Frequency Electronics, Inc. (FEIM) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Greetings, and welcome to the Frequency Electronics Year-End Fiscal 2026 Earnings Release Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. Any statements made by the company during this conference call regarding the future constitute forward-looking statements pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements inherently involve uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements. Factors that would cause or contribute to such differences are included in the company's press releases and are further detailed in the company's periodic report filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. By making these forward-looking statements, the company undertakes no obligation to update these statements for revisions or changes after the date of this conference call. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Thomas McClelland, President and Chief Executive Officer.

Good afternoon, everybody, and thanks for joining Frequency Electronics Fourth Quarter Fiscal Year 2026 Earnings Call. With me today is our Chief Financial Officer, Steve Bernstein. We have a lot to cover today, but I want to start with a very clear statement. After a year of digestion, we're returning to growth now. This quarter, which ends in 2 weeks, will be the beginning of a multiyear ascent to a much bigger Frequency Electronics. On this call, we'll provide additional color on our end markets, talk about our new margin targets and discuss the decisions we made during the year to better position the company to take advantage of the enormous growth opportunities in front of us. But first, I want to share why we feel so confident in this pending upturn in our business. We've described over the past year how fiscal 2026 was a year of digestion for Frequency after we pulled forward some revenue into the prior fiscal year. Despite that, our backlog continued to build throughout the year. Two quarters ago, we told you that we believed it was reasonable that we could see a backlog north of $100 million in the not-too-distant future. Today, I'm pleased to report a record funded backlog of $111 million as of the end of our fiscal year. This backlog gives us a lot of visibility into coming revenue, and so do several other key data points. We don't usually discuss our book-to-bill ratio, but it was nearly 3x in the fourth quarter. Book-to-bill, like revenue, can proceed for us in a nonlinear fashion, but a number this high is a strong indication of the kind of demand we're seeing. Further, fiscal 2026 was the single biggest year of bookings in company history. Recall that the backlog we report is our funded backlog and the total contract value of signed deals is multiples of our funded backlog. We had some very significant contract wins during 2026, especially in the fourth quarter, and those wins will contribute to revenue in fiscal 2027. We we believe we can see multiple new quarterly revenue records established for Frequency in the quarters ahead. We expect to announce a number of additional meaningful contracts in fiscal 2027. Looking ahead, over the next 2 years, there are some very exciting opportunities that we're bidding on, including a number of sole source opportunities on proliferated satellite programs, each of which is bigger than anything we've previously won. Our traditional satellite business also holds promise, and we're bidding on several large geostationary orbit programs. We're also embedded in multiple classified satellite programs. And as they see growth, so will we. On the defense side, we've discussed previously the replenishment opportunities for missile systems like Patriot and THAAD for which we provide content in the missile batteries. These bookings are hitting now. Over the next few years, that same technology will be part of programs in both Golden Dome and Shield. We'll win that Golden Dome and Shield business because we're embedded in those missile programs. Ours is a multi-domain business with opportunities in space, air, land and sea. We're pursuing additional timing applications in naval programs and bidding on important quantum sensor programs today. We're still growing our traditional business while also expanding into new markets. For instance, we continued to produce atomic clocks for GPS satellites while also developing solutions for contested environments in which GPS is denied. On previous calls, we've described a much larger total addressable markets we're going after, all of which are predicated on our existing competitive strengths. These larger TAMs include proliferated satellites, quantum sensing, space defense and space exploration and alternative P&T. These are multibillion-dollar markets we're selling into, with high projected growth rates. Critically, we have already won business in all of these areas, and we anticipate winning much more business in all of these markets. It's worth emphasizing that the contracts we're winning today are a combination of these new markets we're selling into as well as new and follow-on orders from our traditional markets. We anticipate announcing more wins in both new and traditional markets as the year goes on. Just in the past few months, we won very important contracts in high-growth new markets, and I'd like to spend a few minutes discussing 2 of these. First, we won a contract for approximately $7 million for compact, highly precise atomic clocks to support position navigation and timing for a lunar space mission. We anticipate winning additional awards of greater magnitude to support similar programs in the future and to expand beyond the lunar environment into deep space missions. This win is an excellent example of FEI's ability to leverage our long-standing market leadership in space qualified atomic clocks to service exciting new and potentially very large markets. Second, we won a contract in the burgeoning area of space defense, the next major frontier of our country's defense. Space defense involves countering space-based threats, and this award leverage the company's expertise in terrestrial secured communications in a new domain space and opens up significant new opportunities for FEI. Also, the space defense win included not just hardware, but also internally developed software, which expands the solution set we can provide. There is an increasing need amongst our U.S. government customers for space-qualified hardware that can provide secure communications from satellites to ground stations and via satellite cross-links. And FEI is uniquely positioned to provide such solutions given our heritage in both space systems and terrestrial secured communication systems. Space is more important than ever, and we're very encouraged to see generational levels of investment going into our end markets and increased government funding in all of our markets. The environment is robust and so is our win rate, which validates the significant capital investments we've made over the past several years. We are meeting the customer where they are, and more importantly, where they're going. We're the best at what we do, and for many of our customers and products, there is simply no substitute. All of these factors combined gave us the confidence to establish a 3-year revenue target of at least $150 million, which we announced on April 30 at the end of our fiscal year. This level is a minimum target and represents 34% compound annual growth from fiscal '26 forward. Frequency has not historically provided guidance because our business can be nonlinear on a quarterly or even annual basis, but we feel increasingly confident in our ability to project our growth on a multiyear basis because of the continuing expansion of our backlog and order book as well as the significantly larger end markets that we're selling into, all of which are based on technology that leverages our long-standing market leadership in space and defense applications. We expect that additional revenue to drive substantial incremental profitability. And today, we're announcing for the first time 3-year margin targets for Frequency. In fiscal '27, we'll begin demonstrating a multiyear path to higher margins. We are today establishing a minimum gross margin target of 50% and a minimum operating margin target of 30% by fiscal 2029. In addition, our depreciation and amortization expenses have historically been in the low to mid-single range as a percentage of revenue, and we anticipate that trend to continue. The path to these higher margins is largely in our control and is a direct result of the significant business shift we're undertaking. On the gross margin side, we anticipate seeing meaningful improvement from 2 significant levers. The first is the much higher revenue base we're targeting as we've previously discussed and which is well supported by our backlog, order book, industry trends and government funding. In addition, due to customer demand, we're moving from a bespoke manufacturer of exquisite products with more episodic production schedules to a high rate production company making many more units of similar products on a more consistent basis. This higher rate production will be more predictable, allow for better overhead absorption and feature less nonrecurring engineering as a percentage of total business, all of which should drive gross margins to at least 50%. We also anticipate seeing gross margin benefit from some pricing initiatives. In addition, we believe we will demonstrate very strong operating leverage in the business, such that as revenue increases sharply, we should gain meaningful efficiencies on our research and development and selling and administrative expenses. Based on the gross margin target outlined above, and those operating expense efficiencies in R&D and SG&A, we believe we'll then be able to generate minimum operating margins of 30%, with depreciation and amortization in the low to mid-single range as a percentage of revenue. We invested significantly in the business during fiscal 2026 in order to better prepare the company for the strong growth ahead. The majority of this investment was focused on hiring engineering talent in advance of the large ramp-up in production and revenue that we're expecting. This had near-term dampening effects on gross margin as engineering costs flow through the manufacturing overhead portion of our cost of goods sold, raising this expense before the revenue is generated. The second meaningful investment was a business process improvement investment, which should allow us to improve turnaround time. This investment also flowed through overhead and had a similar dampening impact on gross margins. But with the orders and demand coming in, we think it is prudent long-term decision to be ready for that business and to super serve our customers who increasingly want more work done more quickly. We believe this should meaningfully benefit our shareholders as well as we increasingly provide higher levels of mission-critical products that perform to the highest standards in the harshest environments and we'll do so with high incremental margins. The investments we made in our new Colorado facility and team are already opening opportunities in quantum sensing and very low noise micro resources. This is just one example of the many ways we expect our fiscal 2026 investments to pay off in spades. With these investments now made, we do not need to make additional meaningful investments in order to achieve our 3-year revenue target, we simply need to execute. It's also worth noting that these investments were made entirely with cash on hand generated from operations. Further, we've increased our internal focus on our largest and most profitable market opportunities and deemphasized or discontinued products with lower growth potential and lower margin profiles that have historically been part of our business. Specifically, we chose to restructure our Elcom manufacturing business in New Jersey in the fourth quarter because it simply did not have the growth or margin potential of our core space and defense markets nor are those of the much larger addressable markets we're starting to sell into. Though we sacrificed some near-term revenue in the fourth quarter through this restructuring, we believe it's the right long-term decision to better align our capital and talent towards their highest and best use and potential returns. Quite simply, we're playing for much larger stakes. The Elcom restructuring included a $3.8 million inventory write-down, a noncash charge with flow through cost of goods sold and further depressed gross margins for this reported period, but which is not reflective of ongoing business trends. Additional severance costs flowed through selling and administrative expenses. Further, the restructuring yielded over $9 million in future tax benefits, which will benefit the company going forward as we turn to profitable growth this year. Lastly, we had several nonrecurring charges that flowed through operating expenses this quarter, the majority of which was a noncash charge for an accrual related to a onetime change in employee sick/paidtime-off policies. Most of this charge flow through cost of goods sold impacting gross margins and the balance flow through selling and administrative. Steve will provide further detail on the impact of these charges. As a result of all of these charges this quarter, our as reported results do not appropriately reflect the core strength of our underlying business, which will pave the path towards the much higher revenue and margin levels we described earlier. We decided to take the pain now so that we can focus on our highest return opportunities going forward. In short, this quarter and year were preparation for the improvements we're about to see, including in the current quarter. We've historically been conservative in our accounting presentation and today's reporting of charges does not reflect any intended change in that regard. We will not become a company with constant adjustments that seek to flatter financials rather than inform investors. In this case, however, we thought it was cleanest to clear the decks now as we head into fiscal 2027, the beginning of a multiyear acceleration phase, which should allow FEI to demonstrate both strong growth and operating leverage in the years to come. We know that there will be no substitute for our demonstrating these results, and we look forward to doing so starting this year. And now I'll turn the call over to Steve to provide a few more financial details, and I look forward to taking your questions during the Q&A following Steve's remarks. Steve?

Thank you, Tom, and good afternoon. As we have discussed, 2026 was a year of revenue digestion for us and this quarter made for a particularly difficult comparison as the prior year's fourth quarter was the highest revenue quarter in 25 years for the company. That said, we are confident that we are returning to growth in the current fiscal first quarter and for fiscal '27 in general. In fact, we can start setting multiple new quarterly revenue records in the coming quarters. For the 3 months ended April 30, 2026, consolidated revenue was $15.4 million compared to $19.9 million for the same period of the prior fiscal year. The components of revenue are as follows: revenue from commercial and U.S. government satellite programs was approximately $7.7 million or 50% compared to $12 million or 60% and in the same period of the prior fiscal year. Revenue on satellite payload contracts are recognized primarily under the percentage of completion method and are recorded only in the FEI-New York segment. Revenue from nonspace U.S. government and Department of Defense customers, which are recorded in both the FEI-New York and FEI-Zyfer segments were $6.8 million compared to $7 million in the same period of the prior fiscal year and accounted for approximately 44% of consolidated revenue compared to 35% for the prior fiscal year. Other commercial and industrial revenues were approximately $908,000 compared to approximately $890,000 in the prior fiscal year. For the fiscal year ended April 30, 2026, revenue decreased by approximately $6.6 million or 9% compared to the prior fiscal year. Fiscal 2026 was a year of digestion from a revenue standpoint as the company pulled forward some revenue into last year fiscal 2025. Satellite program revenues for the government end use were 31% and 53% of total revenues for the fiscal year '26 and '25, respectively. Satellite program revenue for commercial end use were 6% of total revenues for both fiscal year '26 and $25. Revenue from nonspace U.S. government and DoD customers increased by approximately $11.5 million or 43.2% in fiscal '26 compared to fiscal year '25. These revenues accounted for approximately 60% and 38% of consolidated revenues for the fiscal years 2026 and 2025, respectively. Other commercial and industrial sales accounted for approximately 3% of consolidated revenue for both fiscal years '26 and '25. Sales in the other commercial and industrial sales were $2.1 million and $2.4 million for the fiscal years ended April 30, '26, and the fiscal year ending April 30, 2025, respectively. For the 3 months ending April 30, '26, and the fiscal year ending April 30, '26, the gross profit and gross profit percentage decreased as a result of several pre-revenue investments in nonrecurring factors, as Tom mentioned. Similarly, there were several nonrecurring items that impacted operating expenses, specifically selling and administrative expenses, causing operating profit and operating margins to decrease. We have provided tables in the press release that investors can better understand the impact of these items and see what our margins would have been without these growth-oriented investments in advance of revenue and without these nonrecurring charges. Adjusted for the charges and investments, our gross margin and operating margins would have been approximately 36% and 1%, respectively, for the quarter and approximately 41% and 11% respectively, for the fiscal year. These are levels we anticipate growing meaningfully in the years to come, as Tom stated earlier, starting in the current fiscal year. Lastly, the company made significant cash investments during fiscal '26, but expect to return to normal cash generation in fiscal '27 beginning in our current fiscal quarter. We encourage you to read our upcoming 10-K for further details. John, we can open the line now for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Brian Kinstlinger with Alliance Global Partners.

We've heard a lot about space and satellites. However, GPS GM and time Gaming and the battle fuels become a major problem. Can you talk about how both the war with Iran as well as the Ukraine Rusher are impacting demand for frequencies, precision timing clocks, if at all?

Well, yes, sure, happy to respond to that. Of course, I think those are environments are impacting our products and our markets in several different ways. I mean, one of the things that we have talked about previously is the fact that GPS, which is important for a lot of military applications, is frequently jammed in those areas and also spoofed. In other words, there are -- in place of the normal GPS signals, there are artificial signals, which indicate that the untrue location information. So those things going on have made it very clear to everybody that for defense applications, in particular, but even for a lot of commercial applications, GPS cannot be relied on for position navigation and timing applications. So that's just expanded tremendously our accessible market. Of course, when we provide more precise atomic clocks, this allows better timing in all of these applications, even during those periods when GPS or other navigation systems are not available. The other thing, of course, there are a lot of applications that are being envisioned at this point, which will provide that same kind of information that's provided from the satellite navigation systems, but in other ways. And of course, since, ultimately, those navigation systems rely on precision timing, our products are very important there. And the other application, which we are in the early stages of, is as an alternate means of navigation, magnetic navigation in which by measuring the magnetic field in one's location and with an accurate map of the magnetic field on the surface of the earth, one can navigate without depending on any external signals from navigation satellites or anything else. And this, of course, is very important in these battlefield kind of situations that are being experienced in the Middle East at this point in time. So maybe I'll leave it at that. These are just a few of the important things that are coming out of the war situation in the Mid East. I think the -- maybe the other big thing that we should talk about is, of course, a lot of missiles have been expanded there. And so of course, there's a huge replacement activity for those missiles. Although in most cases, we don't have hardware on the missiles themselves, we do have a lot of hardware in the missile batteries and there's -- we are seeing a tremendous uptick in those markets also.

Great. That's super helpful. I have 1 follow-up. You gave long-term gross margin targets. But as it relates to the $111 million backlog, how much of that is expected to convert to revenue in the current fiscal year? And what is the average gross margin in that backlog?

Yes, I have to be a little bit careful about providing specific numbers on that. So let me just say that I think what we typically see is that we are -- the programs that we work on typically take place over a period of 1 to 3 years. So we expect that backlog to be worked off over the next 3 years, completely. And we do expect the gross margins to increase significantly over the course of this fiscal year.

When you say over 1 to 3 years, that's the funded backlog, not the total backlog? The funded backlog of $111 million is over 1 to 3 years, yes?

It's actually primarily the total backlog. we reported [indiscernible] backlog. yes.

So the funded presumably should be on the shorter end of that 1 to 3 years, I would assume. Is that accurate? Or should I not think that way necessarily?

That's reasonable.

Next question comes from Jeff Van Rhee with Craig Hallum.

A lot to love about that forward modeling on the backlog growth. Obviously, you're right in front of some very large demand drivers. Tom, if you look at the bookings you're putting to the tape now and what's in the pipeline, you called out a bunch of drivers, and it's a blessing of bridges. You've got so many things working here. Can you just help us prioritize though, what are the biggest needle movers right now in terms of the surge we've seen thus far in the backlog growth. And based on pipeline, what's going to drive backlog growth next 6 to 12 months if they're different?

Well, it -- I mean, you actually hit the nail on the head. There's -- one of the reasons that we're so optimistic, Jeff, is it there're so many different arenas that we're acting in that all look really -- are just growing tremendously at this point. But that being said, I think actually over this last fiscal year, nonspace played a big role in the revenue that we did generate. But I think, in the coming year, space is going to be forefront. We're really excited about the activity related to the lunar activity, the movement toward the repopulating the [indiscernible], so to speak. I think there are a number of very large space programs that we're working on at this point. And I think an important thing that I'd like to talk about, in most cases, in the space arena, we really have very little competition. We've looked at it. And over the last couple of years, in space, we've had a 90% win rate on the contracts that we have bid on. So we're in a really strong position there. Space is booming. So I think that's the one that I'd emphasize, but we do have to keep in mind that we've had a tremendous amount of activity in nonspace defense-related things also.

Yes. That's great. Steven, just one for you. You commented on the quarter, and you said you're going to have several new record revenue quarters "in the coming quarters," that's pretty vague, that could be years that could be this year. Were you specifically trying to say over the next 4 quarters, the next fiscal year, we should see several all-time record quarters? I just want to be clear what you're trying to say there.

Yes, I believe, in fiscal '27, we should have.

Okay. All right. That's helpful. And then, Tom, on the -- from the manufacturing front, I mean, first of all, fantastic to see the trajectory to 50% gross margins based on mix and a number of other things that you're working through. But one of the underpinnings there obviously is scale, and you talked about moving from bespoke manufacturing to process driven manufacturing. Those are different mindset, skill sets, our facility setups, equipment. It sounds like you've been working on that a lot during this fiscal year. I think you've referenced that. But just talk about where you think you are now in terms of readiness to go into that, I would say, different mindset and different way of operating.

Yes. I think we are very much, I think the last couple of quarters of fiscal '26, we were in a transition period. And I think we are we are really ready for this at this point in time. I think it's something that we've been working on very hard. And I think we have a very clear road map on what we need to do over the next 3 years. I think we have a lot of work at this point in time. We're very focused on executing. But I think we have the basic items in place in order to be able to achieve what we've talked about. And interestingly, we are going to do that without any significant facility expansion. We're going to do that within our current facilities. Internal to those facilities, of course, there's already been significant expansion taking place. And as I mentioned earlier, of course, we've been adding significantly to the labor force. So I think that although as you say, there is some transition to more of a production kind of environment, we should keep in mind that we're not going from making 1 or 2 to making hundreds of thousands. We are still in the satellite business. And so although it's more continuous production and at a significantly higher rate, we're not talking about manufacturing cell phones or anything like that.

Yes. Got it. And maybe one more and I'll let somebody all jump in. Just a housekeeping. On the Elcom exit, the -- you referenced some lost revenue in Q4, certainly, it sounds like it's going to be some headwind to fiscal '27. Can you quantify what the revenue impact was in the quarter, and what you expect it to be for the coming fiscal for fiscal Yes.

Steve, do you want to...

Well, I think the revenue forgone was about $1 million roughly for Q4.

Okay. And in terms of additional rundown of a revenue stream that you're walking away from an FY '27, just what is -- how do we think about the rest of the headwind from exiting Elcom?

I think we'll make it up multiples with what we have, and it will improve our performance, not hinder our performance in any way.

And congrats. I mean just really seems like you've got the business rightsized here and ready to pounce on some great opportunities coming through the doors and love that target model. So appreciate it.

Thanks.

Thanks, Jeff.

Next question is from Michael Eisner, he is a private investor.

Nice backlog. So Elcom is closed right now completely?

Well, we have some ongoing activities there. We have some commitments that we have to honor going forward. But the plan is to completely shut down those activities over the course of this year.