Ultralife Corporation

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Ultralife Corporation fourth quarter 2022 results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker, Jody Burfening. Please go ahead.

Thank you, LaTanya, and good morning, everyone. And thank you for joining us this morning for Ultralife Corporation's earnings conference call for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2022. With us on today's call are Mike Manna, Ultralife's president and CEO, and Phil Fain, Ultralife's chief financial officer. The earnings press release was issued earlier this morning. If anyone has not yet received a copy, I invite you to visit the company's website, www.ultralifecore.com, where you'll find the release under Investor News in the Investor Relations section. Before turning the call over to management, I would like to remind everyone that some statements made during this conference call contain forward-looking statements based on current expectations. Actual results could differ materially from those projected as a result of various risks and uncertainties. The potential risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially include the impact of COVID-19 and related supply chain disruptions, potential reductions in revenues from key customers, acceptance of new products on a global basis, and uncertain global economic conditions. The company cautions investors not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements which reflect the company's analysis only as of today's date. The company undertakes no obligation to publicly update forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances. Further information on these factors and other factors that could cause Ultralife's financial results is included in Ultralife's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the latest annual report on Form 10-K. In addition, on today's call, management will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures that management considers to be useful metrics and differ from GAAP. These non-GAAP measures should be considered as supplemental to corresponding GAAP figures. With that, I would now like to turn the call over to Mike. Good morning, Mike.

Good morning. Thanks for joining the call on Ultralight's Q4 2022 operating results. This being my first call as President and CEO, I will start with some of my background I am a Rochester Institute of Technology graduate. I've been part of Ultralight since 1993, back when Ultralight first started working on the rechargeable lithium ion polymer battery program. I have experience in everything from testing, cell design, battery pack design, new product development, operation, sales, and most recently, president of the battery and energy business for over three years, where I led the business to an average 8% net organic growth rate and including Excel grew top line revenue from 84 million to 120 million, a 43% increase, delivering operating profit of approximately $10 million while navigating through a pandemic, inflation, and supply chain challenges. We won the largest contract award in history of the battery and energy business, the conformal wearable battery, with an initial possible value of 165 million and additional option years that could add another 350 million. Ultralife has been my life's work. I am passionate about the business and the products and have a strategy for growth that diversifies the business across multiple markets and increases value for our employees, our customers, our suppliers, and our stockholders. As for my current assessment, we have subject matter experts and professionals in both our battery and communications divisions to give us unique expertise that our customers value and require. We need to support these individuals and increase bench strength to achieve our future growth plans. We have unique products that target demanding applications that deliver superior performance. These products, by nature, are designed to meet rigorous standards and requirements, which can result in multi-stage product development that consume resources and interim designs that can incur higher manufacturing costs. We have multiple facilities. which provides us proximity to customers and localized support, allows us room and flexibility for anticipated growth without large increases in costs, and also does give us redundancy in case of site interruptions. There are back office synergies we are beginning to implement, which will increase the utilization of our personnel across the various sites. We have a brand that I feel is vastly underutilized, which I think can be leveraged in new ways to enhance wallet share and value and help with other intangibles like recruitment and retention. Our variable cost productivity projects were drastically reduced due to the pandemic and part shortages and as resources were needed to source parts due to customer commitments. Now we are in process of reinvigorating these activities with focus on cost down efforts and secondary sourcing of key components. I will now turn it over to Phil to talk through the Q4 numbers.