Joe Bergera: Yes, so the — I think that’s kind of interesting, Ryan, because I don’t think that we’ve historically reported enterprise level bookings. I think that if you went back through prior periods, we did talk about our services bookings, but I’m not sure whether we provided a combined, a consolidated bookings figure. So I think it might be hard for you to compare those things, but perhaps I’m wrong. But anyway, our internal view is that particularly we’ve seen a high degree of variability in, like, our products bookings, it’s associated with our sensor bookings and some of our third-party products. And so our experience in the December 31 period wasn’t really different than what we saw pre-COVID. But anyway, as I said, there were a couple of large bookings that were delayed for various reasons.
And, you know, because of their relative size, it had a big impact on the total bookings number. And there are very specific things that I won’t belabor regarding each of those individual bookings. But I think to your broader point is that some degree of budget uncertainty, has that had any sort of an impact? And I would say that probably at the margins it has. I mean, if I were to go — I could walk you through each individual, you know, instance, there are, like, again, particular things that occurred. But if you try to distill that down to sort of what’s happening, I’d say that, you know, at the margins there’s a slight degree of hesitation at the state and local level as they’re trying to understand what the federal budget landscape looks like.
Again, if you look at the total amount of spending in the country, over 80% of it is coming from state and local revenue sources. So it’s not like the federal government represents the majority of the funding. But that being said, some of these state and local agencies not knowing what the status is of some of these federal funds, that can cause at the margins some hesitation. And so we did see that. But I think that the bigger issue is it really goes back to the staffing point that, you know, we talked about previously. It’s simply there’s a shortage, generally, of transportation labor, and then more specifically, traffic engineering, civil engineering, talent, some of which would logically be playing program management roles for these various state and local agencies.
And so what’s kind of broadly happened is the federal government’s increased the amount of federal funding substantially by 50, in some cases, depending on the specific category as much as 100% for what the historical level has been. But, state and local agencies were not able to increase their employee base by 50% to 100% in order to be able to move all those funds through the pipeline. And so, there are delays. And to some degree, it has to do with the uncertainty. But I think the bigger factor is like right now, there just aren’t enough program management staff, most of whom would typically have traffic engineering backgrounds to be able to program that funding and then distribute it to third parties like Iteris. And so, as much as the agencies are attempting to do that, we do continue to see that there are delays and they sometimes are not able to deliver against their best, their best estimates that they provide us in terms of when to expect orders.
Kerry Shiba: Joe, one other thing for Ryan, as far as the unevenness or the lumpiness in the bookings, I think over time, the company has focused more and more on the large contract opportunities. And so, as a result of just having a population of collection of all smaller deals, there’s bound to be more volatility based on the timing of these specific large projects. And as the company continues its focus on that end of the opportunity scale, it’s also going to result in some of the volatility quarter-to-quarter.
Joe Bergera: Agreed. Kerry, I appreciate bringing that up. And Ryan, that is something that we have, I think, talked about routinely on these calls, that as we focus more and more on some of these large deals, and we have more exposure to a relatively small number of very large transactions, it is, we’ve tried to tell people that they should expect to see some degree of lumpiness, which is what occurred in the December 31 period.
Ryan Sigdahl: Yes, makes a lot of sense, just hadn’t been as evident until this quarter, but makes sense. Switching over, curious on some of the Philippines, I guess, how that contract culminated and what the international strategy is going forward for Iteris?
Joe Bergera: Yes, sure. So we’ve — as I mentioned, it kind of has to do broadly with just the amount of market visibility that we have in the North American market. And so to be clear, there isn’t somebody in like Cebu, Philippines that necessarily knew about us. But what is happening is international development banks and global construction firms that operate on a worldwide basis, and obviously like the World Bank, which is based in Washington, DC, and other global construction firms that have a big presence in North America, we’re on their radar screen. And so those entities that are bringing us into these kinds of opportunities, the most with respect to the Cebu opportunity that is partially funded by the World Bank. And that there’s someone in Washington, DC, aware of the work that we’ve been doing in North America that approached us about this opportunity and we thought it made strategic sense. And also we’re glad to help the Philippines.
Ryan Sigdahl: Good. Last one for me. The Allstate partnership, anything you can comment from, I guess, financials or impact to Iteris?
