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Operator
Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the Hope Incorporation fourth quarter and full year 2023 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, you will have the opportunity to ask questions during the question and answer session. You may register to ask a question at any time by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad, and you also may withdraw yourself from the queue by pressing star 2. Also, today's call is being recorded, and I will be standing by if anyone should need any assistance. Now at this time, I'll turn things over to Mr. Quinn Callanan, Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.
Quinn Callanan
Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. Before we get started, I'd like to remind everyone that during today's call, taking place on Thursday, March 14, 2024, we will be making forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are based on the company's current expectations, projections, beliefs, and estimates, and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those forward-looking statements. Potential risks include, but are not limited to, demand for our products, operating results of our subsidiaries, market conditions, and other factors discussed in our most recent annual report on Form 10-K and other documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Although the company believes that the assumptions underlying these statements are reasonable, any of them can be proven inaccurate, and there can be no assurances that the results will be realized. The company undertakes no obligation to update the forward-looking statements made during today's call. In addition, references may be made to certain non-generally accepted accounting principles or non-GAAP measures, for which you should refer to the appropriate disclaimers and reconciliation in the company's SEC filings and press releases. COPIN Corporation's Chief Executive Officer, Michael Murray, will begin today's call with an overview of COPIN's progress within the company's strategy. Following Michael, COPIN's CFO, Richard Snyder, will review the company's fourth quarter and full year 2023 returns. I would now like to turn the conference over to Michael Murray.
Michael Murray
Thank you, Quinn.
Michael
Good afternoon to everyone and welcome to our fourth quarter and full year 2023 earnings call. I'm very proud of the significant progress we have accomplished this past year on our transformation plan and achieving our fifth consecutive positive book to build quarter, enabling over 55 million and backlog for 2024. As mentioned on our third quarter results call, we were expecting a new configuration weapons site order in late December, which would significantly increase our demand for the year. And if received, we would need to take actions within the quarter to prepare the plant for such an increase in demand. Based on our understanding that our recently announced $20.5 million order would be received in early 2024, We took the decision to extend our holiday shutdown period which impacted Q4 revenues so that we could install new automation equipment, retool, and clean the plant to accommodate the anticipated significant increase in production and to improve production flow for long-term profitability. Rich will provide more information on the quarter results shortly. During my first earnings call as CEO last March, I referenced our strategic initiatives for long-term success, and I'll update each of these initiatives briefly and in more detail and in our upcoming shareholder letter. Turning to our first strategic initiative, building the backlog. During the fourth quarter of 2023, we booked follow-on orders of approximately $6 million for our thermal weapon eyepiece assemblies, as well as several smaller orders, which resulted in a book-to-bill of approximately 1.2 to 1. the fourth quarter as mentioned our fifth consecutive positive book to build quarter the six million dollar order was a follow-on and the 20.5 million dollar order is a new configuration uh that we received this quarter and represent a significant increase in year-over-year volume and future revenue and brings our current backlog level to 55 million dollars we believe this is a record level of orders for the last 10 years. Furthermore, we do anticipate additional follow-on orders for both of these products and other products as well in 2024. Based just on this current demand, Copen will potentially ship triple the volume of weapons sites within the calendar year of 2024. We also have continued to acquire inventory into the first quarter to service these larger contracts that will go into production in 2024. Now, turning to our second strategic initiative focused on our Fab Light strategy, we've also made significant progress in the fourth quarter and in 2023. As a reminder, Copen is the only U.S. manufacturer of human-centric AR and VR application-specific optical solutions and micro-displays that are used primarily to provide situational awareness for warfighters, surgeons, and spatial computing device users. You can find our solutions in weapons sites, armored vehicles, a surgeon's head-mounted display, and pilot helmet visors. To support the demanding needs of our individual markets between consumer, medical, industrial, and defense customers, we have taken significant steps throughout 2023 to expand our OLED and microLED technology developments to partners outside of China, which are U.S. DOD approved and in regions that are NATO supportive. We will complete this transition this year. This new strategy allows Copen to manufacture our backplane technology and deposit either LCD, OLED, micro LEDs, or L-costs, either internally or externally for cost, security of supply, and performance beneficial to the end customers. An early success factor of this strategy was announced on Wednesday this week when we announced our European-US DOD OLED partner, was able to achieve brightness performance far higher than that of our consumer vendor, resulting in an OLED display with a lifetime brightness performance of more than 20,000 candelas per meter squared at lower power consumption, which is market leading and enabling. Our third strategic initiative is focused upon visual acuity systems and head mounted display technology developments. As the technology of micro displays expands from AM LCD to OLED, And now it's a micro-LED. Our industry has reached an inflection point due to the size, weight, cost, usability, and neurological issues with AR, VR systems that remain unsolved and are gaining adoption rates. Copen can and will solve some of these issues. And last quarter we announced we are working with a software, working on a software-defined AI-enabled backplane called our Neural Display. The neural display architecture features embedded sensor pixels within the screen focused on the user's eyes, providing immediate feedback to the AI software powering the display. The feedback from these pixel sensors empowers the software to quickly adjust the contrast or the brightness of the display to accommodate changes in the user's vision, neurological state, and their environment. This is what we mean when we say we are providing the knobs to the users through software. to allow the technology to adapt to their personal preference. The neural display will empower users to capitalize on the full capabilities of our displays. The primary benefit of this design approach are user comfort, decreased weight by removing cameras in the system, adaptive eye tracking, and dynamic vision control and lower system power consumption. We believe that this new design will resolve many of the flaws inherent in AR or VR headset on the market today in consumer and military applications alike. This is primarily due to the ubiquitous human response to fight or flight scenarios, video-induced nausea, neck strain caused by cantilever effects, the forward-facing weight, and battery sizes required due to high power consumption of the current headsets. The neural display will allow for smaller, more comfortable headsets where the user can encounter a variety of scenarios while staying engaged specifically in high stress environments found in defense and spatial computing markets. Furthermore, throughout the year, and as evidenced in our recent contract awards, we've been focusing on widening our customer base and taking a greater share of our customer spending by adopting the application specific optical solution strategy. Indeed, we will still sell individual displays and we are winning sockets from competitors who have been struggling of late but Our core competency in differentiation is in delivering a fully integrated and optimized solution for our customers' unique application. This is evidenced in our success delivering our CR3 module to market for our partner, HMDMD, for assisted surgery customers. The design was completed entirely by Copen with user inputs from HMDMD. It is elegant, lightweight, and brilliant to use. We continue to work on similar applications with several new customers in the head-mounted display market, specifically in spatial computing and defense applications. Recently, we demonstrated our off-the-visor heads-up display with Wilcox, which we expect to be a new source of revenue for the company. We expect to announce more of these fully integrated systems and new customers to COPEN shortly, while we continue to drive innovation and research into our advanced display architectures as well that are also being successfully funded, like the recent award from the Navy as an example. As the military adopts more integrated visual acuity systems, Copen is uniquely positioned as the only US owned micro display manufacturer that produces four different types of micro displays. A fully integrated optical design capability, associated drive electronics capability, and now a software defined AI enabled architecture. Throughout 2022, we've been working with our government and military advanced research labs to create technology roadmaps and funding projects, which will increase our technology readiness level and mature our technology to intersect next-generation technology integration and insertion efforts. We expect to announce more progress on these initiatives throughout 2024. Now, I've said in the past, 2023, we were focusing on improving our on-time and full, or OTIF, rate and delight our customers. Throughout the year, we have continually improved in this strategic initiative area and have moved from a 63% on-time and full rate to 84% across the company in under one year. Indeed, a tremendous improvement, but there is still more to accomplish, and we remain focused on reaching and surpassing our goals in this critical area. Now, complementary to our on-time and full initiative, returning the operation to a cash break-even level as a milestone of our transformation, we came very close in both in the second and third quarters when expenses related with the lawsuit and non-cash expenses are removed. We achieved this milestone by improving margins and closely scrutinizing R&D and SG&A spending with continued efforts on what we can control and deliver, and deliver solid margins and growth our investors look for. We have the contracts in place to return to revenue growth in 2024 and expect growth of 20% or greater this year and our goal remains to become a more profitable company this year. Lastly, and most importantly, our One Copen cultural initiative and talent strategy made a significant progress this year. Due to the hard work of our board of directors, the leadership team, and all of our Copen team members, we were able to retain the best talent within Copen, attract new talent with the skill sets we require for growth, and refocus the company into an organization focused on execution. We celebrated our new direction, our new organization and strategy this quarter with the announcement of our new brand, our new logo and website. Our team at Copen continues to improve, win, and grow, and it will be the talented people of Copen that continue to execute on these initiatives this year. I'll now turn the call over to Rich, our CFO, to review our results in further detail. Over to you, Rich. Thank you, Michael.
Michael
Turning to our financial results for the fourth quarter, total revenues from Q4 2023 for $8.6 million versus $12.2 million for the prior year, a 30 percent decrease year-over-year. Product revenues for the fourth quarter ended December 30, 2023, were $6.8 million compared to $8.7 million for the fourth quarter ended December 31, 2022. The decrease in product revenues was a result of lower defense and industrial product revenues, which decreased by $1 million and $600,000, respectively, year-over-year. The lower defense revenues were in part due to planned refurbishing of the clean room during the last weeks of December we discussed in our third quarter financial performance call. The lower industrial revenues is a trend we saw throughout 2023 due to weakness in the Chinese market. In the fourth quarter of 2023, funded research and development revenues decreased by 1.6 million or 47% due to the completion of several programs. Cost of revenues for the fourth quarter of 2023 was 7.2 million, or 106% of net product revenues, compared to 8.9 million, or 103% of net product revenues for the fourth quarter of 2022. Negative gross margin was partly associated with the clean room refurbishment. In addition, we wrote off approximately $400,000 of raw materials we believe would have low yield if we used them in production. Further, Q4 2023 cost of sales includes $445,000 of non-cash stock compensation as compared to $25,000 for the fourth quarter of 2022. Excluding the impacts of these items, cost of sales as a percentage of product revenues would have been 94% for Q4 2023 versus 103% for Q4 of 2022. R&D expenses for the fourth quarter of 23 were 2.2 million, compared to 4.7 million for the fourth quarter of 2022, a 52% decrease year over year. The decrease in R&D expenses is attributable to a decrease in funded research and development expense as certain programs were completed, and lower internal expenses related to OLED development. SG&A expenses were 5.9 million in the fourth quarter of 23, compared to 4.9 million in the fourth quarter of 2022. The increase was primarily due to legal fees associated with our pending litigation. Turning to the bottom line, net loss attributed to Copeland for the fourth quarter of 23 was 6.5 million or 6 cents per share compared with a net loss attributed to Copeland of 6.2 million or 7% or 7 cents per share for the fourth quarter of 2022. During the year ended December 30th, 2023. Total revenues for the year ended December 30th, 23 were 40.4 million compared to 47.4 million for the year ended December 31st, 2022. Product revenues for the year ended December 30th, 23 were 25.9 million compared with 32.4 million for the year ended December 31st, 2022. The decrease in product revenues was a result of lower defense industrial consumer product revenues, which decreased by 2.2 million, 3.4 million, and 900,000 respectively year-over-year. Revenues from the sale of products for defense declined due to lower revenues from thermal weapon site applications, which were partially offset by higher revenues from avionic applications. Revenues for industrial applications declined due to lower revenues for products for 3D automated optical inspection due to continued weakness in the Chinese 3D automated test market, and lower revenues from industrial headset applications. Consumers' revenues declined in 23 compared to 2022 due to lower sales of OLED displays for consumer applications. In the full year, 2023 funded research and development revenues decreased 900,000, or 6%, due to decreased funding for new display technology development for the U.S. programs and OLED development costs, which were partially offset by increased funding for armored vehicle targeting and medical headset development. Cost of product revenues for 2023 were 25 million, or 96% of product revenues compared to 32.6 million, or 100% of product revenues in the prior year. Cost of product revenues decreased as a percentage of revenues in 2023 as compared to 2022, primarily due to an increase of higher margin products for defense applications in 23 versus 2022, and lower sales of lower margin products for defense applications in 23 versus 2022. 2023 cost of sales includes 1.2 million of non-cash stock compensation as compared to 95,000 for 2022. Excluding the non-cash stock compensation cost of sales as a percentage of product revenues would have been 92% for Q4 2023 versus 100% for 2022. R&D expenses for 23 were 10.8 million, compared to 18.7 million for 2022, a 42% decrease year over year. The decrease in R&D expense as compared to prior year was seen in both funded and internal R&D. Funded R&D expenses were 7.2 million for 23 as compared to 10.3 for 2022, a 30% decrease primarily due to completion of contracts for defense programs awarded prior to 2020. Internal R&D expenses were 3.6 million for 23 compared to 8.4 million for 2022, a 57% decrease, primarily due to a decrease in OLED development costs. SG&A expenses were 21.8 million for 23 compared to 18 million for 2022. SG&A for 23 increased compared to 22 primarily due to an increase of approximately 5 million in legal and professional, 1 million in non-cash stock-based compensation, partially offset by 1.3 million decrease in compensation and other benefits. Net loss attributable to Copeland Corporation for 23 was 19.7 million or 18 cents per share, compared with net loss attributable to Copeland of 19.3 million or 21 cents per share for 2022. Net cash used in operating activities for 23 was approximately 15.3 million, Copeland's cash and equivalents and marketable securities were $17.9 million at December 30th, compared to $12.6 million at December 31st, 2022. The amounts discussed above are based on our current estimates, and listeners should review our Form 10-K for the year ended December 30th, 2023, for any possible changes and, of course, additional disclosures. And with that, I'll turn it over to Michael for closing remarks, and then we'll take your questions.
Michael
Thanks very much, Rich. As evidenced in our fourth quarter and full-year results, our focus continues to be on strengthening our record order book, pushing on-time and full rates higher, cost controls, and making sure that the strategic investments in products and people, which in the aggregate will improve cash flow and provide long-term, sustainable, profitable growth. We've also been working hard on our brand, external marketing, and website development efforts. We're ecstatic to announce that we've recently launched a new website and identity. Looking forward, we are fortunate to have world leading and market making customers who are supporting customer during this transformation. We have a unique strategy that distances ourselves from commodity competition, tremendous products and capabilities that new and existing customers value. As we continue to advance and move up the value chain and gain more share of our customer systems and spending, we are carefully selecting new strategic partners to work with and remain focused on new opportunities and development projects. which support our strategic plan, along with opening the aperture to non-organic growth opportunities as well. To this end, and due to our application-specific optical solution strategy, our qualified opportunity pipeline has grown exponentially in the past few quarters due to the recent geopolitical issues and increased sovereign and foreign NATO spending. We expect several new customers, partners, and project awards and announcements soon, which will not only add to our order book, but will fuel larger returns in the future as these new projects move into full-rate production. Perhaps the most culturally important transformation is that Copen remains focused on invention and innovation, but with more focus on cost controls and return on our investments. These new inventions discussed today will help drive our innovations that solve our customers' most difficult technical problems. and serve as the bedrock of our business and fuel our long-term sustainable growth for our employees, our customers, and stakeholders. Thank you, everyone, for your time today and for showing interest in Copen. I'd like to thank our employees, customers, and stakeholders for their continued hard work, support, and dedication. And with that, operator, we'll open it up for a few questions.
Operator
Certainly. Thank you, Mr. Murray. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. You may remove yourself from the queue at any time by pressing star two. Once again, that is star one to ask a question, and we will pause for just one moment to allow questions to queue. We'll go first this afternoon to Matt Sheeran at Stifle.
Matt Sheeran
Yes, thank you. Good afternoon. A couple questions for me. One, Michael, you talked in your outlook and in the release about expectations for double digit growth this year. And you also talked about that $55 million in backlog. How should we think about how that plays out? Obviously, you were down for various reasons this quarter. And so should we expect to see that growth year over year begin in Q1? Or is it going to be more back and loaded? And of that $55 million in backlog, that doesn't necessarily mean that's going to be shipping in this year, right? And some of that could be pushed out.
Michael
Yeah, great question, Matt. So firstly, we see the back half of this year being exciting growth for the company. In Q1 right now where we sit is we're actively purchasing materials for those orders. So as we get materials and as we start building based on our 606 accounting methods, we'll be able to achieve higher growth rates and revenue rates along with that as we progress. So I think you're going to see an escalated revenue growth quarter over quarter. Our customers are pulling demand to the left, meaning they will take earlier deliveries. And our goal is to ship everything we've got in backlog in 2024. Whether or not we're able to do that is a function of getting the parts in here. But I'm pleased to say that our hiring is going quite well in terms of production. And we took the really tough decision in Q4 to take those couple of days to realign the fab so that we can grow. So that's why we took that decision in Q4 versus this year.
Matt Sheeran
So you do expect Q1 to be up year over year then?
Michael
Up over Q4, sequentially.
Matt Sheeran
Okay, but year over year it'll still be down, in other words, right? Because you're at $10.7 million. Okay, okay. So to get to that, though, so you're looking at, you know, we're talking like high teens plus growth in the second half, basically, to get to those numbers, right? Yep. Okay, and then on gross margin, I know there were a lot of moving parts. I'd love for you to clarify on that, what was that raw material write-off all about? And given that it sounds like you're in the build mode in Q1, so should we expect gross margins to be depressed, in other words, below where they were in your Q2 and Q3, which is in the mid-40s?
Michael
Yeah, so as it relates to the $400,000 material write-off, We are working hard. As you saw when you pull out a lot of non-cash charges, we did a pretty good job both in Q4 and year over year in improving gross margins, and we want to maintain that track. And as Michael said, it's all about materials for us. And so, you know, we're asking our vendors to step up. There are certain components which are very sophisticated in our product, and, you know, every now and again when they try to increase and ramp up, we get a lot of it that a lot of material, not a lot, a lot, not a lot of material that just doesn't pass inspection. And so, you know, sometimes you look at it and you say, well, maybe it'll work, maybe it won't. But we're just making, as Michael mentioned, we put a lot of quality programs in to stop that stuff from getting in the line of before we spent a lot of money manufacturing product that ultimately may or may not pass. And so that's what we did. We had $400,000 in material. We looked at it, and we said, okay, we're not really sure that if we put this stuff through the line, it's going to get there. And so we made the decision just to write it off. We work with the vendors. Sometimes they give us credit. Sometimes they don't. It's an ongoing issue. And so that's just going to continue probably through the first half of the year. And that's why, honestly, we're being somewhat cautious about guidance for the first half of the year on growth, because we really need to see our vendors step up and provide the materials. If we're successful, then we'll do better. But we're taking a conservative approach right now.
Matt Sheeran
Okay. Understood. So in other words, so you expect growth. So what should we be modeling gross margins in the first half? like below 40%? Yes. Yeah. Okay. And that just goes back to the, I mean, guess question of profitability, Michael, I know last year you talked about entering fiscal 24 cashflow, breakeven EBITDA breakeven, and obviously you're going to be below that for the next couple of quarters. So I guess the question is what confidence that you have that you can get, get to that, those profitability goals, you know, by the second half.
Michael
It's a function of scrap and revenue, so an absorption rate on the FAB. So as we build more through the FAB, we're able to keep that absorption rate high, and that's what will drop through the bottom line. So one of the early success factors that I see and why I am confident that we'll achieve that goal this year is we are catching more on inbound inspection, which is great news. The problem that that creates, though, If we order 100 lenses, as an example, and 10 of them are returned to the vendor for quality issues, that leaves us 90 to build. So we went through those tribulations last year, quarter three and quarter four, and now we're adjusting our models and ordering appropriately based on the new quality levels that we're seeing. So that's number one. Number two, the volumes that we're now seeing on the thermal weapon sites will allow us to increase our absorption rate on the FAB and get to that break-even point where we then start to drop more down the bottom line. So, we see that time being Q3, Q4, but we really got to hustle and get the product in here and get moving.
Matt Sheeran
Got it. Okay. Thanks very much.
Michael
Yeah. The other thing, Matt, I would add is the litigation goes to trial in 10 days, roughly. And so, we would expect it to be over by middle of April.
Michael Murray
And that has been a substantial cash drain. Thank you.
Operator
We'll go next now to Glenn Mattson at Lattenberg.
Glenn Mattson
Yeah, hi. Congrats on the business momentum and the backlog bills and everything. Rich, speaking on the trial that you just mentioned, the Can you quantify what you expect the expense to be? And I guess it'll be partial, will all be Q1. I don't know how long the trial is expected to last, that kind of thing. Just your general sense for how we model out that portion of the expense line.
Michael
Trial starts March 20th. We're told it's a four-week trial. So third week in April, it's over. And it will be several million dollars.
Michael
And I'll also comment back to Matt's question. One of the perturbations to the business has been that ongoing litigation. And we did take a significant amount of cost in Q4, expecting that this would have gone to trial, or at least was prepping to trial. And then there was a COVID issue in the courts. So that was an unforeseen issue that, quite frankly, just cost us more cash.
Glenn Mattson
Great. On the general, the other backdrop that you talked about on the business side, Michael, you mentioned the backlog and the order flow that you've gotten recently, but also that there could be some further follow-ons to some of these orders that you're doing now and some potential kind of bigger things as well. Can you just kind of help quantify what are some of the two, like one or two or three biggest opportunities? Just remind us what's out there. Maybe it's like the armored vehicle program or something else to just kind of frame how to think about what that could mean for this year and for 24 and 25 potentially as this stuff comes through?
Michael
Sure. So to quantify it as best I can, the thermal weapons type program is really actually hitting full rate production now. It was ongoing for a few years, and I think it's hitting its stride now. And those retrofits and upgrades are happening at the Army level. Furthermore, there were some recent new weapon selections that if you Google hard enough, you can find them for squad weapon, what have you, that are also increasing adoption rates just simply because there's new guns to outfit. So we're seeing the benefit from that. Moreover, I mentioned, you know, NATO and NATO spending. If you do the math around new countries joining NATO, sovereign and foreign spending that is going on, we will be beneficiaries of that, I believe. Hard to quantify when and where and how, but We are seeing a lot of uptick in new opportunities from other countries and other ministries of defense. So we see some opportunity in that area, specifically in the international weapons site business. So I think that's going to continue. And I believe our customer is taking share of the IDIQ from their competitor because of our quality rates and some of the performance that we've been able to put together in 2023. So all good things on the thermal weapons site. On the armored vehicle program, We've actually been having a lot of conversation with that customer, and the great news there is they are still asking us to pull that program in and get done with our PPAP program as quickly as possible. They are now talking to us about additional platforms for that weapon site, which is exciting news, and we hope to have some announcements there later half of this year and getting those production orders on the books in Q3, Q4. So that's on track. We're on track with that program order. which is great news. We also have our avionics customer that is transitioning over to OLED, and we're expecting that to happen this year as well, which will be additional orders on Copen. So to sit here in March with $55 million of backlog, personally, a year ago, I wouldn't say we would get this far, but it's tremendous effort and tremendous results by the team.
Michael
Yeah, the other thing I would add is that there are also a couple of other significant programs that are in process if our government ever becomes functional and can pass a budget and get through this.
Michael
And to frame that, we're looking anywhere between 8.4 million to 15 million, potentially even 20 if once the government gets back working and has some resolutions that are passed once the government works. So we're We're expecting those to happen, and my view is that we'll have several new customer contracts that we'll be able to announce here shortly. So, yeah, I hope that answers your question. Great.
Glenn Mattson
Yeah, yeah, no, definitely very helpful to frame it like that. And just last one for me. So during the current quarter, Q1 is when the Vision Pro launched or whatever. Can you just give a sense of, like, if that's spurring a lot more conversations on the – You know, you talked a little bit about kind of some technology that you're developing for VR display type stuff, but some of that might be further out. But just perhaps if there's been a significant uptick, but it's worth talking about in that space, you know, since the success of the Vision Pro. Thanks.
Michael
Sure. So Vision Pro, I think, is going to create the adoption rate that we all need in AR, VR systems. It's really a software platform, in my view, which is what they released. They are getting decent companies that are now building apps for the Apple II Vision Pro. And that's just going to enable the market, right? And as that market adoption starts to heat up, so will the rest of the markets being medical, military, et cetera. So I think the adoption rate is going to increase, Glenn. And we definitely are seeing an uptick in consumer requests for applications. coping to work with consumer companies, but I'm very tentative with that right now based on the level of costs and risks that I see in the consumer marketplace still. Right now, we see tremendous demand from the military customers with real money, real demand that I can put my finger on. So we're tending to focus on that more. Having said that, we do have a consumer strategy that is more of an IP-related business, and we're developing that relationship now, and we expect to have some announcements the latter half of this year and to be back at CES in 2025.
Michael Murray
That's it for me. Thanks very much.
Operator
Thanks, Glenn. Thank you. And just a quick reminder, ladies and gentlemen, star one for questions this afternoon. We'll go next now to Kevin Deedy at HC Wainwright.
Kevin Deedy
Afternoon, gentlemen. Michael, Rich, thanks for having me on. Thanks for being here, Kevin. Yeah, no. I guess first thing, Michael, your initial remarks spoke to the outline of strategic objectives you offered in the March call last year. I was wondering if you wouldn't mind sharing sincerely how you think you've done and whether or not you've accomplished as much as you thought you would as rapidly as you have, or whether or not you think that some of the hiccups that you've run into, i.e., problems with source components, problems with the FAB, have delayed the improvement that you thought you could accomplish a year ago?
Michael Murray
I would answer it this way.
Michael
I think the surprises for me have been, I think the cash spent on the lawsuit has been more than what I expected it to be and lumpier than we expected it to be. So I think that was a perturbation that I had not expected and caused havoc with our SG&A and our balance sheet, quite frankly. So I didn't quite understand how that was going to impact the year. So that would be number one. I think the amount of effort that we put into our quality systems, it was more difficult than I had, I'd say, appreciated. And how much detail was going to be required to be improved, how much documentation was going to need to be improved. And quite frankly, we needed some, I'd say, better talent in that area. And we went out and got it. And now we're improving. The customers are rewarding us. I think the best surprise in last year was the customer's willingness to work with Copen and the fact that they want to give us more. They want to give us more business. And at this point in time, they are. And if we keep doing what we're doing, I think we're going to be wildly successful. You know, I'm afraid to tell people what our opportunity pipeline is because the number is so large. So I think we've got tremendous opportunity to grow the company. And I think it's just blocking and tackling keeping our customers happy, and turning out quality products. So I think that's where my head is at, you know, after a year.
Kevin Deedy
Okay. Help me make sure that I have the details straight here. I could swear that I heard your prepared remarks. You were comfortable with 20% growth, which gets you like $48.5 million this year. Your backlog is $55 million, and you expect to convert all of it this year. So – Sort of help me reconcile those two or correct a problem in my understanding, please.
Michael
Sure, just conservatism. We want to make sure that we're our supply chain can support that level of volume. We are buying to that level of volume today and expect to shift that level of volume. But again, we want to make sure that we're very crisp and concise and hit our marks. So that's the reason for the delta.
Kevin Deedy
Okay, fair enough, thank you. I was wondering if you could peel the onion back a little bit on the thermal sites, understand? You're very excited about that, but could you, I know that you're obviously very involved with the FWSI, but I guess what I don't understand is, you know, how much foreign interest you're seeing I thought I understood maybe a $20 million order coming in from a NATO affiliate. Can you just help clarify that?
Michael
No, the $20.5 million that we received this quarter is for the U.S. DoD. It's a new weapon selection. So with the new weapon selection, Kevin, along comes a new weapon site. And we had to do some work on the optics to make that weapon site work for this new weapon system. So that is for USDOD. We did have, in 2023, several orders for international weapon sites, specifically long range. And our customer is vying for new business in that area internationally, and they're being successful. So we'll see what happens this year with some of the conflicts that are going on. But in the international market, it is much more price conscientious than I'd say the U.S. DOD market, from my understanding. But I also see opportunity in non-conventional weapons site systems, like off-the-visor systems, as an example, which is one of the things that we worked on with Wilcox and displayed with Wilcox at the SHOT Show. So I think those are new opportunities for us to grow our business and our portfolio. And I think you'll hear some exciting news around those technologies as well this year.
Michael
Yeah, Kevin, I would add that, you know, you'll see, for instance, a lot of discussion about the U.S. providing arms to the Ukraine as an example. Our customer in situations like that is the United States government. So it's not like Ukraine or some European nation orders it. They actually are supplied by the U.S. government. So technically, our customer is always the U.S. government. And sometimes we know where it's going, and sometimes we don't.
Kevin Deedy
Okay. Thank you. Michael, if you'll allow me, you spoke to backplane developments. And I guess making sure that your sources are outside of China. And you mentioned both internally and externally, and I kind of lost your train of thought on that. So if you could help me kind of understand that and maybe how the process is different than the way you were looking at it a year ago. and what position the change puts you in going forward?
Michael
Yeah, no problem. Let me clarify. So we build our backplanes with a silicon partner, and we control that internally. So we'll send out a wafer request to our partner who's in Asia, not in China, but we'll receive those backplanes. And so we build the backplanes, we design the backplanes. We can deposit certain material, whether it be OLED, micro LEDs, or LCOS in Dalgety Bay as an example. But it's that deposition partner that I'm referring to more specifically as being FabLight. The reason why that's important is we've moved our OLED deposition out of China. We have now signed up a European deposition partner that is adapting our OLED designs and using their deposition material and process. And quite frankly, it's working better than expected. We're getting better quality results, better brightness and power consumption, and pardon me, not power consumption, contrast numbers from that partner. So that's going very, very well. Very impressed with that. But we're also looking at other partners in Korea, as an example, that have high-volume OLED deposition and capability, as well as microLED technology, and are USDOD-approved. So expanding into that market allows us to still own the backplane, which we need to design. That's where the brains go, the processor itself, the AI, the software that controls the display. The deposition, Kevin, of OLED or LEDs or what have you is what's happening at our partners' sites. Does that help?
Kevin Deedy
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it helps a lot. And I remember it was one of your first initiatives was to move to FabLight. And at that point, was your deposition partner the one in China, or had you already begun to work with the European partner?
Michael
So the Fab Lake strategy was put in place because our partner was in China. So that was a very specific initiative, yeah. Because, you know, we saw tremendous opportunity in USDOD, and the answer was we'd love to give it to you, but you can't deposit OLED in China. And I said, fine, we won't. And now we do not deposit OLED in China for USDOD customers. And we're being very successful in taking share of individual displays and our optical solutions away from some of our domestic competitors. So that strategy is working quite well, actually.
Kevin Deedy
I'm trying to shorten up my question list for you, Michael. But I can't not let this one go. I'd really love to hear an update on the neural display. I think you referenced it, obviously, but not much detail on time to market and any sort of customer acceptance you may have had to this point.
Michael
So I'll update more in the next call with more definitive details. However, we have been out marketing the neural display with, I'd say, a handful of customers and consumer and a handful of very strategic customers in defense. We've also written several research papers requesting funding for the neural display, and I think we'll be successful in getting that funding from the USDOD for soldier vision systems. So that's going well. I have a high degree of confidence in that technology and our ability to fund it. That's number one. Number two, I have the team working on a very stressful timeline right now where we want to be demonstrable in Q1 of 2025. It won't be a full 2K display or 4K display, but I believe we'll have a demonstrable display in Q1 of 2025 that we can demonstrate for customers utilizing this new technology. And that's our goal, Kevin. It's a lofty one, by the way.
Kevin Deedy
So that Q1 is CES 2025, Michael, which I know you referenced. So could we be so lucky as to see something there? Or am I shooting too high?
Michael
Well, let's put it this way. That's what I'm forcing the engineers towards. But again, I want to stress that is a very lofty goal. But that is the goal. And we're working like mad to make that happen. And we also have a USDOD demonstration that we want to do in Q4 that has now taken priority over that because of the volume of business that we could associate with it. But that's the goal, Kevin, is 2025 CES. So we'll do our best, but it is a lofty goal.
Kevin Deedy
Yes. Well, thanks for indulging me, gentlemen. I appreciate it. I'll turn the call over finally.
Michael Murray
Thanks, Kevin.
Operator
Thank you. It appears we have no further questions this afternoon. Mr. Murray, I'd like to hand things back to you for any closing comments.
Michael
Thank you, Operator. Thank you all for joining. We hope you stay safe and have a great spring, and we will talk to you at our next call. Thank you very much for joining.
Operator
Thank you. Again, ladies and gentlemen, that will conclude the Copen Corporation fourth quarter and full year 2023 earnings call. We'd like to again thank you all so much for joining us and wish you all a great remainder of your day. Goodbye.
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