AstroNova, Inc. (ALOT) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, and welcome to the AstroNova conference call. Today's call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Scott Solomon of the company's Investor Relations firm, Sharon Merrill Advisors. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Tia. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us. Hosting today's call are Greg Woods, AstroNova's President and CEO; and David Smith, Chief Financial Officer. By now, you should have received a copy of the news release that was issued this morning announcing the company's acquisition of MTEX NS. If you don't have a copy, please go to the Investors page of the AstroNova website, www.astronovainc.com. A slide presentation related to today's announcement is also available on the website. Please note that statements made during today's call that are not statements of historical fact are considered forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are based on a number of assumptions that could involve risks and uncertainties. Accordingly, actual results could differ materially. Except as required by law, any forward-looking statements speak only as of today, May 9, 2024. The company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements. For further information regarding the forward-looking statements and the factors that may cause differences, please see the risk factors in AstroNova's annual report on Form 10-K and other filings the company makes with the Securities and Exchange Commission. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Greg.

Thank you, Scott, and good afternoon, everyone and thanks for joining us to discuss the acquisition of MTEX NS. This is a great transaction for us, and we're very excited about the combination. MTEX provides us with complementary market adjacencies in our product identification segment, it expands our addressable markets and broadens our global footprint, opening up significant top and bottom line growth opportunities. Three things attracted us to MTEX, the market opportunities, the technology and the team. The company is not only an innovator, but a technology disruptor with a new industrial printing solutions that have taken the market by storm. Headquarters and technology hub just outside of Porto, Portugal. MTEX operates a sophisticated engineering and manufacturing center there. The high level of vertical integration at their facility has been a model of cost efficiency reducing their dependence on outside suppliers. The company complements its direct sales team with strong distributors in Europe, the Middle East and North and South America. Among the MTEX products that are particularly exciting to us are the wide-format direct-to-package printers, which offer dual-sided printing for large corrugated packaging and the flexible film printers, which allow for pouch package printing. MTEX also recently launched a groundbreaking new solution for direct-to-film printing on an array of materials, including fabrics, leather, and even some hard surface materials. All of these represent new market opportunities for AstroNova. MTEX's Industrial Solutions focus on 4 key industrial segments: packaging, flexible packaging, color labels and textiles. In healthcare and food and beverage to logistics and e-commerce, their products are applicable to a wide range of end markets. I will go into more details now about all of the product benefits and features, but you can learn more about them at their website, which is mtexns.com. One of the company's greatest assets is their very experienced and talented team. While MTEX will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of AstroNova, the plan is for the 76 member team to continue under the current management structure with their CEO Elói Ferreira remaining in that role. MTEX has been on our radar screen for a while now, and we've gotten to know Elói very well, particularly over the last few months. He's a constant professional, who has built a terrific business, earning his reputation for operational excellence by attracting a world-class customer base, spending roughly 100 countries. From a technology perspective, the MTEX team possesses exceptional inkjet and UV piezo technology expertise, directly complementing our own technical strengths. One of their key competitive strengths is the proprietary printhead and ink technologies, which drive high recurring revenue streams. Much of the technology allows for the creation of sustainable packaging solutions such as recycled cardboard printing and environmentally friendly water-based inks. As outlined in this morning's news release, the transaction was a total enterprise value of EUR 24.3 million and provides for a EUR 4 million earnout payable to the seller over 3 years based on the achievement of specified revenue growth targets. For competitive reasons, we're not going to discuss those targets other than to say they are significant. We expect the transaction to add an additional $8 million to $10 million in revenue to our current fiscal year ending January 31, 2025. For those of you traveling to Germany for Drupa 2024, and by the way, it's the first time they've had this show in 8 years for people who are not familiar, it's a very big show, we invite you to stop by the large combined AstroNova MTEX booth in hall 5. And yes, we do have one continuous booth for the combined entity now. We have many of our latest products at the show, and we love taking and talking to you about the products and technology and demonstrating for you face-to-face. In summary, we're very excited about the future. As our third PI strategic acquisition, MTEX further expands the global growth opportunities for our Product Identification segment. It moves us further up the value chain with products that carry higher ASPs, a larger recurring revenue stream and greater customer stickiness. By combining the strength of our technology and go-to-market teams, we expect to see MTEX execute its aggressive growth objectives. We are thrilled to welcome Elói and the entire MTEX team to the AstroNova family. Now Dave and I'll be happy to take your questions. Operator?

[Operator Instructions]. The first question comes from the line of Brandon Daniel with Atai Capital.

So if I'm just looking at MTEX's annual report on their website, they have around 30% EBITDA margins. Is that kind of what we should be expecting from that business moving forward? Or is IFRS affecting that number some? I know you mentioned growth initiatives there. So are those going to affect those margins? Just some color around that would be great.

Yes. I think the business we expect to operate in -- David, do you want to -- hang out [indiscernible] David. As I was going to say, we expect the business in general to operate in similar trend. It's got an upward trend right now. And with respect to the IFRS, I can let David comment on that.

Yes. Those numbers are not even really IFRS. They are Portuguese statutory accounting standards. There is a translation to U.S. GAAP that occurs where the margins would not be as high because they basically capitalize R&D, but the margins are still very handsome.

Got it. And then I have a follow-up here. In the deck, you're highlighting a lot of their [ lower ] cost manufacturing. I think they even said in the annual reports there. Are you going to be able to utilize their like manufacturing for some of the existing products? Is there any facility consolidation there? Any types of synergies we should be thinking about?

Yes. On the latter point first, we don't see really facility consolidation. Although some of the things that we have planned for the future that could have gone to Chicago, could possibly be done in Portugal and we do still have some manufacturing in Asia that we were thinking about bringing to Chicago. So that could get diverted to Portugal. So there's a little bit of that. It's not a huge part of the equation here, but there's opportunities there. And from a capacity point of view, they can actually handle quite a bit more. So it'll probably be more along the lines of further growth and having more products built there as far as new products that we haven't yet introduced.

Got it. Any synergies side of that, that we should be thinking of? And then I noticed there's a Konica Minolta partnership. Could you maybe talk about that a little bit?

Yes. The Konica Minolta is one of their -- it's a large distributor network that they have. So that's probably one of the largest distributors for the MTEX product line. So they have distribution in a variety of areas, but most prominently in the Americas and Europe. And that's something that -- it's the -- that's the -- represent a new channel for us, by the way. We don't use that channel at all right now. So there's a potential to put product -- current AstroNova product identification products through that channel. But that's yet to be determined. It's early days here.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from the line of John Deysher with Pinnacle.

I was just curious if there are other bidders for the company?

There could have been. I guess we're not going to disclose that.

Could have been. Okay. And was the seller actually the management team or their entity?

No, it's the company is owned by the management of the company.

Okay. All right. And there may be other bid. Is there disclosed anywhere the financial results for the last couple of years? Is that disclosed anywhere?

You can find some of their annual reports on their website that I gave out earlier. They do put those out. I think the most recent one is 2022, they haven't put the '23 out there yet.

I'm looking at that. I don't see a lot of disclosure unless I missed it, in terms of financials.

This is David. The financials are there. They're on the basis of Portuguese GAAP.

Okay. So -- and will you disclose the '23 results as well?

Yes, they'll be putting -- they'll put an annual report up there. I don't know the tick that they actually do that on, but, that's their game plan.