Optical Cable Corporation

Good morning. My name is Angela, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome you to Optical Cable Corporation's first quarter of fiscal year 2024 earnings conference 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 period. If you would like to ask a question at that time, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you wish to remove yourself from the queue, please press star 2. Mr. Hoffman, you may begin your conference.

Thank you. Good morning, and thank you for joining us for Optical Cable Corporation's first quarter of fiscal year 2024 conference call. By this time, everyone should have a copy of the earnings press release issued earlier today. You can also visit www.occfiber.com for a copy. On the call with us today are Neil Wilkin, President and Chief Executive Officer of OCC, and Tracy Smith, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that this call may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. The actual future results of Obstacle Cable Corporation may differ materially through a number of factors and risks, including, but not limited to, those factors referenced in the forward-looking statements section of this morning's press release. These cautionary statements apply to the contents of the internet webcast on www.occfiber.com, as well as today's call. With that, I'll turn the call over to Neil Wilkin. Neil, please begin.

Thank you, Spencer, and good morning, everyone. I will begin the call today with a few opening remarks. Tracy will then review the first quarter results for the three-month period ended January 31, 2024 in some additional detail. After Tracy's remarks, we will answer as many of your questions as we can. As is our normal practice, we will only take questions from analysts and institutional investors during the Q&A session. However, we also offer other shareholders the opportunity to submit questions in advance of our earnings call. Instructions regarding such submissions are included in our press release announcing the date and time of our call. During the first quarter of fiscal year 2024, OCC has maintained a strong market position in our targeted markets, even as the industry continued to be impacted by various macroeconomic pressures and uncertainties. While certain of our markets continue to show signs of softness, including our enterprise and wireless carrier markets, we believe there are positive indicators in certain of our other markets and that we are positively positioned relative to our competitors. OCC does benefit from its longstanding market diversification, both geographically and importantly, by target, industry, and application. Overall, we expect our market opportunities to improve during fiscal year 2024 relative to the beginning of the year. We remain focused on executing our growth strategies, and we stand ready to make appropriate adjustments to ensure we capture opportunities in the current market environment. That said, we have not implemented personnel reductions like others in our industry have done. Our planned restraint in this regard is consistent with our view of expected opportunities, as well as considering the time it takes to train new personnel in certain areas of our production operations. This approach does impact short-term results due to our operating leverage, both with respect to cost of goods sold and SG&A expenses relative to sales. Importantly, however, we believe this approach better positions OCC for the longer term in our targeted markets as they improve. Looking ahead, we are confident that by delivering for our customers and end users, and through our continued efforts to work efficiently, we will generate value for our shareholders. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Tracy, who will review in additional detail our first quarter of fiscal year 2024 financial results.