Amtech Systems, Inc.

And welcome to the AMTEC Systems Fiscal Quarter and Fiscal Year 2022 Earnings Conference Call. Please note that this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Erica Mannion of Sapphire Investor Relations.

Good afternoon and thank you for joining us for AMTEC Systems Fiscal Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Conference Call. With me on the call today are Michael Wang, Chief Executive Officer, Lisa Gibbs, Chief Financial Officer, and Paul Lancaster, Vice President of Sales and Customer Service. After close of market today, Amtek released its financial results for the fiscal fourth quarter and full year of 2022. The earnings release is posted on the company's website at www.amteksystems.com in the investor section. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that the Safe Harbor disclaimer in our public filings covers this call and our webcast. Some of the comments to be made during today's call will contain forward-looking statements and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to, those contained in our SEC filings, all of which are posted within the investor section of our corporate website. The company assumes no obligation to update any such forward-looking statements. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements which speak only as of today. These statements are not a guarantee of future performance and actual results may differ materially from current expectations. Among the important factors which would cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements are changes in technologies used by customers and competitors, change in volatility and the demand for products, the effect of changing worldwide political and economic conditions, including trade sanctions, the effect of overall market conditions, including the equity and credit markets, and market acceptance risks, ongoing logistics, supply chain and labor challenges, capital allocation plans, and the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. Other risk factors are detailed in the company's SEC filings, including its Form 10-K and Forms 10-Q. I will now turn the call over to Michael Wang, Chief Executive Officer.

Thank you, Erica, and everyone for joining us today. Fiscal year 22 was a strong year for Amtech. with over $114 million in bookings, $106 million in revenue, and $51 million in backlog exiting the year. To place this in perspective, despite challenges during the year, including the Shanghai lockdown and fiscal Q3, revenue for the year grew 25% with backlog continuing to grow. Driving our backlog growth is a strengthening and diversification of EV-related demand across multiple product lines, primarily for our US operations. Q4 revenue was $32 million, up 33% year over year, as we were able to service much of the advanced packaging and SMT demand built up during the Shanghai lockdown in Q3. Overall, we remain excited about the long-term opportunities across all of our businesses. Within the semi-business unit, following nearly nine straight quarters of strong demand for our advanced packaging products, we have begun to see softening in new orders as customers digest existing capacity and evaluate capital spending projects in light of the changing market conditions. In addition, in high volume SMT applications, We are seeing a shift in global strategy as our customers look to mitigate multifaceted risks. While this is causing delays and disruptions to order flow for now, we feel this redistribution of the customer base will present a great opportunity in the near future. Also within the semi-business unit, we are seeing meaningful increases in demand for our high-temperature belt furnaces, driven by multiple high-volume applications serving the EV market. These applications include thermal processing of EV sensors, battery cooling assemblies, and power module substrates, among others. In the materials and substrate business unit, we continue to see strong demand for our consumable products, driven by the ramp and silicon carbide wafer capacity. As we have said in the past, this will be a multi-year capacity expansion cycle as individual customers ramp wafer capacity, then digest, then ramp again. As evidence of this, in the December quarter, we are seeing a stabilization of consumable demand while existing wafer capacity is fully utilized and would expect to see a subsequent step up in demand as the next phase of wafer capacity expansions are brought online. In summary, while we are dealing with material disruption in customer demand, we are confident that our strategy to align our divisions to high-growth megatrend markets, such as EV, is taking hold. In fiscal year 2022, we saw a four-fold increase in bookings related to EV applications with participation expanded to multiple product lines across all of our business units. We believe this strategic alignment to megatrend growth at multiple intersection points creates a strong and more durable foundation for value creation in the coming years. As we look ahead, we are confident we are well positioned in the growth markets with exposure to several secular tailwinds creates a significant opportunity to drive increased profitability and shareholder value as demand accelerates and we realize the operating leverage built into our current business model. I will now turn over the call to Paul Lancaster.