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spk03: Greetings, and welcome to NAPCO Security Technologies, Inc. Fiscal Second Quarter 2023 Earnings Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during a conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Patrick McKillop, Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.
spk04: Thank you. Good morning. My name is Patrick McKillop, Vice President of Investor Relations for NAPCO Security. Thank you all for joining us for today's conference call to discuss our financial results for our fiscal second quarter 2023. By now, all of you should have had the opportunity to review the press release discussing the results. If you have not, a copy of the release is available in the Investor Relations section of our website, www.napcosecurity.com. On the call today is Richard Soloway, President and CEO of Napco Security Technologies, and Kevin Buchel, Executive Vice President and CFO. Before we begin, let me take a moment to read the forward-looking statement. This presentation contains forward-looking statements that are based on current expectations, estimates, forecasts, and projections of future performance based on management's judgment, beliefs, current trends, and anticipated product performance. These forward-looking statements include, without limitation, statements relating to growth drivers of the company's business, such as school security products and recurring revenue services, potential market opportunities, the benefits of recurring revenue products to customers and dealers, our ability to control expense and cost, and expected annual run rate for SAS recurring monthly revenue. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those containing the forward-looking statements. These factors include but are not limited to such risk factors described in our SEC filings, including our annual report on Form 10-K. Other unknown or unpredictable factors or underlying assumptions subsequently proving to be incorrect could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, We cannot guarantee future results, level of activity, performance, or achievements. You should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. All information provided in today's press release and this conference call is as of today's date unless otherwise stated. And we undertake no duty to update such information except as required under applicable law. I will turn the call over to Dick in a moment, but before I do, I just wanted to mention that we are actively planning our investor relations calendar for more NDRs and conferences in the near future, as investor outreach is crucial, especially for a small-cap company such as NAPCO. And I would like to thank all those folks that assist us in these conferences and marketing trips. Also, we invite you to come to visit our booth at the upcoming ISC West trade show, March 28th through the 31st in Las Vegas, Nevada. ISC West is the industry's largest trade show, with over 30,000 attendees. With that out of the way, let me turn the call over to Richard Soloway, President and CEO of NAPCO Security Technologies. Dick, the floor is yours.
spk06: Thank you, Patrick. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our conference call. Thank you for joining us today to discuss our results. We are very pleased to report our fiscal Q2 2023 record sales of 42.3 million. This is our ninth consecutive quarter of sales growth. Recurring revenue continue to grow at a very strong rate and the annual run rate is now approximately 59 million based on January 2023 recurring revenues. Our balance sheet remains strong with our cash balances at 47.1 million, and we have no debt. We continue to focus on capitalizing on key industry trends, which include wireless fire and intrusion alarms, school security solutions, plus enterprise access control systems, and architectural locking products. The management team here at NAPCO continues to focus on the key metrics of growth, profits, and returns on equity and controlling costs. These metrics are important for us as well as our shareholders. We continue to execute our business strategy and our interests are aligned with our shareholders as senior management at NAPCO owns approximately 16.5% of the equity. Before I go into greater detail, I'll now turn the call over to our CFO, Kevin Bichelle, who will provide an overview of our fiscal first quarter results, and then I'll be back with more on our strategies and outlook. Kevin?
spk00: Thank you, Dick, and good morning, everybody. Net sales for the second quarter increased 27% to a quarterly record of $42.3 million. as compared to $33.4 million for the same period one year ago. Net sales for the six months ended December 31, 2022, increased 27% to $81.8 million, as compared to $65 million for the same period one year ago. Our equipment sales in Q2 increased 23% to $27.4 million, as compared to $22.4 million for the same year-ago period. And equipment sales for the six-month period also increased 23% to $53.1 million as compared to $43.2 million for the same period a year ago. Recurring monthly revenue continued its strong growth, increasing 35% in Q2 to $14.9 million compared to $11 million for the same period last year, and for the six months increased 35% to $28.7 million versus $21.3 million in the same period a year ago. Our recurring service revenues now have a prospective annual run rate of approximately $59 million based on January 2023 recurring service revenues. The increase in equipment sales for the quarter were primarily due to increases in both our alarm lock and marks door locking products, as well as increased sales in our continental access control products. The increase in equipment sales for the six months was primarily due to increased sales of NAPCO's intrusion products, alarm lock and marks door locking products, and continental access control products. The strong growth of our recurring revenue for both the three and six months ended December 31, 2022, was primarily attributable to the continued strength of our Starlink cellular radio products driven by increases in the commercial intrusion and fire alarm business. Gross profit for the three months ended December 31, 2022 increased 70% to $19.4 million with a gross margin of 46% as compared to $11.4 million with a gross margin of 34% for the same period a year ago. Gross profit for the six months ended December 31, 2022, increased 51% to $37.6 million, with a gross margin of 46%, as compared to $24.9 million, with a gross margin of 39% for the same period a year ago. Gross profit for equipment sales for the three months ended December 31, 2022 increased 245% to $6.2 million with a gross margin of 23% as compared to $1.8 million with a gross margin of 8% for the same period a year ago. Gross profit for equipment sales for the six months ended December 31, 2022 increased 88% to $12.3 million with a gross margin of 23% as compared to $6.5 million with a gross margin of 15% for the same period a year ago. Gross profit for recurring revenues for the three months ended December 31, 2022 increased 37% to $13.2 million with a gross margin of 89% as compared to $9.6 million gross margin of 87% for the same period a year ago. And gross profit on recurring revenues for the six months ended December 31, 2022, increased 38% to $25.4 million with a gross margin of 88% as compared to $18.4 million with a gross margin of 87% for the same period a year ago. The significant increase in gross profit dollars as well as gross margin for equipment sales for both the three and the six months ended December 31, 2022, was primarily the result of the aforementioned increases in equipment revenues, as well as increased availability and lower costs of certain components and transportation costs as compared to the same period last year. This was as a result of improvements within the company's supply chain. The increase in revenues also resulted in improved overhead absorption rates from our Dominican Republic manufacturing facility. The increase in gross profit dollars for recurring service revenues for both the three and six months ended December 31, 2022, was due to the continued strong sales of the company's Starlink radios. The continued increase in gross margin of recurring revenue for both the three and the six months was primarily due to increased service revenues relating to the company's fire radios, which have higher monthly selling prices than the company's intrusion radios. Research and development expenses for the three months ended December 31, 2022, increased 12% to $2.2 million, 5% of net sales as compared to $2 million or 6% of net sales for the same period a year ago. Research and development expenses for the six months ended December 31, 2022 increased 19% to $4.7 million or 6% of net sales as compared to $3.9 million or 6% of net sales for the same period a year ago. The increase in dollars for the three and six month periods was due primarily to salary increases and some additional staff. Selling general and administrative expenses for the three months ended December 31, 2022 decreased by 5% to $7.8 million or 18% of net sales as compared to $8.2 million or 25% of net sales for the same period a year ago. The decrease in dollars resulted primarily from higher stock option expense and legal expenses incurred in the three months ended December 31, 2021. The decrease as a percentage of net sales was due primarily to the increase in net sales as well as the aforementioned decrease in expense dollars. Selling general and administrative expenses for the six months ended December 31, 2022 increased by 5% to $63 million or 20% of net sales from $15.5 million or 24% of net sales for the same period a year ago. The increase in dollars resulted primarily from increases in credit card processing fees, insurance expense, and commission expenses. The decrease as a percentage of net sales was due primarily to the increase in net sales as partially offset by the aforementioned increase in expense dollars. Operating income for the quarter increased 643% to $9.4 million as compared to $1.3 million for the same period last year. And operating income for the six months ended December 31, 2022 was $16.7 million as compared to $5.4 million for the same period last year, which is a 206% increase. The company's provision for income taxes for the three months ended December 31, 2022 increased by $886,000 to $1.2 million an effective tax rate of 12% as compared to $291,000 with an effective tax rate of 22% for the same period a year ago. The increase in the provision for income taxes for the three months was primarily due to higher taxable income. The company's provision for income taxes for the six months ended December 31, 2022, increased by $1.3 million to $1.9 million with an effective rate of 11% as compared to $639,000 with an effective tax rate of 7% for the same period a year ago. The increase in the provision for income taxes for the six months was also primarily due to higher taxable income. The effective tax rate for the six months ended December 31, 2021 was reduced due to other income of $3.9 million being non-taxable. Net income for the three months ended December 31, 2022 was a quarterly record $8.4 million or 23 cents diluted share as compared to $1 million or 3 cents per diluted share for the same period a year ago, 714% increase. Net income for the six months ended December 31, 2022 increased 69% to $14.8 million per diluted share as compared to $8.8 million or 24 cents per diluted share for the same period a year ago. Net income and earnings per share in last year's Q1 benefited from $3.9 million of other income from the forgiveness of debt Without such benefit, net income and diluted earnings per share for the six months ended December 31, 2021, would have been $4.9 million and 13 cents, respectively. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was a quarterly record $10.3 million, or 28 cents per diluted share, as compared to $3.1 million, or 8 cents per diluted share for the same period last year. a 232% increase. Adjusted EBITDA for the six months was $18.6 million, or $0.50 per diluted share, as compared to $7.8 million, or $0.21 per diluted share for the same period last year, a 138% increase. The EBITDA margin for the three months ended December 31, 2022, was 24%, as compared to 9% in the prior year period. And for the six months ended December 31, 2022, the EBITDA margin was 23% as compared to 12% in the prior year period. Moving on to the balance sheet, at December 31, 2022, the company had $47.1 million in cash, cash equivalents, investments, and marketable securities. as compared to $46.8 million as of June 30, 2022. Working capital defined as current assets less current liabilities was $101.6 million at December 31, 2022, as compared with working capital of $93.1 million at June 30, 2022. The current ratio defined as current assets divided by current liabilities was 6.6 to 1 at December 31, 2022, and 4.5 to 1 at June 30, 2022. Cash provided by operating activities for the six months was $1 million, as compared to $7.8 million for the same period last year. This decrease was primarily due to inventories increasing by $14.8 million, resulting primarily from the company's decision to purchase hard-to-get parts used in products that generate recurring service revenues for the company. The challenges from the supply chain crisis are beginning to subside, and the company believes its inventory levels will begin to decrease in the latter part of fiscal 2023 and continuing in fiscal 2024. CapEx for the quarter was $444,000 versus $249,000 in the year-ago period, and for the six months ended December 31, 2022, was $816,000, compared to $771,000 in the prior year period. And we have no debt. That concludes my formal remarks, and I would now like to return the call back to Dick.
spk06: Gavin, thank you. Our second quarter was a sales record breaker, continuing our sales growth streak, which is now our ninth consecutive quarter of year-over-year sales growth. Prior to the COVID pandemic, we had 23 consecutive quarters of growth, and we look forward to surpassing that streak in the future. We are pleased that we were able to beat public street consensus estimates for revenue, EPS, net income, and adjusted EBITDA metrics. This outstanding performance is the result of the continued strong demand for each of our product lines. including NAPCO fire and intrusion, alarm lock, and Mark's door locking products, as well as our continental access control systems. One key area of our success continues to come from the commercial fire and intrusion alarm business. The ongoing concerns about a potential recession in the US and rising interest rates remain as top headlines, and I'd like to remind you that our company is highly recession resistant as 80% of our business is commercial and one of our primary growth drivers. The commercial fire alarm business is a mandatory non-discretionary item. Commercial buildings must have and maintain a fire alarm system in order to receive a certificate of occupancy. Given the high profitability and essential nature of this business, we focus on this as a key area of our resources. Our equipment and recurring revenue both generated exceptional growth in this quarter, increasing 23% and 35% respectively. The annual run rate for recurring revenue is now approximately 59 million as of January 2023. Our Starlink radios continue to have strong sales, and we are optimistic that we can reach our previously mentioned goals of $150 million in recurring revenue and $150 million of equipment revenue by the end of fiscal 2026 or possibly sooner. Achievement of those goals, as well as our gross margin goals of 80%, for recurring revenue and 50% for equipment revenue could generate EBITDA margins in excess of 45%. We estimate that there are millions of commercial buildings of all types such as offices, hospitals, schools, coffee shops, fast food restaurants and others that still require upgrades from old fashioned copper phone wires. Our Starlink radios have the widest coverage with both AT&T and Verizon service and rich feature sets, which our dealers love. The 3G Sunset was completed just a few weeks ago, and management believes that a portion of the active NAPCO Starlink radios that lost communications due to the Verizon 3G Sunset have not yet been replaced because alarm dealers expected the sunset to be delayed, as was the case with the AT&T 3G sunset in 2021. Ultimately, the company anticipates that many or all these NAPCO 3G radios will be replaced with NAPCO's newer generation radios because alarm dealers must have new functioning radios and revenue-producing radios to monitor alarm conditions, resulting in both additional hardware revenue and increasing recurring revenue for the company. We are pleased that the equipment margins improved by 1,500 basis points to 23% in this quarter versus 8% in the same period a year ago. Margins for recurring revenues also improved by 200 basis points to 89% for this quarter versus 87% in the same period a year ago. The constraints of the supply chain have largely abated for us, and we believe that in the next three months, the new supplier sources we have developed will begin to invigorate our equipment margins and bring them to even higher levels than what we generated prior to the supply chain crisis. The backlog for the company remains at a higher than normal level, although it continues to come down considerably and we remain confident in sustainable demand for our products going forward. We remain encouraged by the continued strength of the sell-through statistics we are seeing from several of our largest distributors. We believe that we are taking market share from our competition based on new customers continuing to tell us that they can't get product from the competition. School administrators are focused on the need for security solutions as more incidences continue to happen. Our fully integrated solutions for school security generate healthy margins for our business, and now more than ever, we are laser focused on further penetration of the school security market, which is comprised of approximately 130,000 K through 12s and 5,000 colleges and universities across the country. Our fully integrated technologies for the school security market continues to remain a top priority for NAPCO. The availability of grants to schools to fund these security projects has never been better. We are excited to report that we recently received another school security project for a large school district in the state of Massachusetts, and the school will be using our Continental Access Control products in its 125 schools. Offering seamless security solutions which allow for our dealers and us to generate recurring revenue streams is central to our strategy. Historically, recurring revenues have been from our NAPCO intrusion and alarms division, but the recently launched air access product, we are now, with the recently launched air access product, we're now able to generate recurring revenue from all divisions of the company. Air Access should generate recurring revenue from locking and access control, which has never been done before. Air Access is the industry's first cellular-based access control system, which we believe is a billion-dollar opportunity. The benefits of Air Access include no need for upfront investment of expensive hardware, no need to interfere with corporate IT networks, which can be a major problem for installers, and no on-site database backups or software updates. Our R&D team remains hard at work developing even more products for the future, which will help grow our recurring revenue business. We have experienced tremendous success over the last five years growing our recurring revenue business and believe the best is yet to come. Lastly, I am pleased to announce that David Patterson, the governor of New York from March 2008 until January 2011, has joined our board of directors. David has vast experience in crime and security issues and is an outspoken advocate of safety by combating crime traditionally and with new methods and systems. He will bring his unique perspectives to NAPCO and we plan for the future growth and success of the company. We begin our Q&A session portion of this call in a moment. Our fiscal second quarter 2023 was a record-breaking successful one. We have a strong balance sheet, no debt, and continue to generate healthy profits. We believe we can continue this renewed growth streak well beyond the nine consecutive quarter streak we are on now. NAPCO Senior Management owns approximately 16.5% of our equity, and I would like to thank everyone for their support and for joining us in the exciting future we have. Our formal remarks are now concluded. We would now like to open for the call for a Q&A session. Operator, please proceed.
spk03: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time we will be conducting a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask your question, you may press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star key. Our first question comes from the line of Jim Rusciutti with Needham & Company. Please proceed with your question.
spk02: Hi, thank you. Good morning. I just wanted to follow up on a comment that you made regarding the rise in 3G sunset. Are you hearing from your channel partners yet of the acceleration in demand that they might be anticipating as a result of this?
spk06: Kevin, you want to take?
spk00: Sure. So, Jim, we know that the dealers who failed to take action, sunset hit. A lot of these dealers didn't think it was really going to happen because when the AT&T sunset came about, they kept delaying it, delaying it, delaying it. The dealers thought it was going to get delayed this time. Remember this with the dealers. If they don't have an active radio station, then they suffer. They're losing recurring revenue. Remember, they charge the end user recurring revenue, just like we charge the dealer. So the last thing they want is to lose their livelihood, that recurring. So we're starting to see a lot of scrambling around as these radios that went dark at the end of January 3rd are being replaced. We're pretty confident that they're all going to be replaced, and we're pretty confident they'll be replaced with our radios. They'll go from a NAPCO 3G radio to a NAPCO Starlink 5G radio. There's also the possibility that some of the radios that go dark from other manufacturers could come over to the NAPCO side, because we believe we have a better offering than the competition. So there's a lot of scurrying about. Let's watch what happens, but we think in the end it's going to mean more radio sales and more recurring revenue for us.
spk02: Follow-up question, and this may be for you, Kevin, or Dick. If you could talk a little bit to some of the redesign activities. When are you anticipating that that could produce more meaningful improvement in equipment?
spk00: Yeah, I could take that one. So several months ago, probably about seven months ago, we said that we were going to embark on the journey of getting another source to replace the traditional source, which is Texas Instruments. for our radio business because we can't keep living with having to buy these hard to get parts from brokers. So it takes time to do this. It's not like you just find the other source and you pop it into the board and you're off to the races. There's redesigning of the board, there's software updates, There's approvals from the ULs of the world. It takes time. Well, we're happy to say that we're almost done. We're about seven months into this journey, and probably by the end of this quarter, we're in the March quarter now, we're going to start utilizing these new sources. These new sources will be the same cost that we were used to before we had to start buying these parts from brokers. Now, we're going to still use TI. It's not like we're going to give up on them, but they can't keep up with us. They can't keep up with anyone, actually. They're having trouble with everybody. But we'll use them if they can deliver. We'll use the new source when we can get from them. We don't anticipate any trouble from the new source, and that should return margins to more normalized levels that we were used to before the COVID and the supply chain hit. Now, we do have a lot of inventory at the higher-priced inventory, the inventory that we've been buying from these brokers. We've got to work our way through it, and then eventually we'll be exclusive with lower-cost parts for our radios. I think we'll start to feel a difference a little bit in Q3, More in Q4 and certainly in fiscal 2024, I think we'll really start to feel it. And as we work through that inventory, it'll also help reduce the inventory overall, which, you know, we're carrying a lot of extra inventory because we don't want to be short at all with radios. Radios leads to recurring, which leads to going on forever.
spk02: I do one quick final question, if I may. Just remind us about ISC West and the impact that has on SG&A in this current quarter.
spk06: ISC... Go ahead, Dick. I'll do the first one. ISC West is the biggest trade show in the industry. And we'll get to see lots of dealers which are... great buyers, and we'll be able to pick up a lot of market share. We show a lot of new products that show. We have a very large group right in the main section. It's very important to show our products. We'll have our sales teams out there. We'd like to have any customers and also financial people come out and see it. You'll get a feeling for the power of Napa. Welcome to us. As far as what the costs are, Kevin, maybe you can explain that.
spk00: Yeah, so the show is March 28th through the 31st. So it's a Q3 for us, fiscal Q3 expense, an expense well worth it. But it's a $1,000 plus hit to SG&A. So for those of you that are modeling SG&A, remember that SG&A and Q3 will have that expense in it and should be somewhere in the neighborhood of $500,000 to $600,000 higher than what you saw in this quarter that we just finished.
spk07: Got it. Thanks very much. Thank you, Jim. Thank you.
spk03: Our next question comes from the line of Brian Ruttenberg with Imperial Capital. Please proceed with your question.
spk08: Yes, thank you very much. First of all, the gross margin question. It looks like gross margins are going to continue on the equipment side, expanding what you just talked about. Do you expect steady services gross margins? Is 89% sustainable?
spk00: Well, you know, I modeled this back when we did our 150-150 goal at 80%. And I was thrilled at that time to be utilizing an 80% gross margin. And it just keeps growing and growing and growing and growing. I thought the top was 85% or up to 89%. It keeps growing mainly because we're selling more and more fire radios. And we get more money for those. So the margins expand. I think if I was modeling this, I use mid-80s. Maybe we'll keep it in the high 80s. It's not going to go below mid-80s. Maybe we'll even hit 90%. It's possible. But mid-80s is certainly great enough.
spk08: Okay. And then in terms of equipment revenue growth, you beat me by a couple million on the top line in revenue in the period of Is that 27, 28 million, is that a sustainable number for the third quarter, what you had in the second quarter?
spk00: Well, you know, the comps get a little harder each quarter. Third is a little harder than the second and the fourth was 30 million last year. So when I model this, I model 10% hardware growth with the expectation that that we could possibly do better than that and continue. You know, we've been in the 20s the last several quarters. We hope we can keep it up. There's no guarantees. There's nothing we're seeing that says we can't do it. But when I model, I'm more conservative, so I'm more in the 10% range, especially when we get to Q4, which is the 30 million, and that would mean 10% would be a 33 million. But, you know, our guys are charged with I want 20% out of all of them, and that's what we're pushing for.
spk08: Okay. Very good. Then just moving on with cash, you talk a little bit about inventory maybe coming down over the next couple quarters, so that should produce, unless I'm missing something, you can walk me through. Cash should increase sequentially from second to third quarter and third to fourth quarter. Is that correct?
spk00: That is 100% correct. So two things are happening. So as the recurring revenue grows, the cash grows with that too. We haven't really felt it because we've been using a lot of that growth that the recurring brings us for inventory. So as recurring keeps growing, cash grows. And if inventory goes the other way, you'll feel the growth in cash two ways, so to speak. And so, yes, we expect cash to grow in the third quarter, in the fourth quarter, and beyond.
spk08: Okay, so receivables and other things and payables aren't going to – other working capital isn't going to change dramatically. It's all about the cash, right? Exactly. Okay. And then in terms of price increases, I believe you – on the product side, you had a price increase in April, one in July – Have you had any other price increases in the last 90 days, or do you plan any in the next 90?
spk00: We haven't had one since that second one, and we're discussing it. We haven't made the decision yet. But typically, we take a price increase every year. So at the very least, we'd probably do one in July. We always do it. The question is, would we do one beforehand? We're talking about it.
spk08: Okay. Okay. And then last question in terms of backlogs. You mentioned backlogs coming down. Are they still near record levels? I'm just worried about or have a question less worried about your visibility with backlogs coming down slightly.
spk00: You know, backlogs was never a big thing here. Backlogs became a big thing when supply chain and COVID hit. And it was up to 10 million supply And then we got it down to $6 million. And now it's down to $3.5 million. These are still historically high levels. We don't like backlog. We want to be able to ship dealers right when they order it. So we're working hard. As fast as we kill the backlog, we get new orders. When the demand is strong, that's a good thing. But even with strong demand, we're working to reduce that backlog to... Less than a million dollars. We're not there yet, but working hard towards it.
spk08: Great. Well, thank you very much.
spk00: Thank you.
spk03: Our next question comes from the line of Raj Sharma with B. Reilly Securities. Please proceed with your question.
spk05: Hi. Thank you. Again, congratulations on really, really good results. Thank you, Raj. My question – Yeah, absolutely. My question is on the continental locking access, were those increases in those equipments indicative of the school security projects?
spk00: Certainly helped. Yeah.
spk06: The product line utilizing our cellular technology that we invented for the fire intrusion is helping out a lot because of school security where you don't have to wire the school, but you can get the lockdown functionality out of it. And it goes through the cloud and people with cell phones can access what's going on in the building and It has to be a lockdown. Electronically, it can be done. So it's a great product and it has great growth potential. And one thing I'd like to point out in the 150 in equipment by 2026, 150 million by 2026, and recovering revenue of 150 by 2026 or before, we don't have air access for this application included because it's a new product with us. It takes typically a year, in this case, a year and a half for it to become more mainstream with dealers because it is very different, but it gives the dealer the benefit of recurring revenue where he never had recurring revenue on a product. It's kind of what the fire and vertical alarm dealers get now for locking and and access dealers. It's a very new and exciting product. We're teaching the industry on how to sell it.
spk05: I understand that air access is still a minimal part or non-existent part of the service contracts. On the equipment side, any estimate of what the school security contributes to the equipment currently?
spk00: It's hard to say, Raj, because we get a lot of orders that go directly through distribution, and we don't see it. There are a lot that we do see, and what I look at, just to really get an indication, I like to see what's our locking sales as a percentage of our overall hardware. And so I see that our locking sales is about 59% of our overall hardware sales. That's a lot. That's a very healthy thing. And I know it's because of schools. It's not only schools. It's hospitals. It's airports. It's a lot of things. But when schools are doing well, the security end is doing well, that number does better. So I know it. And there are lots of wins we don't talk about. We mentioned one on this call in a Massachusetts school district. For some reason, the schools don't let us really talk about it a lot. They like to keep things quiet. We have mentioned a couple of really big wins on the largest school districts in the country, which we got over the last six months. Two top 10s. two of the 10 largest school districts in the country. So we were proud to get that. It's early stages. I know we sound like a broken record, despite all the shootings that have gone on. We're still in the early stages of this, as most schools still haven't done enough. And now there's all kind of money available from both the federal and the state governments to help them. And of course, if it's a university, They have big endowments and can do it. We're in the early inning, second or third inning, if you ask me, on school security. Big area. I wish we could be more specific, but we can't.
spk05: Got it. Got it. And then on the inventory increase, the higher-priced inventory, I just wanted to understand, on one hand, the margins, gross margins on equipment are going to be helped because of the higher volumes. and the cost absorption. On the other hand, you're going to have higher price inventory, you know, flow through the income statement. I know you just talked about that. Could you help me understand if that is happening, you know, what the cadence of that is happening in the next two quarters or largely the impact of higher price inventory on gross margins, negative impact, you know, does that happen fiscal 24 or?
spk00: That's going to happen probably in the next two quarters. It's going to keep our margins in a similar range to where they've been in this fiscal year. The fourth quarter is probably going to benefit from a much higher sales level and more overhead absorption. So last year, as an example, when we had a $30 million hardware quarter, the margins for equipment jumped to 27%. You know, 27% may not sound like a lot because in the old days it wasn't a lot compared to what the rest of last year looked like. That was a significant jump. So we're going to see a jump probably in the fourth quarter because of that volume overhead absorption from the DR facility. But we won't feel the back to the good old days yet until we work through this inventory. We'll start to feel more of it because we're not buying as much from the brokers. So that helps. We've got to work through that inventory that we did buy from the brokers, and that will affect Q3 and to some degree 4 by next year, fiscal 2024. I think we get a lot of this behind us.
spk05: Got it. And then just lastly, could you give us some more color on the sell-through at the dealers? Are you still seeing in the top five dealers robust year-on-year increases?
spk00: Yeah, the sell-through is still very good. It's changed. The old sell-through, we wanted the distributors to carry three months' supply of everything. And once COVID hit and supply chain crisis, then the distributors became just in time They wanted to carry the bare minimum. We don't love that. There is a good side to it. Our business, our orders come in very steady throughout the quarter. They come in weekly, one after the other. We don't have to wait to the end. I was telling somebody earlier today, I used to sit here in December on New Year's Eve. Everybody's out celebrating, and I'm waiting for orders to come rolling in. They come in last minute as distributors waited to place their big orders to try to get the best deal they could. Those days, in large part, they're over. The orders come in very steady throughout the quarter. They don't have to go crazy with overtime and flying things as much, and you can forecast better. The only negative is you've got to watch their inventory levels They don't run too low and that they have product across the board. We don't want them to run out. If a dealer comes into a distributor and they don't have the product, they go elsewhere, and we better hope that the elsewhere is a place that carries our product. So we monitor it closely, make sure they have everything on the shelf. The days of the three months might be over, but there are benefits from it.
spk06: Roger, I want to mention something to you and realize that most of our production goes to distributors, and the distributors are our customers that when Kevin is talking about the stats, he's talking about these large distributors that have the products, and he's watching over them. you know, what's checking and what's selling to those dealers. The dealers go to distributors and get the product. Our business was founded on small, mid-sized dealers in every town and city. But now what's happening is we're getting big, big ones. The ADTs of the world are coming to us. The Siemens, the Johnson Controls, they're coming to us directly. so um it's a very very good thing that they are the products that we have outperform everything in the industry functionality range and a lot of other feature sets that we talked about so uh the big companies which have lots of installations want to use these type of products so those come direct those large companies and everybody else goes through distribution. Kevin is watching the vast number of dealers we have. We have more than 12,000 dealers that go to distribution and get the products. So everything seems to be checking well.
spk05: You got it. Thank you. Those are my questions. Thank you for answering them. I'll take it offline. Thank you, Raj.
spk03: Thank you, Raj. As a reminder, it is star one to ask a question. Our next question comes from the line of Christopher Hillary. with Robux Capital. Please proceed with your question.
spk01: Hi, good morning. Hey, Chris. Morning. I wanted to ask today if you could share any other metrics on the reoccurring business. For example, could you share roughly how much is coming from the fire radios? Could you discuss at all annual pricing and how that might change? And then lastly, could you share any color on products that you see aiding your reoccurring revenue growth in the medium term, out in two or three years?
spk00: We don't break out the radio sales, Chris, not yet anyway. I know we've been asked about it, and we can start doing that. We just haven't done it yet. What we have said is that fire radios is the largest piece of the various Starlink radios, and it's It's been around three or four years. It's the newcomer to radios, but yet it's taken over as the number one seller within the group. So we'll look at that. Maybe eventually we're going to break it out. There's no harm doing that. But we haven't done it yet. As far as looking three years out, Dick, maybe you want to talk about the air access and the potential for that.
spk06: So our concept in our company is integrated solutions. And we have an integrated engineering department which develops all these products in-house. We don't go offshore. It's all done in-house. We have our own factory. We don't use subcontractors. We have our own factory in the Dominican Republic. And we have been getting recurring revenue in two of our segments, which is the fire alarm and burglar alarm. But we want an integrated recurring revenue solution for all of our segments, which means the locking and access. And the introduction of air access gets us recurring revenue for every segment. And it is a great thing for locksmiths and access control dealers because they now can start getting recurring revenue like a fire and burglary loan dealer can do. And there's a very big... if they sell any of these accounts, like, for instance, a fire or burglar alarm dealer sells an account to an ADT or another company, there's a 35 to 40-time monthly multiple that the dealer can get by selling one account to one of the large alarm providers. So we think that the locksmiths and... the access control dealers who don't get that recurring revenue stream from their products because those products don't really offer it, but Air Access does. And we think that from our focus groups and the initial training that we've done, that we think that this is a billion-dollar industry, Air Access with recurring revenue and locking, and we're excited about it. But it's going to take another... six months to a year before it becomes more mainstream because it is a big change for locksmiths and access dealers that never really got recurring revenue. All they got was a service contract to replace the lock or to come and lubricate it or to upgrade the software of an access system on site. Now all of this is done by air access companies. and they can now give additional services to their clients, which are very valuable to their end-user clients. So we're very excited about the future of Air Access.
spk01: Great. Thanks for all that. And then anything on your reoccurring revenue pricing per year that you could share with us, how that tends to evolve or how you're planning on managing that? Thank you.
spk09: We have a price list.
spk06: We have a price list. We have a price list for each of the different types of radios we manufacture, including our, we talk about it as radios, but NAPCO does more than radios. NAPCO also makes the control panels for new work. We make both fire and burglary control panels. And each of those control panels has a radio built into it. In the past, they all used copper, but as we know, copper is dead, and the dealers are switching their new jobs over to radio, and now we have radios built into our control panels, which is a very, very popular product line with us. We're very busy building these control panels with radios inside. So we do the rip and replace radios for all the lines that are going dead, fire and burglary, where you keep the control panel and the system that you have. You don't have to rip it out. You put our radio there. And our radio is what we call a universal radio, different than anything else on the market because the one radio does any type of control panel, whenever it was made, whichever brand it is. It works on everybody. It doesn't just work in the NAPCO ecosystem. And then we have our control panel with the radio built in. So we have this menu. It's a published menu. But we make the most on the fire radios because the fire radios require more handshakes from the central station. In other words, more signals going back and forth. So there's more traffic. And we charge more for those. But we are keeping our pricing the same. And we think it's priced right.
spk07: And you can see what the margins are. Thank you. Thanks, Chris.
spk03: There are no further questions in the queue. I'd like to hand the call back to management for closing remarks.
spk06: Thank you, everyone, for participating in today's conference call. As always, if you have any further questions, please feel free to call Patrick, Kevin, or myself for further information. We thank you for your interest and support, and we look forward to speaking to you all again in a few months to discuss NAPCA's fiscal Q3 23 results. Bye-bye. Have a wonderful day.
spk03: Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's teleconference. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and have a wonderful day.
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