Novanta Inc.

Good morning. My name is Keith, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Novanta Incorporated's 2022 Third Quarter Earnings Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star, then 1 on your touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star, then 2. Please note, this event is being recorded. I now would like to turn the conference over to Ray Nash, Corporate Finance Leader for Novanta. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much. Good morning, and welcome to Novanta's third quarter 2022 earnings conference call. I'm Ray Nash, Corporate Finance Leader of Novanta. With me on today's call is our Chair and Chief Executive Officer, Matthias Glastra, and our Chief Financial Officer, Robert Buckley. If you have not received a copy of our earnings press release issued today, You may obtain it from the investor relations section of our website at www.novanta.com. Please note this web call is being webcast live and will be archived on our website shortly after the call. Before we begin, we need to remind everyone of the safe harbor for forward-looking statements that we've outlined in our earnings press release issued earlier today and also those in our SEC filings. We may make some comments today, both in our prepared remarks and in our responses to questions that may include forward-looking statements. These involve inherent assumptions with known and unknown risks and other factors that could cause our future results to differ materially from our current expectations. Any forward-looking statements made today represent our views only as of this time. We disclaim any obligation to update forward-looking statements in the future, even if our estimates change. So you should not rely on any of these forward-looking statements as representing our views as of any time after this call. During this call, we will be referring to certain non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of such non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures is available as an attachment to our earnings press release. To the extent that we use non-GAAP financial measures during this call that are not reconciled to GAAP measures in the earnings press release, we will provide reconciliations promptly on the investor relations section of our website after this call. I'm now pleased to introduce the chair and chief executive officer of Novanta, Matthias Glastrup.

Matthias Glastrup Thank you, Ray. Good morning, everybody, and thanks for joining our call. Novanta achieved record results in the third quarter of 2022. We delivered another quarter of terrific financial performance. with double-digit growth in revenue and adjusted EBITDA, as well as solid growth for adjusted EPS. We ended the quarter with our backlog still at near record level, as we continue to see strong demand from our customers in the medical and advanced industrial markets we serve. In the third quarter, we delivered a new record high $223 million in revenue, representing 25% year-over-year revenue growth on a reported basis and 21% growth on an organic basis and up 4% on a sequential basis. In addition, our operating profit in the third quarter was fantastic, with adjusted EBITDA of $49 million, up 22% year-over-year and adjusted diluting earnings per share, of 81 cents, up 8% versus tougher comps in the prior year. The excellent year-to-date financial performance means we will once again raise our full year 2022 financial guidance, which Robert will cover in detail in a few minutes. We are extremely pleased with our company's performance and the resilience of our portfolio in an ever-changing and challenging macro environment. Noventa's portfolio is well-positioned in medical and advanced industrial applications with long-term secular tailwinds such as robotics and automation, healthcare productivity, and precision medicine. We feel good about our strategy and we're staying focused on where we play and how we win. We continue to build and grow quality businesses with proprietary IP and attractive secular growth markets with a vibrant culture and great talent. And I continue to be very proud of our teams around the world who are using the Noventa Growth System to drive exceptional operating performance no matter the environment. Now let's turn to what we're seeing in our markets and our customer activity. We continue to see strong ongoing demand from our customers in many application areas, and we ended the quarter with still near record backlog of $626 million. At the same time, and as indicated in our last call, we have started to see a return to more normalized ordering behavior from our customers. This was expected after a period of record orders and a seven consecutive quarters of positive book to bill, which resulted in a cumulative book to bill of approximately 1.3 over that time. We're also seeing some easing of supply chain shortages, and this gradual improvement of delivery lead times is consistent with a normalizing of customer order patterns. While our year-to-date book-to-bill is well above 1 at 1.12, the third quarter book-to-bill normalized to 0.91 in the quarter for Noventa overall. In the third quarter, our sales to advanced industrial markets saw 33 percent growth year-over-year and 5 percent growth sequentially. In the quarter, we continue to see strong sales performance in automation and robotics markets driven by continued underlying demand for factory automation, battery and electric vehicle production, extreme UV lithography, and increased overall adoption of automation-enabling technologies. We believe that the penetration of robotic and automation applications is still relatively low, with adoption increasing due to multiple drivers such as increased productivity, higher robot utility, onshoring, and labor shortages. In the quarter, we did start to see a rapid downturn in the microelectronics markets, which is now being widely reported on by other companies. Only approximately 10% of Noventa sales are in this area, and we delivered terrific operating results in the third quarter, despite the impact of this downturn. Although it's clear that overall industry output is decelerating across most major economies, it matters where you play. Noventa's portfolio is geared towards secular growth trends, and our sales so far have been nicely resilient. We continue to see strong pull-through from our OEM customers to fulfill our backlog to them as they continue to sell through to their end markets. Turning to our medical end market, for the third quarter of 2022, sales to medical applications grew 19% versus the third quarter of 2021 and 6% sequentially. During the quarter, we saw very strong orders and shipments to many of our medical OEM customers with noteworthy strength in surgical robotics, DNA sequencing, and minimally invasive surgery equipment and consumables. These categories also strong double-digit growth in sales year over year. It was positive to see further growth in our minimally invasive surgery product categories, which is tracking with the broader gradual improvement in elective surgical procedures. While demand signals demonstrate that this market continues to accelerate heading into 2023, it is important to recognize that hospitals are still battling staff shortages to some extent. Therefore, some near-term volatility in ordering should be expected. Our longer-term outlook, though, on the minimally invasive surgery market remains bullish, particularly with our unique product offering of integrated smoke evacuation insufflators and also next-generation endoscopic pumps. From a regional perspective, we saw strong demand across all major geographies in the third quarter. Sales in Europe grew 15 percent, and sales in the United States grew 36 percent year-over-year. We experienced 9 percent year-over-year revenue growth in China, help our ATI acquisition, which saw strong electric vehicle production and robotic demand. Our China revenue, excluding acquisitions, was down double-digit year-over-year, which reflects the microelectronics downturn I spoke to earlier. as we have several large customers in microelectronics who are based in China. As a reminder, our China revenue is relatively low percentage of total Noventa revenue. Now, let me touch on some of Noventa's strategic growth metrics. For the third quarter, our vitality index, which is the revenue from new products launched in the last four years, continues to be healthy at about 25% of sales, with year-over-year MPI revenues up high single digits versus the last year. Our R&D teams continue to make good progress on our new product pipeline, which remains very healthy, and we continue to invest in R&D in order to capture the many and mid- and longer-term opportunities with differentiated offerings in high-growth markets. Moving on, in the third quarter, design wins for the overall company increased more than 20 percent versus the prior year. We saw solid design wins in the majority of our businesses, including another exciting win in our minimally invasive surgery business. We're excited about the platforms we're winning and attractive high-growth applications such as minimally invasive surgery, surgical robotics, laser additive manufacturing, micro-machining, extreme UV, and electric vehicle battery welding. Now, I would like to spend a moment on our minimally invasive surgery business, which is part of our vision segment. In the last few years, we have secured a leading position in insufflator and pump technology through design wins and development agreements with multiple minimally invasive and robotic surgery OEMs who have platforms which we expect to launch in the next two years. We're gaining share in our smoke evacuation insufflator in the endoscopy market while also expanding in robotic surgery. In addition, we're successfully expanding into arthroscopy with our proprietary pump technology. As indicated in prior calls, these business wins are why we have stepped up our R&D investments in the MIS business. Based on the business one to date, we expect the incremental business opportunity to be approximately $50 million revenue in 2025, with consumables kicking in exponentially after that. We believe that the penetration rate of these technologies is still relatively low, with an attractive long-term growth trajectory, and with November content steadily increasing in these attractive applications. Based on the anticipated growth and our gross margin expectations for this business, we expect to significantly expand our medical consumables manufacturing capacity and capability in our lower-cost region. To that extent, I'm pleased to announce that in the third quarter, we close a small but important acquisition called MPH Medical Devices. This is a single-site medical consumables manufacturing company located in the Czech Republic, which will be integrated into our MIS business. MPH manufactures medical consumable tube set products very similar to the products that already get sold alongside our insufflator and endoscopic pumps in the MIS business. This new FDA registered factory offers us a lower cost option with well-trained talent, available talent, and a state-of-the-art facility to manufacture more of our proprietary medical consumable products in-house improving our margin profile, and creating much-needed capacity expansion as we ramp up volumes over the next few years. The near-term sales contribution for this site is negligible, but will grow rapidly in the coming years. We are thrilled to welcome the FDH employees to be part of the Novanta family, and we are excited for the way this new site will help us achieve our long-term strategic goals for gross margin expansion and sales growth. Next, I'd like to give you a brief update on Noventa's other acquisition and integration activities. Our ATI and IMS businesses have now passed their first anniversary of being part of Noventa. Both businesses saw strong performance for sales and bookings in the third quarter. We are extremely happy with the contribution of these businesses and their strategic fit with Noventa. At this point, a large portion of the integration activities have been successfully completed. We're now focused on capitalizing on the mid- and longer-term opportunities these businesses have brought to us. As for the rest of our M&A activities, acquisitions continue to be the primary focus of an eventless capital deployment. We'll continue to work on an active pipeline of opportunities, and we'll share updates as we make progress on new opportunities. So, in summary, we feel terrific about our third quarter results, and we continue to see strength in the remainder of the year. We believe Noventa's long-term strategic positioning is extremely strong, and we continue to broaden our exposure to medical and industrial applications that have long-term secular growth threats, such as robotics and automation, healthcare productivity, and precision medicine. So, with that, I will turn the call over to Robert to provide more details on our operations and financial performance.

Thank you, Matthias, and good morning, everyone. Our third quarter non-GAAP adjusted gross profit was $101.7 million, or a 46% adjusted gross margin, compared to $80.3 million, or a 45% adjusted gross margin in the third quarter of 2021. For the quarter, adjusted gross margins were up year over year and close to flat sequentially. We continue to have good success counteracting the high inflationary pressures which further demonstrates the resiliency and overall strength of our business. In addition, we also continue to make strong progress in institutionalizing the Novanta growth system across our factories and in our commercial channels. The deployment of Kaizen essential tools, particularly around standard work, problem solving, value stream mapping, and the 80-20 principle are taking root and explains our ability to continue to deliver strong financial results despite the macroeconomic environment. Third quarter R&D expenses were about 21.3 million, or roughly 10% of sales. Third quarter SG&A expenses were 40.3 million, or 18% of sales. Overall operating expenses were roughly flat sequentially, which is slightly better than expected due to the timing of new hires, which were later in the quarter than expected, and project spending delays. Operating expenses on a percent of sales also improved with the better than expected revenue performance. Adjusted EBITDA was approximately $49 million in the third quarter of 2022, a 22% adjusted EBITDA margin. Our adjusted EBITDA performance beat our expectations and our previously issued guidance due to higher than expected revenue, timing of the new hires, and the associated project spend. On the tax front, our non-GAAP tax rate for the third quarter of 2022 was 19%. This differed from the statutory rate due to jurisdictional mix of income. Our non-GAAP adjusted earnings per share were 81 cents in the quarter compared to 75 cents in the third quarter of last year, an increase of 8% year over year. While adjusted operating income and adjusted EBITDA grew more than 20% year over year, EPS was impacted by higher interest expense and a higher tax rate. Third quarter operating cash flow was approximately $15 million, which is up versus the prior year, but lower than our expectations. The third quarter cash flow continued to be impacted by higher inventory purchases we've made to mitigate some of the supply chain disruptions, as well as higher accounts receivables due to strong sales performance and larger than normal shipments in September, which was the final month of the quarter. And to a lesser extent, cash flow was negatively impacted by roughly $3 million of higher cash taxes related to the change in U.S. tax law, We ended the quarter with gross debt of $448 million, and our gross leverage ratio was less than two and a half times. Our net debt was $363 million. I'll now turn to update our performance on the operating segments. First, I'll start with the photonics segment. For the third quarter of 2022, this segment saw revenue growth of 28% year over year. This segment continues to experience strong customer demand in their advanced industrial applications and medical applications. The book to bill in this segment was won in the third quarter. We are very pleased with this outcome, especially considering this business experienced a significant fire as primary PCBA vendor in Indonesia. It was able to recover quickly, benefiting our customers and our shareholders. Our supply chain and manufacturing teams demonstrated extraordinary resiliency to deliver these strong results. Within Fortonix, new product revenue stayed strong at greater than 20% of sales in the third quarter. But design wins were up double digit year over year as our sales teams continue to win excellent new customer platforms in attractive high growth medical industrial applications. The photonic segment adjusted gross margin was approximately 50%, which was up nearly 300 basis points year over year, in line with our expectations and our prior guidance. The team continues to make terrific progress ramping our new Taunton production facility, mitigating the cost and shortages of our primary PCBA vendor in Indonesia who had the fire, and embracing the Novanta growth system disciplines. Turning to our vision segment, this segment predominantly serves the medical end market and saw reported revenue growth of 12% year-over-year, which was better than our expectations. Growth in this segment was driven by strengthening and elective surgical procedures and continued success with our smoke evacuation insufflator technology. While our JDAC business line continues to show year-over-year declines due solely to supply chain shortages, These shortages, and therefore the revenue declines, continue to moderate as supply from our vendor continues to increase and we are able to deliver to our customers. The vision segment saw a book to build just under one as customers started to decrease their ordering in line with our reduced lead times. The vitality index in this segment remained greater than 30% of sales. And design wind activity in this segment increased strong double digits year-over-year, driven by another strong wind in the minimum evasive surgery business. Finally, turning to precision motion segments, this segment experienced 38% year-over-year revenue growth in the quarter. Excluding acquisitions, precision motion grew 2% year-over-year. Our solarium Motion and ATI business lines experienced 6% organic growth in the quarter. However, the segment's overall growth was impacted by a significant downturn in the China-based PCBA electronics market, which is served through our Westwind product line. This product line fell nearly 40% in the quarter and is expected to stay depressed for a few quarters. As a reminder, the largest share of Novanta's remaining exposure to microelectronics is in this segment. The overall book-to-bill ratio in this segment was 0.78, which was also largely driven by the Westwind product line. Excluding this business, the book-to-bill was closer to 0.9. On a year-to-date basis, the book-to-bill ratio in this segment was 0.98. And excluding the Westwind product line, the book-to-bill was 1.04 on a year-to-date basis. Precision motion MPI revenue was 18% of total sales in this segment, including ATI and IMS. MPI sales grew 22% year-over-year. Adjusted gross margins for this segment came in about 49%, which was down year-over-year, but in line with our expectations and was the result of margin dilution from the decline in the Westland product line. Turning now to guidance, overall, we expect the fourth quarter to start to return to a more typical industry and business dynamic and ordering pattern away from the pandemic-fueled recovery. In the near term, this could mean further slowing in some microelectronics applications and some industrial capital applications. However, we also expect our medical applications to continue to strengthen, helping to offset the headwind in those applications. Microelectronics applications, which represent approximately 10% of our sales, would decline to 9% of sales in the fourth quarter or nearly 20% reduction sequentially. Whereas medical applications, which represent approximately 48% of our sales year to date, will represent 50% of sales in the fourth quarter. Despite these dynamics, our customer demand and business performance has been resilient and we continue to expect to exit 2022 with near record backlog and accelerating demand trends in the medical markets. Our strong financial performance in third quarter means our full year 2022 guidance will be raised. So starting with the revenue guidance, for the fourth quarter of 2022, we stand here today, we expect gap revenue in the range of $215 million and $217 million, which represents revenue growth in the range of 7% to 9% year over year. For the full year of 2022, we now expect gap revenue in the range of $857 million to $859 million, which implies revenue growth of 21% to 22% year over year. representing approximately 12% organic growth for the full year of 2022. On a segment level, in the fourth quarter, we expect the photonics segment to grow revenue in the 25% to 30% range year-over-year. Customer demand remains solid in this segment with growth in a number of industrial medical applications. The vision segment is expected to demonstrate revenue growth in the range of 8% to 10% year-over-year. While we continue to see strong demand from the medical end markets, electronic parts shortages are primarily cause of the range in the revenue. Finally, our precision motion segment is expected to be down 8% to 10% year-over-year, due solely to a year-over-year decline in our Westwind product line, which will fall more than 60% in revenue in the fourth quarter. Excluding the Westland product line, our Solera Motion and ATI business lines are expected to grow in the mid-single-digit year-over-year basis. Moving on to overall Novanta's gross margin, we expect gross margins in the fourth quarter to be greater than 46 percent, which is expected to lock our 46 percent gross margin target for the full year of 2022. Gross margins by segment are expected to see similar dynamics that we experienced in the third quarter. Finishing off the year at an adjusted gross margin of approximately 46% represents a nearly 100 basis points of expansion year-over-year, and is an excellent accomplishment given the difficult dynamics we've had to manage throughout the year. Thanks to our progress with the Novanta growth system across our business units, we feel confident we're on a path to continue and sustain gross margin expansion this year and the next. Turning to R&D and SG&A expenses, which were $62 million in the third quarter, they are now expected to be approximately $63 million to $64 million in the fourth quarter. We continue to invest in R&D because of our confidence in the near-term customer applications we are pursuing and the expected launch cycles of customers' new products. We are particularly excited about the new insufflator winds, which are effectively solidifying our value proposition of an integrated smoke evacuation insulator technology in the medical markets. Depreciation expense was $3 million in the third quarter and should be similar in the fourth quarter. Stock compensation expense, which was $6 million in the third quarter, will be just over $5 million in the fourth quarter. For adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter of 2022, we expect a range of $45 million to $46 million. For the full year, we now expect adjusted EBITDA on the range of $183 million to $184 million, higher than previously issued guidance. Interest expense, which was $4 million in the third quarter, will be approximately $5.5 million in the fourth quarter, driven by rising interest rates and a slightly higher debt balance. We expect our non-GAAP tax rate to be around 18 percent of the fourth quarter, absent significant changes in jurisdictional mix of income and other variability of our eligible tax benefits. Diluted weighted average shares outstanding will be approximately 36 million shares, For adjusted diluted earnings per share, we expect a range of 70 cents to 74 cents in the fourth quarter. And for the full year, we now expect adjusted diluted earnings per share to be between $3.02 and $3.06. Finally, we expect operating cash flows to improve sequentially in the fourth quarter versus the third quarter as we stabilize our inventory levels and drive a more linear production process and therefore shipments in the quarter, resulting in a lower accounts receivable balance. As always, this guidance does not assume any significant changes to foreign exchange rates. However, it's worth noting that the currency markets have continued to be historically volatile in the past few months, and this has had an impact on our third quarter results, including an nearly eight-point negative impact on our reported revenue growth. In summary, Novanta's performance in the third quarter of 2022 was excellent. We had our highest level of quarterly sales, We saw double-digit growth in sales and adjusted EBITDA, along with solid growth in adjusted earnings per share. Our teams continue to execute extremely well, helping the company manage through the difficult supply chain challenges while still winning new customer platforms and progressing our innovation pipeline. We continue to see below-market attrition rates and are seeing great success at attracting top talent. And we continue to deliver strong financial results with a very solid full-year outlook despite significant macroeconomic challenges in the marketplace. We remain very grateful for the outstanding performance of our employees and the tireless efforts to help us be successful in this challenging environment. We look forward to continuing to deliver on our commitments to our employees, our customers, and our shareholders. This concludes the prepared remarks. We'll now open the call up for questions.

Yes, thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star, then 1 on your touch-tone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star, then 2. And today's first question comes from Lee Chagata with CJS Securities.

Good morning.

Good morning, Lee.

Good morning. Starting with the vision segment, can you kind of parse out the mix of consumables versus capital equipment in the quarter and then how we should think about the lag between increasing consumables and capital equipment purchases kind of bouncing back in medical?

Yeah, I would say they both were roughly the same in the third quarter. So they both had a very, very, very strong period of growth. As we get into the fourth quarter, I think that's where the volatility might lie from an ordering pattern behavior. The hospital systems still have some labor shortages, which impact their ability to take deliveries of some products. And so that results in some volatility that could be expected. I would still expect consumables to be growing at a double-digit rate. in the fourth quarter, so that should still hold relatively steady, but the volatility would be more on the pumps and the insufflator side.

Yeah, the other thing that I would say, Lee, is that, you know, we see the environment improving, you know, sequentially also on the capital, and actually some of the volatility is also related to our OEMs not finding all the right components. So there's going to be some timing effect there.

But if you look past that immediately, we feel very good about 2023 also on the capital side.

Got it. And in terms of just the consumables portion of the growth, is all of that being used relatively quickly or is there some restock that has to take place of consumables coming out of the pandemic?

There's always a, I wouldn't say that there's a big element of restocking per se, but there's always an element of shipping the product to distribution centers that serve as their safety stock. So it's fair to say, you know, you're asking a question more on the double-digit growth, You know, is that aligned to surgical procedure rates? I think surgical procedure rates, which have historically been somewhere around 6%, are definitely growing at a higher rate right now. And so there is a little bit of a combination of both. But this is something we expect to hold relatively steady, not only for the remainder of this year, but going into 2023 as well. So that same level of demand profile is still expected for a little bit, if not accelerated.

And then I appreciate the announcement on the new facility that you guys acquired. How do you view its current capacity relative to your current consumables production outside of that facility and sort of the timeline to get things moved over there?

Yeah, so, of course, yeah, first of all, we're indeed very, very excited about this acquisition. We talked about this for a few years now that we would need a lower cost, you know, highly capable production site, and we had multiple options either to kind of greenfield it or acquire, and we're very pleased we were able to agreed to add MPH to our portfolio. Very, very experienced, very capable team, state-of-the-art facility. Now, they're making certain products today that they have a certain capacity. We obviously need to expand their capacity with our production processes, etc. So, we are using 2023 predominantly to transfer production lines, qualify production lines, and then start to ramp these production lines towards the latter part of 2023. So then, therefore, in 2024 and beyond, you will start to see a more gradual but increasingly significant contribution of this site.

Got it. One last one for me, and I'll hop back in, is Embedded in your Q4 revenue guidance, what's the headwind from currency that you're assuming?

The same that we experienced in the third quarter.

Okay. So that's 7%, 8% range. Okay. So that's good. Thanks.

All right. Thanks, Lee. Thank you.

Thank you. And once again, please press star, then 1 if you would like to ask a question. And the next question comes from Brian Drab with William Blair.

Hi, thanks for taking my question. Hey, so just kind of building on that last question, just to be clear, what is embedded in the 4Q guidance for organic revenue growth overall?

The organic revenue growth I spoke to, I think it was 7% to 9% in the fourth quarter. So, yeah, there's still similar FX headwinds expected in the fourth quarter that we experienced in the third quarter. But despite that, I think from an organic basis, we'll be up about 12% for the full year and in the range of 7% to 8%, 7% to 9% for the quarter. That's right. 7% to 9%.

Okay. And we're lapping the larger acquisitions of Schneider and ATI. or we have already, so that's not going to be in there, but is there acquisition revenue in the – how should we think about the acquisition that you just made and revenue related to that? I don't know if you said what that comes in terms of the revenue.

Well, I would say the real – yeah, you're trying to get at the reported growth versus the organic. Reported and organic should mirror themselves. The only difference is the impact of foreign exchange. The acquisition we did was not material from a revenue perspective. Obviously, we didn't buy it for that, but whatever revenue it comes with is not going to have an impact on us. And you're right. We lapped IMS and ATI, so you won't have that revenue growth anymore in the top line.

Okay. Got it. And then I don't know how – I can go about getting you to make some comments on 2023 without upsetting you. But I'm going to try. I think in the prepared remarks, correct me if I'm wrong, you made a comment about expecting continued acceleration. I think you even used the word acceleration and procedure volume. What was the comment you made about that market?

Yeah, I think what we're seeing right now is microelectronics, which will represent about 9% of our sales in the fourth quarter, is decelerating uh at a double-digit rate but the medical on the medical side we see acceleration so we're seeing double-digit type of growth in some of the medical consumables that we have right now and even some of the capital equipment while there's some volatility expected there you know overall that's that's an area that continues to strengthen as we get into 2023. So the big question is, you know, the effects on the rest of the industrial piece of the portfolio, and then how does that all fold out? I would just say that, you know, as we look out to 2023, we expect microelectronics to be weak, and we expect the medical markets to more than offset that. And then it's a question that we'll talk about in January where the rest of it is. But overall, you know, we feel like the cylinders on the engine are appropriately balanced.

The expectation is that the medical markets collectively for you would grow in 2023, just to state it simply.

That's correct. Yeah.

That's correct. Okay. And your backlog, you're likely going to enter 2023 with significant backlog, maybe at least double, I would imagine, maybe almost triple what you've had in the past. How does that break down across the different segments and how does that help you weather the you know, some of the pullback that you're seeing on the industrial side.

Yeah, I don't think we have ever broken down backlog by segment, but obviously it's helping to buffer, right, whatever potential hand winds there might be, you know, heading towards us. So, yeah, we feel good about where we play, the markets that we play. You see the diversification of our portfolio and the resilience of our portfolio really playing out also in this part of the cycle. And on top of that, we have a strong backlog position that could be used as a buffer, you know, for potential shock. So, we'll leave it at that in terms of defer to breakout.

Okay. And then one last one on 2023. So you've made the acquisition and congrats on that. Now, my understanding, and maybe you'll correct me on how to phrase this exactly, but that should significantly help the gross margin that you're able to generate on the consumables within the WAM business and and bring it up, I think, in line with the segment average. In any case, what I calculated at one point is this is potentially going to get you, when you get it ramped up, like 100 basis points to consolidate a gross margin. And I'm just wondering if you can comment on that and the timing, given now we know when you close the acquisitions.

Yeah, so your commentary is directionally accurate. This facility serves two purposes. One, it allows us to facilitize and capacitize ourselves so we can get all the volume out that we're expected. how the WINS and MIS drive about $50 million worth of incremental revenue in 2025. Well, now we've solidified that, and this facility is needed in order to drive that volume in. And then by moving it in-house versus having it outsourced, we're able to improve the gross margins. Now, it takes about I would say, a year to get the facility fully capacitized and qualified to manufacturing these medical consumables, or obviously FDA-registered products. And so we expect, you know, roughly this time at the end of next year that that facility be fully qualified, and then we'll be driving the margin expansion thereafter.

Okay. So the margin expansion associated with that is really more to come in 2024 before it's fully realized. Is that fair?

Yeah. Yeah, because it's mostly, it's going through a qualification period in 2023. And so, therefore, you're not going to really drive material margin improvement or material volumes until you get to 2024. Got it.

Okay. All right. I'll save my other questions for later. Thank you.

All right, Brian.

Thank you.

Thank you. And the next question comes from Andrew Buscalia with Ehrenberg.

Hey, good morning, guys. So in the precision motion segment, you got it down 8% to 10% in Q4. Just wondering, that was a bit lower than I was expecting. First off, that's an organic growth number in there. And then I guess beyond Q4, I guess how does that, I know you don't get 2023 guidance, but how should we expect that to trend or maybe talk about like an absolute level or something to give it some baseline to start to grow that off?

Yeah, so what I said was that the overall segment is expected to be down 8 to 10 percent in the fourth quarter, and that is being driven by our Westwind product line. That Westwind product line itself is down 60 percent. The Westwind product line serves the China PCBA drilling market, and so it is by definition a microelectronics-based application. So if you exclude the Westwind product line, the Solera Motion and the ATI businesses are expected to grow mid-single-digit year-over-year in the fourth quarter. And I don't see any of that kind of changing as we get out further from here. So I think those are growth businesses, and they're expected to stay in a growth category. There's just a little bit of a headwind on the Westwind business. I think the Westwind will have a larger headwind in the fourth quarter. versus any other period. And I think most likely as you get into 2023, it'll look more similar to the dynamics of the third quarter.

Okay. Okay. And then, you know, overall you're talking about microelectronics, you know, not surprising down double digits and into next year too. What will microelectronics be as a percentage of total sales when you finish the year? What's the expectation built into the guide?

Yeah, 9% of sales.

About nine down double digits. And then 50 roughly is medical, and that's going to continue to grow and offset that kind of idea. Correct. Correct. Okay. Okay, and then one more, if I may. You know, you talked about that, you know, you've been spending a lot of R&D to capture that minimally invasive surgery opportunity, and you talked – Correct me if I'm wrong, you talked about 50 million incremental revenue through 2025. Will that continue? Will that require a similar level of R&D spend? Or should we expect overall R&D spend to kind of taper?

So I'll answer part of the question. I'll let Matthias also interrupt me. But I would say that, you know, we've been floating around 10% of sales for the last two years. I don't see that dynamic changing. in 2023 or 2024. So I still expect us to make some shifts there because I think there's plenty of opportunity to make investments even as we, even as those programs fall off. Now I will say, you know, we're driving $50 million worth of incremental sales from those programs, but they don't all kick in at once with the same exact launch cycles. And so there will be continued spend associated with that in order to fully commercialize them.

Yeah. Yeah, and we just packed a number of 50 million incremental business in 2025. And, of course, that will continue to grow afterwards, both on the capital side as well as on the consumable side. So the majority of that 50 million will be more capital placements, right, because you're early in the cycle. And then the consumables will gradually kick in, but that will ultimately become more of an exponential growth. growth aspects because you suddenly have increased your installed base dramatically with capital equipment, right?

So there is between 25 and 2030, there's going to be further sustained growth that we're super excited about.

Okay. Okay, got it. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. And the next question comes from Rob Mason with Baird.

Yes, good morning. Good morning. Listen, I joined the call late, so apologies if this is redundant information, but did you explain why the vision gross margin came in where it did and it bounced eventually below what I was expecting and what maybe you're expecting on the fourth quarter?

Oh, sorry. I didn't hear. You're kind of difficult to hear, so I didn't hear it right away. You said the vision grows partly just why they came down.

Down sequentially. The reasons for that and what you're expecting for the fourth quarter there.

Yeah, it's difficult to hear you, but I would say that in the fourth quarter, I expect the gross margins of vision segment to tick up a little bit. So in each of the individual segments in the fourth quarter, gross margins will tick up a little bit from their third quarter level. And in the third quarter specifically in vision, I would say that it was largely driven just by a little bit of a change in mix. the medical consumable business grew at a double-digit rate, and so that has an impact on our gross margins. And so even though that's actually, you know, that same dynamic is happening in the fourth quarter, our JDAG business will not deteriorate in the fourth quarter, and so that has a favorable mix shift for us, which helps to improve the margin profile.

Okay, okay. And then maybe just last question, is there any semiconductor, micro-E exposure to speak of in the photonics segment that we should also be aware of in terms of getting softer? I know there's some semiconductor exposure there. I think it's newer content, newer winds, but just the trend line on the business in that segment.

yeah so there there is a little bit of exposure there it's it's at this stage throughout you know most of 2022 it's been relatively small in the photonic segment and the reason being is that some of its larger exposure had been associated with flexible uh pcbas and smaller pcba type of uh via hall type applications and that market actually went down in 2021 And so it hasn't actually been a big contributor in the 2022 calendar period. So, you know, the largest element of the exposure in that segment has not manifested itself and been a growth driver in 2022. And so we don't expect the same level of impact. You know, overall, microelectronics is going to be about 9% of sales in the fourth quarter and probably going forward on a run rate basis. I would say almost all that exposure is really sitting in our precision motion segment at this point.

The other point, Rob, I want to make is that, yeah, our content in extreme UV lithography is steadily increasing, and it's, yeah, public knowledge that that application is increasing. is growing double-digit, actually against the microelectronics trend. So, even within that 9 percent of sales, an increasing amount of revenue over time will be in that kind of faster secular growth trajectory, you know.

Robert Adler Right, right. Okay, very good. I'll come back and speak. All right, Rob.

See you tomorrow. Thank you. And this concludes our question and answer session. I would like to return the conference back to Mr. Tyusk Lostra for any closing remarks.

Thank you, operator. So, to summarize, Noventa delivered very impressive results in the third quarter of 2022. We saw a record level of sales and profitability, double-digit growth for sales and adjusted EBITDA, and we maintain a near record high backlog. We've achieved all of this while managing a challenging macro environment. We're excited to see the continued strength in the medical sector and also the resilience in the advanced industrial sector. Noventa is very well positioned in these sectors and with diversified exposure to long-term macro trends in robotics and automation, precision medicine, minimally invasive surgery, and industry 4.0. In closing, as always, I would like to thank our customers, our employees, and our shareholders for their ongoing support. I continue to be especially grateful for the dedicated efforts of all of our Noventa employees who work so hard every day to tackle each new challenge. We appreciate your interest in the company and your participation in today's call. I look forward to joining all of you in several months on our fourth quarter and full year 2022 earnings call. Thank you very much. This call is now adjourned.

Thank you. As mentioned, the conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. May I disconnect your lines?