Operator
Good day, and welcome to the Precision Optics Report's third quarter fiscal year 2026 financial results conference call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the start key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press the star key, then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press the star key, Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Robert Bloom, with some partners. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Darcy, and thank you to everyone joining the call today. As the operator mentioned, on today's call, we will discuss Precision Optics' third quarter fiscal year 2026 financial results, and it's for the period ended March 31, 2026. With us on the call, representing the company today, are Dr. Joe Forkey, Precision Optics Chief Executive Officer, and Wayne Cole, the company's Chief Financial Officer. At the conclusion of today's Prepared Remarks, we'll open the call for a question and answer session. Again, if you dialed in through the traditional teleconference line, as the operator indicated, please press star, then one to ask a question. If you are listening through the webcast portal and would like to ask a question, you can submit your question through the Ask a Question feature in the webcast player. Before we begin with prepared remarks, we submit for the record the following statement. Statements made by the management team of Precision Optics during the course of this conference call may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 is amended and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 is amended, and such forward-looking statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements describe future expectations, plans, results, or strategies, and are generally preceded by words such as may, future, plan, or planned, will, or should, expected, anticipates, draft, eventually, or projected. Listeners are cautioned that such statements are subject to a multitude of risks and uncertainties that could cause future circumstances, events, or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements, including the risks that actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors and other risks identified in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. All forward-looking statements contained during this conference call speak only as of the date in which they were made and are based on management's assumptions and estimates as of such date. The company does not undertake any obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of the receipt of new information, the occurrence of future events, or otherwise. All right, with that said, let me turn the call over to Dr. Joe Forkey, Chief Executive Officer of Precision Optics. Joe, please proceed.
Thank you, Robert, and thank you all for joining our call today. Last quarter, we said Precision Optics had strong production demand, but we're still working through the challenges of scaling a much larger manufacturing business. In the third quarter, revenue continued to grow, and we began to see the payoff of the investments we've made in the last few quarters improving manufacturing processes and efficiency. Revenue was $8.7 million, a new quarterly record for precision optics, and more than double the quarterly revenue of a year ago. More importantly, we achieved positive adjusted EBITDA, a major milestone that reflects both the strength of our core production programs and the manufacturing improvements we've made over the last several quarters. Our two largest production programs continue to drive the business. Revenue from our top-tier aerospace customer reached $3.6 million, a new record, representing 44% sequential growth. This is the result of our investment in production capacity now achieving improved efficiency. Production yields on this line have now increased to 97% consistently, a significant improvement from previous months that were typically in the 85% to 95% range. Because our customer has faced bottlenecks elsewhere in their deployment process, they have asked us to slow production against our existing backlog in Q1 and Q2 of fiscal 2027, with new orders expected for Q3. All indications are that we continue to be the sole source for this assembly, and that the long-term prospects for this program remain extremely high. Our single-use Sysdisco program also contributed record revenue at $2.2 million in the third quarter, an all-time high, in representing approximately 10% sequential growth. More importantly, we have made dramatic progress in terms of production yields and costs. Here, too, yields have increased to current rates above 90%, but not yet to the targeted 95% level, which we expect to achieve in Q4. Beyond those two lead programs, we continue to advance newer programs, including our single-use ophthalmic endoscope program, supported by a $3.5 million follow-on production order that we just announced last week. Our Ross Optical division also contributed significantly to the quarter's improved bottom Revenue for Ross Optical was approximately $1.3 million, compared to $1.0 million in Q2 and 0.8 million a year ago, representing 65% year-over-year growth. This is important because this business can support higher revenue without a proportional increase in headcount or other fixed costs, so incremental revenue contributes meaningfully to gross profit and adjusted EBITDA. As a result of revenue growth and production improvements, our overall gross margin improved to 24% compared to 10% a year ago and 3% in Q2. While we still have work to do, the quarter showed that our operational improvements are beginning to translate into stronger financial performance as our production lines become more stable and the higher revenue levels leverage the manufacturing infrastructure we've built over recent quarters. The process and personnel updates that have driven the results are directly attributable to the change we made in our operating leadership bringing on joe trout as chief operating officer in october of last year joe has rebuilt the operations team making changes where needed and empowering others to act with urgency to deliver more product with greatly improved efficiency joe and his team have made great progress in six months and i am confident we are seeing just the beginning of what they can accomplish going forward we also strengthened our balance sheet in march through an oversubscribed $10 million public offering led by existing and new investors, and including participation from directors and officers. This capital supports our growth plans, and I want to thank all of our investors for their support. Given the strength of our results and our visibility into the remainder of the fiscal year, we are increasing fiscal 2026 revenue guidance to a range of $29 to $31 million dollars compared to our previous guidance of 26 to 28 million dollars this represents 52 to 62 percent growth over fiscal 2025 revenue of 19.1 million dollars we are also increasing fiscal 2026 adjusted ebitda guidance to a range of negative 2.5 to negative 2.7 million dollars compared to our previous guidance of negative 2.5 to negative 3.0 million dollars this translates into another quarter of roughly break-even adjusted EBITDA in Q4. For comparison, adjusted EBITDA was negative $3.7 million in fiscal 2025 and negative $2.7 million in the first six months of the current fiscal year. As we look forward to Q4 and into fiscal 2027, we anticipate continued strong performance from our lead aerospace and cystoscopy production lines, along with our quickly ramping single-use ophthalmic endoscope lines. And with the highest backlog in many quarters, we believe that the recent increases in ROS optical revenues are sustainable and will continue to contribute to positive margins and bottom-line profitability going forward. In addition to the continuation of these strong revenue-producing programs, we expect as many as five to six programs in the development pipeline to move to production in fiscal 2027. Three of these are scheduled to enter production over the next six months. A low-volume, single-use device for small joint arthroscopy, an upper GI scope, and a robotic surgery articulating rigid scope. While there are always timeline, yield, and efficiency challenges when development programs are transitioning to production, our new operations team is deeply experienced and already working closely with the production and product development teams to ensure a smooth transfer and efficient drive to profitable volume production. This was a fantastic quarter for POC, and we believe it's just the beginning of leveraging our improved operational infrastructure. With high revenues supported by our existing programs, new programs entering production today, and new production slated for the next six to 12 months, along with a strong outlook for Ross optical revenue and high variable margins, we believe the recent positive trends will continue to drive growing profitability. In light of our operating performance and growing confidence in our production capabilities, which contributed to our successful capital raise, we are thinking about strategic investments in our business in two specific areas. First, we are investing in capabilities required to become the leading production company in micro-optics, including components and systems, especially those that are small and complex. We have learned through the ramp of the production programs I spoke to before that there are greater requirements to becoming a premier production company than we initially expected. Investments go beyond simply increased production capacity. We require investment in quality assurance, manufacturing engineering, supply chain management, and other functions. We have made several of these out of necessity in recent months, and will continue on this path to enhance and stabilize these capabilities to be well prepared for the anticipated ongoing increase in production volumes. Along with this, we continue to evaluate multiple options for potential updates to our manufacturing facilities. Second, we want to grow within the markets we currently serve, all of which continue to exhibit strong growth trajectories able to support the substantial long-term growth of POC. We participate in three primary markets, medical device, defense and aerospace, and satellite communications. We have previously considered satellite communications as part of aerospace, but have begun to treat that segment separately as we work to better understand market drivers and primary participants. Medical device, which remains our largest and most immediate opportunity, continues to move toward minimally invasive procedures, smaller imaging systems, and single-use devices. This aligns directly with our core strengths, particularly in micro optics and digital imaging. market data continues to support these observations with recent reports estimating the disposable income market will grow at a compound annual growth growth rate of approximately 15 to 20 percent over the next 10 years this is also where our unity platform becomes important unity was designed to reduce development costs time to market and execution risk through a modular imaging architecture that can support reusable and single-use endoscopic systems. As more customers look to bring advanced imaging products to market efficiently, we believe Unity can enhance our role as a development and production partner and provide a strong competitive advantage. Today, we have one Unity program in our product development pipeline and are in discussions with four additional sales prospects today. The second major market is defense aerospace, which is increasingly driving optical systems to smaller size, weight, and power, or SWAT. We believe there are opportunities in a broad range of products, from autonomous vehicles to directed energy weapons. Interest in budgets for these types of systems have increased substantially, given the wars in Ukraine and Iran. We are adding resources and emphasis here, as evidenced by our recent participation at the SPIE Defense and Security Conference at the National Harbor in Maryland just two weeks ago. Our recently announced development agreement for a high-end jet engine inspection boroscope is a good example of the complex optical opportunities where precision optics can be highly competitive. The third market focus is satellite communications and related infrastructure. Current market studies estimate this market to be growing at 15 to 25 percent per year. We see opportunities similar to the program, which is currently our largest revenue generator, in both ground-based and space-based systems as satellite networks continue to expand. Across medical device, defense aerospace, and satellite communications, we are finding a common theme that customers need smaller, more precise, higher-performance optical systems. We will be investing in go-to-market resources to expand our presence and customer reach within these sectors, and we will consider add-on capabilities as needed to complement and broaden our current offerings. Investments will be made with discipline and high expectations of returns, which we think is achievable given current market dynamics. With that overview, let me turn it over to Wayne to review the financials in more detail. Thank you, Joe.
Let me expand on some of Joe's comments on the financial results, starting with revenue. For the third quarter, total revenue was $8.7 million compared to $4.2 million in the year-ago third quarter, an increase of $4.5 million, or 108%. Revenue was also up compared to $7.4 million in the prior sequential quarter. Breaking it down, production revenue was approximately $7.6 million compared to $3.3 million in the year-ago quarter and $6.4 million in the prior sequential quarter. Product development, or engineering revenue, was $1.1 million compared to $900,000 in the year-ago quarter and $1 million in the previous quarter. Our aerospace program contributed $3.6 million in revenue during the quarter. while the single-use sister scope program contributed $2.2 million in revenue, net of tariffs. Ross optical revenue was $1.3 million in the quarter, compared to $1 million in the sequential second quarter and $800,000 in the year-ago third quarter. Both represented quarterly records. As we discussed last quarter, we successfully negotiated agreements with these customers to pass through tariffs without markup. Total revenue net of tariffs would have been $8.3 million. For the quarter, gross margin was 23.6% compared to 10% in the year ago third quarter and 2.8% in the prior sequential quarter. Gross profit increased to $2.1 million compared to $418,000 in the year ago quarter. As Joe discussed, the improvement was especially meaningful because it reflects the operational progress we have made in the business. Higher production volumes, better throughput, and improved yields all contributed to stronger gross profit performance. The gross margin was also impacted by the recording of a $225,000 refundable credit from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Economic Development Incentive Program, which is earned by POC as we increase the number of employees at our Massachusetts locations. Given our anticipated growth, we expect additional refundable credits from the EDIT program in future periods. Total operating expenses were approximately $2.1 million during the third quarter, compared to approximately $2.5 million in the year-ago third quarter. Breaking it down, SG&A expenses were $1.9 million during this quarter, compared to $2.2 million in the year-ago quarter. The decrease was primarily due to lower stock-based compensation and recruiting costs, partially offset by increased consulting, bonuses, and bad debt expense. R&D expenses were $267,000 during the quarter, compared to $211,000 in the year-go quarter, an increase of $56,000. R&D expenses primarily represent employee-related expenses to support product improvement, development new technologies and standardized approaches to address opportunities in our three primary markets as a result of the factors i've discussed our net loss for the quarter was 108 thousand dollars compared to a net loss of 2.1 million dollars in the year ago third quarter compared to a net loss of 1.8 million dollars in the sequential second quarter adjusted ebitda which excludes stock-based compensation interest expense depreciation and amortization was positive three hundred thousand dollars in the third quarter compared to negative 1.3 million dollars in the year ago third quarter and negative 1.5 million dollars in the sequential second quarter this was a major milestone for the company and reflects the combination of record revenue improved manufacturing performance better yield, and continued operating expense discipline. As Joe discussed, we believe the third quarter provides evidence that the investments we have made in operations, leadership, manufacturing infrastructure, and production capacity are beginning to translate into improved profitability. Cash at March 31, 2026 was $10.7 million dollars compared to approximately 900 000 at december 31 2025. during the quarter we completed an oversubscribed 10 million dollar public offering to support our growth plans the offering included participation from both existing and new investors as well as participation from directors and officers this financing significantly strengthened our balance sheet and provides additional flexibility as we continue to scale production support working capital needs and invest in the growth opportunities joe discussed earlier bank debt at march 31 2026 was approximately 1.5 million dollars we continue to engage in productive discussions with our current as well as alternate commercial banks to improve our loan facilities commensurate with our growth plans. As Joe mentioned, based on the strength of our third quarter results and our visibility into the remainder of the fiscal year, we are increasing our fiscal 2026 revenue guidance to a range of 29 to 31 million dollars, compared to our previous guidance of 26 to 28 million dollars. We are also increasing our fiscal 2026 adjusted EBITDA guidance to a range of negative $2.5 million to negative $2.7 million, compared to our previous guidance of negative $2.5 million to negative $3 million. With year-to-date revenue of $22.8 million and positive adjusted EBITDA achieved in the third quarter, our updated outlook reflects the improved operating performance of the business, continued strength in our core production programs, and our expectation that the recent positive trends will continue into the fourth quarter. I will now turn the call back over to Joe for some final comments.
Thank you, Wayne. Before we take questions, let me recap just a few points. First, Q3 revenue reached a new quarterly record of $8.7 million, driven by continued strength in our core production programs. Second, we achieved positive adjusted EBITDA, which is a major milestone for precision optics and demonstrates the impact of our strong production volumes, improved yields, better throughput, and overall impact of the operational changes we have put in place. Third, with the ongoing strength of our base production programs, newer production programs ramping today, and a number of programs slated to move from development to production in fiscal 2027, we anticipate continued profitable growth. And finally, we strengthen the balance sheet through our oversubscribed $10 million public offering and increased our full-year guidance based on the strength of our results and visibility into the fourth quarter. In many ways, this quarter demonstrates the business model we have been building towards. Our production programs are scaling, our operations are improving, our pipeline remains active, and our financial performance is beginning to reflect that progress. We still have work ahead of us, but we are encouraged by the trajectory of the business and believe Precision Optics is well-positioned to create significant long-term value for shareholders.
With that, we'd be happy to take any questions. We will now begin the question and answer session.
Operator
To ask a question, you may press the star, then 1 on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up the handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star, then 2.
Operator
At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Once again, if you would like to ask a question on the phone, please press star, then one, and write your name to the email.
All right, Darcy, this is Robert. While we wait to see if anyone queues up through the live teleconference line, we want to remind everyone that's listening through the webcast, if you'd like to ask a question and you're listening to the webcast player, again, you can type that into the ask a question box there on the player. We do have a couple of questions online, Joe and Wayne, so why don't we get to those first here. The first question here is, can you comment on revenue expectations in Q4 for aerospace and the sysoscope, and what do we expect in Q1 for this as well?
So generally speaking, we expect both of those programs to continue uh at similar levels that we saw in q3 with the with the one caveat that the aerospace program our customers asked us to pull back a bit in q1 and q2 so for that particular program we may see oh i don't know 15 20 pullback in q1 and q2 we expect that some of these other programs that are coming online will make up that difference but generally speaking over the long run we expect both of those programs to continue at the same levels and even to continue growing.
All right. Very good. The next question here is, can you discuss more about the customer requested slowdown and what happens if it moves to a license model?
So the customer requested slowdown is for the aerospace program for which there is no licensing model. And I guess what I can say is that we've heard from our customer that they take the assembly that we make and then they combine it with components from many other suppliers and build it into satellites. And that process of combining it and building it into satellites is running slower than they anticipated. So they've had some challenges on their side. And because of that, they have excess inventory of the part that we're building. And that's the reason for the slowdown. They've also said very clearly that they expect to be back up to similar levels as before once we get through these next couple quarters. So we see this as a bit of a blip and not a long-term issue. And then maybe just on the licensing side? um so there is no licensing for the for the aerospace program i'm sorry i think he was referring to the uh the medical device uh side oh to the to the other to the other person i'm sorry um so so um so there is a licensing uh option for uh both of our single use programs and that licensing option is that um we'll stand up uh we'll duplicate our production line in our customer's facility or another facility of their choice. We didn't talk about it today, but the Systoscope customer has funded us to build out another production line in our facility and has asked us to build a production line in their facility. So we've been working on that. We see this as a positive for a couple reasons. The first one is they invoke this clause by building the production line in their facility and not a third party we always expected that they would want to have duplication of supply for this critical component so duplicating it within their own facility is the ideal situation for us as opposed to going to a competitor and the third piece is that for the units that they build in their facility we'll collect the royalty so at the end of the day we we benefit financially when we're either building things in our facility or when they're building things in their facility we've always known that there would be some mix right now we'll be running basically three shifts on two lines they'll be running one shift
maybe one and a half shifts on their line so that that ends up being a pretty good mix and so um we see this as a way of of that product continuing the the impact from that product continuing to grow even as our production levels um stay the same or grow by just a small amount all right very good uh today investor uh question uh is is uh needs to be expanded upon please let us know um again if you're in the webcast portal there please uh type your question into the ask a question uh feature there on the screen uh next question pertains to unity uh with the adoption of unity is the time frame for conversion of r d into production
shortened it is um so that that's one of the main benefits of the unity program the unity platform And that's one of the reasons that we put Unity together, because we expected that the reduction in time to market would be attractive to our customers, and certainly it's attractive to us. We want to move things through the engineering pipeline and into production. We're starting to see this bear out. We only have one program right now in the engineering pipeline that's using Unity. It has benefited from the Unity platform, so the time to production is shorter. I guess I would expand on this answer a little bit and say that we launched Unity a little over a year ago, about 15 months ago. And I have to say, I expected that by now we would have a product development pipeline full of Unity projects. And we don't. We have one. but the the good news is that our sales and marketing team I think has done a good job we we frankly had to figure out the best way to market the unity platform because it is a little bit different than simply going out and saying we can design an endoscope and then build it for you going out and saying we're starting with a platform is a slightly different message and so the way that we that we bring that messaging to the market took us a little while to figure out. The good news is that, as I mentioned in the comments today, we have four customers now that our sales team is talking to about potential Unity projects. There's no guarantee that they'll all come into the engineering pipeline, but we are starting to see some more traction with Unity, and so we do expect that as we move forward, it will contribute to an increase in the programs in the product development pipeline, and it will have that benefit of moving things through the pipeline and into production faster than we've been able to do in the past all right very good uh next question here is on roth optical do you view the significant increase in sales for roth optical this quarter is sort of a new run rate for that business um yeah that's a great question we um i wish i had a uh a very precise and certain answer we we've been having uh discussions internally about what the causes are. So there are a couple of things we're thinking about. One is that we know that people were holding back earlier in this fiscal year and really over the last 12 months because of uncertainty surrounding the tariffs. With the Supreme Court ruling, there seems to be some settling of where the tariffs are going to be. And customers can only hold out so long before their inventory gets to a level where they have to reorder. So we think some of it is coming from that, that there was some dip because people were holding back because of the tariffs, and now they're coming back online. There is some thought that there could be some folks who are doing what we saw after the pandemic when there were supply chain disruptions because of the war on Iran, that we could be seeing some people building excess inventory because of the concerns over supply chain that one we think is a little less likely because the supply chain disruptions of course are specific to the middle east and not a lot of optics come through the middle east but but there is a concern that that could be part of it as well that people could be building up their inventory to an excessive amount so it could be either of those things. We also are seeing, however, that we're getting new customers with meaningful size new orders. So given everything that we're seeing, and especially because we are seeing some new customers with new orders, we're seeing some customers who have been ordering at small volumes starting to pick up their volumes because their business is starting to grow some more.
We do believe that the majority of it is coming from an increase in the need in that marketplace and so we do believe that this is sustainable and that it will continue all right very good next question here is about sort of manufacturing capacity can you talk more about growing out the facilities where the company stands now square footage wise or other and where we will be roughly a year from now and as an extension of that what is the capacity utilization currently and where can we get to on that yeah that's a great question so
we've talked in previous calls about the facilities updates that we've already made so a facility update in massachusetts moving the professional roles if you like the roles other than manufacturing to a new facility closer to boston we made a move of similarly in maine to a new facility in south portland for the engineering team we moved the production from maine down to our massachusetts facilities a little farther west of massachusetts and gardner mass where our headquarters was and we've talked a couple times about the need to update the facilities that are in Gardner and so we're the the manufacturing facilities and we're looking at multiple options now for what the best approach is to update those facilities in terms of capacity we have today we're in three buildings in that location in Gardner one of those buildings has an enormous amount of space that our landlord rents out to various different people and there's there's always additional space available for us so instead of giving a capacity number today what I would say is if we decided to and we needed to we could expand the footprint of the Gardner facility to double the size that it is today so we don't expect that the facility question will impede our ability to continue to roll out the new production programs having said that that being in three buildings in Gardner is not ideal. Some of the space in the facilities that we're in in Gardner is not quite at the level that we would like it to be in terms of the modernness of the clean room air handlers and those sorts So there clearly needs to be some update. The big question is, how do we do the update? Do we keep everything in Gardner? Do we move to a different facility? Do we pull it all together into one building? And those are exactly the questions that we're looking at now. Again, we don't expect the answer to any of these questions to delay us in being able to roll the new programs into production. But it is part of what we'll be looking at over the next 12 months in order to update the facility so we'll be ready for the ongoing continuous growth in the long run that we continue to expect.
All right. Very good. a quick reminder everyone again if you are listening through the traditional teleconference line and would like to ask a question press star then one on your telephone keypad again if you're listening through the webcast player type your question into the ask a question box there on the player uh the next question here is regarding pipeline uh it says here you mentioned four projects in the pipeline is that correct uh over what time frame will you get answers on these and where in magnitude of revenue potential do these projects fit compared to other projects?
So I think this question is referring to the four programs that I mentioned are in the sales prospect, sales pipeline, differentiated from our engineering pipeline, which is robust in moving programs into production. Assuming I have that right, these four programs are the four unity programs. There are many more programs beyond that that are in our sales funnel, our sales pipeline, if you like. And our general target, when we look at new programs coming into the engineering pipeline or that we're targeting with our sales team, is that these programs, particularly when they're a Unity program, would be programs that ultimately in production would lead to $1 to $3 million a year in revenue when they get into production. As they go through the engineering pipeline, they typically run anywhere from $1 million to $2 million over a couple of years as they move through the engineering pipeline. All right. Very good.
The next question here is regarding tariffs. What is the scale of tariff refunds you expect, and will those be passed on to customers?
Yeah, so we're still in the process of reviewing what that all looks like. there is a part of those tariff refunds, for instance, in the situations where we've negotiated agreements with our customers, both for the assist scope and the satellite line, where we'll be refunding those tariffs. We do expect to not have to refund all of those tariff refunds. And so we think it'll be a net positive in terms of the bottom line. but it will, of course, reduce sales at the time those credit memos are issued.
All right. Next question here, I guess more of a comment here, but maybe a question here. When will you be able to talk more about specific customers and projects in order to, as other optics companies are able to highlight specifically the contracts to more of a degree, when you're able to provide more color to attract investor and customer interest. So I think specifically is referencing the ability to name customers and projects here.
Yeah. We would love to name specific customers, and we talk with our customers about that routinely. Additionally, the challenge we have, particularly with our very large customers, is that they're always hesitant and, frankly, don't allow us to do that. I think as we move forward, in some cases, it becomes obvious to everyone in the industry because of the characteristics of the product and the ramp and the timing of the ramp that we're going through and that our customers are going through. Sometimes it becomes fairly general knowledge, and I think we can probably confirm things when we get to that level. We will continue to work with our customers to be able to name specific names, but as of right now, we haven't been able to do that. We would love to do it. We'll continue pushing on it, but I don't have any prediction for when we'll be successful.
All right. Next question here regarding the SysToscope line. You mentioned in previous calls pending improvements in the SysToscope line. Have all of these improvements been realized in the third quarter?
They have not been. So, as I said in my comments, we've made significant progress on that line, in particular with the yield now at over 90% consistently and continuing to grow. That's compared to previous times when we've had yields typically in the 80% range, sometimes even below that. So getting to 90% in the third quarter was a huge accomplishment. But we have a whole series of additional improvements that we are looking at and that our customers are looking at with us. It really is a great partnership to be able to get us consistently above 95%. And I think there's a good chance we could even get to 97%, 98%. So there are plenty of improvements from a yield standpoint. The other thing we continue to look at, and we haven't emphasized this as much, but it certainly is part of what's been happening, is that there are updates to the procedures that we're using, to the tools and to the fixtures. These things take a little bit longer to update because it's not simply training people better, it's actually changing the process a little bit. And so there are a series of updates to the procedures that we're using and the tools and the fixtures that we expect will continue to allow us to reduce the touch time. Or the other way to say it is to increase the throughput with the same number of technicians. And so we've seen some improvements there, but again, there's more to be done. I think we will see significant increase again in Q4, and then I think we'll continue to see increase even beyond that into Q1, Q2, into next year. The other thing is, as the volumes continue to increase, we will get to points where the volumes are high enough that the return on investment for more significant changes in the tools and fixtures, again, to drive down the touch time even more, will become possible. So I think this is one of those cases where we'll see continuous improvement over the long run.
All right. Very good. And this will be my final reminder. If you'd like to ask a question online, go ahead and type that into the ask a question box on the webcast player. Question here is, does the industry recognize your momentum? And if so, at what point do you expect revenue to, quote, hockey stick?
I'm not going to predict when the hockey stick will come. we're we're focused on continuing to drive programs into the engineering pipeline and continue to drive the engineering pipeline programs into production we see we see revenue continuing to increase in a nice healthy way as we move forward the question about whether the industry recognizes us is an interesting one I think that with some of the marketing work that we've done around unity we're getting we're getting better exposure out there in in the marketplace. I also think that with the new facilities that we have in Portland and the new facilities that we have in Massachusetts, having customers come and see us here helps with the impression that they get of the company. Having them see the production lines that we already have running gives us added credibility that we can not only do the top-notch engineering, which we've been known for for many years, but now customers can see that we can roll those into production and be very successful with production. So all of these improvements that we've talked about here from a financial standpoint also roll into improvements in our ability to market ourselves to the industry. So I can't give specific predictions on hockey sticks or specific numbers on how much better we're being recognized today, but we do see that. We do sense the momentum in the marketplace that people will come and talk to us and talk about things that we're talking about publicly and recognize that we've made progress so i think all of those things are just going to help to accelerate the rate at which we can pull new programs into the engineering pipeline and of course those rolling through into production to help grow their revenue so we're pretty excited about it all right very good uh a question here and more broadly talk about uh expectations for profitability here so I guess what I would say is this quarter was basically break-even a little bit positive from break-even at the same revenue levels that we're at now with the improvements that we continue to make we would expect that that would continue to grow in the positive direction we have that little bit of slowdown on the aerospace program that we have to manage through we've got some other programs coming online so I think we'll see things continue to grow there, but it'll be close to breakeven. But in general, as we have new programs going into production, and as we have more programs coming into Ross Optical, those will have a very high variable margin. So I think getting to breakeven is one thing. Moving beyond breakeven, I think, can accelerate pretty quickly because of the fact that we're leveraging the infrastructure that we've already put in place. So we do see this quarter that we're reporting on here is really an inflection point, and we expect to see growing profitability as we move forward.
Well, with that, Joe, I will turn it over to you for any closing remarks.
Thank you, Robert. Thanks, everyone, for joining us on the call today. We will look forward to speaking with you again in a couple of months. Thanks, everyone. Have a good evening.
Operator
The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation you may disconnect.
