Sono-Tek Corporation

Good morning, and welcome to the Sonotech Corporation fourth quarter and fiscal year 2022 year-end earnings conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Stephanie Prince with PCG Advisory. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Gary, and thank you to everyone joining us today. SunTech released their fourth quarter and fiscal 2022 year-end results pre-market today. If you don't have a copy of the release, please go to the company's website, at Sonitech.com and click on the Press Release tab in the Investor section. The product, market, and geography sales tables on the last page of the release will be part of today's discussion. With me on the call today are Chris Coccio, Sonitech's Chairman and CEO, Steve Harshbarger, President and CEO, COO, excuse me, and Steve Bagley, Chief Financial Officer. Before turning the call over to management, I would like to make the following remarks concerning forward-looking statements. Please note that various remarks that may be made on this conference call about future expectations, plans, and prospects for the company constitute forward-looking statements for the purposes of safe harbor provisions under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may vary materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including those discussed in the company's filings with the SEC. The company assumes no obligation to update the information contained in this conference call. I would now like to turn the call over to Chris Coccio, Chairman and CEO of Sonitech. Chris?

Thank you, Stephanie, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today for our fourth quarter and fiscal year 2022 year-end earnings conference call. Today, we're going to discuss our results that were released earlier this morning for fiscal year 2022, which ended February 28, 2022. I will begin with some opening remarks, and then Steve Bagley, Chief Financial Officer, will provide a financial review of the year. Steve Harshbarger, President and COO, will then go through the business and operational results and the sales growth guidance. Following that, we'll open the call for your questions. This is our second earnings call. The first was when we reported our mid-year results last October after we uplisted to NASDAQ last August. Briefly, for those who are new to Sonotech, we developed a revolutionary method of applying precision thin-film coating several decades ago. The proprietary technology involves the use of patented high-frequency ultrasonic nozzles incorporated into motion control systems that are able to achieve uniform micron-thin coatings for our customers. We focus on important high-tech markets that require the ability, such as semiconductor manufacturing, handheld electronic devices, medical devices, fuel and solar cells, and industrial processes such as glass lines, textiles, and even food coatings. Over the years, we've expanded our footprint from the U.S. to Europe, then Asia, and Latin America. Our solutions offer dramatic savings in raw material, water, and energy usage, and are environmentally friendly among many other advantages. The strategic shift that we made several years ago to offer more complex, complete solutions versus component sales has broadened our addressable market and has resulted in significant growth in our average unit selling prices. Our larger machines now sell for over $300,000, and system prices more and more often reach over $1 million. Most recently, we focused on opening new markets for our technology. This includes three main areas of strong global growth, microelectronics and semiconductors, clean energy, which includes fuel cells and carbon capture, and medical devices. All three of these areas are experiencing strong demand from long-term societal needs, and they all benefit from our unique thin film coating technology and systems. We've had growing success penetrating each of these markets. This includes the application of thin films onto advanced diagnostic test kits, which are used in genomics and blood identification and are now being deployed for rapid COVID test diagnosis. As we continue to advance our capabilities, more and more of the approximately $8 billion global coding market opens to our advanced solutions. One example is that we are in the process of expanding our coding capabilities to include role-to-role product handling, which is used in approximately 15% of the global coding market. We're also in the process of changing our SIC code to the technology instrumentation designation. This is where Sonotech really belongs, and it's helpful for customers, the investment community, and other stakeholders to better understand our business and outlook. We entered fiscal 2022 on a high note. The fourth quarter trends were strong, and we finished the year with over 17 million in sales, a new record for the company. When our fiscal year began last March 1st, the world was still impacted by the pandemic. Yet Sonotech's flexibility to quickly change focus geographically and by market segment, combined with our expanding system and project capabilities, allowed us to capture new and larger orders during the year. Steve and Steve will go through the details in a few moments. The fourth quarter trends continued into the new fiscal year, and we again expect double-digit sales growth for the first quarter and the year, which will be another record. We ended the year with a cash balance of $10.7 million, over $2 million higher than at the end of the last fiscal year. We also paid our mortgage debt off during the year and currently have no debt on our balance sheet. We're very excited about the new applications that we're developing for our technology and our opportunities for growth in our focus markets of semiconductors, medical, and clean energy. And we have the right team with the right capabilities and drive to achieve our goals. With that, I'll turn the call over to Steve Bagley, our Chief Financial Officer, for some details of our financial results.