M.T.I Wireless Edge Ltd. (MWE.L) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon. Welcome to the MTI Wireless Edge Limited Investor Presentation. [Operator Instructions] Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. And now I'd like to hand over to Moni Borovitz, CEO. Good afternoon, sir.

Hi. Good afternoon. Thank you, Lilly. Good afternoon, everybody, and thank you for joining our interim results presentation. I will start by giving a short brief about the markets we operate in. I think we all experienced a very hot summer. We all understand global warming is here and the need to manage water is becoming more crucial. And this is what we do in Mottech. The second market we operate in is the backhaul of antennas for backhaul for cellular market, the 5G market. As we all consume much more data, the need to have more capacity in the backhaul is increasing, and this is part of our growth pattern. And the third market is the defense. We all know and felt that the defense budget are increasing quite heavily in the last few years. So you can look on the left-hand side of the slide, how much it grew in the last few decades. And then if you look at the future and what we expect in the European NATO countries, it's just going to grow from 2% of the GDP to 5% of the GDP. So we expect a very high growth, and this goes throughout the business of MTI. So what was the effect on us in the first half of '25? First of all, we had a very strong result, although we are still operating in a difficult environment. Very nice growth in profit, 8% year-on-year and falling all the way down to operational profit and net profit reaching an EPS growth of 17% year-on-year. And at the same time, we continue to generate cash. And I'm happy to say that the operational cash flow was equal to the operational profit showing the profits are real and we can make cash out of it. In terms of the business itself, I'll start with the defense. It continues to grow. We have a very nice backlog. We announced several large orders already during this year. Some of them are going even to continue into '26. And we see a lot of opportunities ahead of us. We are bidding quite a lot of projects, and I assume that the larger projects that we bid, the better success potential that we have. In the water management solution, I think that the key progress we did is the launch of the Elite Pro unit. It's a controller developed by us. And it increases the addressable market we can approach, and I will elaborate about it later on. In the 5G backhaul market, as you all know, we operate quite heavily in India, and this was the biggest market pushing in the last 12 months. It continues to be very sporadic. So it's very hard to predict. But overall, we are positioned well, and we see business coming out of it. At the same time, our automatic beam steering antenna solution, the ABS has moved into production. We are now in trials within the cellular operator, Tier 1 and 2 cellular operators, mainly in Europe, and it looks quite promising. In terms of the technology advantages, we announced several contracts with new technologies, including beamforming antennas. This was for drone video management solution. And we have many other solutions that we are advancing our technology. And I think that this is part of the growth that we see in the defense business, and we expect to continue. Talking a little bit more about each of the divisions. So I will remind you that we are working with collaboration with Motorola in the water management solution. Most of the hardware is coming from Motorola and our IP is based mainly on the software right now. Although, as I mentioned, we added our own controller and increasing the addressable market because this is a lower-end solution. The number of controllers that are installed in the field is quite big and increasing every year. And it's important to understand that once we install in countries where we have our own subsidiaries is not only operating via value-added resellers, it will add within 2 to 3 years, depending on the warranty period in each country to the service agreement that we have under this division. Overall, the recurring revenue from service and maintenance is about 25% of this division, which is continuing very well. And most importantly is that at the end of the day, we save water. This is the key issue to doing this. If we look at the key advantages or progresses that we made in the first half of '25, so we renewed all the agreements in Israel that had to be renewed until the first half of '25. Most of them with increased pricing and increased pricing that will be incremental year-on-year because it's not every year that we discuss the pricing. We also completed the fund and control management solution. One city is completely finished, and we were able to start project with two other cities. It's important because we see more and more cities joining in this solution. And this, again, will contribute to the recurring revenue going forward. I think that after the fourth or fifth project in Israel, we will take it elsewhere in the world because we see that there is a lot of demand for that. About two months ago, we announced on a nice project in Italy, about EUR 1 million. It progresses well. Most of the revenue will, of course, be in the second half of this year, and we expect this to develop even further. In France, we are working mainly in sourcing funds in the vineyard market with the Andromeda solution, which allows you to get a location of water in order to meet the capacity demand there because you cannot open all the pipes at the same time. And here, I can say that we are working already with 12 water consortium and thousands of farmers, and this continues very well. We are working for a long time in the Arabian Gulf. It was mostly in the landscape market, and we just now penetrated into the agriculture market, again, with our value-added reseller in this market. And this opens very nice opportunities to us in this market as well. And as I mentioned, the key success for us is the Elite controller that is our own IP. It allows us to go to really new markets and open more markets for us. So far, we sold hundreds of controllers that are already operating in the field. The feedback is very good, and we expect this to grow much faster in the coming years. Moving into the antenna division. I think this is the start of the first half of '25. We are operating in both commercial and military. Just to remind you that in military, we do everything from airborne to submarine types of antenna, including manned and unmanned vehicles. And we did a lot of advances technology-wise, whether it's the beamforming, whether is it proximity sensor and so on. So we see a lot of enthusiasm about the technology and where we can take it in the defense market. In the commercial market, we are operating, as I mentioned, in the 5G, which is the biggest commercial part of the antennas right now. And we are also working in fixed broadband access, the legacy part, which is slowing down a little bit and RFID, which is again more project oriented. If I focus on the two key parts of the antenna business, the 5G backhaul and the military. So talking about the 5G backhaul, revenues are continuing to grow quite high. It doubled in '24. And then we had a further 40% growth in the first half of 2025. We feel good about this market. Again, the key push for this market was so far India. It's very sporadic. So it's hard to predict how it continues. But at the same time, we see the demand coming from the -- for the multi-band solution we have and the ABS, as I mentioned, that is progressing very well. In the military antenna, quite similar to the 5G backhaul. We have shown a very nice growth in '23 and '24. Combined, it was 70% growth over '22. And again, in the first half of this year, a very strong growth of over 40%. It's not only the technology, it's also, of course, the defense budgets that are increasing. We see a change in Israel that the big system houses like the Cobham and Smiths from the U.K., the local system houses here in Israel are looking to outsource more of their antenna production. We already won several bids and are continuing to bid on new projects. And assuming we can win some of them, again, it's for long-term production capability, and it will add a lot of value to the company. We see a lot of requests coming from the international markets, mostly from NATO-based countries to different types of antennas and some projects we already won and some are in bid stages. And as we announced in the beginning of '25, we won a very large production order for a system house here in Israel. It's a very advanced system. The antenna involved in this project also has some unique manufacturing technology that we have. And we know that our customer is bidding a lot of projects outside of Israel currently. And hopefully, they will win and it will come back to us as well. So overall, the defense here is working very well for us. Moving to the Distribution and Special Consulting Services division. So first of all, I remind you that as a distributor in Israel, we are one of the largest in RF and microwave, and it continues to go very well. It's focused a lot again on the defense market, but also part of the overall high-tech hub that we have here in Israel for all the international companies. We continue to support various tethered balloon projects, as you can see at the bottom picture to the right. This is not only in Israel, it's also outside of Israel, and we always have teams outside of Israel that are supporting the customers. And as defense is becoming something that is required worldwide, we see some tenders in this area as well outside of Israel. We continue via PSK to support a lot of adhoc solution to our Ministry of Defense, and this is growing very fast. And as we reported in the second quarter, PSK was already breakeven, which is a good sign and boding well for the future. Going into the distribution itself, the representation, we have a strategic customer here in Israel. We were able to secure prices and back-to-back with the companies we represent for him, and it looks very well. We have some nice orders and backlog until the end of this year, and it will probably go into next year as well. Here, we also are selling test and measurement equipment, both for the development of Ericsson Microwave and on the production line. It is growing quite nice, and it's a key growth engine for us in this division as well. As I mentioned, with PSK, we have a very good service agreement with our MOD , it was signed about three years ago for $10 million approximately over a 7-year period. I can say that this year and the next year, I would assume that it will be much higher than the annual run rate because there is a lot of destruction, mainly in the north part of the country that we are now doing a lot of work to restore. It started mainly now in the summer, and it will continue until probably October in a very high demand for work. PSK's backlog is very high at the moment. We won some tenders as we reported. We also have a lot of bids out there that we expect results quite soon. So we feel quite comfortable with how PSK is now built and where it is headed. And of course, the demand for the shelters that we do that you can see in the picture in the lower graph to the right, we see a lot of demand for those. We are trying to be very selective right now on the projects that we take. We want to price them correctly, and we want to make sure that PSK remains profitable. So if I try to look a little bit about what happened in the quarter in the first half and how it reflects. So as mentioned before, the 5G grew by 40%. But even though with this high growth rate, still military as a whole in the company grew from 44% of revenue last year to 47% in the first half, it's showing that defense is going very strong. And I think this is part of the strong performance we had in all of the divisions. All of them are profitable, and we are very happy with this diversity. I think it's a key strength for the company. And if you look at the middle pie, the business is very well diverse with 1/3 of each of the division. We have a very loyal customer base. Actually, 90% of the revenue was generated from companies that work with us for over five years now. There was a shift from the new customer to customers that are over five years, mainly because of 5G backhaul and some new defense companies that we work with that are now over five years with us. So we are very happy with this progress as well. The global reach is good. As you can see, Israel became a bit stronger than it used to be. But again, at least 1/3 of what we do in Israel ends as indirect export. I believe this will remain more or less similar in the next second half of this year due to the work that we currently have in Israel, and we see it increasing quite dramatically. I always tell that at the end of the day, we are very much focused on the earnings per share and the benefit of the shareholder. So I'm happy to report that we continue to grow it. It grows quite nicely, and we are happy with the results. The numbers themselves are really, really nice, and we are happy with those numbers. If we put on the graph the Q2 of '25 compared to Q2 '24, it is even better. And I think that the key importance for me is that the operational cash flow met the operational profit. It will not always be like that, but we were very cash generative. I can say that usually in the defense market, the payments are safer, but are slower. The terms are a little bit longer. Nevertheless, this first half, we were very strong on collection, and it's reflected in the profits and the cash flow. We have a very solid shareholding base, with Herald supporting us for many years, Herald from the U.K. and the rest is the two families that own the business. So we are having an aligned interest with all the shareholders, and this is part of the dividend policy that we have that we will continue to pay dividend. As you know, we announced on the buyback program many years ago. Right now, the company owns about 2.3 million shares. We invested about GBP 1 million in those shares. And we have about GBP 60,000 left due to the dividend that was paid in April. Since coming to end, it's now going to be nearly our 20th year -- 19 years. We paid the dividend each and every year beside one. And I think that we will continue with this dividend policy. So if I summarize, a very good start for the year, very good backlog and pipeline of opportunities. We are in key growth markets, whether it's the defense, the 5G or the water management. We expect the business to continue and grow. We have a strong balance sheet. We are looking for M&As. It was not on the table, I would say, in the last 18 months due to the issues we had here in the country and the need to see that we can operate as usual. As you can see from the results, we are operating almost as usual. But with the current strong backlog that we have and pipeline of opportunity, we are quite confident about where we are headed. And as always, we will look for M&As only if out profit enhancing. And with this note, I want to thank you again for supporting the business, and I'm happy to take any questions you may have.

[Operator Instructions] I'd like to remind you the recording of this presentation along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A can be accessed by investor dashboard. Moni, as you can see, we have received a number of questions throughout today's presentation. If I please ask you to read out the questions and give responses where appropriate to do so, and I'll pick up from you at the end.

Okay. There is one question from [indiscernible]. Given the recent geopolitical situation in Israel, how is the company managing operational and financial risk? What contingencies are in place if conflict prolongs? So first of all, as you remember, about half of our business is outside of Israel with subsidiaries all over the world, including the manufacturing facility in India, where we manufacture most of our commercial antennas. So I think this is one contingency. It's easy for us to move production if we need. We have two facilities in Israel with a redundancy plan that really within days, we can move most of the people from one side to the other engineering-wise. I must say, and I will not go into political discussion is that if you follow the news at the end of the day, it's all about people. The vast majority of the people in Israel is supporting to end this war to return our hostages. And unfortunately, we have selfish government. But I do believe that we are not too far from the end. Mark is asking why the general and administrative costs rise so much? If you remember, we just have the CEO in the antenna division resigning in April, and we approved to give him some adaptive grant. So actually, we are paying for two general manager in the antenna division until June, July, August time, and then it will drop. Overall, I'm quite confident that next year, the G&A will be much lower. Why do you have net interest charges given your healthy cash position? Again, for Mark. It's not really interest. It's more the currency exchanges. We operate in shekel, we report in dollar. So when the shekel and it strengthened a lot against the dollar in the first half of the year, it means that the salary and the costs are higher. At the same time, we do some work in euro and the euro strengthened against the dollar. So again, the inventory and all those stuff created some finance expenses for us. Please comment on the outlook for the tax charges presented over the next 2 to 3 years. Tax charges are very, very difficult to predict again because we operate in many countries and we report most of the assets here in Israel in shekel and again, the exchange rate influence it a lot. Overall, I would assume that we should be somewhere between 16% to 18% tax range. Why is the share price underperforming? I think that the investors are smarter than me. So I can only say that we did the buyback because we thought it was good for trading and the price was right. How is the current situation in Israel affecting your operation? Are there any issues with your supplier? Are many of your employees serving in the Army? So first of all, the only effect we had on suppliers came actually from the tariffs between the U.S. and China. We had to buy some magnets for some of our antennas, but I can happily say that it is now resolved. Some of our employees are serving in the Army, but others are covering for them. We are not at 100% capacity -- 100%. But this was the situation over the last two years. And I think that overall, there is a very limited effect of the war currently on our business. I think that I've answered them all, didn't I?

Moni, thank you for answering all those questions you have from investors. And of course, the company can review all questions submitted today, we'll publish those responses on the Investor Meet Company platform. Just before redirecting investors to provide you with their feedback, which is particularly important to the company, Moni, can I please ask you for a few closing comments?

Yes. Once again, I want to thank everybody who attended the call. I want to thank you for your support, and we are very excited about where the business is headed. Thank you.

Moni, thank you for updating investors today. [Operator Instructions]. On behalf of the management team of MTI Wireless Energy Limited, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.