AstroNova, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALOT) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Gregory Woods: Yes, in certain models, mainly through our channel segment. So we know which indications we can sell the machines into. So on a go-forward basis, we’re able to do that incrementally. And now we have, of course, the fix in place so we can go a little more aggressively on it. But the channel — you can imagine, if you’re a channel partner and you had a number of issues, you’re reluctant to do it until you see the new solution prove out and regain those sales. So we’re — a lot of what we’re doing is working with the channel partners to get them back online, explain exactly what we did to make sure that we have a solid solution here. And yes, that’s working, but now they need to go back out and generate their customer sales. So there was a hardware impact for those reasons.

George Melas: Okay. And maybe help us understand, like Trojan, what percentage of revenue is direct or how much is through the channel? How important is the channel for Trojan sales?

Gregory Woods: It’s an important piece of it. There’s a good amount of direct sales as well. But a lot of the OEMs, some of the larger accounts, happen to be either OEM accounts or channel accounts for Trojan equipment, less so with the QuickLabel.

George Melas: Okay. Okay. Great. Maybe a question on the bookings. They seem to be really strong. Was there any particular area of strength? Or was it sort of across the board? Was it like a few large deals? Maybe give us just a little bit of color on the bookings.

Gregory Woods: Yes. There wasn’t an outsized deal that was involved there. It’s pretty much spread across different products in both the Test & Measurement segment and in the Product ID segment.

David Smith: Yes. The trend is — the trend in the aerospace products is generally favorable.

George Melas: Okay. How do the aerospace guys order? I mean, is it very lumpy? Or is it sort of just a continuous kind of order patterns?

Gregory Woods: We wish it was the latter, but it’s more the former, right? So it depends on — in the Test & Measurement segment, I’ll put this into one because that’s how we report it. So with the kind of data acquisition — those tend to be a lot of aerospace and defense government contracts, so that’s very lumpy. And then the aerospace product lines, it depends on which — you get a new airline who buys, whether it’s — say, it’s 50 Airbus 320s or 50 Boeing 737 airplanes. That then — they then come to us or go to Boeing or Airbus and — it depends on which product category you’re talking about. And they put their orders in. So that could be a big order, it might be spread over 12 months or even longer. And sometimes it’s a forecast.

We can’t even book it as an order. But that’s where that lumpiness comes in there. Sometimes we get some surge orders. But the short term, hey, we need something in 3 months that wasn’t forecast, that’s pretty rare. We don’t see a lot of that in the aerospace. It’s pretty predictable. There’s typically — we’re shipping product 6 months or more in advance of when it goes into the final assembly of the airplane. But there’s spare parts part of it. There’s other parts of the business that can jump around as well.