Grant Russell: Well, our goal, as Paul said, was to overall achieve about a 20% reduction. So if you look at our op-ex and we’d expect to see a 20% reduction that could be implemented by the middle of next year. As far as, you know, discretionary versus people, I mean, I think there’s probably going to be more discretionary stuff. We’re going to adjust and tweak rather than, you know, necessarily headcount. We’ve got a good team here and we want to keep some of the great people we have. I mean, we’re going to look at, you know, as I said, none stuff we do that’s not differentiating or not necessarily proprietary and push it up to some other third parties. So we can still keep active moving ahead without having to make the commitments of hiring more people.
As we said, we do have an absolute headcount freeze going on right now. The only exceptions might be in production to respond to a needed demand. But, you know, we think we got good opportunities to reduce costs and our future products are spending even more time to improve the gross margins going forward on future generations. And competitive business, we’re all in, so we’re going to do our best to win.
Matt VanVliet: Okay. Thanks for taking the questions.
Grant Russell: No problem, Matt. Thanks for asking.
Operator: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, there are no further questions at this time. Actually — our next question actually comes from the line of Christian Schwab with Craig-Hallum. Please proceed.
Christian Schwab: Hey, guys. So Just on the decision to make the OpEx reduction at this time, listening to the prepared comments, it seems like there’s a tremendous amount of opportunity in front of you between different customers and many different applications. I mean how are you going to satisfy those markets with a reduced workforce?
Paul Travers: There’s a balance there, Christian, on where those cost savings are coming from. And I will admit, there will be changes in some of the workforce, but as Grant mentioned, it’s related to things like where you might get work done, et cetera. We’ve got what we need to be able to deliver. Quite frankly, Vuzix has got a great infrastructure to deliver way beyond even what the current run rates are. So our production capacities, our sales teams, as you can see, there’s a shift in how our sales are starting to operate with bringing the channel partners on board the way that we are. So yeah we’ve got the right infrastructure right now. And in fact, we could even lower some of the infrastructure that we have right now, bring it more aligned and still deliver very, very well for the customer base.
Grant Russell: And part of it will also have an increased focus. We might try to do a few less things simultaneously than we might have had in the past. We know what’s working and we’re going to focus and we’re not going to frankly just chase every opportunity if we feel that market isn’t ready to mature as fast as some of the other markets we see as opportunities.
Paul Travers: And Christian, there’s some natural things that are happening. Our investments in things like the new waveguide facility, it’s just not goning be anywhere near the amount of money in 24 that went in in 23, because that facility’s up and it’s operational. We don’t need to spend further in that regard. In 2024, the amount of dollars that needs to go into the micro LED development efforts is a fraction of where we have been in the past. So there’s a lot of reductions that are coming just out of those kinds of things also.
