Lantronix, Inc. (NASDAQ:LTRX) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Mike Walkley : Great. That’s helpful. And then as Gridspertise ramps or as you look at your mix throughout the year, Jeremy, is there anything to call out on gross margins? I know you’re saying Q1 should bounce back kind of to that mid-40-ish. Is that a good way to think about for the full year? Or is there any puts and takes, how we should think about gross margin throughout the year based on your pipeline?

Jeremy Whitaker: Yes. With the models that we put together and based upon our current forecast, the gross margin profile for the full fiscal year looks pretty close to what we had in fiscal ’23. And like I said, as I mentioned previously, we do see some benefit from greater absorption as revenue increases from some of our fixed costs. And also, we are seeing quite a bit of relief in both in logistics and purchase price variances, which should start showing themselves as we get into Q2 and the second half of the fiscal year. I think in addition to that, just on the operating margin, there’s also quite a bit of leverage in the business. And so as we do grow the top line, we don’t expect to add OpEx at a similar level, which would allow us to exit the year with an EBITDA margin in the mid-teens.

Mike Walkley : Great. That’s helpful. As you think about the ramp in the model. I guess, last question for me, just on Embedded, very strong quarter due to that shipment, and you talked about it down sequentially. Is this a business that builds from there? And do you think it grows year-over-year? Or is most of the growth coming from IoT systems in 2024?

Jeremy Whitaker: Yes. So on the Embedded compute side, the next couple of quarters will be a little bit soft there. We have a couple of new — a number of new design wins that are beginning to ramp in Q3, which would continue to grow that business. But in general, the compute business is driving the growth. Gridspertise itself is part of the, I would call it, the compute business, although it’s not an embedded product and that — that opportunity was brought to us through our design services on the Qualcomm processor.

Mike Walkley : Great. Thanks for taking my question. I’ll pass the line.

Operator: The next question comes from Christian Schwab with Craig-Hallum Capital Group.

Christian Schwab : So I just wanted to verify that you guys still believe you can do $50 million over the next few years with Togg. Is that still the production goal?

Jeremy Whitaker: Yes. And if anything, it’s gotten better. We just received this quarter, a follow-on order from Togg, which was much greater than we had initially anticipated. So they’re on track, if not doing better than what we’ve indicated previously.

Christian Schwab : Fantastic. And then my final question is like a follow-up to the first question, I think, from Scott. There’s about 40 projects that you kind of highlighted before that could contribute $150 million of the annual revenue. Are any of those projects in your expectations for next fiscal year?

Jeremy Whitaker: There are a couple that could help fiscal ’24. I would say the vast majority of them would be projects that we’d be winning in fiscal ’24 and then most likely contributing to revenue in fiscal ’25. I think more about the future with that pipeline, although some of them have a high likelihood of closing and contributing in the current fiscal year as well.

Operator: The next question comes from Ryan Koontz with Needham.

Ryan Koontz : Yes. Just kind of drilling down on the near term, it sounds like a promising pipeline and contracts that with kind of the current state of the business out there in terms of — are you still dealing with inventory in the distribution? And there was some Qualcomm commentary about kind of general softness in industrial IoT. Can you kind of contrast your pipeline versus near-term dynamics? That would be helpful.