So, I think we’re lined up extremely well to be able to hit the ground running as the semi producers start to produce more and get the recovery going.
David Silver: Okay, very good. And I’m going to ask you to parse one comment you made near your opening remarks. But again, on electronic materials, I believe you indicated that the order book that you’re seeing is kind of indicating maybe early signs of stabilization, I think was your wording. And when I think about an order book in electronic, your electronic materials business, I kind of think, well, are the orders that you’re seeing, are they reflective of maybe legacy products? In which case maybe it’s indicating the customer inventory liquidation is nearing an end, or alternatively, is it for more leading edge or newer applications, which kind of points to the rollout of the ramp up of new customer facilities. Is there some way you could maybe parse that the order book that you’re seeing and maybe read the tea leaves there a little bit?
Jugal Vijayvargiya: Yes. I think it’s a combination from what you just indicated. So for example, when you talk about the leading edge, we indicated that we launched two new ALD materials for the advanced memory applications and AI applications. We’re starting to — as we’re having discussions with our customers, we’re starting to feel that they are going to start to put orders in that then we’ll translate into sales in the Q2, Q3 timeframe. So I think that’s an example of where there’s newer products that we believe we’re going to contribute to a sales uptake. And at the same time, I think on the legacy products, as you know, we have a lot of precious metals business, non-precious metals business. We’re watching the inventory levels very closely with our customers.
And then from what we can see the last few weeks, I mean, the orders have — there’s not been a decline, let’s put it that way. So we feel good about, I think the fact that, okay, maybe we’re bottoming out and we would expect to see over the next few weeks slight uptake in the order rate for those legacy products. So that’s kind of really where our commentary is coming from. And that’s where we feel that there will be a slight uptake in Q2, but really a bigger uptake in Q3, Q4. And I think we’re hearing that also from the various other earnings calls or other announcements that the semi producers are making as well.
David Silver: Okay. And then you did mention the two new ALD materials and please don’t tell me anything you shouldn’t tell me. But should I assume that the new materials are tantalum related the new ALD materials? Or is this kind of new-new materials, something beyond kind of use the tantalum based activity, you know products and activities, development activities that you have ongoing?
Jugal Vijayvargiya: Yes. So our ALD portfolio that we have is not a tantalum based ALD portfolio. It is not something that we created as part of the acquisition that we made from H.C. Starck, ALD, something that we’ve been working on for a number of years. It’s an organic activity that we started to invest in when we started to see that this was a emerging area. And so, over the last four or five years we’ve been developing and we’re now up to a total of five materials. And so really advanced chemicals is what the category is that we put it in internal to the company. But they’re — so they’re not tantalum related. They’re really much more advanced materials that as I said, end up in the next generation memory applications which then we’ll end up in the various AI applications that we would see.
David Silver: Very interesting. So it sounds like Milwaukee, not Newton. So thank you for that. Okay. I just wanted to switch over maybe we don’t really talk too much about your optical segment, but you’ve done a lot of restructuring work there. I’m just wondering if you maybe have an outlook for 2024 for that segment. I mean, is this the time when that group finally presumes organic growth. And if so, what would you say would be kind of the one or two leading sources of that turnaround?
Jugal Vijayvargiya: Yes. Well, I think first of all that business despite the sales prop that happened, has done a really nice job of managing the performance and the cost management of that business various cost control activities that we put in. We’ve now had three consecutive quarters of — three quarters I’d say, Q2, Q3, Q4, where we’ve had EBITDA improvement. It’s our expectation that we’ll continue to drive improvement in that business on the bottom line throughout ’24. And then on the top line, if you look at the last time that we did an earnings call, which was the Q3 earnings call, we talked about space and defense related orders in the optic space. Today we’re talking about contract and the LIDAR technology for autonomous vehicles.
And so, I think those are the type of areas that are going to contribute. So automotive is going to be a contributor in this thing defense, the space market is going to be a contributor, I think to the growth here in ’24. And then of course longer term as well in ’25 and ’26. So, our expectation is that this business is going to be a top line contributor in ’24, as well as a continued bottom line contributor as it has done over the last couple of quarters.
