Christopher Coccio: Yes, I think we all learned a lesson, too. I mean, we’ve managed our inventory levels very aggressively in the past. And we saw this coming to some extent, so we started to build up inventory, not enough though to forestall any problems as seen in our numbers. I think what Steve said is true, though. As we find out that the supplies are now available, we can back off a bit, but I don’t think we’ll ever go down to the level that we were before.
Ted Jackson: Okay. Well, that’s it from me, and I just want to finish and just say I’m looking forward to 2024 and 2025. It seems like you guys are on the cusp of some really exciting stuff, and I’m looking forward to watching it play out.
Christopher Coccio: Thanks.
Stephen Harshbarger: Thanks Ted.
Christopher Coccio: Thank you.
Operator: Our next question here will come from Avi Fisher with Long Cast Advisors. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Analyst: Hi, Good morning. Just two or three quick questions. What products are delayed because of supply chain issues, which…?
Stephen Harshbarger: Yes. The primary product line is our multi-axis coating machines. That’s where we really got clobbered. And those multi-axis coating machines are very heavily used in our larger platform systems directed at both the electronics sector and the green energy sector and a little bit in the medical sector as well. But they’re not very commonly used in the industrial sector, for example.
Unidentified Analyst: Okay. So presumably, I mean, what we’re really talking about is a robot, right? The robot arm that comes from a supplier, right? That you get from a supplier?
Stephen Harshbarger: Yes. It’s motion, I would describe it as motion platforms and product handling platforms. But it’s — they’re not, for example, like simple XYZ vanilla robot systems that you might see from some manufacturers. Most of our systems are highly custom and engineered for the application. But you are correct in saying that it’s a robot.
Unidentified Analyst: And are those coming from — I mean, presumably, I think those are coming from like ABD or from somewhere in Japan? Is that…?
Stephen Harshbarger: While we do have one robot that we purchased from — it’s a very inexpensive robot from Japan, which is kind of like a vanilla machine that just steps out the same thing. It’s for a very, very low entry point for small universities. The majority of our robots are all custom-engineered solutions and they’re manufactured in the U.S., either by Sono-Tek or in combination with our partners. And the product that we’re looking at there, and fortunately, they’re — our partner, there is no equivalent vendor to them in the U.S. or Europe that has similar sort of products, their capabilities, I should say, even more so than products, it’s the capabilities. There are some out of China that we’ve identified, but they have their own supply chain and shipment problems coming out of China as well.
That’s why we were really heading down the path of bringing a lot of this expertise in-house and increasing our own internal capabilities. Even though this industry partner, other than the delayed shipments, they’re a really good quality, really good price, but we need to get a little more control ourselves of the supply chain. So that’s why we brought some of those talents internally within Sono-Tek.
Unidentified Analyst: Is there — I’m just going to sort of say something, like presumably whoever this partner, you’re a fairly small partner to them currently. But as your addressable market grows, as your R&D clients move into production, is there an opportunity for you actually to instead of doing this on your own to get closer to your partner and say, hey look, let’s work together. We think we can sell multiples of the units we’re selling now. That will move us up the priority chain. We’ll be a little more important to them. And now you may have a co-branded product that can address a large, an even larger market. Is that something you’ve thought about at all?
