Sono-Tek Corporation (NASDAQ:SOTK) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Because I wouldn’t be shocked if we see our backlog just start to accelerate even with healthy revenue going out. But I wouldn’t be surprised if our backlog really starts to beef up and look very, very good for FY 2025 with still a healthy revenue stream going out in FY 2024. Because the production lead time on a lot of these machines is longer than typical for us. So a lot of these million dollar plus machines can have build times of six to 12 months depending on what the configuration is. So it is something we need to just keep in mind that the long build times on these large platform machines. Our smaller platform machines, which now I consider our flow business, still have relatively short lead times on them, if you’re talking about $100,000 or $200,000 machines.

Christopher Coccio: Yes, if I might add here for a moment, Steve. Over the years, Sono-Tek’s had a business that’s grown at a — we liked it, 10% growth, whatever. But things have really changed in the last year or so. Moving into — I think those questions pointed out, we’re moving into the production phase of our business. So instead of selling 1 unit that for — well, it felt good, $0.5 million or something, we’re now in a position to sell multiple units. So that’s a change in our business structure. And the other area that was highlighted in the previous question, is this a bubble that will come and go? And we don’t really see it that way because of the large amount of money that the government is putting into this clean energy sector, in particular, which is coming through to us now and over the future.

So I think there are two changes that have taken place in our business really within the past year or two, and that’s moving into production and the large amount of federal funding in the clean energy area. And then Steve Harshbarger just mentioned the third strategic change, which we’re doing, which is pre and post processing. Wherever we see an opportunity to add on to our basic structure, we do it. So I think without forecasting numbers, what I’ve seen in my tenure is a change in the business structure, and I’m very optimistic about it personally from this comparison with the past.

Ted Jackson: Well, I’m optimistic. I just want you to don’t let me get too optimistic, that’s all. It sounds like you guys are on the cusp of really having some good stuff happen. Let’s keep going on the revenue stuff. So just thinking about sort of what’s going to drive FY 2024 revenue. So when we kind of look at kind of your line items, the multi-axis systems, clearly that’s where you’ve had some hang-ups on where your larger systems are. They were down quite a bit from 2022. Can we — I mean, given what you’re seeing in backlog and given that we’re expecting to see $0.5 million of revenue to flow through with some large multi-systems, multi-axis systems in there, is there — is it realistic that we could see 2024 that you come back to — that you would at least meet what you did in 2022 on that particular line item and perhaps exceed it?

Stephen Harshbarger: Most certainly for the multi-access coating systems, we should be on track to exceeding it this year. And that’s partially driven by these delayed shipments that didn’t go up for us in FY 2023 that are in our backlog now. So there’s a lot of multi-axis coating systems that you’ll see, especially coming from the clean energy sector and the electronics sector, in particular, that we’ll be shipping out in FY 2024. The other good news is where we had our most significant supply chain challenges is in the multi-axis coating area. But Sono-Tek, we’ve done a pretty good job of accelerating our in-house capabilities in this area, which should allow us to achieve shipments at a more expedient manner than what we had encountered this past year.