M-tron Industries, Inc.

Thank you for standing by. My name is Kathleen and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Amtron Investor Update. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press the star one again. Thank you. I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Cameron for interim CEO. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Kathleen, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for attending our investor update this morning. We're pleased to speak to you about our preliminary earnings release for Q4 and also the preliminary annual results for 2024. We did post those last night. to the SEC in an 8K and put out a press release on that. So hopefully you all have a copy of that. Just a note, we do expect to file our 10K with our audit results on about March 26th or 27th, so later next month. But we're very far down our audit process and don't expect substantial changes. So for those of you who don't know me, my name is Cameron Foer. I joined Imatron this past September. I was recently named interim CEO, having served over the past several months as CFO and just a little bit of background and we'll get into more of the company which i know you're more interested in my background is 30 years of experience in technology company management advisory roles i spent the last 15 years running companies uh from startups you know with less than a million to uh software companies with over 100 million and this is um of those companies you know we've sold two of them one to cisco one to red hat return significant returns to investors I also have a lot of combined corporate finance M&A experience as an investment banker and also as an advisor at Bain & Company. So I've raised about $12 billion in equity and executed on over 30 acquisitions and hope to bring some of that experience here to bear. So today we're going to give you an update on the health of the business, talk about the direction that we're taking things forward, and answer any questions you have about the business and our recent announcements about rights offerings and This morning, we did put out a press release that we're going to shift gears there and move towards a dividend warrant. The goal there is really to distribute value to our shareholders in a fair and equitable way. And we've kind of refined how we're doing that. I think this is probably a better tool to do that. So I'm pleased to be joined this morning by Linda Biles, who's our EVP of finance and also our chief accounting officer. Linda, if you could just introduce yourself and then maybe go through the safe harbor statement. I appreciate that.

Good morning, I'm Linda Biles. I'd like to go over our safe harbor with you. Information included or incorporated by reference in this presentation may contain forward-looking statements. This information may involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause our actual results, performance, or achievements to be materially different than the future results, performance, or achievements expressed or implied by any forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements, which involve assumptions and describe our future plans, strategies, and expectations, are generally identifiable by use of the words may, should, expect, anticipate, estimate, believe, intend, or project, or the negative of these words or other variations on these words or comparable terminology. Examples of forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding efforts to grow revenue, expectations regarding fulfillment of backlog, future benefits to operating mergers, and the adequacy of cash resources. Actual events or results may differ materially from those discussed in forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, including without limitation the risks outlined under risk factors in the information statement contained within our form 10-K filed with the SEC on March 25, 2024. In light of these risks and uncertainties, there can be no assurance that the forward-looking statements contained in this presentation will, in fact, be accurate. Further, we do not undertake any obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements. As a result, you should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. With that, I'd like to turn it back over to Cameron.

Yeah, thank you, Linda. Okay. I'm going to start the presentation with the NPTI overview slide, which you should all have from our website. And I really just wanted to give you a brief update on the company for those of you on the call that it's new to. But we were formed in 1965 and listed on the New York American Exchange in October of 2022. And we've been focused on the aerospace and defense markets since the acquisition of PTI. in 2004. So there was a fairly significant shift in the business, not in terms of its products, but in the markets that it went after. Today, we're an American-made defense contractor, specializing in robust, engineered frequency and timing control and filter applications. We have about 2.9 million shares outstanding, and we also enjoy broad employee ownership. At the end of 2023, we distributed 183,000 options to our valued employees, you know, based on their tenure with the company, really to reward their behavior over the years, their contributions. And we're really pleased that they're shareholders in the company and strong believers in what we do. We're well-positioned to continue to access long-term value creation opportunities, and we'll talk about some of that today. If we move to the next slide, some of the key takeaways that we wanted to share with you today. We continue to perform well and announce our preliminary earnings for Q4 in the 2024 annual period last night. We're a unique American story, I think, founded in 1965 with tremendous, tremendous engineering skills and capabilities. It's been built out over the years to serve our nation's defense sector and other key markets such as avionics, space and satellites, and the commercial sectors. And in the commercial sectors, we play strongly in the telecom area. and also in testing measurement. I think what's really unique about us is that we're vertically integrated with the capability to start with a raw crystal and complete it all the way to produce a finished oscillator or filter. We're really one of the only companies in the market that supplies both oscillators and filters. And we do this in terms of how the manufacturing process using CNC machining, surface mount assembly. We have a full suite of tests and screening capabilities. to ensure robust designs, and we have high quality products. And the production of these components and subsystems, they're really designed to be very high tolerance markets. As much as art is a science, and we depend upon our highly skilled and motivated workforce based in Orlando, Florida, Yankton, South Dakota, and Novi, India for assembly, and really appreciate all the work that they do and the diligence they bring to the job. We have a global customer base, including many of the industry leaders in our key markets, And many of our customers, most in fact, really have been with us more than two of 10 years. Since the end of 2024, just at the end of the year, we announced two big $10 million plus contract wins. One we received just in the last days of 2024. And then the second one we received at the very beginning of 2024. And it really strengthens our pipeline And we also expect to have several other large contracts like that coming in over the next quarter or two. And the momentum continues for the business. So we supply many of the key defense programs for both the United States and our allies. And this includes a broad set of applications, including precision guided munitions, communications, radar, electronic warfare, drones and UAVs, and even space and satellite applications. All these applications require really high tolerance products and the integration and communication between systems is ever increasing. It's really increasing demand for our products. Despite the recent discussions in Washington about potential defense cuts, we've seen no slowing of our engagement with customers or our sales processes. They all remain on track. I would say there's not even a slowing down of those processes. Um, we expect bookings and revenue in the coming years, a few years to remain strong, and that'll really be driven by the replenishment of us stockpiles. And the, also the increase and expected European defense spending, uh, which I think there's a lot of low discussion about. And if you look at the European stocks, a lot of the European defense stocks are up quite a bit, but most of the European countries spent over 60% of their defense procurement budgets, uh, acquiring from us defense suppliers. In addition, another note I wanted to add, the Pentagon has been very explicit about carving out some key programs out of any discussion of budget decreases in the U.S. And a lot of these are in areas that we play a key role in. So they've discussed explicitly carving out key air defense systems, precision munitions, and missile programs, which we're a large part of. autonomous vehicles, so drones and UAVs where we play, and some of the surface ships and other platforms where we're a key supplier. And they're also kind of key priority areas for our growth. In addition to the defense sector, with the resolution of the strike discussions at Boeing, we expect to be able to fulfill orders to supply a large backlog of Boeing and Airbus airframes out through 2041. I believe the common word on the street is that there'll be 80% more airframes or 80% airframes being replaced in those years. And so we expect to have strong tailwinds there. In terms of margins, I want to talk about margins a little bit. Our margins remain strong with gross margins around the 40% mark for the quarter and over 46% for the year. So this is a, you know, really it's a thousand basis point increase over the past three years. we're getting a lot more leverage out of the model and dropping more cash to the bottom line. And this is the result of our product mix also improving just our manufacturing efficiencies and reducing our inventory usages and being more efficient with our product. We ended 2024 with a strong balance sheet and we expect cash to accumulate significantly throughout this fiscal year. There are some remaining options to be exercised by our employee base, and they would account for an additional up to about $3.6 million of cash potentially if they're exercised this year. I wanted to talk a little bit about where we're taking the business, and the business itself, the core business, remains very strong. I do think we're going to spend a little bit more time in the future exploring the use of partnerships and acquisitions to provide inorganic growth to the company. And also, we talked briefly in our press release last week about also an investment in a group called Connectivity Partnership, which will be making investments in RF communications companies in a number of sectors, many of which we don't participate in. So this gives us a window into new market opportunities, and I'll go through that in a little bit more detail. I expect you'll see over the next couple of quarters, you know, announcements detailing our progress along those lines. And we're really seeking to expand our product portfolio, gain new customers, and increase our traction in growing markets. And most importantly, consistently grow our EBITDA and EPS for our shareholders. So when we look at acquisitions, we're looking at creative transactions where NPI can play out and provide value to the combined ending. whether that's through our strong sales network or manufacturing capabilities or engineering talent. And the goal was to acquire companies and bring them to our margin profile as quickly as possible. And given the large fixed transaction costs and legal and advisory fees, and just the time it requires from our team for the integration work and diligence, we're trying to concentrate on potential transactions that can add meaningfully to our bottom line. And when a company has meaningful technology, it's a little bit too early for development cycle and its development cycle to provide that earnings profile we're looking for. We need to partner with it for development of products, for manufacturing of products and for sales and assisting their sales. Or we can participate through a potential investment by connectivity partners and then either exercise or write in the future to acquire or partner with that business to drive revenue from those firms. So I want to turn next to the next slide and really speak to our Q4 results. So you saw in the press release that our preliminary revenues were up significantly in the quarter over the prior year. It's a year-on-year increase of between 17.9% and 20.7%. So it remains the third year in a row that we've had near 20% growth on the revenue line. In addition, our quarterly gross margin was also strong and we expected to be in the range of about just just shy of 46 to 48.5% or 7% for the fourth quarter. And that's comparing to it's that's up 200 basis points from the fourth quarter of 2023. So 2024 has continued to be a very, very good year for the company in terms of its execution. If you look at the fiscal year results. Revenues are expected to be between 48.9 and 49.2 million in 24 compared to 41.168 million in 2023. This represents an annual growth rate of between 18.8 and 19.5%. And as I said, that'll be the third year of an annual growth rate close to approaching the 20% mark. And I think these results really reflect the strength of our strategy, the dedication of our team, and really the trust our customers have placed in us. And we continue to execute on their behalf well. We haven't finished our tax provisions yet, so otherwise we would provide operating income and net income, but they're expected to remain close to the same percentages that we saw in Q3 and the long range goals that we've outlined in prior investor presentations. So no radical changes on that front for Q4 or for the annual results. Okay. Okay. We're next going to move to some of the investment highlights. And this is really just, I think, a repeat of what you've heard in the past if you've followed us, but I think it's tracking well. We are seeing strong revenue growth and expect that to continue. And we're now in the phase of the company where we're generating a lot of cash and we expect to drive earnings up throughout the period. We have long-term contracts and loyal customers. and they're very attractive in large end markets. At this point in time, this is something we've talked about a little bit, we've become a critical part of the U.S. supply chain, the mission critical supply chain. And for our aerospace and defense business, which is close to 70% of our business this past year, it's in the mid 60s to 70%, depending upon the quarter, where our 85% of that is program driven at this point in time. which means we're part of long-term contracts for programs of record in the Defense Department. And that's critical because that helps you whether budget storms, like when things are going through late budget approvals, we're still able to benefit from that because we're on a program of record and any continuing resolution can fund further purchases of our products. And those programs of record typically last five to 25 years in the defense sector. Just an example of that is in this past year, the Patriot missile system, which is a stalwart that's used around the globe and is in the news quite often, was up for a redesign. And they've decided that there really are no competitors, and it's quite effective still. And so that program has been extended again without a redesign. So that's going to be a program that's well over the 25-year mark. We also feel we have compelling financials with the organic growth that we've shown over the past year and the improvements we made in the business. And now we're looking more at an inorganic growth strategy to complement that. And then lastly, we have a very strong management team. Linda is a part of that, Bill Drafts, who I think will be on the next call when we do our 10K earnings release in March will also join us. He's our president and COO. Both of them have a long tenure at the company. and a clear understanding of our business. And we work well together to support our employees and also our shareholders. Okay, I'm going to turn towards the opportunities for growth slide and talk a little bit more about our M&A strategy and our partnership strategy. We're really focused on improving our market position through acquisitions and for more products and entering new markets, or else gaining key customers. Our organic growth has been contributing to this. And if you look out in the past year, we've had over 30% of our revenues regenerated by new products or products developed within the last several years. And we're continuing to hire engineers, additional engineers to help us make good progress penetrating markets and penetrating programs. But we're looking for integrative methods as well to accelerate that. So in terms of the type of profile of companies we're looking for, we're looking to companies that have moderate to strong revenue growth and also have positive cash flow, that they fill key product or technology gaps. They can bring new customers or end markets or help us accelerate into new markets. And they also support our desire to move more to solution sales. And so we've been doing that on our own. We're selling subsystems now, modules as well, but but acquisition or partnership is not a key way to do that. And we also want to find companies where hopefully we can also leverage what NPTI has already built and honed over the years to help accelerate their traction. And lastly, there is a slide here which shows some of the technologies we're looking at just to give you a feel for it. We're open to ideas of companies you're aware of that you think might be a good fit. Really, the key here is to add additional products and technologies to our portfolio. This gives our sales reps additional products in their line cards and helps solidify our engagement with customers and helps us move more into the subsystem space. And so some of the areas we're looking at are RF amplifiers, mixers, power dividers and couplers, phase shifters, diplexers, and waveguides. And we're also looking at subsystem providers and also people who provide sensors or keep components of avionics and other areas like that for growth. And the last thing I'll leave you there is we're looking at companies that do have revenues that are growing their revenues, but they might need some improvement there. And that already have an EBITDA. They're already offering EBITDA and probably around the $2 to $5 million EBITDA range. And this is something that we think we can acquire and integrate well. and it'll also be a meaningful driver of our our event down numbers and our dps and then lastly i think it's important to consider we are a publicly listed company so we have a lot of flexibility in how we can finance acquisitions so we can we can we're accumulating cash we have the ability to to borrow we already have a line in place with the third bank and we're looking to expand that we can raise capital from our investors our current investors or issue shares to target shareholders. We prefer to use those first methods just to enhance the returns to the current investors in the company. And then lastly, I want to mention another thing is that we went through a strategic committee process or review this past year. We looked at acquisition targets and identified quite a few. We also tried to identify if there are other companies in the marketplace that are maybe of similar size or even larger than us that are interested in going public and using our our listing as a means of providing liquidity and also serving as an acquisition platform. And so that's something we're not against. And this is something that we would consider if it's gonna provide meaningful returns to our shareholders. And really our goal as a company is to become two to three times our current size in the next few years to continue to gain market share and market presence and to increase the number of types of products our reps have on their line cards and grow our earnings. So that's the update on the business. I did wanna talk briefly about the offering, the rights offering, and now this morning's announcement about a warrant dividend, just to clarify that for some of you, and then we're gonna turn it to questions from the groups. So many of you are aware that we announced a rights offering last week. The goal of that was really to distribute value to shareholders. We are at the point now where we're generating cash for that helped drive our business and fuel growth of the business. We appreciate your interest and investment in the company and want to reward you for it. But given the volatility of the stock and also some of the feedback we received and just the engagement that we've done with shareholders and stakeholders, we thought we should look for an alternative way to approach that. So we did this morning announce that we were canceling the rights offering. And we were going to use another vehicle similar to that called a warrant dividend, which is essentially a right, but it's a longer term right to provide that value distribution to shareholders. That was our goal. So with a warrant dividend, it's essentially a right to buy a share. So for every shareholder record, they'll receive a warrant dividend, a warrant. The warrant, for five warrants, you're allowed to purchase one common share of stock. The warrant dividend itself will remain open for three years. Once it's declared, we have a record date and we open that. We distribute the warrants. And it'll also have an early trigger. And we spoke this morning in our press release about the strike price of the warrant being $47.50. And that would be something you would act on at the end of the three-year period. Unless during the course of the next three years, our stock trades up to the 50s and the average VWAP of the company for 30 days is $52 a share or greater. The warrants are going to be tradable on the New York Stock Exchange and transferable. And I think that's really key to understand. And this is really key to the concept of distributing value to the shareholder. So what it does is it gives you the ability to either take your warrant and sell it to another individual or to keep the warrant and exercise it over time and participate in the growth of the company and your investment in the company. We will, in the short term, in your term, be announcing just the record date and making further announcements about this, but I did want to just update everybody here on the call. Okay. I think that's what we wanted to cover on today's call. We are happy to open it up to questions from the audience and welcome your feedback.

Okay, we will now begin the question and answer session. If you have dialed in and would like to ask a question, simply press star then the number one on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press the star one again. And your first question comes from the line of Andrzej Soderstrom of Sidorian Company. Your line is now open.

Hi, and thank you for taking my questions and congrats on the nice progress here. So just in terms of this capital ratio we're doing and you're canceling now and doing this once again. Is there something imminent for you in terms of M&A, or is this support that, or what are you seeing in the M&A market?

Yeah, thank you, Anja. Appreciate you joining us today. No, there's not a deal at M&A that we're going to announce next week or so, but we are seeing a lot of opportunity. And so the desire was to, one, is to distribute value to our shareholders. And an added benefit is that it would, to the extent that people exercise the warrant or exercise the right when we were envisioning that, is it would put more capital on the balance sheet. And it would make it just a little bit easier to do acquisitions of size. So that's some of the, and really execute on that strategy. So it could be JV partnerships. It could be acquisitions. We're going to continue to make investments in the business, regardless of how much capital we raise. And I think we will see some opportunities in the acquisition market as well. But having some more capital on the balance sheet, as we continue to accumulate capital as well, We'll just help make sure that we can do acquisitions with a higher cash content than shares. And so that provides a better return to our investors over time.

Okay, thank you. And in terms of those large contract wins you've been announcing, are those with the same customer or with different customers? You also alluded to other sizable contracts in the pipeline and also if they are with the same customers or different customers. Yeah.

Yeah, these were with two different customers, with two of our larger customers. We do have a number of other contracts that we expect to sign in the next few months. And it's, you know, it's really, it's a variety of people in the avionics and also in the airspace and defense space.

Okay, thank you. And then the connectivity partnership. How are you going to be working with that? And could that be also helping you source deals to absorb into Amtron?

Yeah. So the connectivity partnership is something that's been discussed at this affiliate for several months. I think there's a large market opportunity for investment in the area. And they are establishing a team that sees investors and operators into the space as well. And I anticipate they're going to have pretty strong investment returns. part of the interest on our part is that you know we focus on several markets we're really trying to drive our revenue but we don't have a broad view of all the markets where RF plays a role right or where connectivity plays a role communications in general so uh connectivity partnership is going to look at a broader set of vertical applications than we do here at Emtron and so I think it'll give us a good window into some of those market opportunities and allow us to invest through the partnership in some companies that we might not have come across, but also gain knowledge of new market opportunities and areas that we should consider in the future for growth. And I think it's in terms of how does it benefit our shareholders, we're looking at it two ways. One is I think it'll generate significant investment returns to us over time. And also, I think it'll give us the opportunity to partner with or acquire companies that we may not have come across on our own. So we're going to have a strategic role in the fund, but we're not going to be running the fund. And I anticipate that we'll have a right of first refusal on potential acquisitions of companies that come across. And also, there may be a lot of companies that frankly are too small for us to buy at this point in time. And if a connectivity partnership can support them, wonderful. and we'll partner with them to drive revenue for both firms, or maybe we'll look at acquiring them down the road. So I think it's twofold, really. It'll generate good returns on our capital, as well as give us opportunities to acquire or partner with companies that we might not have seen yet.

Okay, thank you. And you mentioned you expect a strong revenue growth to come in with a strong backlog in these contracts. Do you expect it to be... To the same magnitude as the near 20% or were you anticipating the revenue growth to be in the next coming of year?

We've been guiding people in terms of what we feel we can guarantee is lower numbers. So in the 10% growth range, we do have a desire to grow higher than that. And if you look at the last three years, I think we went into every single one of those years expecting probably 7% to 10% growth. and we were pleasantly surprised with how we came out. This year is shaping up strongly, so we're doing well in Q1, and I think we do have a good chance at exceeding that. I don't want to predict 20%. There's a lot of headwinds in the market in terms of the dialogue that's going on in Washington and other places. I don't think it's going to impact us, but there are a lot of changes in front, and so I think it's kind of prudent to stick with those numbers for now.

Okay, and then just in terms of the gross money, you also talked about 45% before, but you've been beating that every quarter now. How should we think about that going forward and the product mix there?

Yeah, I think we're going to stay in the high 40s, to be honest. It'll bounce around a little bit from quarter to quarter, but I think something in the, you know, when we gave up the long-term model, we were talking about, I think, you know, 45% to 48%. I think that's reasonable on a quarter-by-quarter basis. And I expect our margins to kind of remain where they are.

Okay, great. That was all for me. Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, your next question comes from the line of Chief Ruby of Ruby Asset Management. Your line is now open.

Good morning. Thanks for taking my call. First question. Again, and I'm just not that familiar what's going on. So could you put into context what the connectivity partnership is? How much of what sort of funding is the company committed to for right now? And then how big will that fund be? And, you know, just clarify that is the fund where your former CEO is taking a senior advisory role.

I have some follow-up questions. Sure. Thank you, Chip. So the fund itself is just being established. They're right now in the market building their team, talking to potential investors, and also identifying and building out their deal flow. So it's not set in stone yet in terms of the size of the raise, but I think they anticipate raising about $200 to $250 million, so a substantial amount of money. We look at being a part of the GP, so we would have some benefit from the carry on those investments. And we haven't determined yet the size of our investment. I don't expect it to be a meaningful amount of the cash on our balance sheet, but I do think given our position in the market and getting it early with the fund, we'll have a meaningful return there. But we'll let people know that as it becomes more solidified.

Okay. And you mentioned, I think that you'll have a right of first refusal. I mean, I see this fund a little bit as a competitor of your own M&A activities potentially.

Yeah. That's a good point, Chip. So that's one of the reasons why, as we work with them, we are looking to establish a right of first refusal. So it's not a point of competition for us. We're really trying to delineate the types of things that they would look at, the types of things that we would look at. And for anything that's really in our wheelhouse, we would have the ability to transact ahead of them. But if we looked at it and we just chose not to, then I wouldn't see any reason why we wouldn't let connectivity partnership potentially get involved.

Okay. And changing gears for a second. I appreciate your comments on the continued cadence of activity at the DOD and foreign military replenishment. I think that makes sense. My question is, you know, there's a strong organic growth path at the company. So can you talk about the hurdle for acquisitions as far as if you do, and you've said you'll look at bigger acquisitions, and you use the word accretive, accretive over what time? Like immediately year one and on what metrics? EPS, cash flow, adjusted EBITDA, that would be helpful. And then secondly, discuss your incentives, if you would, since you're new to the company, now you have a new role, so changing quick. Are your incentives in cash? Are your incentives in stock? And how are the other members of the C-suite incentivized and how are you going to get paid? Are you doubling the company with kind of equity at stake and how much, you know, kind of skin in the game for a successful accretive growth path for us as equity holders?

Okay. And do you mind just repeating your first question? We're like, I've got the second one down.

The first question was, um,

the the creative nature of help deals um on what metrics basically yeah oh that's fine yeah thank you for that um so yeah we we've been looking at doing a creative deals we look at it on an eb to ebitda basis um and um and we've been really limited to looking at things that are uh creative almost immediately so we're not looking to make big bets on new technologies moving into production levels of manufacturing. For things that are more on the come, we would look probably more towards partnerships or forming of JVs as a way of sharing and the benefit of helping them grow their business or grow our business. So those are some of the metrics. In terms of the size, we're really trying to buy things that have a couple million at least of EBITDA, if not more. We do find, though, that when we look at the marketplace, I'd say currently our margins are five to ten times higher than many of the companies we look at. And so we are trying to find situations that aren't going to drag down our margins over time and where we can have an impact on that and hopefully improve their margins and keep our business model the way it is. We think we have a pretty successful model at this point in time. We're really trying to export that. In terms of incentives, you had asked about that. Right now, the senior team is incentive through salaries and performance bonuses that are cash based, based on the company's performance against plan. It's not really based on our stock performance, to be honest. And we are also, we do participate as equity holders. So senior management team either has Most of them have restricted stock, which vests for a three-year period, and so they benefit from that. And there are periodic grants of stock or restricted stock to management team members.

Okay, that's helpful. And I would just – I can let you go, but I think the one thing I'd like to see as a holder, since you are kind of targeting good and aggressive and that's positive – growth targets, I think the bonus should be more equity-based to align you with holders better. I think that will be received well if you can look at that next go-round or next cycle and change that. And if you're successful, probably it's better for everybody on the team anyway if you do that over the longer term if you're successful. So I would look forward to that change. Okay. Appreciate that, Jim. Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line up, James Tyvie. Your line is now open.

Yes, good morning.

James, your line is now open.

Yes, sorry. Good morning. Thanks for taking the call. Hi, Linda. Welcome, Cameron. I have a very granular question related to gross margins. Okay. In your Q3 earnings release, you mentioned that margin improvements would do in part to improved production efficiencies from previous investments. And I know today on this call, you talked about efficiency of raw materials, which relates to crystals. Can you provide some clarity on the statement? It wasn't something we previously had seen. And are these investments... capital or human in nature? And how does the crystal yield actually fit into this efficiency, improved efficiency in your production?

Yeah, we haven't talked about like what our crystal efficiency levels are, but we are dedicating resources to making improvements there just because it's such a large portion of our COGS. So we have both consultants and engineering talent we've brought on board to help us do that, as well as we are making investments in machinery to aid that. So I don't know if we can say more than that, but it is a core area of focus for us. We're also trying to be just more efficient in our purchase of inventories as well, since that can be a large number as well.

Okay, thank you. That's all I had.

Thank you, James.

That concludes our Q&A session. I will turn the conference back to Mr. Cameron Ford for the closing remarks.

So thank you very, very much for joining the call today and your interest in the company. I'm hoping that clarified a lot of things that may have arisen in your mind as you've been reading some of the press releases recently. We are really committed to providing shareholder value and doing that in a number of different ways. One way to do it is the warrant dividend now, which is what we're trying to pursue. We do realize we kind of stubbed our toe on the rights offering and hoping to make that good for you over time and participate your support of the company and kind of be in our mission. And also a big thank you to our employees who are on the call and their dedication to what we're doing here. And thanks for your time.

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.