, the portion that's funded. I'm wondering how the ratio of funded to total has changed maybe compared to, say, a year ago, quarter.

Well, I'll answer the first question. Well, the reported backlog is fully funded. So that is fully funded. We don't report the non-funded courts, the options or things. Tom has explained numerous times, like we get a contract just for like $10 million, maybe 10% or 20% of it's funded, so only $1 million or $2 would go into backlog. We don't report that other $8 million or $9 million until it becomes funded.

Yeah, no, understood. What I'm asking is, you know, you've got visibility to what the rest of that backlog is, but you're only reporting funding. I'm asking the ratio of what's visible to total and how it's changed. And then the second part of the question is, what portion is the next 12 months?

I think it's multiple times of it going, you know, the unfunded portion of it. And as for the 12 months, it's about 60-some odd percent, 65% approximately.

Tom, you referenced again on this call, and you talked about it last call as well. I mean, obviously, the order book is full, and you've got to figure out how to allocate and which orders to take. but one of the responses has been to ramp production. Just talk a little bit about, you know, where you are in that volume production ramp, that build-out. You know, are you hitting your throughput goals? You know, it's a challenge to keep up at this level of growth. Curious how you're doing on that volume production shift.

Yeah, that's a really good question, Jeff. I think that's certainly one of our biggest challenges at this point. We are ramping successfully, ramping up our production on a number of fronts at this point. But we, you know, there are changes and limits to what we are able to achieve in that regard. And I think one of the management challenges is being able to thread the needle appropriately so that we, you know, of course, we never like to turn down additional business. On the other hand, it's very important for the liver. And so in some cases, we are not signing up to some of the more ridiculously optimistic schedules that some of our customers are asking for because we don't feel that it's possible. And I think, you know, it's important for us to kind of a thing. But, yeah, that's a good regard at this point.

On the proliferated LEO opportunity, I mean, I think you commented last quarter 90% win rates in space. And in particular, we've seen some real interesting, call it green shoots, in terms of proliferated LEO and the ability to win. Just curious, any updates there last 90 days, things that have influenced your conviction? What you're seeing in the pipeline there, observations on PILIO opportunity would be great.

Yeah, yeah. I think the opportunities are really good. I think that, you know, a big arena for us is the classified satellites, which the architecture is very aggressively moving to the proliferated satellite model. It is still in the early stages of that transition, but we are kind of, you know, at the point where we're moving from demonstrating capabilities to initial production on those programs. We're getting involved in more programs every day at this point. So that's really pretty exciting. and but I think there's a tremendous amount more to come in the future we hear a lot of talk about data centers in space but that that hasn't materialized quite yet I know there's talk about that happening in 2027 but we I think that's probably a little bit overly optimistic, but that concept is definitely happening, and we are in the thick of it and very excited about that. Sort of a variant of that, we involved in the lunar missions that you get a lot of press at this point in time, And in some ways, it's similar to the proliferated satellites. In some ways, it's different. We're not really talking about the hundreds or thousands of devices heading toward the moon, but I think a lot of the approach is similar to the proliferated satellites where we're looking for a lot smaller, cheaper, faster production of things. And so I think that's important involvement for us because it helps to get our feet wet in this smaller, cheaper, faster.

Last one maybe on gross margin. Tom, I know you pay a lot of attention to which contracts you take and which you don't. And there are a lot of variables that can affect your gross margins, whether they're follow-on orders versus new and a variety of other things. Just as you look at the order book and what is to come over the next few quarters, any notable call-outs in terms of, you know, you put up a great gross margin print here this quarter quite a bit ahead of us, things that would drive it higher or lower.

I know you're not going to call a specific quarter, but as you look out over the next, you know, two or three, anything to call out about what's in that pipe and going to turn into revenue and whether those are in particular upward or downward pressure and gross margin yeah I you know I don't see any any particular either upward or downward pressure on things at this point in time I guess what I'd say is it you know it's it's really part of our strategy at this point we've talked about it before you know we know so much growth in our basic markets that we're it puts us in a really strong position we can be a little bit picky so I I think it for us the strategy is to be disciplined to make sure that we did things you know such that we can be very profitable and maintain our high margins and of course part of that strategy is being willing to lose some things if you know the competition is extreme and the margins that we would necessarily need to accept in order to get those programs are a little bit lower so so we're in a in a really good position and we are staying disciplined and yeah and not you know I think we've talked about it previously, the proliferated satellites, especially in the early stages, are ones where we are willing to accept somewhat lower margins in order to get involved in those programs. But at this point, you know, we, you know, there's not a major, major move in that in the sense of having to accept lower margins. We are seeing activity in the proliferated satellites, but we haven't really seen a lot of pressure on our margins. So I think it's pretty optimistic. On the margin front, we'll say that we shouldn't interpret that as a straight line upward necessarily.

Yep, got it. Congrats and understood. And obviously, years of decision-making, good decision-making, getting you guys to this point. So congrats to the whole team.

The next question will be from John Sigmund from Stiefel. John, your line is live.

Hey, good afternoon. Thank you very much for taking my question, and congratulations on the momentum in the business.

Yeah, thanks.

So the company's got a long history of relationships with the larger traditional companies. companies you've made reference in earlier calls about bidding with some of these new companies clearly some success sounds like it's percolating on the space side can you talk a little bit about any penetration and success you've had on with the new defense tech companies thank you oh good very good question yes I think it's true that at this point in time most of our success in this arena is in the space environment we we I have to be very

careful about talking about specific programs but we've had conversations with a number of the newer space companies on a variety of different programs, Intuitive Machines, Esperanos, and a number of in the defense arena. We don't have a whole lot of success in this area yet, although we are certainly pursuing things with a number of different companies.

Anduril in particular is is one that we've had communications with yeah let me just leave it at that that's great and then well maybe just on the traditional side the patron bad production increases understand you're more on the battery side versus the interceptor side but is there any way to frame how much increases that could be for your business if we're tripling production rates for those programs thank you again yeah it's very uh you know it's very significant uh obviously you don't build new batteries every

time uh you shoot up a couple of missiles but i think uh the bottom line is we're seeing a tremendous amount of business for both sad and Patriot and I think to put that into context I think you know there's a lot of activity in Ukraine talking about additional missile batteries and things and and I think that the more missiles are shot off tends to mean that batteries are needed in additional locations and this translates into more more business needs in these applications so yeah it for whatever reason I think the bottom line is it's a thriving business for us at this point thank you and once again it will be a star R1 if you wish to ask a question today.

The next question will be from Steve Levinson from Big Rock Research. Steve, your line is live.

Thank you very much. Good afternoon.

Yeah, hi, Steve.

I've enjoyed watching your progress over the last few years, and I'm curious about a few things. You talked about using some of your new capital to expand manufacturing, and I imagine a lot of your work is sort of manual bench work, And I'm wondering if there's an opportunity to enhance margins by using some automation, or is that impractical for the sort of assemblies you make?

A very good question. It's not out of the question. In fact, we are looking at that very carefully, especially in, you know, So quartz crystal manufacturing is an important part of what we do. And the quantities that are required, I guess I should emphasize that all the, you know, this is part of our vertical integration. We do all of the manufacturing of quartz resonators starting from raw quartz crystal material. And so the production there is certainly one of the challenges that we face at this point in time. And we are looking at putting in place additional equipment that has higher throughput capabilities. We tend to think of our facility as sort of a boutique facility because, in general, the quantities that we work with are relatively small for space applications and so forth and so on. And, you know, relative to quartz crystal manufacturing for consumer watches and things of that sort, our production will remain relatively small going forward, but it is nonetheless increasing. And so we are looking at putting in place equipment that can increase the throughput. In addition to that, though, you know, there's a lot of equipment that products that go into space need to be tested in a space-like environment, a so-called thermal vacuum, vacuum environment where we can modify the temperature to be similar to what units experience in space. So, obviously, that's an environment we've not encountered on Earth, and there's a lot of special test equipment in order to be able to test them in those kind of environments. So, another thing that we're looking at adding additional capacity for. And, of course, there's a lot of other things that we're looking at at this point in time. and those are just kind of a couple of straightforward examples.

Great. That's helpful. Thank you. My other question would be, in terms of proliferated satellite constellations, is there an application for the quantum sensor to gather data for the world magnetic model?

Is that something that can be done using that device from space, or is that more a terrestrial item? well I it definitely is something that meaningful measurements can be made from space and I know there there is definitely some talk and some ideas for doing just that I think that you know in terms of quantities I think that which remain relatively small but it is definitely something that we're interested in pursuing great thank you very much I'll be watching your

progress along the way thanks okay great thank you thank you the next question will be coming from Michael Eisner and Michael is a private investor Michael your line is live hey great job one quick question or two in space revenue you coming from?

Well, I think no. The simple answer is I think we're seeing increasing revenue from a variety of different, they're exciting and unique about this time, you know, relative certainly to a decade or two decades ago. You know, I think we've commented on it recently, whereas, you know, a decade ago, there were something like 100 launches in a year. I think in the last year, the United States had something like, it launched something like 3,700 objects into space. so 100 objects launched into space objects being satellites and things like that and now 3,700 so tremendous growth any way you look at it the traditional satellite activity is booming we have a lot of work going on right now but the new proliferated satellite stuff is also very active and we have a lot of programs that we're getting involved in and as we demonstrate success on those programs we see more and more coming in the front door so pretty exciting I like the answer what's the book to bill? You got those kind of numbers?

The book to bill is about 1.76 to 1 for the quarter.

Okay. Thanks, Mike.

Thank you. And the next question will be from Robert Smith from the Center of Performance Investing. Robert, your line is live.

Thank you for taking my questions. Congratulations on the ramp. It's superb to see.

Thank you.

My first question is Could you give me the current R&D figure, and how do you see R&D as a percent of revenue going forward, considering the large yield targets that you have to grow?

So a good question. I think a couple of qualitative statements first. I think, and we've talked about this in the past, But one of the overall strategies for the company is to try to get as much external funding for R&D as possible. I think this is really important that we specialize in because, you know, the primary customer, really the U.S., And, you know, when the U.S. government funds research, it's always because they're funding applications that they're interested in. And, of course, that's what we want to focus our research and development on, what our customers are interested in, as opposed to stuff that might be intellectually interesting but doesn't necessarily lead to profitable products down the road. So that's the first thing, is to try to get external funding for as much research and development as possible. But talking about the internal R&D, I think that, like a lot of things, understand that there will be fluctuations. situations, and so I don't want to make statements that would be held to on a quarter-by-quarter basis, but I think that we anticipate the internal R&D funding to stay under 10 percent revenue at this point in time I think that we will see in an absolute sense some additional R&D expenditures over the next couple of years as our revenue grows I hope that gives at least a bit of an answer to your question it does and my second question is would you at all consider the initiation of a small cash dividend to attract any number of institutions that won't buy a security without a cash payment? Well, we have done so in the recent past, and I think we certainly will consider that going forward. I'm not making any promises at this point, but yes definitely something that's on the table thanks very much good luck thank you thank you thank you and there were no other questions at this time I would now like to hand the call back to Thomas McKellen for closing remarks thank you thanks for taking the time to listen and participate in today's call and we look forward to providing further updates in the coming months.

Thank you. This does conclude today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time and have a wonderful day. Thank you for your participation.