EBX is designed for digital data transmission and offers improved speed, reliability and security when compared to traditional copper. At the simplest level, the vast majority of Nortech’s products provide digital connectivity solutions that transmit data and power in various applications. As you may know, the Internet of Things or IoT integrates a variety of electronic components such as microcontrollers, sensors, actuators and connectivity modules. These components in turn enable IoT connected devices to collect, parse, transmit and receive data. More and more today that data is being evaluated and analyzed using artificial intelligence for improved performance and data management for our customers as well as for their customers. More data means, needs better data pipelines and that’s where Nortech comes in.
Technologies like our EBX smart cables helped to collect and distribute this data faster, more cost effectively and more securely across these sophisticated networks. We see strong opportunities for growth here. For example, industrial IoT applications are expected to experience impressive double-digits annual growth from 2023 to 2030 according to the Fortune Business Insights. Our pivot to more fiber optic technology improves product performance for our customers by offering unparalleled speed and reliability. It also aligns with the sustainability goals we share with many of those customers. When compared with traditional copper, fiber optics offers significant environmental benefits during both production and operation, including improved energy efficiency and less material usage, while decreasing the carbon footprint of complex cables we manufacture.
For example, aerospace and defense customers are adopting fiber optic technology due to these key advantages: reduced size, weight and power requirements, immunity to electromagnetic interference, improved security and greater durability in harsh environments. Harsh environments, of course, are very common in aerospace and defense applications. Nortech has a proud history of serving these customers’ unique needs, dating back roughly 30 years. It’s the smallest of our three core markets by net sales, but very important for our diversification. Our contributions to our national defense are a source of great pride for Nortech employees. The majority of our aerospace and defense cables are still traditional black round and molded type common in legacy defense systems, such as shipboard missile launchers.
But we are looking to the future with fiber optics and evolving along with our customers. In closing, we are excited about technological developments across all of our markets and expect them to support our continued sales momentum in 2024, aided by stabilization in supply chain and customer orders. Last month, IPC cited improving sentiment among global electronics manufacturers, with stronger demand and shipments reported in January. Our progress over recent quarters confirms that outlook. Now, we’ll open up the call to your questions. John, please open the lines.
Operator: [Operator Instructions] And we do have a question coming from Thor Mickelson, Private Investor. Thor, please proceed. Thor, your line is live.
Unidentified Analyst: Jay and Andrew, congratulations on a great quarter. We really appreciate that. Thank you. This is a question for Jay. Congratulations, Jay, on your five year anniversary with Nortech. As a shareholder, I’m delighted for your tenure at Nortech. Could you please briefly comment on what you’ve seen Nortech accomplished in these last five years, your perspectives on that and where you see Nortech going now?
Jay Miller: Yes. Thank you, Thor. That’s a really good question and I appreciate it. Look, the business has changed quite a bit in the past five years, but what has not changed is the dedication and the focus of the employees here. We have great employees. We have great customers. We have great supplier, partners. And candidly, it was for those reasons why I took the job to begin with. Now we’ve gotten a lot more disciplined about managing our balance sheet. We’ve done a lot as you’ve seen. We’ve done a lot of cleanup of our balance sheet over the past five years. And now we’re much more on a growth trajectory. Our expectation is that, we will take it from here. Our expectation is we’ll continue to grow the top-line and candidly we’ll grow the bottom-line faster.
And I’m very confident this team can do that. I mentioned in my remarks, our strategic planning process, which we take very, very seriously and we execute very, very — we’re very focused on the execution of that plan. We very seldom if ever deviate from our strategic plan. Now plans are never perfect and we have to make adjustments along the way, but this team has proven that, it can make great adjustments along the way to deliver good top-line growth and really good bottom-line growth. Look, I’m thrilled with how things have gone. If I look back at where I thought we would be five years from the time I took this business, clearly, I don’t think we I would have thought we would have made this much progress. And I didn’t know anything about COVID and we didn’t predict a global supply chain crisis.
The fact that this business has done so well through COVID, in fact, gotten stronger through COVID in a lot of ways and manage the global supply chain crisis as gracefully as it has. I can’t tell you, I couldn’t be any more proud of the people at Nortech for what they’ve done. Thanks for the question.
Unidentified Analyst: This may be a question for Andrew or Jay jump in. But, looking at the gross margin, if I’m reading that correctly, I’m seeing there’s a 300 basis point improvement over the last quarter. And I see generally your operating expenses have been well controlled. Could you comment on what drove, if that’s correct, what drove and what’s been driving you mentioned last quarter you were expecting improved gross margins. Is there something happening there?
