Baylin Technologies Inc. (BYL) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Baylin Technologies Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2023 Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] This call is being recorded on Thursday, March 21, 2024. I will now turn the call over to Kelly Myles, Director of Marketing and Investor Relations of Baylin Technologies. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Lara. Hello, and welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us this morning for the Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2023 Earnings Conference Call for Baylin Technologies. On the call with us today from Baylin are Leighton Carroll, Chief Executive Officer; and Dan Nohdomi, Chief Financial Officer. We will be available for questions at the end of the presentation. Before we begin, let me make it clear that our comments today may include forward-looking statements and information and answers to questions that could imply future expectations about the prospects and financial performance of the business for 2024 and could include the use of non-IFRS measures. These statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions. Accordingly, actual performance could differ materially from statements made or information provided today, so you should not place undue reliance on them. We also do not intend to update forward-looking statements or information, except as required by law. I ask that you read our legal disclaimers and explanation of the use of non-IFRS measures and refer you to the risks and assumptions outlined in our public disclosure in particular, the sections entitled forward-looking statements and risk factors in our Annual Information Form for the year ended December 31, 2023, and our other filings, which are available on SEDAR. Our Q4 and full year 2023 results were released after market close yesterday. The press release, financial statements as well as the MD&A are available on SEDAR and on our website at baylintech.com. I would now like to turn the call over to Leighton.

Thank you, Kelly. Before I begin, I'd like to provide a summary of recent findings that we -- financing, excuse me, that we closed in December 2023. In December, we completed 2 financing, a rights offering and a private placement, which was described in detail in our Q4 and full year 2023 financial statements and MD&A. Net proceeds from the rights offering and private placement were used to fully repay the term loan outstanding. The effect of these financing is that our balance sheet has been substantially recapitalized. Leverage has significantly improved, and our total North American debt nearly halved, reducing from $24.2 million in December of 2022 to $12.4 million at December of 2023. Also to put it another way, in the time that I've been here, thanks in large measure to our Chairman, our shareholders, our Board members and myself as well participating. Our debt has improved that has gone down by 60%, which is pretty dramatic. And to be honest, it was one of the -- to me, one of the biggest challenges that the business faced, certainly not the only one, but we still obviously have debt on the books. We saw obviously, are going to continue to service it, but it is remarkably better. And the commitment that our shareholders have made to this company is pretty remarkable, and I am personally very thankful for it as are the employees of Baylin. This substantially changes our balance sheet, which directly impacts cash flows, cash flows improve and immediately are better by over $4 million per year as we no longer have an obligation to make quarterly principal repayments on the term loan. This frees up cash for investment in the business and for operating the business. It's great news. And obviously, we're super excited that we're now finally in this position. It was really for me going through this process, when it's not just your principal shareholder, your Board participates, independent investors who have been with you participate, someone say, it's dollar cost averaging. And then obviously, I participated. And if nothing else, and forget my participation for a second when all those other folks are helping you on this journey, to me, that's a vote of confidence. During the fourth quarter, we continued to work for the company's future, and we'll talk about several wins and the momentum we have in several of our products a little later. We remain encouraged about the pipeline of opportunities we are pursuing as well as the continued elevated backlog. However, we continue to face challenges as folks know. And one of the things that I talked about in Q3 earnings was that we expected Q4 to have some significant challenges, we could see it coming, and that certainly was the case. Before I provide an update on our business lines, I'd like to describe an important change on the presentation of our financial results of our Mobile and Network business. As we have hired an investment banker to facilitate the divestiture of M&N this calendar year, we have, for the purpose of presentation and reporting our financial results are showing continuing operations of 3 businesses, the Embedded business, the Wireless Infrastructure business and our SATCOM business. That means that the Mobile and Network business is being reported as held for sale, which is appropriate for IFRS. M&N continues to deal with its primary customers reduction in volume, which has impacted all suppliers in their ecosystem. I was actually just in Korea last week, meeting with said customer. And while the M&N businesses got a number of new products, both with their customer and with others, we -- what we're seeing is the principal customers having continued softness even from their 2024 projections. And the new products and new customers that we have added, the ramp of them is -- I mean, by the way, the ramp of them is normal as there's nothing I would characterize as wrong with them. But given the size of the older customer -- the legacy customer, it does not offset that at this time. Our embedded antenna business did experience a slower quarter, principally due to its end consumers, end products, there were some pull in and overbuild inventory in one case but even with lower volume and lower revenues, the business remains substantially healthy and profitable. And the nice part is we expect this trend will reverse in Q1 of 2024. The infrastructure business definitely saw lower sales and probably was the most adversely impacted on a quarter-over-quarter basis. Even though we had a number of really interesting marquee wins, it was honestly fascinating to see what happened in the North American wireless ecosystem across the board and how that has impacted so many people. One of the things I personally did is, I went out and I looked at several of our competitors and to be fair, they look at us too and see what we're doing. And our competitors they're really terribly bad. We certainly didn't have a great quarter. There was a consistency. The nice part is, as I think we actually felt a little better than those despite the fact that we just did not have the order flow and revenue attainment that we wanted in Q1. The good news is I've been in wireless a long time quarter-over-quarter, that typically can't hold that way. And if you're going to see it, you're going to see it at the end of the year as carriers are trying to make certain numbers. They need to invest in their network, and we're already seeing really interesting order flow in Q1 2024. On a more positive front, our SATCOM team -- they were in line with expectations [ effect ] in Q4. They actually were slightly up on revenue and EBITDA from plan. Despite all the challenges that are going on in the macroeconomic environment, new entrants, that team continued to perform very, very solidly. Backlog from continuing operations increased to $34.7 million as at March 13, and it's actually slightly higher than that now. What a difference a week makes we continue to get orders, which is a positive. And by the way, just I shared this backlog to me is such a critical number because it just tells you where you're going. And in our continuing operations, which are the Embedded, the SATCOM and the Infrastructure business to be at $34.7 million as of last week and going higher. That's a good place to be because it secures our future with more on the way, which is great. By the way, in comparison, $31.2 million at December -- at year-end of 2023 and $35.2 million at December 31, 2022. Basically, it suggests that we are relatively consistent within what I would call this core business group, the businesses that are headquartered here in North America. And the fact that we -- even in what I would reference in 2 of the 3, a really challenging environment towards the end of the year. We continue to have competitive differentiation because of our new products and that competitive differentiation is allowing us to continue to sell successfully and keep our business moving forward. We also -- we have been continuing to work on to improve the quality of the backlog. In other words, the gross profit associated with each of the purchase orders and improvement of our overall cost structures. In fact, it's one of the things that I'm really, really pleased with, if you go back to when I started in the business, the company was running at around 16% gross profit. And when you look at where we are now, we're running at slightly over 38%. That's a pretty remarkable change of events in the business. There's a lot of things that go into that, but retiring legacy products, launching new products with better margin profiles that matter, working on your manufacturability, changing your cost structure. A lot of good things have happened that I would say are more kind of the fundamentals, if you're a sporting guy or gal, our fundamentals of how we run our business are so much better than the way they were 2.5 years ago. So it's -- I'm very proud of the journey we've made. All right. In recent developments, we've had several notable successes over this past quarter. Galtronics multibeam continue to demonstrate class-leading performance, building on the success in 2023 and now it's continuing in '24. Most notably, we were chosen for Allegiant Stadium in Los Vegas when the 2024 Super Bowl occur. The antennas to handle large-scale performance -- large-scale capacity needs is spectacularly for wireless carriers. And it's really kind of need to see that they go in and get chosen for events that matter. By the way, a separate Funds Act, and I had not realized that sometimes when you talk to customers, you find out where your equipment went. I also learned literally yesterday sitting with the customer that a lot of the broadcast television for the Super Bowl was provided by Advantech Amplifiers. So not only do we have the Allegiant piece, but we also had Advantech operating at the Super Bowl, providing the technology. So as people were watching the ball game, our products were there as people who were there at the game, our products were there. For me, that's pretty cool. The nice part is with our multibeam. We're continuing to get approvals. We're continuing to get traction. And to be honest, those things are a key technology that's helping us open up our expansion into Europe for that business line. SATCOM has had a good year. The Genesis amplifiers, the launch of the new products, Ka -- Ku we're getting ready to have a C-band shortly. Also, we've recently [indiscernible] that we had a Direct-to-Home satellite broadcast network in India, has bought our amplifiers. It's the first phase with likely more coming, which is a great thing that was $2.7 million, and there's more on the way. I can keep going because this stuff hopefully you guys hear the passion in my voice. I get really excited about the technology we've built and where we're going and some of the success we have and I'm looking forward to seeing this build further. With that, Dan, I'm going to turn it over to you for commenting on our fourth quarter and full year financials.

Thank you, Leighton. Before I provide a summary of Q4 and full year '23 results, we wanted to provide an update regarding our credit facilities. We're pleased to report that the company agreed with its lenders, RBC and HSBC Canada, soon to be just RBC Canada, to further amendments to the Credit Agreement governing our credit facilities. They've extended the maturity of the revolver to June -- the end of June, and we're obviously very thankful for the continued support. We're -- at the moment, we're working towards putting in place a more permanent credit facility prior to maturity of the revolver and this extension period will allow us to do that. Just in terms of our results, I'll start with full year and then move on to Q4. Revenue from continuing operations was $73 million for the full year '23 which was a moderate decrease of $5.2 million or 6.6% compared to fiscal '22. The decrease primarily due to a decrease in sales volumes and embedded and infrastructure this year compared to last year, and that was partially offset by an increase in sales volumes in SATCOM that Leighton alluded to earlier. Margins, interestingly, from continuing operations was nearly 39% for full year '23, and that compares to 36.9% for full year '22. Improved gross margin resulted from a balanced product mix, including the sales of newly launched products and the focus on margins. That's obviously great news. Additionally, the improvement was mainly generated by stronger revenue recovery in SATCOM, favorable product mix, including the new multibeam that Leighton mentioned earlier and innovative antenna portfolio in the wireless infrastructure business line and consistent operational efficiency in Embedded. Adjusted EBITDA from continuing operations was just around breakeven or slightly below in fiscal '23 at negative $0.2 million, a decrease of $1.2 million compared to positive $1 million in fiscal '22. The decrease a result of decrease in revenue and gross profit, partially offset by a decrease in OpEx and a focus on costs and ensuring the right cost structure given the revenue base. Adjusted EBITDA from discontinued operations of negative $2.3 million in full year '23 was a decrease of $2.6 million compared to positive $0.3 million in full year '22. And the decrease was mainly a result of production volume reductions at our principal customer in fiscal '23. Net loss from continuing operations was $8.2 million in full year '23, compared with a net loss of $12.7 million in fiscal '22. And the net loss was primarily due to an operating loss of $5.4 million, interest expenses and income tax expenses. On a per share basis, this translates to a net loss of $0.10 per share in fiscal '23, which compares to a net loss of $0.16 per share in fiscal '22. Net loss from discontinued operations was $5.6 million in full year '23 compared to a net loss of $4.2 million in full year '22. And this net loss driven by an operating loss of $5 million as well as other finance expenses in the M&N business line. On a per share basis, this translates to a net loss of $0.06 per share in fiscal '23 compared to a net loss of $0.05 per share in fiscal '22. Net debt from continuing operations was $12.8 million at the end of the year, and that was a decrease of $10.3 million from the end of the prior year. And obviously, that was mainly attributable to a decrease in noncash working capital in fiscal '23 as well as the full repayment of the term loan from proceeds of the rights offering and private placement in December '23 that Leighton mentioned in his opening remarks. On to the fourth quarter. Revenue from continuing operations was $16.1 million, which was a decrease of $4.3 million or 20 -- just over 20% compared to Q4 of '22. And the decrease in revenue in Q4 was mainly due to the reasons noted earlier. Gross margin from continuing operations continue to hold at 35%, just over 35% in Q4, and that compares with 34% in Q4 '22, which is also an improvement. And that improvement was mainly due to stronger revenue recovery and favorable product mix in SATCOM. Adjusted EBITDA from continuing operations was negative $2 million in Q4 of '23. That was a decrease of $2.6 million compared to Q4 of '22 and decrease driven by the decrease in revenue and gross profit mentioned earlier. Adjusted EBITDA from discontinued operations was negative $0.7 million in Q4 of '23, which was a decrease of $0.7 million compared to Q4 of '22. And net loss from continuing operations was $6.9 million in Q4 '23 compared to a net loss of $4.4 million from continuing operations in Q4 of '22. This was driven by an operating loss of $5.3 million as well as interest expenses. On a per-share basis, that translates to a net loss of $0.07 per share in Q4 of '23 compared to a net loss of $0.06 per share in Q4 '22. The net loss from discontinued operations was $1.1 million in Q4 '23, and that compares to a net loss of $0.2 million from discontinued operations in Q4 of '22. On a per share basis, this equates to $0.01 per share in Q4 '23 compared to a -- just right around breakeven per share for Q4 '22. I'll now turn the call back over to Leighton.

Apologies for the interruption. This is Lara, the operator. Mr. Carroll, would you mind taking [indiscernible] you're currently on mute.

Fantastic. I was rolling on mute, that was brilliant. Sorry about that, guys. All right. Thanks Dan. Sorry about that. We obviously had a challenging environment in Q4, and it was predominantly because of the embedded side of the business and seeing the slowdowns with customers as well as the infrastructure side. When you have to carry a certain fixed cost, you have lower revenue, your gross margins go down and then certainly impacts your operating EBITDA. While our overall performance continued to be negatively impacted by our M&N business, SATCOM was strong and actually had a very solid fourth quarter for us. So I'm actually very proud of the team, very proud of the team in Kirkland for their ability to deliver these monster systems that they've been putting together. And the nice part is we have more on the way, which is great. The Embedded and line really had a challenging quarter, but honestly, still was nicely profitable, while the infrastructure line, the entire ecosystem just got, for lack of a better way to put it got [indiscernible]. There's certainly plenty of third-party data that will support that with more clarity for folks if they're so inclined. We continue to focus on our innovative -- on our innovation, where we can drive competitive advantage at the end of the day. There's a certain sequelae in some of these markets. And in my experience, it doesn't last. You have to weather these storms. And if you don't focus on continuing to drive innovation and product development, if you take your hand off the gas pedal, you're going to get hurt actually disproportionately. So we have continued to move forward and continue to innovate and actually has continue to have a nice product pipeline across all of our businesses. The other thing is we have a nice bid pipeline across all of our businesses. So I'm confident that we're going to be in a better place here. Another thing to maybe just mention is the interest rate environment for a second because that does matter. And it has mattered certainly for wireless carriers, given the state of some of their balance sheets. We do expect interest rates are going to remain higher for a good portion of this year. We do see that customer spending is going to continue to be muted for M&N business, which certainly has continued to affect that. And although we are seeing despite higher interest rates, spending starting to increase in North America with their infrastructure business unit. Now I'd like to speak about each of our businesses and the work that is going on in those. The Embedded line certainly was impacted in the fourth quarter with materially lower sales as a result of that was reflected industrywide. What if l look at Airgain, one of our competitors and their revenue is substantially more off than ours, which I thought was interesting. The -- we don't expect these conditions to reoccur in 2024. And in fact, we are seeing a recovery in demand for devices, not just in Q1, which we have seen, but we are seeing -- we expect to see further demand as the service providers are beginning to make their shift from Wi-Fi 6 to Wi-Fi 7 based technology and new technology adoption always tends to be a good thing for us. We tend to do really well in those scenarios. For now, we expect the embedded business line will continue to perform well for 2024, and its performance will depend on the ability of home network in public safety and automotive markets to remain resilient in the face of the broader economy and the interest rate environment. The number of active bids in this business line for 2024 remains at a very strong level as well. With respect to the infrastructure business, we do believe it will perform better in '24 than it has in 2023 with improvements in revenue, gross margin and operating EBITDA. We are looking to build on the sales success and -- excuse me, the sales and success of our innovative multibeam and small cell antennas as well as the strong pace of stadium deployments. It's actually kind of a nice thing that stadiums were obviously dead in terms of revenue opportunity for years in COVID, and now we're seeing a solid consistent pace of investment, and we're really well positioned to take advantage of that. We also have seen that the quality of our product is opening up, as I mentioned earlier, opportunities in markets across the globe where we haven't done business before. That gets me excited because all of that's greenfield, continuing to expand in these new markets as a priority for the business and seeing sales in Europe is certainly hardening. You don't just show up and say, "Hey, my name is Leighton. Can I sell you an antenna. " There are plenty of people in Europe who already do that. You have to have something that matters and actually seeing us break in with active volume says something about the quality of what we're building here. All right. Our SATCOM business. The SATCOM business has demonstrated a very, very consistent ability to deliver and meet its targets. Major programmatic opportunities, particularly government and military. It also adds just general space because that's not always in government. Space opportunities have continued to be resilient, and we expect this will continue in 2024. We do see softness in the commercial lower power end of the market. But given that we've really focused our business Advantech on the high-power side of the market. We have been really resilient. That positioning is serving us very well. So while we see certain companies have had degradation in their product portfolio or in their revenues, our business continues to be very strong. We further see that our new Genesis and Summit lines of solid-state power amplifiers have been extremely well received by the market. And that's important for us because while the technology is brilliant, it has better performance, monitoring failover, hot swappable power, the level of redundancy built in the control architecture. All those things sound great. But when you realize that they're easier to manufacture than the legacy product and have a more consistent supply chain, more consistent architecture. It means that over time, it will help our margins improve. And to be honest, that is also exciting. Overall, we expect revenue and adjusted EBITDA in 2024 will be incrementally stronger than it was in 2023, which was a good year for us. SATCOM business continues to demonstrate a strong order book. We do expect to get further production efficiencies out of our manufacturing side of the business. And obviously, we're going to continue to invest and focus on building out our Kirkland facility to be able to take care of some large wins. And the reason I say large wins is because we have a very active pipeline of bids for larger programmatic items that is really interesting. Of course, we won't win them all, you never do. And in some cases, you don't want to win certain programs that are large because you can watch your competition burn themselves, but we're being very selective and thoughtful in that space, and I'm looking forward to see what we accomplish this coming year. The Mobile and Network business line continues to face challenges. It's one of the things that was very clear when I was over there. The global smartphone market was down in '23. And what we're seeing is the addressable market for what we do for Samsung has also continued to decline. They face weaker demand for certain key products, and as a result, that directly impacts us. We have been taking steps to limit the adverse effects in this business. One of the things I will say is that there's been a lot of work done on operating discipline and efficiency, and I'm actually really proud of how far that team has come and how much better it is, even though unfortunately, the business continues to be a struggle. The business, we're going to continue to try to focus on revenue, diversity and working on it. But obviously, the economic environment, which is since this business is really tied to the Korean market, the economic environment in the Korean market has caused a few delays for a few of those customers. As a result of all of this, as mentioned earlier, we've hired an investment banker, the [indiscernible] and their job is to facilitate the divestiture of that business. Okay. We ended the year with a challenging quarter. That challenging quarter really skewed our results for the year on a year-to-date prior to that basis, particularly in the North American businesses, we were really solid footing. And unfortunately, the Q4 was just a bad quarter for us. The good news is order book remains strong. New products are still being developed. Our bid pipeline remains strong, and we're already seeing clear evidence of not repeating Q4 in Q1 for 2024. A lot going on in the business. I know there's a lot in this earnings call, really, do want to thank the employees of this company and thank our partners, thank our customers. And actually, to be honest, thank our investors for standing by us as we go on this journey, being able to retire the debt and have a vision for where our business is going, that people can see and understand and appreciate. I'm thankful for everybody who's been on this journey with us. With that, that concludes our formal remarks, operator. Happy to take any questions.

Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Daniel Rosenberg from Paradigm Capital.

My first question was around the held for sale asset. I was just wondering if you could speak to the process, what are the steps in getting this thing sold? And any expectations? I understand there's some liabilities on the asset, but any ballpark idea of what you could fetch for the asset if it's sold?

Sure. First of all, thank you, Daniel. Nice to talk to you again. Yes, so the process, we engaged the banker in 2023. We saw this starting to come. There's been a lot of work done to put the materials together and certainly tons of work with the financial group and work done with me with the leadership team in Korea as well. The investment bankers published this and we have multiple NDAs signed. We have set a deadline to receive initial indications of interest. And the expectation is we are continuing to work that process separately. I have had conversations with a few other people in the ecosystem about that asset and that capability. And I think it's interesting, the value to go back to that side of your question, it's going to be a bit hard to pin down. As shared, that business has had a rough go of things recently. And it certainly has. So if you're using a very -- I'm oversimplifying and a bit the multiple model and you're correct in saying there are some liabilities on the books. It's what are you going to get for it? Well, that's not how in my opinion, how it should be thought and I'll give you 2 reasons why? One, you don't get to walk into our principal customer and say, may I have a contract? It doesn't work that way. The only way you get in that game is if you have a contract already. And being able to have business with them is extremely difficult to attain. And I can -- off the top of my head, name companies who, I would suggest have a broader portfolio of products for that market than we do, who do not do business with them, but covet that relationship. There is, I would argue, clear intrinsic value there. The another portion of this is certain assets in Vietnam would be included in the sale. And as I think we all know, there are plenty of people who are over-indexed on Chinese manufacturer who are looking for alternatives. And when you have assets that have been in business in a safer geography, if you will, and that's probably not the best word to use, but a less geopolitically-risky geography with a mature ecosystem and capabilities, that is interesting for a number of people. So there's some unique value propositions on the table for the right buyer, and we're going to go through the process. I don't think I can say how much money it would get because it would be a bit of speculation. Obviously, our job is to maximize the value and continue to improve our balance sheet.

Okay. I appreciate the color there. I guess my second question is around Embedded. So you mentioned some challenges in Q4. What are the underlying drivers and kind of the outlook in Q1, Q2 for that specific segment?

Yes. So they were really -- so I look in that product stack. It actually has a pretty good mix of diversity. We saw one of our key customers get into an overbuilt scenario and really pull back. So one of our top 10 customers pulled back on their order volume because I think they had overbuilt their inventory position and they needed to bleed it off. Guess what? We -- they burn through it and they're back to ordering in Q1, and we're back producing at a very solid volume. So that is already right in itself. We did have a negotiation with another one of our top 10 customers on margins. They were struggling with their margin profile, what we make as part of a larger product. We went back and forth on it and actually concluded that. And so while it did cost us a couple of points it allows us to continue and have durable revenue into 2024. We're seeing the fruits of that, and that was part of our forecast. I mean we just -- whenever you have a situation like that, it's like guess what, okay, it's takes you had to give up some points, but now it's your turn to turn around and figure out how to get more efficient, right? No excuses, get more efficient, get your gross profit back where you need to get to work, and that's kind of how we approach these types of things when they happen. And then on a nice front, we have 2 new customers. And we certainly had technically had these customers, they were under contract last year, but the products hadn't really gone into production. One went into production at late Q4, and the other one is coming into production this year. The one that's already in production, to be honest, it's actually in Q1, it's actually exceeded forecast. It's they have a success on their hands. That's good for us, and volume is up, and that will provide some nice incrementality in that business for 2024. So I actually feel good right now about our Embedded team and feel good about where we are in Q1. And on a relative basis to Q4, I expect the Embedded team will be doing better.

Okay. Great. Good to hear that it's going to be improving. On the backlog, like a good number pointing to what you're saying. I was wondering, is there any mobile included in that mix? And could you do the mix between SATCOM, Embedded and [ Mobile ] within the backlog as a whole?

Yes. So when we put Mobile into the held for sale, we took the mobile backlog and moved it out of the backlog information that we report, right? So with where things stand today, we are at a really solid number. And by the way, the mobile piece, mobile used to have a pretty reasonable amount of backlog. Well, guess what, not surprisingly, the mobile business right now has a very low backlog regardless. The total backlog from the North American businesses off the top of my head, as of yesterday, it's well north of $34 million. And I expect there will be an opportunity for more to come. We have some really unique bid opportunities going on with SATCOM. Looking forward to see how order flow happens, particularly as we get into Q2 with some of the things we think that are going to happen. Certainly, if there -- if they play out like I think they will do press on this. And we are continuing to see improvement in infrastructure. So let me further jump over Embedded and let me just knock that out of the way. Embedded super solid, elevated backlog and is seeing heightened revenue without the backlog number moving materially. So that's a positive that we're getting the order flow through, and we're seeing customers really want us to continue to produce and by the way, get us more orders at a similar pace. So as revenue has started to lift in Q1, the orders are also lifting. So the relative level has not materially changed, but that implies that we're getting incremental order volume in addition. Within infrastructure, mainly, you could see it in Q4, the order volume just really slowed down. And 1 of the 3 North American carriers, it was as if they turned off the spigot completely, it was breathtaking, and I've seen that before. Well, guess what, new year, new fiscal year, all right, it's not off. And by the way, what are they buying? Multibeam, which is great because that's a great product for us. It's one of the ones that we've done to improve our margin stack. And actually, as I recall, looking at this yesterday, our Infrastructure division has the highest backlog -- has the higher backlog today than they had the entire year in 2023. So I feel good about where we're going. I would be lying if I say I didn't want better. I've always felt like infrastructure was the one division that had the potential to have the biggest impact to our business, particularly in terms of just the bottom line. If we can get it to start to perform up to its capability. Fortunately, we've got some really smart engineers in our Canada location. We've got a great sales team and our ops team is solid. Customers need to buy. And when you get nailed by a customer environment issue that it's kind of spread the [indiscernible] equally, everyone's going to get impacted. You end up with a less than stellar quarter, but we're already seeing the fruits of that in Q1.

Okay. Great. And just shifting gears on kind of the financials here. So there are some moving parts. Could you -- the gross margin profile and maybe this one is for Dan, but the mid-30s, are you guys -- is that how we should be thinking about things in the year ahead? Are there any other considerations we could take into account?

Let me take a stab at it, Dan, and then have you jump in if you think it makes sense. From my perspective, getting the gross margins from [ 16% ] to this is -- I'm super proud of. To be fair, midyear of '21, the revenues were way off. There were several reasons for that, but the margins were not in a great position. Dan, I think, shared earlier where we were from a gross margin perspective in '22, and you can see it's incrementally better in '23. What I would suggest is, I would like us to be incrementally better in '24, not 16% to 38% that's spectacular, and I will look back at one of my careers over. I'll look back at this time and what we accomplished there, honestly, very broadly. But we have really been working on improving our margin profiles over time, but that's an incremental journey that you do. So 38.9%. If we finished the year at 38%, I'd still be happy, but I want us to be north of 40%. I'm pushing us in that direction. We're working towards it with some of the things. I think SATCOM will have some interesting work coming up to improve their margin profiles. The goal is durably for North American properties to get what we do north of 40% from a gross margin perspective, and that helps us drive a healthy business. Dan, anything you wanted to add?

No, I think that covers it. It's -- yes, it's -- all I would say is it's a better reflection of the continuing operations and the go-forward of the business, if that's helpful.

Okay. Understood. And then on kind of the fixed costs around the company, it's really just about getting that backlog through and getting the operating leverage from that. Is that how I'm to think about OpEx?

We would -- I would suggest we've had a big focus on operational and CapEx efficiency. We need to be tight. We need to deliver and we need -- and given our backlog and that we're clearly able to sell, right? We've got products that customers want. We sell -- we've got a good book of business. Our conversion of said backlog is a key focus for us this year.

Okay. I appreciate that. And maybe one last one to wrap up. So if you think of this business a year or 2 years from now, your backlog is coming through. Sales are being converted into cash flow. What are the next strategic steps that you envision? Is it expanding the product set or continuing with the core that you have and just penetrating deeper into new markets? Help us think about how you're thinking about this company for the medium or long term?

Yes. So first of all, great question. I think a way to think of it is we see opportunities for certain of the product groups to expand adjacently. In the interim period, it's certainly not a surprise that we've talked about in infrastructure going into Europe. That's not really an adjacency, right? That's a new market that's expanding what we did already and generating revenue from places we hadn't been based on capabilities we already have. But there are some adjacent markets where we really have not participated for at least 2 of the businesses that we are going to look at. And that's one of the things that I'm not going to say we're definitely doing this because we need to evaluate it. We need to be thoughtful in how we look at that. Where we -- sometimes it's not just the financial side. It's how we spend our time, where do we focus our energy and effort and how do we turn that into revenue and cash flow? And something to announce, I think about a lot because at the end of the day, there's a finite number of talented people in this business and how do we apply them the best way. And then how do I ensure that there's appropriate capital to see that we're successful, right? So from my point of view, we are going to start to look at adjacencies. And then at the end of the day, there are other things that can be done creatively over time within a business. And I won't get into it because there's still a dissertation on a couple of things. But we're going to look at other opportunities to grow the business or bolt on additional capabilities certainly through partnerships or through creativity to add additional capabilities to the business for the long term. Longer term, I'd like to see us be a fantastic business where everything we're doing is predicated on RF technology. I'd like to see us add some software capabilities that complement that, and I'd like to see us start looking at some adjacencies as maybe a way I'll wrap that up.

There are no further questions at this time. I'd now like to turn the call back over to Mr. Carroll for final closing comments.

Yes. Really, really fascinating quarter, a lot going on, imminent in held for sale is certainly interesting. I will say that I have personally talked to the team about this. They knew it was coming and they know that they're still in it to win it, and I'm proud of the team and the way that they're handling themselves at the moment. And I'm proud of their diligence and continued follow through. I'm thrilled with SATCOM and its consistency and I'm excited about its future. I'm happy that Embedded and Infrastructure are coming back strong in Q1. And I'd be remiss if I said I wasn't thrilled the fact that our term loan was repaid, that we have had a vote of confidence from our investors and what we're building to help us get a substantial portion of our debt behind us so we can get all the better things. With that, I thank everybody for attending the call and appreciate the hard work everyone has put in to get us to this point. Have a great rest of your day.

Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your lines. Have a lovely day.