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

Good morning, and welcome to the MTI Wireless Edge Limited Half Year Results Investor Presentation. [Operator Instructions]. The company may not be in a position to answer every question received during the meeting itself. However, the company will review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it is appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I would like to submit the following poll. And I would now like to hand you over to CEO, Moni Borovitz. Good morning to you, sir.

Good morning, Alex. Good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining our first half results presentation. I would like to start by giving a review on the macroeconomic trends that are supporting the demand for the solution that we do. Starting with the recent report on water development issued by the UN, we can see that the world is in a bad situation concerning preservation of water. If you look at the report, you can learn that the they -- the forecast that by 2050 in many continents, 6% of the GDP would be reduced just in order to deal with the demand for water. And not only that, but they claim that in that year, half of the population in urban area,will be under water scarcity. So there is no doubt that we need to manage water, preserve water, and this is what Mottech is all about. Moving into a 5G world, cellular world. We all know that people are joining more and more to the 5G network maybe not at the pace that everybody expected, but it does grow. And at the end of the day, we will need a strong backbone backhaul solution for that, and this is what our antenna business is about. Where we see currently a very big growth is in the defense market. As you all are aware, the war between Ukraine and Russia is still going on, many European countries allocated a big defense budget as they did not do in the past. And I can say that now we see a more real project -- products are coming into our direction. It is true for our antenna business and for the distribution business, including PSK. At the end of the day, it's important to understand that MTI is a technology-oriented company, not necessarily product one, and we are able to move and use the technology into different directions in the market. It gives us a resilient solution, a very nice diversification across many areas of expertise. And today, with a strong balance sheet, we feel that we can safely navigate the company through the high inflation and the uncertainty in the economic market. If we look at the key results of the first half of 2023, I think we've shown a very strong solid results. The revenue was more or less flat year-on-year. But this on the dollar value, if we look at constant currency, we had a nice increase in revenue. The local currency here in Israel, the shekel, lost nearly 12% against the dollar, if we compare year-on-year. And our revenue mainly in Mottech in Israel and in PSK is shekel based, and this was the main reason for the reduction in revenue. On the other hand, since most of our expenses are in shekel and we export quite a lot, we gained better profitability. And you can see it throughout the P&L all the way to the growth in the earnings per share. We always knew how to convert the profits into cash. You can see that this is the same situation in this year, and we have a very healthy net cash balance. Looking into the business themselves, I can say that the defense business is growing very rapidly. As I mentioned, we now see more projects and programs coming into maturity and we have a lot of quotes and bids out in the pipeline. On the water front, we have a good business coming from Europe. I can say that in this first half, it was the first order we received from Northern Europe. But we also continue to have in Southern Europe, very nice opportunities and business, and I will elaborate later on. On the antenna commercial market, if we look a little bit on the 5G backhaul solution, so we are very well positioned in India, but it is still moving slower and sporadic. But we just need to be there and be ready for the volume when it comes. On our automatic beam steering antenna solution, we continue to make the progress. We have initiated first trials with the customers. And I hope that by the beginning of next year, we will be able to start well production. If we look into each of the segment a little bit more deeper I think that in Mottech, we had a very solid half year, growth in revenue on a constant base and a real growth, operational profit one, coming from the better margins that we have. As a reminder, Mottech is working as a master distributor for Motorola with very close relation for many years. We have a very strong IP here in the software, and we do recurring revenue for -- about 20% of our revenue is recurring from service and maintenance. But the most important thing is that at the end of the day, we are here to save water, and this is what we sell to the markets. If I look at the first half of '23 and maybe even a little to the end of '22, the most important thing that we were able to do is to secure the service agreement with all key municipalities. I'm happy to say that throughout the first half of '23, we completed it. Always better prices and margin for us for the service going forward. We started to fill it in the profitability in the first half, and we will fill it even more going into the second half and for the future is because some of the agreements are scaling up in prices. Last year, we won a project that we call the fountain control project over the city in Israel. I can say that we learn a lot, the project is progressing very well and we installed already half of the system. And we now consider it even with a bigger opportunity, as it looks like a smart city solution for narrowband. It's not that we can control a full city on a video level, but on a narrow band to control and monitoring something within the city, for instance, light or something like that. We have an excellent solution. We are in a good position to start and show this in real term to other municipalities, and we anticipate that more will require such a solution. As I mentioned, Europe is doing very well for us in this segment of the business. Italy had an excellent year in '22 and continuing to have a very good year in 2023. In Italy, we work mainly in landscape and water distribution in the rural area. We have some nice project at handed. We are supposed to deliver in the second half of the year and many others that are still under quotation that we hope to win. In France, if you remember, we talked before about the vineyard application that we help the farmers to get the water allocation that they need. I can say that so far, we are working with 8 water consultants that distribute this quarter to over 1,000 farmers. And we just recently learned from our distributor that in the coming 12 months, we should increase the number of water consultants to 12 and again, approach approximately another 1,000 end users that would use that solution. So we continue to see this as a big demand. Last but not least, our autopilot solution. We started it in agriculture, sensing the water at the root level and moved it at the beginning of this year to try in landscape irrigation. I can say that we can now say that we see the benefits coming out of it, and we believe that this will be another step of growth for Mottech. Looking at our antenna business. It had an excellent first half of the year with both revenue and profit growth. Most of the profit growth coming from better margins that we are able to take partially because of the foreign exchange that I've explained. If we look into the difference between military and commercial antenna business, we see that most of the growth is coming from the military side. If we look into the 2 key growth areas that we prospect for our business here, so the military antenna is growing very fast. We were able to secure last year and also in the first half of this year, several new customers, most of them from Europe as part of the demand in Europe for more defense type of antennas. We still have quite a lot of bids out there that we are sure that will gain more projects going forward. I can say that in some instances that we already won. We are looking on long-term programs that it will be very reasonable to think that we will have recurring orders coming from that. On the 5G backhaul, we made a very good progress, and we are very well positioned. We are working with most of the key OEMs in the market. In our antenna beam steering and antenna solution, as I said, the trials have initiated and we are fairly confident that in the beginning of '24, we will go into production, full production. India market, it opened exactly a year ago in August. I can say that we had some nice orders coming out of it. It's mostly sporadic, but what we learned and we were happy to learn is that the [ list one ] cellular operator in India decided that he wants to work with our antennas because of superior technology that we bring there. And he actually forced 1 of our customer to work only with us when installing there, saying that the market is still progressing quite slow. It's still in its infancy. And we just need to sit tight and support the customers to wait for the market to grow. We just opened the company onshore in India. We used to work always offshore for international market. But when you want to work domestic in India, you must be onshore. And this is part of our preparation for the volume to come. Moving into our Distribution & Special Consulting Services division, we had a good first half of the year. I remind you that this is built out of our legacy design win consulting business and the PSK business that we acquired at the beginning of last year. So in our legacy consulting business, we are doing very well, progressing very well. We still represent over 40 companies here in Israel, and it goes well. PSK is looking very good. We have 2 more difficult projects in the year -- in this year, in the first half. It means that we have some delay in the project. It costs you always more when you have some delays. So PSK has ended the first 6 months with some lost operational loss, which reduced the profitability of the entire division. But having said that, I can say that 1 of the projects completed in early July, and we shipped the shelter to the customer. And in the other one, I think that we have passed the main obstacle and I'm quite positive that we will finish this project by year-end. If we look at the achievement in this area in the first half of the year, I will start with the strategic agreement we signed at the beginning of '22. It's continuing very well. We make more design win and receive more orders from the customers. In PSK, we announced a big service contract, again, last August, continuing very well and progressing well. And we even got the first new customer for PSK for a shelter buildup, as you can see at the bottom right-hand picture. This customer came through the connection and the knowledge of MTI. So we chose again the good strategy in this acquisition. Overall, I can say that we see a very high demand for shelter buildup. Both in Israel and outside of resale. We've issued quite substantive number of quotes. And I hope that we will win some of them and push this business forward. If we look a little bit into the numbers themselves and the changes between the first half of '23 and '22, first of all, military is up substantially. It now represents about 44% of our business relatively to 37% in full '22. I think that the nice thing about our business is the diversity. We always claim that the diversity is important part. We work in different markets, both vertically and globally. And we see that sometime one of them is moving slower, the other can compensate, and this was the situation in this first half. Overall, the business itself didn't change a lot between the different divisions and the long-term relationship we have with the customer, they rely on us, they like to work with us. The global reach has changed a little bit. As you can see, Israel and EMEA grew a little bit, and EMEA is mainly Europe over the Americas. But at the end of the day, we are always focused on returning to the shareholders. And the earnings per share growth is something that is very important to us, and we are very happy with this 9% growth year-on-year. Talking about the shareholders, all the key shareholders remain supportive of the business. We continue with the dividend payments. We paid an increased dividend in April. Of course, my family as part of the shareholders enjoys it as well so we have aligned interests. We continue with the buyback program that we have for treasury, and we were quite active in the last 6 months. And I believe this is helping the liquidity of the shares. So if I may try and summarize, I think that the key immediate growth engine for the company comes from the defense business because it is very active at the moment. I believe that the water demand is continuing and we will continue to grow step by step. We are very much focused on the 5G growth. We know that it will happen. It's just a matter of when the market really opens, and we are just making sure that once it is happening, we are ready for it. And we continue to have a strong balance sheet because we are a strong believer in generating the cash and preserving the cash. Of course, we will continue with the dividend as we did in the past as long as we make the profits. M&A-wise, we are still looking for those. I believe that in the next 6 to 12 months, there will be better opportunities given the unstable economic environment at all. And overall, we feel quite comfortable with how the business is looking for 2023 and beyond. With this, I would like to thank you again for joining the call and be happy to take any questions you may have.

Moni, thank you very much indeed for your presentation this morning. [Operator Instructions] While the company take a few moments to review those questions submitted today, I would like to remind you that recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides in the published Q&A can be accessed via our investor dashboard. Moni, If I may ask you to come out of full screen mode. And as you can see, we have received a number of questions throughout today's presentation. And if I may hand back to you and kindly ask you to read out the questions and give responses where appropriate to do so. I'll pick up from you at the end.

Okay. So I think that the first 2 questions are similar asking about the share price underperforming. As I said before, we are very much focused on the business because this is something that is under our control. We are looking to see that the business is growing. We are looking to see that the business remains profitable. I feel that the entire market and the uncertainty all over has shifted the entire share market a little down. I'm not sure if we have more than others. But at the end of the day, if we focus on the business and continue to make good progress as we did so far, I guess that the market will catch up. There is a question from Mark, how big is the company in terms of personnel and geographically, where are you located? So we are about 250 employees worldwide. About half of them are located in Israel. And the rest are mostly in India where we have the production facility for our antennas. Then we have 10 people in Australia, 3 people in North America, a few in China, a few in Europe and about 20 in South Africa for our water distribution management. Steve is asking how big an opportunity is 5G for the company? And when do you expect it might positively impact revenue? It's a very good question. The assumption is that the point-to-point market, which is the communication between the towers is roughly about $300 million, $400 million a year for antenna business. Everybody assumes that what we call the even or 80 gigahertz where we play as part of 5G should be 25% of this market. So this is the market size. And it's more than a million dollar question. When will it kick off? What we are doing at the moment is just sticking to the key [ radio ] manufacturing and making sure that when they are ready to kick off, we will kick off with them. Can you talk -- Damien is asking, can you talk about the competitive pressure that you face and which area suffers the most of competition? First of all, we have competition in each and every single part of the business. And if you are not [ acting ] in a competitive world, probably you are not in a real world. So in the military defense antenna, we usually compete more with a division within the system houses. For instance, Cobham has its own division. But we have some expertise, and we are gaining more and more new customers, as I mentioned. In the commercial antennas, as there are many competitors, I would say that in the 5G, we feel right now that there are a limited number of competitors. One of them is Comstock, which is much bigger than us. but we have our advantages against it. And in the water distribution business, again, we usually compete either with giants like Toro and Hunter from the U.S. always local competitors in each and every country that we operate. We have here the advantage of the Motorola communication system. And I think that our software that brings a full system level has its advantages. Steve is saying, clearly, defense, an exciting sector for the company. Are you looking to enter any new sectors? As I always say, when we are looking for M&As, we are looking to areas where we can add value to the company that we acquire and accelerate the profitability so it can be new sectors. By our own, we are right now focused enough sectors that we do not need to expand, but having said that, as I mentioned before, we are a technology company. So if we find a new sector for antenna business, we will, of course, chase it, and this is what we are doing on the day to day. Damien is asking again, are any parts of the business still suffering from supply chain issue? And if so, are these issues changing? I cannot say that we are now seeing any supply chain issues. Are you managing to pass all inflationary, sorry, purchase? Onwards to customers' price rises, we certainly do try so. I can say that in many areas, we were success. And I think that overall, you see it in the increased gross margin and profitability that we've shown. And Daniel is asking for the opportunity in defense, can you discuss commercialization cycle for new business in that market? How quickly can new customers and potential new customers start generating revenue for you? Yes, the selling cycle is not too long, I would say, because usually, they approach us when they already have a program. You need to understand that in military, most of the program requires some customization or nonrecurring engineering that we charge for. So this starts quite immediately. Then you go into production. That's why the project is usually longer and takes, let's say, up to a year in our world. And then it depends, in many cases, we already get development and production order in 1 instance for 1 year. And then it depends on how fast the program is to get the recurring revenue or more repeat orders. We are now in a stage that some of our customers are doing a lot of repeat orders. And with the new ones that we just gained, we are in early stages of doing development and supply and this will come in the next year or so that we will see more return on revenue, I hope.

Moni, that's great. And I believe you have addressed all those questions from investors today. So thank you for being so generous with your time. And of course, the company will review all questions submitted today, and we will publish those responses on the Investor Meet company platform. But before we directing investors to provide you with a feedback, which are those particularly important to the company. Moni, can I please ask you for a few closing comments. Thank you.

Yes. Thank you all for joining the call today. exciting and challenging times, but we are on the right direction. Thank you very much.

Moni. Thank you once again for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you will now be automatically directed to provide a feedback in order that the Board can better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete and I'm sure will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of MTI Wireless Edge Limited, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation. And good morning to you all.