Baylin Technologies Q3 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
November 7, 2024

There are 5 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Baylin Technologies Third Quarter 2024 Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all lines are in a listen only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. This call is being recorded on Thursday, November 7, 2024. I will now turn the call over to Kelly Miles, Director of Marketing and Investor Relations of Baile Technologies.

Operator

Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Thank you. Hello and welcome everyone. Thank you for joining us this morning for the Q3 2024 earnings conference call for Baylin Technologies. On the call with us today from Baylin are Leighton Carroll, Chief Executive Officer and Dan Nodome, Chief Financial Officer. We will be available for questions at the end of the presentation.

Speaker 1

Before we begin, let me make it clear that our comments today may include forward looking statements and information and answers to questions that could imply future expectations about the prospects and financial performance of the business for 2024 and could include the use of non IFRS measures. These statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions. Accordingly, actual performance could differ materially from statements made or information provided today, so you should not place undue reliance on them. We also do not intend to update forward looking statements or information except as required by law. I ask that you read our legal disclaimers and explanation of the use of non IFRS measures and refer you to the risks and assumptions outlined in our public disclosures, in particular, the sections entitled Forward Looking Statements and Risk Factors in our Annual Information Form for the year ended December 31, 2023, and our other filings, which are available on SEDAR.

Speaker 1

Our Q3 2024 results were released after market close yesterday. The press release, financial statements, as well as the MD and A are available on SEDAR and on our website at valentech.com. I would now like to turn the call over to Leighton.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Kelly. During the quarter, we continue to work on growing the company and we'll talk about several wins we've had. I do like the resilience of our backlog despite a challenging market environment. Many of our competitors have clearly not fared as well. I'd like to remind everyone that reporting our financial results continuing operations comprise 3 businesses: the embedded antenna line, the wireless infrastructure line and Satcom, while the mobile and network business line has been reported as held for sale since Q4, 2023.

Speaker 2

On July 9, we announced that we had agreed to sell Gautronics Korea Limited GTK and Gautronics Vietnam Company Limited GTD to a Korean strategic require. On July 30, we completed the sale of GTK and we recognized a gain on the sale of non current assets of 900,000 dollars subject to the receipt of required regulatory approvals, which are in process, we expect to complete the sale of GTV during the Q4 of 2024. I am pleased to report that our North American businesses had a very solid quarter. Our embedded business delivered consistently, particularly in its consumer and end customer products. The business is healthy, profitable and we expect its trends continue for the balance of the year.

Speaker 2

The wireless infrastructure business line also had a strong quarter, substantially stronger than Q3 of last year. Additionally, the business has been making progress across a number of fronts, which have resulted in improved order flow. I'm cautiously optimistic we will see a solid Q4, one that is substantially better than last year as well. Staff comps performance despite a significant change in mix has been consistent in a small measure to the efforts of our production teams. Moreover, the team exceeded plan from a gross profit and margin perspective and continues a solid backlog, which will allow the business to remain consistent in performance.

Speaker 2

Backlog from continuing operations remains elevated and was at $30,200,000 at the end of the quarter. Backlog has since increased to $31,900,000 at October 31, 2024 as a result in increased order flow across all three business lines at the start of the Q4. I am also pleased but not satisfied with the improvement in overall cost structure and thereby margin attainment in our business. The improvement in operating discipline focused on better costing and bidding and attention to detail throughout the entire company continues. Finally, a number of active bids on 2024 and to be honest now 2025 projects continues to be at a consistently solid level, meaning the funnel of opportunities is very positive.

Speaker 2

In recent developments, we've had several notable successes over the past quarter. Infrastructure had some pretty cool things, placement of 400 antennas in the University of Alabama, 100,000 person capacity football stadium, the placement of multi beam antennas in Rogers Stadium in Toronto and BC Place in Vancouver. Both of those were really nice wins and demonstrate the power of the products that we've been developing. STATCOM's high power amplifier systems have been chosen across a variety of interesting environments. A sports entertainment satellite broadcaster and service provider chose us for upgrades to their network.

Speaker 2

A and well this is geeky, assist lunar communications network as part of the NASA Artemis Moon Exploration Program. Kind of neat, we're working with stuff that's going into space and supporting space exploration. And then finally, the radar surveillance system is part of the North warning system, which think as many of you know is a joint Canadian and U. S. Early warning radar system that stretches across the Arctic from the western part of the Yukon to Southern Cliffs or Labrador.

Speaker 2

These orders reflect the sophisticated nature and the reliability of our Satcom and suppliers. Dan, let me turn it over to you for our Q3 results.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Leighton. Revenue from continuing operations was $20,700,000 in Q3 of 2024, which was an increase of $3,800,000 or nearly 23% compared to Q3 of 2023. The increase in revenue was primarily due to overall sales volume increase in the embedded and wireless infrastructure business lines compared to the prior year period. Gross profit from continuing operations was $9,500,000 in the quarter, which was an increase of 2,900,000 dollars or over 44% compared to the same quarter last year. This also represents an increase of $300,000 compared to Q2 of 20 24.

Speaker 3

Gross margin from continuing operations was 46.1 percent in of 2024 and that compared to 39.2% in the same quarter of last year and 41.9% in Q2 of this year. Compared to the prior year period, the higher gross margin in Q3 of 2024 was primarily due to improved product mix with higher margin infrastructure sales as well as certain shipments of higher margin Satcom products. Adjusted EBITDA from continuing operations was positive $900,000 in the quarter, which was an increase of $1,700,000 compared to negative $800,000 in Q3 of last year. This increase was mainly due to a combination of stronger revenue and higher gross margin, as mentioned earlier. Net loss from continuing operations was $1,400,000 in the quarter, which compares with a net loss of $2,400,000 in the same quarter of last year.

Speaker 3

On a per share basis, that's a net loss of $0.01 per share in the quarter compared to net loss of $0.03 per share in the same quarter of last year. Net debt from continuing operations was $15,000,000 as at the end of Q3, which was a decrease of $1,600,000 from the prior quarter. That's a result of working capital inflows. But this was an increase of $2,200,000 from the end of last year, mainly due to the use of cash to fund interest payments. I'll now turn the call back over to Leighton.

Speaker 2

All right. Thank you, Dan. Now, speak a little bit about each of the businesses. The embedded business line had a strong Q3, although at levels below those of an exceptionally strong second quarter. By the way, that is fairly normal within this business.

Speaker 2

We do expect the embedded antenna business line will continue to perform well for the remainder of 2024. Understanding that Q4 is traditionally at a little bit of a lower volume than Q3. We already have purchase orders in as they're rolling into 2025, just the way that this business works and I feel very comfortable with the progress we're making on multiple fronts. The wireless infrastructure business line also had a strong Q3 with continuing sales of higher margin multi beam and innovative small cells and further stadium deployments. Revenue was lower than the 2nd quarter.

Speaker 2

That's normal. That's seasonal. And we also expect that trend will be similar in Q4. We are leveraging our competitive advantage to afford us the opportunity to drive new sales across multiple fronts. But I would tell you, if you take year over year and this business in particular, wow, what a difference.

Speaker 2

It's night and day. And the work that we have been doing on the diversification of our product mix and equally and in some respects more importantly, the diversification with our customer mix has absolutely paid dividends. Other people in the wireless industry that who I know I've obviously got lots of friends in it, haven't fared as well as our business has and our business is now not only being resilient, but we're seeing lots of opportunities across a wide customer set. The Satcom business line also continues to see consistent demand in its products, particularly in high powered amplifiers. Military government broadcast applications in particular are doing well for us.

Speaker 2

I'm very proud of the team, both for working through challenging products sometimes to produce and maintaining our revenue. There was a reasonable mix change within that group year over year. But more importantly, there has been some disintermediation on the low end of the market as StarLink has taken share, particularly in the maritime and aviation spaces. Our ability to not only deal with that, but actually grow and improve our profitability within this business in this environment is a testament to both the work the team has done, our ability to sell products that matter and the fact that strategically how we chose to position ourselves on the playing field made a significant difference for us. Now a lot of these programmatic opportunities, they're resilient, they're not going away and they're we actually have a pretty good pipeline.

Speaker 2

The awards are lumpy and that's one of the things, you can't just get it every month, get it every month. You'll get this you'll get a huge bump 1 month and then the next month you may not have a great sales month and then the next month will be back to kind of somewhere in the midpoint. That's pretty typical in this business. We expect that we're going to continue to see resiliency for the remainder of 2024 and in part because a lot of what we've been doing, not just with the legacy products, but with the new Genesis and Summit lines of solid state power amplifiers are going to continue to generate sales as clients get the improvements in performance and monitoring and fill over they provide over technologies and certainly our competitors. We continue to see opportunities for military and other government uses and do not expect that anytime in the near future the emphasis on defense and scientific spending is going to go away.

Speaker 2

I think the other thing is and I'm actually pleased with it because it allows us to really focus on our North American core. Moving on from the mobile and network business, it has been an important step for us. Unfortunately, the process in Vietnam and in particular, the regulatory approvals over there take longer than I would say I'm used to doing having bought or sold a number of companies in over the course of my career. We had hoped to have that completed by Q3. We're close, but we do expect it will close and we will be successful in Q4.

Speaker 2

When we walked into 2024, I got to tell you, end of Q3, particularly in infrastructure and a little less so in embedded, it was a terrible year, the way that that year ended. And that was not peculiar to our business. That was across the board, but it was I could start seeing in December that I thought we were going to start doing better and Q1 to Q2 to Q3, I'm actually very confident in saying that our business has been way more resilient than many of our competitors. We've done well. The work the teams have been doing, the innovations we have are paying off.

Speaker 2

And we plan to take advantage and continue to take advantage of this groundwork, build new innovations, continue diversifying our customers across our three businesses and continue growing and remain confident that our best is yet to come. I cannot thank the employees of our business enough for their dedication and hard work. I'd also be remiss if I didn't thank the investors who stuck with us through the challenging times when the wind look, the company wasn't doing great and our stock price didn't fare particularly well because of a lot of things that happened in our past. I am heartened to see what's happened recently in the public markets. We're finally attracting attention in part because we're now telling it because we actually have a story to tell.

Speaker 2

We have things that are unique and innovative. We're actually having pretty decent turnaround from where we were certainly from where we were 3 years ago. And I'm looking forward to seeing a continuance of the traction that we've been able to attain recently. With that, it concludes the formal remarks. Operator, we'll be pleased to take any questions.

Operator

Thank Your first question is from Daniel Rosenberg from Paradigm Capital. Your line is now open.

Speaker 4

Hi, good morning. I was curious to hear about your outlook. It seemed like you were a little bit cautious about the macro environment. I was wondering if you could share any specifics on what you're seeing change out there when it comes to macro, please?

Speaker 2

Yes. So I guess I'm making up a new word, I'll try for Kate. So I'll break this between each of the three businesses. Within Satcom, it's pretty consistent, pretty resilient, but right now we're dominated by some of these programmatic things that we have won and opportunities. And it's kind of cool because we have some amplifier systems we make, for example, for a USDOD application.

Speaker 2

We have built 3 of them. These are large and they are each package and these things are huge, are multimillion dollar amplifiers. And we have 3 that are built and delivered. Number 45 are currently in production, will be finished Q1 and Q2. They're well north of 10 plus behind that.

Speaker 2

And we don't have the purchase order to that. That concept is why these programmatic opportunities matter, not just because there are several of them, it's durable, there is ongoing spending in that place, but once you're in there, you're the spec and because of where we've chosen to play in this very high power arena, we have limited competition and we really do have some nice advanced technology. I would also tell you that a key competitor for us in certain broadcast applications, that works with a particular alternative technology to us, not as reliable, heavier, cost more to run, but they got decent market share because they would fight solely on price. They're exiting the market. I see that as a good thing for our future in Satcom.

Speaker 2

On the embedded side, we tend to grow very linearly. And we've had a lot of success. We've had a lot of success in recent years because of some work that we've been done to diversify our business. The public safety piece has been a home run for us. We're doing fantastic, obviously, in a place we've always had, which is home automation.

Speaker 2

I don't think those are going to go away. And I think there's additional opportunities there. That business should continue to grow 10% year over year, at least that's been the historical trend and I think we have an opportunity to outrun that if we continue to get things right. Infrastructure is really kind of an interesting place because if you go back to Q3 and Q4 last year, wireless carriers, particularly in North America to a limited extent lower so in Europe, but they really abbreviated their spending. And it absolutely affected everyone in the market.

Speaker 2

It's not peculiar to what we do. It's not peculiar to the type of company we are in the infrastructure space. Having the growth we're having is actually really exciting. And if you take a look at the macro trend, right, a lot of those carriers spent a lot in 2021 2022. And to be fair, even at the back half of 2020, why COVID?

Speaker 2

A lot of people moved to different parts, people working from home, wireless carriers had to redeploy or deploy new assets to provide appropriate coverage. Well, as that has abated, that capital investment, most carriers who I've talked to felt like they had a good hold of what they had and what they needed. And many of them rotated more heavily in the fiber. North America is a super easy way to do this, including United States. In the United States, there's something coming called BEAD, B E A D.

Speaker 2

It's the Broadband Equity Access Development Fund. It's money to make sure that in rural America, there are programs like this in Canada, there are to lesser extent programs like this in Europe, that people in the sticks can have access to high speed Internet. Well, that funding is being released in late 2025 and certainly all over 2026. Well, what happens in that environment? I've been in this industry a long time.

Speaker 2

I've worked in the fiber space. When that type of funding comes in, that market gets white hot, means demand goes up, I mean your deployment costs go up and your ability to deploy slows down because the demand is so high. For wireless carriers aren't stupid, guys like AT and T and Verizon by working on fiber now ahead of this obvious to see wave are able to build assets they need in a part of the network they do need to invest in. It's our expectation they've been doing that. As we get to 2025, we expect we are going to see wireless carriers investing more than they did in 2024 and I actually expect '26 will be a much better year than 'twenty five.

Speaker 2

I don't think 'twenty five will be like, oh my gosh, it's an incredible year. I do think 'twenty six I think 'twenty five will be better than 'twenty four incrementally and I think 'twenty six should be a pretty solid year for us because wireless carriers have to continue to put money into their networks because data usage continues to grow unabated. That's good for us. And if you're taking market share in a down market like we have been, I like our chances when the tide starts lifting.

Speaker 4

Okay. That sounds pretty positive. But if I'm to parse through that, it's basically the success you've had in Satcom, not necessarily certain to continue forever, but we wish it does. Is that how I'm to read everything put together?

Speaker 2

Yes. No, look, is there an opportunity for Satcom to continue to grow? Yes. Does it mean we have to continue to take share? Yes.

Speaker 2

Are there opportunities to do so? Yes. Satcom is a very different market now than it was even 5 years ago. And we've done really well. Now it also means that as we continue this journey, do we look to diversify our product set?

Speaker 2

Do we add other assets? We actually have some software capabilities in Satcom. Can we lever that into other revenue streams? These are all things that we'll look at in our future. So I'm not I don't want to paint a picture that's going to just be, oh, it's we're going to hit a plateau and then that's kind of it.

Speaker 2

What I would also say is, as we look at these businesses at the end of the day, growth cures all. The reason Balen is doing better is because we've gotten the company to grow and start functioning at a much better level, particularly on the gross profit side of the coin. And at the end, we have to continue to do that because my job is, A, to run this company, but B, create shareholder value and that is truly we want to do. And to do that, guess what, we got to grow. That's the plan.

Speaker 4

Okay. Appreciate that. And then so as we think about the margin profile, I know you mentioned product mix supporting things this quarter. So what should our base case be as we think about next year for Bay Lin when it comes to the margin profile, understanding that the mix does change quarter to quarter?

Speaker 2

It does, by the way, great question. Do I want Balen to be a 50% gross profit company? Of course. Is that realistic? I don't know that it is.

Speaker 2

I would tell you and I think Q2 at north of 42% is a good place to be. I want to stay there. Infrastructure out of our 3 businesses clearly has the strongest margin profile, but that actually affords me something. And what I mean by that is, as we continue to penetrate and or go to new markets, for example, Europe or Asia, the Middle East, the margin profile of products we sell into those markets may need to be at a lower margin. I may need to have a lower margin profile that weren't currently enjoying in infrastructure to really drive revenue in North America.

Speaker 2

At the end of the day, it's not about the gross profit percentage, it's about how much can we drive to the bottom line. And obviously, that's a function of both that gross profit percentage and the amount of revenue coming in the door. So if we can gas up the amount of revenue that we can generate across what we're doing and I have to trade a few margin points to that and drive the bot, which goes to the bottom line very quickly because of the efficiencies in our cost structure, we'll make those trade offs. So I would tell you at that 42% right now, it's not a bad number to use, but we're going to continue to try to beat it understanding that there are going to be some business decisions along the way to try to drive overall value.

Speaker 4

Understood and sounds like a sensible approach. Thank you for taking my questions. I'll pass the line.

Operator

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. Please proceed.

Speaker 2

Okay. Guys, first of all, good quarter seasonality, we've talked about it. Our business has some seasonality in Q4, I suspect is going to run with Q3. I like how the business is setting up for 2025. I'm proud of the team.

Speaker 2

Maybe just a housekeeping thing. We are talking about should we change the time of this call, understanding that this is one of the ways that things have always been done. And since I've gotten here, one of the things we've been doing a lot of is we question the ways things have always been done is that the best use of everyone's time and is that the right time for us to ensure that we get the coverage we want and get our message out. So that's going to that's something just as a placeholder to tell folks about. I'll wrap this by saying that I'm happy with the results.

Speaker 2

I want more. I feel like we can get more and I like our chances. So appreciate the time this morning. Have a great rest of your day, guys.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, the conference has now ended. Thank you all for joining. You may all disconnect your lines.

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Baylin Technologies Q3 2024
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