Unidentified Analyst: If you could be a little bit more specific, though, in 2021 specifically, I understand the evolution, but what was the catalyst in ’21 that drove that inflection in net margin?
Ed Richardson: The ultracapacitor business. We have been selling ultracapacitors for a company called Maxwell for about 15 years, and Maxwell was sold to Tesla. And Tesla took them out of the commercial industry and used their entire production for their automotive industry. So we went looking — we had about a $3 million business in ultracapacitors, and we went looking for another source and found a division of LG in Korea called LS Materials, and we wrote an exclusive with them for ultracapacitors. And at the same time, NextEra, which is the largest wind turbine operator in the United States, also had been working with Maxwell to replace lead acid batteries, and they went to LS Materials and referred to us. And we spent 2 years working with them, designing the ultracapacitor modules to replace the 18 modules, the GE wind turbines.
And over a period of time, we’ve gotten 2 patents on that product. And as Greg said, we’ve shipped over 30,000 of those modules to date. And now all the wind turbine operators are buying from us. It’s a little bit like a bridge club. You’ve got NextEra is the biggest 1 that has 10,000 or 11,000 wind turbines and service. But right behind it, you have RWE, you have , Energy and on and on. And so that builds — business that’s just built up from there. And then the people and the cellular towers who also have these UPS, uninterrupted power supplies, they came to us and said, “Well, can you replace the lead acid batteries for us? and so it’s just been from 1 customer telling another that’s built this business — and we’re just the tip of the iceberg.
The opportunity is incredible. I think you can add to that, Ed, that when I look at the sales canvas also grew during that period, has got a strong margin. They grew — they growing almost $5 million, which adds to the top line growth and more profitability.
Ed Richardson: What was lands grow I mean that to the roof.
Wendy Diddell: Yes. That was a big part of it. I think all the business units in general are contributing to improved…
Ed Richardson: And Canvys is the same concept. These are medical OEMs coming to us and saying, “Can you build this custom display for us that goes into equipment like a linear accelerator for cancer treatment that we sell to now owned by Siemens or laser-guided surgery equipment that we sell to Medtronics and so forth and so on. So we have a reputation for being able to use our engineering capability to supply all of these requirements for the customers.
Unidentified Analyst: Do you guys have publicly traded competitors in the ultracapacitor space?
Gregory Peloquin: Not the ones we’re dealing with now Maxwell was, but currently, there’s other ones are that make ultracapacitors are private, but they don’t make the actual modules themselves. And that’s another interesting topic is who used to be competitors of Maxwell have now contacted us for other projects using their ultracapacitors as an integrator. And I think somebody mentioned on the call, we don’t have a reputation right now being in the electric vehicle market, which is fine because I think the opportunity for power management applications is higher. But what we are getting is a reputation both from electric modules is to be an integrator of ultracapacitors into all kinds of products. That’s like you’ve seen, the UPS, the ULTRA3000, the ULTRAGEN, the locomotives, we’re kind of a design and an integrator of ultracapacitors in niche products like Ed mentioned, that the customer needs for their system.
Unidentified Analyst: Okay. And last 1 for me, guys. In terms of the Lam exposure and the semi cap exposure, is that confined to the power a microwave? Or is that across power microwave GES health care and campus?
Wendy Diddell: Only PMT.
Ed Richardson: Only PMT.
Operator: Our next question comes from Mike Schellinger with MicroCapClub.
Mike Schellinger: Yes, in a previous call, you had mentioned an order you were expecting for ultracapacitors from — for wind mills. Is there an update that you can provide on that?
