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spk02: Good day and welcome to the second quarter fiscal 2023 Keytronic Corporation conference call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Brett Larson. Please go ahead.
spk00: Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. I am Brett Larson, Chief Financial Officer of Keytronic. I would like to thank everyone for joining us today for our investor conference call. Joining me here in our Spokane Valley headquarters is Craig Gates, our President and Chief Executive Officer. As always, I would like to remind you that during the course of this call, we might make projections or other forward-looking statements regarding future events or the company's future financial performance. Please remember that such statements are only predictions. Actual events or results may differ materially. For more information, you may review the risk factors outlined in the documents the company has filed with the SEC, specifically our latest 10-K, quarterly 10-Qs, and 8-Ks. Please note that on this call, we will discuss historical financial and other statistical information regarding our business and operations. Some of this information is included in today's press release, and a recorded version of this call will be available on our website. Today we released our results for the quarter ended December 31st, 2022. For the second quarter of fiscal 2023, we reported total revenue of $123.7 million compared to $134.5 million in the same period of fiscal 2022. For the first six months of fiscal 2023, Our total revenue was $261 million compared to $267.2 million in the same period of fiscal 2022. As previously announced, our revenue for the second quarter of fiscal 2023 was impacted by a six-week delay in starting production for a large program with a leading power equipment company. This delayed revenue by approximately $20 million from the second quarter of fiscal 2023, but production for this program is currently underway and increasing in the third quarter. While constraints in the global supply chain continue to limit production, we saw some gradual improvements with respect to lead times of certain key components. For the second quarter of fiscal 2023, our gross margin was 7.2% and operating margin was 2.9% compared to a gross margin of 7.3% and an operating margin of 1.2% in the same period of fiscal 2022. The gross margin in the second quarter of fiscal 2023 was adversely impacted by business interruption and other operational losses related to storm damage in our Arkansas facility, as well as by preparations for expected sales growth in the second quarter and increased labor costs in both the U.S. and Mexico. While profitability is expected to improve in coming quarters with expected increases in revenue, higher interest rates on our line of credit and increasing wages will limit a portion of that expected improvement. For the second quarter of fiscal 2023, net income was $1 million, or 9 cents per share, compared to $0.6 million, or 5 cents per share, for the same period of fiscal 2022. Our results for the second quarter of fiscal 2023 included a gain on insurance proceeds of $2.7 million, or approximately 19 cents per share, related to equipment damage Damaged in the storm at our Arkansas facility. We are still determining determining further business interruption proceeds related to the operational losses incurred in the past two quarters as a result of the storm damage. For the first six months of fiscal 2023, net income was $2.1 million or 20 cents per share compared to $1.4 million or 13 cents per share. for the same period of fiscal 2022. Turning to the balance sheet, despite the continuing production delays due to supply chain problems and the continued ramp and transfer of new programs, we ended the second quarter with total working capital of $190.7 million in a current ratio of 2.1 to 1. Compared to the prior quarter, We're encouraged to see our receivables decreased by $4.7 million and DSOs at 78 days, down from 91 days, which we believe reflects some improvement among our customers with respect to disruptions from COVID-19 and supply chain issues. At the end of the second quarter of fiscal 2023, our inventory increased by approximately $2.5 million. or by 1.5% from the prior period, reflecting the delayed production for the large outdoor power equipment program and our preparations for expected growth in coming quarters. While the state of the worldwide supply chain still requires that we look out much further in the future than in historical periods, we attempt to carefully balance customer demand and the likelihood of successfully bringing in Parts in time for plan production in future quarters, we expect to see our net inventory turns slowly improve to more historical levels. Total capital expenditures were $1.4 million for the second quarter of fiscal 2023 and we expect total capex for the year to be around $9 million. We're also utilizing the $2.7 million gain on insurance proceeds for storm damage to modernize our operations, which should increase efficiencies in our Arkansas facility. While we are keeping a careful eye on capital expenditures, we plan to continue to invest selectively in our production equipment, SMT equipment, and plastic molding capabilities. utilizing leasing facilities as well as make efficiency improvements to prepare for growth and add capacity. Despite the ongoing disruptions from the global supply chain that will continue to limit production and adversely impact operating efficiencies, we are expecting significant growth in fiscal 2023. For the third quarter of fiscal 2023, we expect to report revenue, in the range of $160 million to $170 million, and earnings in the range of 15 cents to 25 cents per diluted share. While profitability is expected to improve in coming quarters with increasing expected revenue, higher interest rates on our line of credit and increasing wages will limit a portion of that expected improvement. While our facilities in the U.S., Mexico, China, and Vietnam are currently operating, Uncertainty does still remain as to the possibility of future temporary closures. Customer fluctuations in demand costs, future supply chain disruptions, and other potential factors, any of which could significantly impact operations in coming periods. In summary, we continue to grow our pipeline of new sales prospects and continue to increase our customer demand to unprecedented levels for Keytronic. We believe that we are increasingly well-positioned to win new EMS programs and continue to profitably expand our business over the longer term. That's it for me. Craig?
spk03: Okay. Thanks, Brett. We're pleased with a successful ramp of new programs and our expanding customer base in the second quarter of fiscal 2023, despite the six-week delay for production from the large previously announced power equipment program. Production for that program is now back on track and rapidly ramping up. In essence, the revenue from that program simply pushed by a quarter. During the second quarter of fiscal year 2023, we continued to see the favorable trend of contract manufacturing returning to North America. Currently awarded new business has created backlog that will support over 65% growth in the U.S. sites over the next fiscal year. We won new programs involving outdoor power equipment, battery management, automated sprinklers, and biometric sensor technology. We move into the third quarter with record backlog, and we're seeing improvement in the global supply issues for certain components that have severely limited our production in recent periods. Global logistics problems, the war in Europe, China-US geopolitical tensions continue to drive OEMs to examine their traditional outsourcing strategies. We believe these customers increasingly realize they had become overly dependent on their China-based contract manufacturers, not only for product, but also for design and logistics services. Over time, the decision to onshore or nearshore production is becoming more widely accepted as a smart long-term strategy. As a result, we see opportunities for continued growth. As we've discussed in prior calls, we built Keytronic to offer the ideal solution for customers as they move to respond to geopolitical pressures. Our facilities in Mexico represent a campus of 1.1 million square feet in Juarez, most of which is contiguously located in nine facilities acquired over time. Our three US-based manufacturing sites have also benefited greatly from the macro forces driving business back to North America. Moreover, our new Vietnam facility continues to increase production levels, and the abatement of COVID-related government restrictions in Vietnam is allowing us to travel there and tour the plant with potential customers. Our Shanghai plant has added capabilities in management, staff, and systems that allow it to serve Chinese customers directly. Shanghai has replaced the business that we moved to Vietnam, and our procurement group in Shanghai, which serves the entire corporation, is important for managing the supply issues that crippled many of our competitors without boots on the ground in China. The combination of our global footprint and our expansive design capabilities is proving to be extremely effective in capturing new business. Many of our large and medium-sized manufacturing program wins are predicated on Keytronic's deep and broad design services. And once we have completed a design and ramped it into production, we believe our knowledge of a program's specific design challenges makes that business extremely sticky. We also invested in vertical integration and manufacturing process knowledge. including a wide range of plastic molding, injection, blow, gas assist, multi-shot, as well as PCB assembly, metal forming, painting and coating, complex high-volume automated assembly, and the design, construction, and operation of complicated test equipment. This expertise may set us apart from our competitors of a similar size. As a result, a customer looking to leave their contract manufacturer will find one-stop shopping in Keytronic which is expected to make the transition to our facilities much less risky than cobbling together a group of providers, each limited to a portion of the value change. Moving further into fiscal 2023, the headwinds from the global supply chain continue to present uncertainty and multiple business challenges, but do show some signs of gradually abating, particularly with respect to the recent price stabilization for some commodity components. At the same time, these price reductions are offset by increasing wages at our North American facilities. We believe global logistics problems, China-US political tensions, and heightened assurance of supply concerns will continue to drive the favorable trend of contract manufacturing returning to North America, as well as to our expanding Vietnam facilities. The fact that we see record-level backlogs and expect record revenue in the third quarter indicates our growing momentum. Along with the records we are setting for backlog and revenue, we see a dramatic improvement in all metrics associated with business development. For example, over the past year, the number of active quotes with prospective customers has increased eightfold. This unprecedented increase in demand for our unique mix of skills, location, and people has powerful implications beyond the obvious revenue growth potential. In particular, we have been able to negotiate more favorable pricing terms and business parameters than in the past, as well as to be much more selective in the new customers we bring on. While this shift in leverage will not manifest in the short term, its effect on our long-term performance should be profound. As the implacable effects of global demographics combine with the unique attributes of the North American economy to drive the re-industrialization of the U.S. and the accelerating industrialization of Mexico, Keytronic should be uniquely positioned for significant growth in fiscal 2023 and beyond. This concludes the formal portion of our presentation. Brett and I will now be pleased to answer your questions.
spk02: Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Again, please press star 1 to ask a question. And we will pause for just a moment to allow everyone an opportunity to signal for questions. Our first question comes from Bill DeZellum with Titan Capital. Please go ahead.
spk05: Thank you. Let's start, if we could, with the power equipment customer that had the delay since that led to the pre-announcement. Walk us through, if you would, what happened there and what, if anything, Keytronic could have done to influence those revenues coming in sooner.
spk03: Well, Bill, I'm not sure I can be as specific as you would like about what happened there. I can generally say that it was a brand-new program on a brand-new product that we shared in the joint design and development thereof. There were delays all across the board. In fact, the final delay was the artwork for the packaging. So we were six weeks off out of a 11-month design program, which was pretty annoying. But on the other hand, we got it done. And in fact, we mentioned the new programs involving outdoor power equipment. that same customer has just awarded us, uh, another piece of business on another product. And before you ask me, it's about, uh, $11 million.
spk05: That's, uh, that's quite helpful. And congratulations on that next, uh, next piece of business. Yep. Continuing, continuing with them, um, So since I've never been in the position of doing artwork for packaging, six-week delay sounds like a lot, but walk us through kind of that. That just seems extreme to me.
spk03: It is actually more common than you would hope in our business. where we are manufacturing a product for a customer that is selling it to a retail customer. So retail packaging, as you know, is very, very critical for sales and product market acceptance. And unfortunately, or probably fortunately, knowing how artistic I and the rest of my engineers are, we have no say in the artwork. It's a joint agreement that has to happen between our customer and our customer's customer, and it's a joint agreement that has to happen between quite a few artistic people. So it's fairly common that we are with our backs against the wall trying to get either packaging or artwork for packaging done and approved and actually produced. In fact, we're looking at a big upside right now for a different product And yet again, the delay is our ability to get packaging in time with the customer's increased demand into a new market.
spk05: Fascinating. Thank you. And so with this power equipment customer, just to help us have a perspective of the trend line that's taking place, What was the revenue level in October, then the month of November, the month of December, and then in January? What does that look like?
spk07: Pretty easy, Bill. Zero, zero, zero. And then January?
spk05: Yep.
spk07: What?
spk05: At least one more month in January. Go ahead.
spk03: Yeah, I'm not going to comment on what it was in January, but it was a lot more than zero.
spk05: Okay. Are you able to talk about what the peak level of production will be for this customer? No. And is January probably not at the full run rate, given that they were zero in December, so it'll be even higher in coming months?
spk03: Yeah, right now we're at... We're at about five-eighths of our required run rate after really about three weeks of full production.
spk05: Okay, that's helpful. And then originally, if I have the right customer in mind, I think you had a press release that stated that you anticipated that they would be an annual run rate of about 80 million. Is that still is that still what this piece of business is looking like? I'm excluding the new piece of business that you won, but just this original piece of business?
spk03: This original piece of business, we expect to be somewhat less than that in this first period as far as an annualized run rate. But at the beginning, towards the middle of next fiscal year, it should be up to that number for a run rate.
spk05: Okay, that's quite helpful. Thank you. And then you did allude to the fact that I asked about the new product wins and the size. Would you... Would you talk through the other three in terms of the size and then whatever discussion that you have on these four wins would be helpful?
spk07: The other three were around five each.
spk03: Okay. Those will be headed into the Midwestern facilities. And those are pretty good. That's right. Those are pretty representative of what the Midwestern, the three sites in the Midwest have been winning at a really amazing rate over the last year. When we said that they're going to be over 65% growth, that's pretty astounding since they had been basically stable for the last four and a half years, five years. We, as I've always told you, we expected everything that's happening to happen It was a little bit delayed, but now it's actually happening to a larger extent than we thought it was going to. The folks in the Midwest are uniquely constituted to run programs in the one to 10 million range. And these sized programs just continue to come in over the transom and then be gaffed and hooked and cleaned. And it's just an amazing rate to me. It's been really, really fun.
spk05: And presumably, even though it's maybe more exciting for us externally to talk about a large customer, presumably these smaller ones, I'll call them bread and butter ones, are higher margin than a large piece of business.
spk03: Yeah, you can. Pretty reliably predict that something that's going to be run in the U.S. facilities is lower volume, higher margin, stickier overall, and typically quicker to develop also, unless there's a design program that went with it.
spk05: Thank you. and I don't want to take up more time than I should here, but I would like you to talk through the change that's taken place with the U.S. facilities or the Midwest facilities going from essentially flat for a number of years to this accelerated growth. What happened? What changed to lead to this?
spk07: Well,
spk03: As we said in the narrative, as more and more of the general agreed opinion is that it's risky to be overseas and the size of the company that will command the attention that you need to be successful with that piece of outsourced business continues to grow. more and more of the smaller pieces of business that just automatically went to Asia are now more automatically staying in the US. As Asian prices have gone up, as uncertainty with Asian supply has increased, and as the friction, the business friction of doing business overseas has become more generally acknowledged, It's just so much different than it was five years ago when every piece of business we won, we had to dig out from under a rock. Business is now coming to us, and people aren't just kicking tires. People have been given edicts by their corporate leaders and business leaders to get stuff out of Asia because it's too risky.
spk05: Thank you. And did we hear correctly that your quotes, you said, were up eightfold from one year ago? Yeah.
spk03: Yeah, it's, we, as you know, we've been doing this for a while now, and we used to have, probably five, six years ago, we'd sit around and agonize over four or five big quotes that we had to land one of them in order to replace the leaks out of the revenue bucket and maybe grow. And now we've got four pages of single line quote opportunities that are, you know, all of them have passed our screening process. All of them are real opportunities. And it's just, it's hard to even fathom as you, for somebody like me, that's been through what we were going through four or five years ago. but it's really fun.
spk07: Great. Thank you very much. I'll give someone else an opportunity.
spk02: Our next question comes from Sheldon Grotsky with Grotsky Associates. Please go ahead.
spk01: Well, good afternoon, everyone. The first question I'm going to ask is the Arkansas facility, is it fully up and running or is it still being repaired or what's the status?
spk03: It's probably 90% up and running and that's a bit more down to the weather than it is to anything else. We just had the last machine arrive today in a snowstorm and everybody's home but the general manager and the VP are out there driving forklift trucks and getting it off of the trailer. But yeah, like I say, it's 90%, and they had a good couple of weeks, last two weeks, and so we expect that to continue to ramp.
spk01: Okay, and as far as the insurance situation, there may be more... money coming in from that as things get determined, or do you expect it to be neutral from here?
spk03: No, I think there's going to be some more coming in. Our insurance policy was well written, and the company has been very forthright and honorable, which has been a – in the world we live in today, it was a very pleasant surprise. They've been good people.
spk01: So anyway – yes, go on. I'm sorry.
spk03: So the cool thing about that is that the equipment that we have replaced was aged, but the policy was for replacement. And as we said in the narrative, just to put some flesh on those bones, the stuff we've got in there now is five times as fast. And so that has a very massive impact on capacity and cost out of that Arkansas facility.
spk01: Now, I don't know how to phrase this question, but based on what you're saying, you're seeing probably at least in the short or medium term more demand than you can actually meet in a relatively short period of time. Are we looking forward to a major growth cycle for Keytronic as far as you can tell?
spk03: Just from a macro sense of what's happening in the world and as I've gone through the various metrics that we analyze and I think are relevant, it certainly seems as if we should be looking at a very nice growth period for us going forward.
spk01: Well, I've been following your company for a long time, and it always seems that something gets in the way of getting to the bottom line. So I keep on hoping every quarter that we're finally going to break out of that and get some real sense of what potential you can do here. So I wish you good luck in that the world hasn't been an easy place to operate. So let's hope it gets a little bit easier for you and you're able to pick the right contracts, et cetera. I'll let someone else take the floor with the questions.
spk07: Okay, thank you. Thank you.
spk02: Our next question comes from George Millis with MKH Management. Please go ahead.
spk04: Thank you. Hi, Craig. Hi, Brett. Hey, George. I want to follow up on the two previous callers and want to sort of look into the future and And I think you were saying that coding is very strong. That has an impact on pricing. On business terms, you can choose your customers better. But then I guess you have to make some kind of balance between growth and margins, I imagine. And I'm wondering how you think about that. I'm just curious. I'm always thinking about margins and where could those margins go? And is there sort of an idea that maybe the idea would be to grow X percent in order to reach 9 percent margins or 9.5 percent margins? Can you sort of elaborate on that? I don't know if it makes sense, but maybe I'd love to have a discussion on that.
spk03: What I was trying to say, I'll just try to do a better job of explaining, is that five, six years ago, actually from the time we became a contract manufacturer until about a year ago, we were ahead of our time in predicting that what's happening now was going to happen. And so very much so at the beginning of our contract manufacturing days and then It lessened over time. And then the no commentary on the goodness or badness of Trump, but certainly the Trump presidency sped up the realization of what we already knew was going to happen. And then COVID accelerated it even further. So that difference between now and the old days, let's call it before the pre-realization that overseas is risky. So the difference now is that we would be sitting in a room doing the final negotiations with a customer and the customer would say, well, we're close to a deal, but, um, you know, you need to drop your margin by a half point because you're higher than these other guys. And we would be sitting there sweating bullets, trying not to show the fact that we desperately needed that deal to happen. And so we would act as good as we could act. And, um, They would see through us or not see through us, depending on how perceptive they were and how good we were at acting on that day. And we would get driven down to where our margins were to the point where it was basically, at this point, we don't care anymore. If we lose this business, even though we really want it, we're going to have to walk away. And today, the situation is quite a bit different. our prospective customers starts down the road of, you know, this is just like buying a used car. It's a very predictable and prescribed interchange between buyer and seller. But when they start down the road of, you know, you're too high or we need you to hold inventory for a year or we need payable terms of 360 days and then maybe we'll pay you, we can just say, yeah, no thanks, we're not interested and walk away. And It's hard for me to tell you, George, what that's going to do to gross margin, but I can for sure tell you it's going to make it better. We don't have any hard and fast rule that says, well, anything under 9% we're walking, because as we're analyzing a piece of business, there's not only the margin, there's also the potential for growth. There's the Behavioral patterns that we see exhibited by the customer as we go through quoting and negotiating. There is the attractiveness of the business from an operational standpoint. So there's a gob of factors that we're considering as we're negotiating. But we're negotiating from a position of strength rather than a position of semi-desperation that we have to win this deal. So I know that you would like a nice number that you can plug into your equation, and so would I. But I can't give you that. I can just tell you it's going to get better. At least I believe it's going to get better.
spk04: Okay. And then that is really driven by, A, your design capability, and, two, sort of that you're sort of becoming a one-stop shop for – really being able to not just do components, but a whole box, a whole product, right? And it's interesting because you're talking about having some delay in the artwork, in the packaging, because it means that you're going to put your product in that packaging, and then it goes directly to the retailer. So it's a finished product. So those are two of the key capabilities that you have and two of the real advantages that you have in the marketplace.
spk03: Yeah, and to give you an example, one of our pieces of business, new pieces of business, is probably the perfect embodiment of the overall macroeconomic process that we're watching and that we predicted and that we're enjoying. So probably, I'm going to just give you this for an example, and I apologize. This is going to take, I'll time it. I bet I can do it in less than two minutes. So 30 years ago, a guy invented a new product that required a pretty complex manufacturing process. All kinds of welding and vacuum forming and hydroforming. And 20 years ago, that product moved to a town in China and a number of his competitors also copied him and then moved their product to a town in China. So that town in China became the world's preeminent location of manufacturing that type of product. And then as time went by in the last two or three years, That company and their competitors realized that in order to really service the market here, they needed to have a lot less than 12 weeks uncertain ship time over the ocean. And the slight increase in price was more than offset by the increase in business and margin they could make by having a much quicker turn. And so they chose us to bring that manufacturing back to Mexico, so it left the West Coast of the States, went to a town in China, and now has come back to our factory in Mexico. So we are in fact reverse engineering the Chinese who reverse engineered the guy in sale. And I just find that to be an amazingly big circle of whatever you want to call it that's going on right now. But that is exactly what's going on in many different industries. In some cases, our customers have lost the knowledge and ability to manufacture. In other cases, they've lost not only that, they've lost the ability to design and manufacture. So as we talked about the re-industrialization of the U.S. and the industrialization of Mexico, that's a perfect example. And that was a minute, no, two minutes and ten seconds, so I overshot it a little bit.
spk04: I think nobody was keeping track, Craig, but that's great. Okay. Let me push you a little bit more on margins. What are the margins goals that you would like in, let's say, fiscal 24? What is it from a gross margin perspective? Because they fluctuated, and I think we were always trying to govern for nine or slightly above nine, but we've fallen short. What would be your goal?
spk03: I don't know, George. I keep telling you I'm not going to give you a number for your equation because I can't. I hope it's better than that. If I look forward from what I'm seeing, if nothing goes wrong, it should be better than that. But something always goes wrong.
spk04: Okay. And then from a growth perspective, How much growth is too much growth? How much growth would be very difficult to manage? Is 20% growth sort of a good number? I mean, 20% is a lot.
spk03: Well, if you take the Midwestern sites as an entity, which they used to be, they are going to manage 65% plus growth in the next half a year. And I don't see that there's going to be any significant problems within the operations in doing that. There may be problems with getting parts, but in terms of managing it, I don't see an issue. Every piece of business is different. Some of it is highly IQ point intensive to bring in. Some of it is just a simple slam dunk moving a PCB assembly from our competitor to us. So all those factors go into my answer of, I don't know, but certainly a lot more than what we've done in the past is possible.
spk04: Okay. Great. Thank you. Okay, thanks for those very precise guidelines.
spk03: Yeah, yeah. 9.276, so just plug that in there. We'll be good.
spk04: Exactly. Thank you very much.
spk07: Okay, bye. Thanks, George.
spk02: Our next question comes from Bill DeZellum with Titan Capital. Please go ahead.
spk05: Thank you. So you had mentioned that the outdoor power equipment company had awarded you another $11 million piece of business. Given that you have, they presumably awarded that before you had actually produced any of the current program for them, what led them to want to give you more business before you had done any?
spk03: Well, we've been interacting with them for over a year now. We've had people in their factory, and they've had people in our factory for over a year. We've been in the design process for over nine months. We started coding on this new piece of business while we were still trying to get the current design done. But in fact, it wasn't awarded to us until just last week. It wasn't really awarded until they saw the first chunk of product go out the back door.
spk05: Congratulations. Okay, that does help. And then let's talk a little bit about Vietnam. You had mentioned that customers or prospective customers can now go and tour the factory. What does the prognosis look like for filling that factory?
spk07: It looks very hopeful to the point that we have looked at land availability close to the factory.
spk05: And since I have not been to that factory, what does the availability of land, facilities, and labor look like in that near area? Is it as convenient as Juarez where literally everything is contiguous? So far, yeah. And what level of expansion are you currently considering?
spk03: We're not currently considering anything. We're just beginning to think it would be wise to have a good understanding of what's close and how fast it's going to get gobbled up by other folks.
spk05: And then what about the labor factor, Greg?
spk03: What's labor available? Labor still looks good in the region we're in. Some of the other regions are getting tighter, but where we're at looks very good so far.
spk05: Okay, that's helpful. Thanks.
spk03: And then speaking of labor... Hey, Bill, speaking of labor, maybe we're going to the same place. In the last two months, we've hired 1,000 people in Juarez.
spk05: And how does that compare to a normal amount of hiring that you would do? Because presumably some of those people are replacing those who have left and just the whole great resignation concept, but Talk to us about that.
spk03: I'd say the normal number over that period would be maybe a couple hundred.
spk05: And that period was what again?
spk07: A couple months.
spk05: I thought you said. So normal run rate of 100 people a month you'd be hiring and now you're hiring 500. Yeah. That might. Okay. Okay. So that might start to answer my next question, which is, is wage pressure in Mexico accelerating, decelerating, or kind of what's your view of what's happening there?
spk07: Well, it feels to us as if the wage pressure is flattening out. And what do you attribute that to? Too many factors to mention. Okay.
spk05: And are you a bit surprised that as you're trying to hire five times as many people as you normally would in a period of time that you're sensing the labor pressures or wage pressures are mitigating? I mean, that sounds pretty positive.
spk03: I'm kind of enthralled with the whole demographic situation across the globe. And if you spend some time looking at that, Mexico and the states are basically uniquely positioned compared to the rest of the world in the fact that we aren't about to age ourselves into oblivion. And so I would expect that even though they may raise prices by law in Mexico, the availability of generally younger people who are looking to start their professional life continues to be good in Mexico and in the States compared to the rest of the world.
spk05: Right. Yep. Okay. Well, thank you. Appreciate it. And, uh, Look forward to seeing the coming quarters grow. Thank you.
spk07: Yep. Thanks, Bill.
spk02: Our next question comes from Sheldon Gradsky with Gradsky Associates. Please go ahead.
spk01: Okay. Well, you're tempting me as I listen to all these questions and answers, and you mentioned that your bidding activity is going up at an extraordinary rate and your backlog is growing rapidly. How much do you think you could increase unit volume? I know units are all different in this business, but how much do you think you could increase unit volumes if you had the contracts in hand, let's say, in the next two years? Are we talking 50%, 100%? It sounds like we're not talking about 20%.
spk03: Sheldon, I don't want to be dismissive of your question, but in the reality that we face, I can't answer it, because we have pieces of business that are $8,000 per printed circuit board, and we have other pieces of business that are 15 cents for a sensor. So when I talk about, when you ask about unit volume, it's just it's impossible for me to even answer.
spk07: There is square footage that we have availability of.
spk03: The equipment to replicate lines continues to get faster and faster for a given dollar of expenditure. the availability of that equipment, which used to be almost unobtainium, is now getting better. The big question for us and you as an investor is, do we see a big recession coming, or do we see the improvement in commodity availability and unemployment and everything else kind of swamping over the efforts of the Fed to drive inflation down. That's more the question of what's going to happen to our growth than is our ability to add three or four SMT lines and a million bucks apiece.
spk01: What do you think, aside from the macroeconomical, you've just been dealing with a few years of craziness between COVID-19 and supply chain difficulties. What do you think would be the major constraint? Again, aside from the general macro economy, what would be the biggest constraint on your growth? Would it be on the design side? Would it be on the manufacturing side? Or just on the marketing side?
spk07: I think...
spk03: I think the major constraint at this point would be continuing to absorb programs while providing the level of service that a new customer expects and demands. I don't think you guys have, and it's not to say that you're foolish or dumb or anything, because I'm not saying that, but I don't think you have an appreciation. I don't think you have an appreciation for what has to happen to move a program from a competitor to our factory or to start up a new design and move it into our factory. It's incredibly complex. I think, I don't know if I shared with you guys that we buy over 2 billion components in a nine month period. So every one of those components has to get into our system, has to get purchased at a timely period, has to be purchased at the right price. has to be delivered through whatever delays are happening and has to get through our incoming inspection and has to be used in a way that has been documented and laid out by our engineers. So that process is incredibly taxing and time consuming. So it's a soft constraint rather than a, do we have enough square feet? Do we have enough mold machines? Do we have enough placement machines? Do we have enough stampers? And each piece of business can be dramatically different. You can have a customer who doesn't even have his bill of material anymore because he's been in China so long that he's just been counting on his China suppliers to do it for him. Doesn't have any engineers anymore. So there's really nobody we can even talk to about what's important and what's not important about the design. Doesn't have a pipeline of components ordered. So depending on lead times, it could take nine months to a year to get components here. And who has got a bad relationship with the supplier he's leaving, And so the ability for us to step into that pipeline and just assume POs is very minimal. So I guess that's a very long-winded answer, but it's why I can't just give you a simple percentage.
spk07: Okay. I won't hold it against you. Thank you. I'm trying my best. Thank you.
spk02: Our next question comes from Bill DeZellen with Titan Capital. Please go ahead.
spk05: Thank you. I thought I was done, but Craig, I'm going to take the bait. You referenced the economic environment. What insights or indicators do you have of weakening economic environment versus not? You know,
spk03: I read all the stuff I can get my hands on as far as what people are predicting, and then I try to compare that to what we're seeing from our customers. We have yet to see any indication whatsoever of a broad-based slowdown or push-out of orders. We have seen people who cut their forecast coming back with Oh, God, we need upside now. That has been more prevalent than people cutting their forecast and leaving it cut. We do see a better availability, as I said previously, on S&T equipment, which is said to be a leading indicator. We do see a better availability of componentry, but better is a relative term. It still sucks. we still see inflation in component costs. We see people coming in just today, a component that goes on one of our highest volume products. That integrated circuit manufacturer came in with about a 4% increase And it's not a let's negotiate it about it. It's a take it or leave it. We've got other people that want to buy it. So as of right now, I don't see a broad-based slowdown coming. But that seems to be in conflict with everything I read and hear from people that are talking about it. So right now we've become, as a result of everything we learned during COVID, we've become very hardcore on forcing our customers to pony up for any upsides or on-the-come purchases we make because we're being extra cautious due to the fact that the world thinks a recession is coming. So I don't know, you're the more economist than I am, but that's what we see from our order book and from our purchase book.
spk05: Thank you. Appreciate the insight.
spk07: Less insight and more data, but anyway. Appreciate the data. Yep.
spk02: This does conclude today's question and answer session. I will turn the call back to Mr. Gates for any additional or closing remarks.
spk03: Okay. Thanks again to everybody for participating in today's conference call. Brett and I look forward to talking to you all next quarter.
spk02: This concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation and you may now disconnect.
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