speaker
Operator

Welcome to ComTech's Fiscal Third Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded today, Tuesday, June 18, 2024. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mrs. Maria Ciriello of ComTech. Please go ahead, Maria.

speaker
Maria

Thank you, Operator, and thanks to our investors for taking the time to dial in today. Welcome to Comtex Telecommunication Corp's conference call for the third quarter of fiscal year 2024. Today, I'm here with Comtex Chief Executive Officer John Radigan. We're also joined today by Mike Bondy, Comtex CFO. Before we get started today, please note we have a detailed discussion of the quarter in our shareholder letter available on our website. Certain information presented in this call will include, but not be limited to, information relating to the future performance and financial condition of the company, the company's plans, objectives, and business outlook, and the plans, objectives, and business outlook of the company's management. The company's assumptions regarding such performance, business outlook, and plans are forward-looking in nature and always involve significant risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially from such forward-looking information. Any forward-looking statements are qualified in their entirety by cautionary statements contained in the company's SEC filings. Now, I'm pleased to introduce Comtec's CEO, John Radigan. John?

speaker
John Radigan

Thank you, Maria. And as you know, I'm relatively new to the role of CEO at Comtec, but I'm feeling that I'm already making a positive difference. Last quarter during our earnings call, I said that it was clear to me that the foremost concern of all of our stakeholders and certainly our shareholders was refinancing our balance sheet. I also said that executing a refinancing would be my highest priority. As uncertainty saw, we announced the completion of a $222 million refinancing that replaces our bank facility with a new credit facility consisting of a $60 million asset-based lending facility and a $162 million term loan that matures in 2028. The completion of the refinancing is important for ComTech in many ways. First, our balance sheet is stronger and can support the improved performance and growth of our business as we look ahead. We can now conduct our business without the distraction associated with a looming debt maturity all of our stakeholders would benefit from. Our customers, our vendors, and our people are all excited to move forward unencumbered by reservations about liquidity. It also means that my top operational priority is now the acceleration of our cash conversion cycle and managing our unbilled receivables downward by executing against some of our large multi-year contracts. This quarter, we made progress in delivering against our next-generation troposcatter awards with the U.S. Marine Corps and the U.S. Army. With the refinancing complete, the ComTech team is now wholly and wholly focused on accelerating execution against these contracts to deliver value to both our shareholders and our customers. This leads me to my second key point. ComTech hasn't been waiting to move forward. We've been winning business this entire time, demonstrating the strength of our technologies and mission-critical nature of our solutions. I'll give you the most recent obvious example. Following a competitive process on May 16th, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts voted to award ComTech a five-year contract with a five-year extension option for the operations and maintenance of their statewide next-generation 911 public safety system. initial value of this contract is in excess of 120 million dollars with additional upside potential over the 10-year life of the agreement these wins combined with our recent 48 million dollar contract extension with the state of washington demonstrate the competitive advantage of our people and our technology within our satellite and space communications segment the contact team continues to deliver against the next generation troposcatter awards with the U.S. Marine Corps and the U.S. Army. In addition to completing work against existing contracts, ComTech continues to expand its relationship with the U.S. Army with a recent $13.5 million award for VSAT equipment and related services. This leads me to a higher level point that I've made both publicly and in my direct conversations with investors and that I want to emphasize here today. ComTech has a long-standing history of providing mission-critical communication solutions to its customers. In this country, for example, it's easy to take a 911 call for granted. But making sure that those calls have the public safety result they should is an extraordinarily complex problem, and ComTech is at the forefront of the technology that solves it. We play a similar critical role in satellite and space markets, providing communications infrastructure that ensures people, businesses, and governments can connect anywhere on Earth under any conditions. This mission-critical role and capability is what I want our investors to remember and hope the markets reconsider. The fact is that our ability to develop and deliver superior technology remains fully intact. And Comtech's underlying value is one of just a few businesses in the world that do what we can do remains unchanged. So what has changed? First, we now move ahead with a committed financing and strengthened balance sheet. Second, we can more successfully leverage two underlying businesses that each see growing demand from traditional buyers, from upgrade cycles in public safety and satellite and space communications, and from opportunities in the new end markets. Mike will speak in detail to this quarter's financial performance in a moment. Before I make that handoff, I do want to make one other point to our shareholders. It says something very positive about our business and our company that we continue to be able to attract exceptional talent. You may have seen these announcements or read our newsletters, but it's meaningful to the capital markets as well that we have done the following. announced Jeff Robertson's appointment as president of our terrestrial and wireless business back in April. And it's safe to say that he's hit the ground running. Jeff is a known leader and expert in the 911 and public safety space. And even as he and his team have secured the contract with Massachusetts, he's moving fast to both improve our existing operations and grow into new opportunities. We hired two other senior public safety officials, Tom Guthrie and John Whitehead. And on the satellite and space side, we added Raleigh Regal as Vice President of Business Development and Sales. Raleigh is a well-known across the industry for its expertise and ability to drive growth, both in terms of top-line sales and also in terms of building teams. I wrote this in our investor letter and will repeat it here. I don't think CompTech has ever had a deeper and stronger bench than it does today. ComTech is a good business that offers mission-critical solutions to the world's most demanding customers. We've got some of the best people and technologies in the market, and the markets we are selling into are themselves growing. Taken together, I remain optimistic about our future and our ability to create value for all of our stakeholders.

speaker
Tom Guthrie

I'm going to turn it over to Bob now. Thanks, John. Before discussing our recent results for Q3, let me first cover the status of our refinancing efforts. Last night, we were very pleased to announce that we entered into a new $222 million credit facility with a new syndicate of lenders, which replaces our prior credit facility and which is expected to be funded today, June 18th. With July 31st, 2028 as its maturity date, we have significantly pushed out our repayment obligations by about four years, and by adding an asset-based revolver component to the facility, have immediately enhanced our liquidity. As a result of entering this new credit facility, we are able to once again reclass a major portion of our outstanding debt back to its long-term status. The new credit facility itself consists of a committed $162 million term loan facility and a $60 million revolver loan facility, backed by our eligible receivables and inventory. Outstanding borrowings at close approximate $187 million, reflecting $25 million drawn on the revolver. At close, our available sources of liquidity approximate $63 million, consisting of qualified cash and cash equivalents and excess availability under the revolver. both as defined under the credit agreement of approximately $28 million and $35 million respectfully. Interest on the term loan facility currently approximates SOFR plus 9.5%, whereas interest on the asset-based revolver currently approximates SOFR plus 5%. Blended, the rate currently approximates 14%. Interest on the term loan is dependent on a pricing grid based on our net leverage ratio, and interest on the revolvers dependent on a pricing grid based on our average revolver usage, both as defined in the agreement. Our first covenant testing period is July 31, 2024. At such date, our maximum net leverage ratio is set at 3.25 times trailing 12 months EBITDA. As for the minimum fixed charge coverage ratio, that is initially set at 1.2 times. The first step down in the net leverage ratio to 3.15 occurs on July 31st, 2025. And the first uptick in our fixed charge coverage ratio to 1.25 occurs on April 30th, 2025. Other financial covenants we need to maintain include an initial minimum trailing 12-month EBITDA of $35 million starting in October of 2025 and a minimum average liquidity of 20 million. In connection with entering into the new credit facility, we exchanged our Series B convertible preferred shares for a new series of B1 convertible preferred shares. The new Series B1 convertible preferred shares reflect certain changes to consent rights and existing put rights related to payments upon a change of control following specified asset sales, in each case consistent with the terms of the new credit facility. The powers, preferences, and rights of the Series B1 convertible preferred stock are substantially the same as those of the Series B. We did not receive any cash proceeds from the issuance of the Series B-1 shares, and importantly, as I'm sure some might ask, the preferred holders' conversion price and interest rate did not change. Now, the documents themselves are lengthy, so I'm not going to run down each and every term in the agreement. I just covered a good amount of ground on the key terms and strongly urge investors to read these documents, which are being filed in the Form 8K with the SEC today. Entering into the new credit facility was a key milestone, not only for our company, but for our customers, our vendors, our dedicated employees who got this over the finish line. We are very pleased to have finally resolved a significant overhang on our business and expect the new credit facility to contribute significantly to enhancing our liquidity and business prospects. With this refinancing now in the rear view mirror, we can get back to the tasks at hand of growing our business liquidating our unbilled receivables, and increasing value for our shareholders. Now let's talk about Q3 results. Consolidated net sales were $128.1 million compared to $134.2 million in the second quarter of fiscal 2024, and $136.3 million in the third quarter of fiscal 23. Net sales during our third quarter of fiscal 2024, primarily in our satellite and space communications segment, continue to reflect challenging business conditions stemming principally from our efforts during the quarter to refinance our prior credit facility, which temporarily slowed down our receipt of components from suppliers and our ability to deliver finished products during the quarter. While we have made significant progress toward resolving such conditions by entering into our new credit facility, net sales related to certain orders in our backlog shifted to future periods. Also, as an important reminder, net sales in our satellite and space communications segment for our third quarter reflect the absence of PST, which was divested on November 7, 2023. For the three months ended April 30, 2024, net sales in our satellite and space communications segment primarily reflect higher net sales of our Troposcata solutions to U.S. government and customers, including progress toward delivering next-generation Troposcata terminals to both the U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Army, more than offset by lower net sales of high-power solid-state amplifiers related to the PST divestiture, COMETROPO terminals to an international customer, and VSAT-SACCOM equipment for the U.S. Army. A book-to-bill ratio, a measure defined as bookings divided by net sales, in this segment for the three months ended April 30, 2024, was 0.85 times. During the third quarter of fiscal 2024, This segment was awarded over $13.5 million of funded orders from the U.S. Army for resat equipment and related services, over $6 million of funding from the U.S. Army for cyber training related solutions, over $5.5 million in operational support and maintenance orders from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, over $5 million of funding from a Canadian customer to upgrade a previously deployed triple SCADA system, as well as an order from an international military who is evaluating our common triple scatter solutions. We believe that this new international customer along with the two other new international customers that placed orders in our second quarter of fiscal 2024 to evaluate our next generation modular transportable transmission systems could lead to larger scale triple opportunities in the future. As for our terrestrial and wireless network segment, Compared to the comparable period of the prior year, Q3 fiscal 2024 reflects higher net sales of our NG911 and call handling services, while set in part by lower net sales of our location-based solutions. Our book-to-bill ratio in this segment for the three months ended April 30, 2024, was 0.72 times. Key bookings include a multi-year extension for critical NG911 services for a large county in a Midwestern state valued at over $10 million, and an extension of our short messaging service software engineering services to a large international mobile network operator valued at over $7 million, and a multi-year NG 911 call handling services contract aggregating $4 million for PSAPs located in Canada. Additionally, as John referenced before, subsequent to our quarter end, We entered into a contract with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for the continued operation and maintenance of the state's NG911 system. This new contract has an initial five-year term from August 1st, 2024 through July 31st, 2029, and includes one option to renew for a five-year period through July 31st, 2034. Including the option period, the total contract value could potentially exceed $250 million. We are very honored to have been selected again to be a trusted solutions provider to the Commonwealth. This competitive win serves to highlight strong value proposition of our critical communications infrastructure services and significantly enhances our revenue visibility into the future. Gross margins for the quarter were 30.4% compared to 32.2% in our second quarter of fiscal 24 and 31.7% in our third quarter of fiscal 23. We reported a GAAP operating loss in Q3 fiscal 24 of $3.5 million compared to an operating loss of $5.3 million in Q3 of fiscal 23. While both quarters included restructuring charges, GAAP operating loss in the more recent quarter includes $2.5 million of CEO transition costs. As explained in more detail and reconciled in our Form 10-Q for the quarter, we utilized a non-GAAP measure that we refer to as adjusted EBITDA For Q3 fiscal 24, adjusted EBITDA was 11.9 million or 9.3% of related net sales as compared to 12.5 million or 9.2% that we achieved in Q3 of fiscal 23. The decrease in adjusted EBITDA in dollars reflects lower research and development expenses in both of our reportable operating segments, more than offset by lower consolidated net sales and lower consolidated gross profit both in dollars and as a percentage of consolidated net sales. and higher unallocated SG&A expenses due to our OneComTech and People Strategies initiatives. As we enter the fourth quarter of fiscal 2024, business conditions continue to be challenging and the operating environment is largely unpredictable. In light of these business conditions and resulting challenges, while we are pleased to have successfully closed on our refinancing of the prior credit facility, we do anticipate variability from time to time as we move through our OneComTech transformation. and are targeting net sales and adjusted EBITDA for our fourth quarter of fiscal 2024 to be similar to our third quarter of fiscal 2024. Such expectation considers our strong backlog of 653.4 million as of April 30th, 2024, our revenue visibility of approximately $1.5 billion, and the timing of our refinancing of the prior credit facility today being so close to our fiscal year end. Now let me turn the call back over to John.

speaker
John Radigan

Thanks, Mike, and thanks again to those of you who dialed in today. To recap, our balance sheet is strong. We have made excellent additions to our leadership team. Our people, technology, and equipment are best in class, evidenced by our continuing success in winning new business. As I said, my top near-term priority is ensuring that we manage our unbilled receivables downward, improving our cash conversion cycle. There's a lot ahead of us to look forward to, and we're exiting the quarter with significant positive momentum. Some of what's to come is challenging, but I remain confident and we'll get to where we need to be. I'm excited to lead ComTech forward at this moment in time, and I expect it won't be long before the markets come to appreciate and properly value our business. In closing, I would like to thank our dedicated employees, customers, and suppliers for their continued commitment to ComTech.

speaker
Mike

Thank you very much.

speaker
Joe

And at this time, if you would like to ask a question, please press the star and 1 on your telephone keypad.

speaker
Operator

You may withdraw your question by pressing star 2. Once again, to ask a question, please press the star and 1 on your telephone keypad. We'll take our first question from Joe Gomes with Noble Capital. Please go ahead.

speaker
Joe Gomes

Good morning, John and Mike. Congrats on the refi.

speaker
John

Good morning, Joe. Thank you. Thanks, Joe.

speaker
Joe Gomes

A couple of quick questions on the refi. I just, during the call, was scanning the 8K and was wondering, you know, you said it's with a new group. Did White Hat, Magatar, did they contribute any additional funds over and above what they had done previously? Also saw there's about 1.4 million warrants that were attached to the deal. Was wondering who those warrants went to. And you gave us kind of a blended 14% rate. If you could just remind us how that compares to what it was under the old facility?

speaker
Tom Guthrie

Sure. I'll have to unpack there, but if I miss one or two, please remind me. So in terms of the, let's cover the warrants first. The warrants did not go to Magnetor and White Hat. That was going to the lenders as part of the deal. Magnetor and White Hat did not put any new cash into their investment. You know, they were very supportive during the process and helped us along the way. And in terms of the economics to the rate compared to what we have today, we're sitting at about 10% currently under the old agreement. So there was a step up, but it's reflective of, you know, the deal that we're striking here.

speaker
Joe Gomes

Okay. Thanks for that clarification. And two, you know, one of the things that you'd mentioned, you know, was the challenges with the supply chain and getting products done, and that has pushed some of the, we'll call it, you know, some of the revenues to the right. And, you know, I'm just trying to get an idea of how long do you think this, you know, resolving the supply chain and getting the finished products, how long does that take? process going to take to get back to, you know, let's call it a normalized rate?

speaker
John Radigan

Yeah, so as you might imagine, going through the period we went through where our liquidity was low, we weren't able to get everything to the suppliers that we needed. They weren't able to supply equipment, and it certainly pushed things to the right. that within a three-month timeframe, we can reset the supply chain and return it to a kind of a rate of normal production of all of our facilities.

speaker
John

Does that answer the question?

speaker
Joe Gomes

Yes, thank you for that. I mean, one of the big contracts was the global field services. I know it had been under protest, and I think there had been some issues issuances that maybe the protests have been denied, but maybe you just give us some update on where that contract stands today.

speaker
John Radigan

Yeah, so as of last Thursday, we got a note from Army Contract Command that the stop work order had been lifted.

speaker
John

And so we are anticipating taking over that contract.

speaker
Joe Gomes

Okay. And when do you think you might start seeing revenues out of that then?

speaker
Tom Guthrie

Our view at this point, Joe, is with the stop work order lifted, we would get going pretty quickly. We do have a ramping up, but the Army has already expressed a desire to get going, so we will get ramped up. It's probably going to start contributing meaningfully in 2025. I think that timing is about right.

speaker
John Radigan

By the time we transition all the employees, I would expect August 1st.

speaker
Joe Gomes

Okay. And one last one for me, and I'll jump back in queue. So, John, a lot of great news here with the refi finally done and continue to move forward on adding new people, some major contract wins like Massachusetts. Any timeframe as to when they are going to remove the temporary tag?

speaker
John Radigan

Oh. Well, you know, unfortunately, I would give you one answer, but it's the Board of Directors who, of course, have the fiduciary responsibility to do a search, and that is ongoing. You'd have to talk to our chairman, Mark Quinlan, about that. But as I've told the board, I'm going to make it very difficult for them to take me out of this job, and if they can find somebody better, then more power to them. But I'm loving it. performing under the job and with the team that we've got in place and others to be added, I couldn't think of a better place to be.

speaker
Joe Gomes

Great. Well, congrats again on getting the refi done. Look forward to getting back to business as normal, and I will allow someone else to ask some questions. Thank you.

speaker
John

Thank you, Joe. Thanks, Joe.

speaker
Joe

And we will move next with Mike Crawford with B-Riley Securities.

speaker
Operator

Please go ahead.

speaker
spk03

Thank you. With the win in Massachusetts, does that whole $140 million go into bookings already in this July 4th quarter?

speaker
John

That would be a fourth quarter booking, yes. We would not put the option year in at this point.

speaker
Tom Guthrie

The option year would not be in backlog.

speaker
spk03

And then regarding the unbilled receivables and how those will be declining in the next year. Can we just walk through some of the mechanisms regarding that, maybe starting with troppo scatters, for example, timeline from order to delivery to acceptance on a troppo product and maybe what relative contribution that kind of section of unbilled receivables is on the balance sheet and maybe kind of a similar walkthrough on the other major items there.

speaker
Tom Guthrie

Sure. Hi, Mike. This quarter, you know, looking at our footnote, you probably will notice that while the total headline numbers stayed about the same, we did have a shift in our unbilled receivables with the U.S. government towards billed receivables. So I take that as a sign that we are starting to get the components in, starting to make the deliveries that we need to in order to clear the unbuild. So we always felt around this time of the year we would start to see this liquidation. I think now with the refi behind us and supporting our balance sheet, we can lean in on the supply chain to get components in faster and out the door sooner. I think that's probably the number one thing to do is just get the supply chain, get the manufacturing and getting those deliveries out as planned on both the Army TROPO order as well as the Marine TROPO order. So I think we're in the thick of it right now, and we do expect to see a nice liquidation in those two particular contracts over the next couple of months.

speaker
John Radigan

Yeah, I would also add that we started deliveries, significant deliveries, I should say, at the end of May. We'll be delivering throughout the month of June, July, and August. And I believe the last deliveries, we're trying to move it into August, but the last deliveries, I think, are the beginning of September.

speaker
spk03

Okay, that's great for the Tropo. And what about for things like software delivered to telecom customers where you've been waiting for acceptance after it's been delivered?

speaker
Tom Guthrie

Yeah, I think we're doing what we need to do for our delivery. Some of these milestones were out in fiscal 25, so we haven't yet approached those milestones. I think you're probably going to see probably a more dramatic drop in the satellite and space unbuilds. The T&W unbuilds I think will be a little bit of a longer tail, but I think we're moving along doing what we need to, working with our customers and fully expect to recover that

speaker
John Radigan

Some of those contracts in that space, which are indicative of that market, have long times between milestones. And so as we catch up to those, I believe in fiscal year 25, we'll start to roll those off. And in the future, we will try to make sure that we put in place contracts with a little bit better milestones.

speaker
spk03

Yeah, that would be good. Just to be clear, this $11.9 million adjusted EBITDA number for 3Q with a similar expectation for 4Q, are those the numbers that will be used for the leverage covenant in your new bank facility?

speaker
Tom Guthrie

Yeah, in terms of the specifics, how we derive that, this is our view at the moment based on getting the refinancing done, and certainly we have some risks and opportunities that we track. And, you know, we felt at this juncture, it's so close to year-end, this was probably the appropriate guidance. Certainly, we'll do our best now, having secured the refinancing, to expedite and move things to the left. But, you know, we just want to be cautious. We're only into it one day. And, you know, we want to, you know, start executing now, servicing the supply chain. And in terms of how we developed the covenant themselves, we... model being sensitivities and if we feel comfortable that you know uh how we set up the covenants going out of the gate uh you know we'd be we expect to be in compliance is the best way to say it great well thank you very much thank you thanks mark and as a reminder it is start anyone if you would like to join the queue we will move next with greg burns with sudori please go ahead

speaker
spk04

Morning. Just to follow up on that last comment, when you look at staying in compliance with those covenants, obviously this run rate would imply either a step down in the level of debt or EBITDA growing from these levels. What is your view on that and how you're going to stay in compliance? Are you expecting to liquidate those receivables and reduce the level of lending? Do you have a view on EBITDA maybe stepping up with some of these contracts kicking in in 2025? How should we think about that?

speaker
Tom Guthrie

I think you nailed it in the last point. Certainly the unbilled receivables and liquidating the unbilled is a key driver to this. We are expecting those, as I said earlier, to unwind over the summer and generate cash flows for us. And certainly we have grown our backlog and we're on pace to have record backlog if we keep this up. So I think things are trending in the right direction. And now that we have the refinancing secured, we feel comfortable about making those investments to move forward on bringing whatever we can to the left and maximizing our EBITDA. But I think the number one item is definitely the unbill that's going to drive our compliance. Okay.

speaker
spk04

And when you look at the disruptions in your business that you saw last quarter and this quarter and I guess probably into the next quarter a little bit, how much of that is just timing with the supply chain and getting the products out the door versus maybe lost businesses?

speaker
Tom Guthrie

I would say it's the majority is components, getting key components in to manufacture things. It only takes one part to hold you up. And certainly as we were in the throes of getting the refinancing done, you know, we were expecting to have this done back in March. So we were living under this agreement for another three months. There was, you know, humming that we had a reserve for in that old agreement, you know, which changes your behavior. So now that things have, you know, open up a little bit with our liquidity under this new asset-based loan and the way we structure this, we'll have more liquidity at our disposal and, again, service the supply chain. They've been very good partners over the last several months working with us. I think it's time to return the favor now and get things back, prioritizing the factories and keeping Maria's team busy.

speaker
John Radigan

Yeah, I would also add that I'm not sure that we were losing orders, but that there were orders that were being delayed with some of the customer base worried a bit about our financial stability. And this completing and the resolution of the refinancing will solve all of those problems in terms of our perception in the market, as well as giving us a boost into business for the next year.

speaker
spk04

Okay. When you think about alternative solutions, if a customer is delaying and kind of waiting to see where you're at, how easy would it be for them to replace your solutions? Or, you know, I'm just trying to get a sense of maybe if they were able to find another supplier or if they... Yeah, so on the Troposhatter side...

speaker
John Radigan

Yeah, on the trooper scatter side, there really aren't a lot of competitors in that market, and certainly we're the world leader in the technology that's in that space. So sometimes it'll come down to what's their tradeoff, whether or not they want to go to a piece of equipment that is less capable than what we produce. On the satellite side, on the digital side, on the RF side, there are competitors there, but We're still seeing a very healthy backlog. I wouldn't say that there was a diverse set of competitors there, but certainly there are. And they could go to other places, but we haven't seen that yet. I think what we've seen is a delay in some of the things that customers are doing, as well as our ability to produce and get equipment out the door. We're going to be excited to do that in a much better way than we have over the last three or four months.

speaker
spk04

Great. And with the 911 renewals, what was the pricing like on those? Was there a step down in pricing or how did those renegotiations go?

speaker
Tom Guthrie

Yeah, I don't think we'll get specific as to how we priced the opportunity, but I would say we have good relationships with our customers. These were competitive awards that we won, so there were folks out there that we were competing with. We outbid them, I guess, if you will. But the pricing and the jobs themselves, this is a lot of work that we've been doing for years and the continuation of that work. And we're not seeing massive discounts to win the opportunities. I think the customers are at the point in their life cycles where they're also looking to do upgrades of the technologies, particularly in the 911 space. And so that gives us opportunities to have margin expansion

speaker
spk03

uh while we secure the base and then bring in other opportunities on top of that okay great thank you thanks greg we do have a follow-up from mike crawford with the rally security please go ahead um thank you just uh on um growth other growth drivers so the the global field services representative contract is that still anticipated to grow to be as much as $100 million a year kind of revenue contribution for the company for several years?

speaker
Tom Guthrie

Yeah, that was a four plus, four and a half year contract. It's staffing over 200 something positions globally. And once you have them in place, it's pretty stable, steady work.

speaker
spk03

Okay, thank you. And then the other one that we've been maybe more excited about is this EDEM modem that you're developing that really is the next generation of this EDEM modem that FISAT I think has generated about a billion dollars of revenue on over the last decade. And I believe you're building the first articles there or what is the, what's the timeline on EDEM?

speaker
John Radigan

Yeah, so the first articles and prototypes are due in September. We aren't expecting significant revenue to that until probably the end of what would be our, towards the end of our 2025 fiscal year. But, yeah, that will be the first digital modem in the market. We're pretty excited about that. That kind of aligns with where our strategy is going forward, which is the digitalization of the satellite industry. So we're getting a bit of a jump start on it with the Army on that modem. By the way, we have other modems that we do expect that we've been involved in. There's been three major programs that have come out of the military, and ComTech has been involved in all three of them. That's the WAMS, the A3M, which is the Army Air Force anti-jam modem, as well as the EDAM. And we expect the A3M to move into a production phase very shortly. And that should provide significant revenue for us in the fiscal year 2025.

speaker
John

Okay, great. Thank you.

speaker
Joe

And we show no further questions at this time. I will turn the call back to our presenters for any closing or additional remarks.

speaker
John Radigan

Thanks, everybody, for calling in and being with us today. Mike and I and this entire team of financial professionals are very proud of the work we did to complete the refinancing. And we're happy to move forward. We're excited about the future. We think there are lots of good things ahead for ComTech. We expect to continue to bring on additional leaders in the industry. and expect great things out of both our public safety and satellite and space businesses.

speaker
Mike

Thank you.

speaker
Joe

And this does conclude today's program. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect at any time.

Disclaimer

This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.

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