Baylin Technologies Inc

TSX:BYL

Earnings Call Transcript 2022-Q4

[Operator]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Baylin Technologies Inc. Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] This call is being recorded on Thursday, March 9th, 2023.I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Daniel Kim, Executive Vice President, Corporate Development of Baylin Technologies. Please go ahead.

[Daniel Kim, executive]

Hello, and welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us this morning for the fourth quarter and full year 2022 earnings conference call for Baylin Technologies. On the call with us today from Baylin are: Leighton Carroll, Chief Executive Officer; and Dan Nohdomi, Chief Financial Officer. We will all be available for questions at the end of the presentation.Before we begin, let me make it clear that our comments today may include forward-looking statements and information and answers to questions that could imply future expectations about the prospects and financial performance of the business for 2023 and could include the use of non-IFRS measures. These statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions.Accordingly, actual performance could differ materially from statements made or information provided today, so you should not place undue reliance upon them. We also do not intend to update forward-looking statements or information, except as required by law.I ask that you read our legal disclaimers and explanation of our use of non-IFRS measures and refer you to the risks and assumptions outlined in our public disclosures, in particular, the sections entitled Forward-Looking Statements and Risk Factors in our annual information form for the year ended December 31, 2022, and our other filings which are available on SEDAR.Our Q4 and full year 2022 results were released after market closed yesterday. The press release, financial statements as well as the MD&A are available on SEDAR and on our website at baylintech.com.I would now like to turn the call over to Leighton.

[Leighton Carroll, executive]

Thank you, Daniel. The first quarter continued the improvement in our business. Despite the challenges with global supply chains, some easing of COVID lockdowns in China towards the end of the quarter, we continue to make progress through this challenging period. We will provide additional detail about each of our businesses later, but I'd like to highlight the following accomplishments for the full year and for the fourth quarter.First, adjusted EBITDA for the full year was $1.2 million. This is $0.6 million for the fourth quarter and our fifth consecutive quarter of positive adjusted EBITDA since the fourth quarter of 2020. This accomplishment is -- was done despite significant challenges. Our embedded and infrastructure teams managed through the zero-COVID policy in China during the year. Our mobile business dealt with the primary -- their primary customers, our primary customers, significant reduction in volume, which has impacted all suppliers in their mobile ecosystem.Now, another interesting point is that, we did not receive any COVID-related government assistance in 2022. This is compared with receiving $3.1 million -- excuse me -- in 2021, which was recorded as a cost -- a reduction to cost of sales and operating expenses. When you take this into account, this represents a positive swing of $19.1 million in adjusted EBITDA year-over-year.And when you look at it, it's basically $16 million increase in operating results, plus not having received the benefit of the $3.1 million this year. Despite the -- continuing to deal with external macroeconomic challenges during the year and the quarter, the business continues to demonstrate resiliency in overcoming several challenges to deliver positive results.Our backlog at December 31, 2022, was $38.1 million. This is the highest backlog the company has ever attained at year-end. Moreover, we have been working diligently over the past 1.5 years to improve the character of that backlog, meaning, the gross profit associated with each individual purchase order. The backlog of Satcom in particular remains strong. While the business has performed at consistently high levels of -- excuse me -- while the business performed at consistently high levels of revenue attainment in Q4 -- in fact, I would argue probably the best for -- that they've done for the entire calendar year of 2022.The order volume matched the production volumes consistently. Meaning, we were actually in Q4 at higher revenue and the orders continue to come in. Meaning, our backlog remained very strong for this business. Satcom, to be sure, is capitalizing on our unique technologies, while taking advantage of multiple tailwinds. The embedded business continued to show not only strength in its financial attainment, but continues to have strong backlog on a very consistent basis.Mobile, as people, I think, had heard from the comments and from some of our documents -- has seen its backlog decline in Q4. This is -- really isn't surprising given the challenge that its largest customers had. Infrastructure on the other hand is seeing growth in its backlog, and in particular, this growth is being driven by several of the new innovations and product launches that we have done recently.For example, the average month-end purchase order level for infrastructure for 2021 was $1.48 million. For 2022, the average was $2.6 million, with a strong finish at the end of the year. This was led by our innovative multi-beam products as well as the development of new customer relationships -- multiple new customer relationships, which previously had not existed.Overall, this translates into our backlog increasing by $1.6 million year-over-year, which is 4% compared to December 31 [ to '21 ]. Improvements in our go-to-market strategy, business development and sales activities, coupled with new product introductions and great work by our employees, led us to this attainment.In January of '23, we announced that Galtronics infrastructure had received orders for over $1 million for its multibeam antenna product, on behalf of a major North American carrier. These orders followed the announcement in September of '22 that Galtronics had expanded its multibeam antenna portfolio with 3 additional new products.These new products use patent pending beam-tracking stability technology, which makes these antennas ideal for high traffic, high data environments such as stadiums, venues, airports and other special event deployments. We are excited about the multibeam product as a need for high throughput and dense environment is not only growing, but our products had unique competitive differentiation against alternative technologies.Also in late November '22, we announced that Satcom received combined orders for Summit 2 power amplifier systems of approximately $6.7 million. This includes the next 2 phases of a large-scale Western government program as well as a separate deep space communication application for a European client. The Satcom team also launched its new solid-state power amplifier platform -- excuse me -- for satellite communications called Genesis.Infinitely part of the reason we called it Genesis is, in many respects, it's the beginning of a new chapter for business. The Genesis family of SSPAs provide high-end features that are unique to the product line, including a modular platform, streamlined manufacturability and ease of serviceability. And part of where we're going on this journey is, more and more of our legacy products will evolve to the architecture and capabilities of this new Genesis line.That is good for us in the long-term, and that's going to improve our margin structure in the long-term as we go down this path. The first customer delivery of the Genesis amplifier occurred in Q1 of '23, and the customer was extremely pleased with the quality, performance and feature set of the product. We're very excited about the future of it.Lastly, on February 28th, we announced that our Vietnamese subsidiary, Galtronics Vietnam's Dai Dong Company Limited, or GTD, had completed the transfer of the lease of the MMU facility in Vietnam to a third-party, which has assumed responsibility for GTD's obligations under the lease. The facility was originally intended to be an MMU antenna contract manufacturing facility, but never became operational.The original term of the lease ran until May 29 of 2029. The rental and related costs associated with the lease over its remaining term were expected to total approximately $2.7 million. Transfer of the lease substantially completes the liquidation of GTD's assets. The leasehold liability will be reversed, of course. I think it actually has already been reversed. And the only thing that remains is the test chamber, which we are continuing to conduct a sale process to liquidate that asset.Dan Nohdomi, our CFO, will now comment on our full year and fourth quarter results.

[Dan Nohdomi, executive]

Thank you, Leighton. I'll begin with a summary of our full year '22 results, followed by a summary of fourth quarter results. Revenue for the full year of 2022 were $120.9 million, which was an increase of $18.4 million or 17.9% compared to the fiscal '21. The increase was primarily due to stronger performance, stronger sales across all the North American business lines in '22 despite, as Leighton mentioned, continuing supply chain disruptions, chipset shortages and COVID-19 which also negatively impacted revenue in the prior fiscal year.Gross profit in fiscal '22 was $32.9 million, an increase of $17.8 million or 117.8% compared to fiscal '21. Gross margin was 27.2% in fiscal '22 compared to 14.7% in fiscal '21.The improved gross margin resulted from a balanced product mix due to both changes in pricing strategy and a data-driven focus on margin at the business unit level. In fiscal '22, the improvement was mainly generated by strong revenue recovery in the embedded antenna business line, operating and financial efficiencies in Asia Pacific and consistent growth in the wireless infrastructure and Satcom business lines.Adjusted EBITDA in fiscal '22 was $1.2 million, as was mentioned earlier. And again, this is an increase of $16 million compared to negative $14.8 million in the prior year. The increase in adjusted EBITDA was mainly due to the overall increase in revenue and gross profit discussed earlier, partially offset by an increase in operating expenses of $1.3 million compared to the prior fiscal year, excluding non-current asset impairments.For fiscal '22, we recorded a net loss of $16.9 million compared to a net loss of $67.4 million in fiscal '21. The net loss this year -- pardon me, in '22 was primarily due to an operating loss of $12.4 million, interest expenses and other finance expenses. The net loss in fiscal '21 included non-current asset impairments of $26 million and a $7.1 million reduction in the carrying value of deferred tax assets.On a per share basis, what this translates to is a net loss of $0.21 per share in fiscal '22, and this compares favorably to a net loss of $1.09 per share in fiscal '21. Net debt was $21.4 million at December 31, '22, an increase of $9.1 million compared to net debt at December 31, '21, primarily due to an increase in non-cash working capital, CapEx and interest payments.Revenue in the fourth quarter of '22 was $29.8 million, which was an increase of $2.6 million or 9.5% compared to the fourth quarter of '21. The increase was mainly due to stronger sales in the -- in Embedded, which was attributable to increased demand for new -- from new customers for home networking products.Gross profit in Q4 was $7.9 million, a decrease of $0.9 million compared to the fourth quarter of '21. Gross margin was 26.7% in Q4 of '22 compared to 32.3% in Q4 of '21. The higher gross margin in Q4 of '21 was primarily due to the impact of an inventory provision release of $1.6 million in Satcom.Excluding this one-time item, Q4 of '21 would have been $7.2 million. And the comparison -- direct apples-to-apples comparison, gross profit for Q4 of '22 would have been $0.7 million or nearly 10% higher than Q4 of '21.Adjusted EBITDA in Q4 of '22 was $0.6 million, our fifth consecutive quarter of positive adjusted EBITDA. Adjusted EBITDA was a decrease of $0.3 million compared to Q4 of '21. And the decrease in adjusted EBITDA was mainly due to the decrease in gross profit discussed earlier, partially offset by a $0.7 million decrease in OpEx, again, excluding non-current asset impairments compared to the prior year period.Net loss in Q4 of '22 was $4.6 million compared to a net loss of $20.1 million in Q4, '21. The net loss in Q4 of '22 was primarily due to an operating loss of $3 million, interest expenses as well as income tax expenses. The net loss in Q4 of '21 included a non-current asset impairment provision of $10.1 million. And what this translates to on a per share basis is a net loss of $0.06 per share in Q4 of '22 compared to a net loss of $0.26 per share in Q4 of '21.I'll now turn the call back over to Leighton. [Audio Gap]

[Operator]

This is the operator. Leighton, are you there? We're not able to hear you.

[Leighton Carroll, executive]

Sorry about that guys. I put it on mute while Dan was speaking closely. My bad. All right. So I just said something really important. Everyone missed it in -- let me repeat myself.We continue to make progress on our journey in the fourth quarter. I'm happy that it's our fifth quarter of positive adjusted EBITDA. I'm happy that our backlog is at record highs at the end of the year. But honestly, I'm also -- in many respects, I'm happy or -- that the content, the makeup of that backlog is different than it was certainly 2 years ago, even last year.The gross profits that we believe we will be able to attain, are getting stronger because of the new product launches, because of work we're doing to improve our manufacturing and our capabilities and work we're doing to be cost efficient. Now, in saying all of this -- and I do this every quarter, but it's important for me to thank the employees of Baylin for their hard work.I'm grateful for the level of commitment and engagement that we have in this company and it's from people across the world. Turnarounds -- and this is a turnaround. Turnarounds are a team sport. Everyone has got to buy in, play their role and in some cases grind to get through some of the issues. It hasn't been -- always been easy. In fact, there have been many challenges to overcome.Our employees have embraced the new culture. While we've been tackling many issues caused by legacy decisions in many cases, that impacted them directly, but they had no say in how things transpire. With that, its -- part of the journey we're on is having data to lead us having an open transparent culture, having a strong customer and commercial focus, identifying and resolving issues quickly and working collectively to solve problems.This is a much different company than it was when I started. People are in -- issues get on the table and we just get to work. And I'm proud of the level of engagement and resiliency of our employees. And while I think all of us would say we're not happy with where we are, there's more to be done. But I think that the team broadly has bought in not just how we're doing it, but why we're doing it. We want to see this company live up to its potential and be what it can be. That gets exciting. We're building something and that gets -- that's cool.That said, we continue to face challenges brought on by the macroeconomic environment, material challenges, and, of course, chipset shortages. I always struck when I see something on the news saying, oh, there's now a chipset glut. Well, maybe in memory chips using certain scenarios, but with the types of things we do, we still see chipset shortages.These factors continue to cause delays in both production and delivery of our products as well as the push-outs of some orders from customers. We anticipate these challenges will continue through the first half of 2023 at a minimum. The ongoing geopolitical events will also continue to affect our business. We are paying close attention to the situation in Ukraine as well as China's relationship with the Western world, and have been taking active steps to plan for contingencies.As a result of these continuing challenges, we expect, 2023 will be somewhat consistent with 2022 for revenue and adjusted EBITDA, in spite of the growth of our company's backlog and work being done to improve margins.Now I'd like to take an opportunity to talk about each of our businesses and the work that we're doing within each. The Embedded antenna line had a very strong -- 2022, excuse me, in which it made significant contributions to the overall business and recorded record high revenue and operating profit. To be honest, I'm just very proud of the team. They killed it.We expect this business will continue to perform strongly in 2023, although with a slightly -- at a slightly reduced level from 2022, basically driven by customer forecast, not at all driven by opportunity. In fact, if anything, we're working to expand our opportunities. The results in 2022 were affected by customers repurchasing some products to build a supply of stock in order to avoid supply chain disruptions.That's not going to happen again in 2023. We expect this year is going to be more of a normalized purchasing flow for us, and then we're going to work towards the upside. We do expect home network in public safety and the automotive markets that we participate in, or remain resilient, despite the broader economic slowdown and inflationary pressures that we're seeing broadly.The Wireless Infrastructure business line is expected to see improving performance with higher revenue and operating EBITDA team in 2023 compared to 2022. We expect the distributed antenna business or DAS deployments will strengthen, particularly for use in stadium and other venues. And we expect our new multibeam, and, of course, our large portfolio of innovative small cells that many of -- I mean, that's been kind of our bread and butter, and we have such a good reputation based on that portfolio.That combination is going to continue to open up new opportunities and allow us to drive sales with wireless carriers, third-party operators and others who are in the wireless ecosystem. The Satcom business, the commercial side has continued to demonstrate strong demand with the capital spending by our customers, continuing the momentum from fourth quarter.Given the capital build cycles of satellite operators and others in the Satcom ecosystem, we -- in fact this will continue to benefit our business in 2023. We also expect that our new Genesis line of SSPA, solid-state power amplifiers, will generate significant interest, and to be honest with our cash, from commercial clients, particularly those in the aviation and maritime industries.Sales for military and other government-related uses will continue. Their strength in the first half of 2023 in many Western countries had dramatically increased defense spending. And while the circumstances for that are -- I know -- as just a normal person, I would say, is probably less than ideal. The business reality is, that is a tailwind for us.Finally, we've recently completed multiple technology upgrades within our product portfolio and have several more in development, setting the table for improved financial performance over time. By the way, that new product launches and more [ coming ] concept, that is not unique to Satcom. You can say the same thing about infrastructure as well.Overall, we expect revenue and adjusted EBITDA for the first half of 2023 for Satcom will be similar to the second half of '22, with continued improvement the overall -- in the -- to the -- excuse me with continued improvements to the overall margin profile of the business. The Satcom business line continues to demonstrate a strong order book. And that said, production continues to be affected by supply chain constraints, chipset, shortages, component delays.Our team in Kirkland, they work through a lot of issues on day-to-day-to-day to be able to produce for us. The lack of availability of some transistor types, power converters and other components do cause us to have to juggle and do impact our production schedules. That said, the team has done -- and particularly through fourth quarter, did a terrific job of being able to manage through that and produce with consistency.We do expect these challenges, unfortunately, going to continue for the first half of '23, but to alleviate over time. In the meantime, we're going to continue to work on improving our production efficiencies and get -- and continue to work on our backlog. Having an elevated backlog is terrific, getting higher revenue consistently against that backlog and being able to produce more at higher margin levels is really where we're going.The Asia Pacific line, the mobile business line, we expect 2023 is going to be extremely challenging for the business unit. This is due to significant production volume reductions from its principal customers. These reductions reflect a contraction in the customer smartphone market in 2022 as well as going into 2023, due in part to the global economic slowdown and continuing inflation as well as this competitive pressures faced by the customer itself.Although the business line expects to benefit from several new programs in 2023. Those programs are not expected to generate any meaningful revenue until the second half of the year. In the meantime, management is looking to reduce or eliminate operating and other costs, evaluate strategic alternatives and work on potential financial support for the business in South Korea.Reflecting on the year in the quarter, I want to reiterate, the resilience of our business is a key factor in delivering the results we were able to achieve. Not only will the challenge -- will there be challenges in the coming quarters, but our business -- excuse me -- I'm sure there will be challenges in the coming quarters, but our business is substantially better than it was in either 2020 or 2021.And despite these challenges, I suspect our business is going to continue to show resiliency. We had better operational controls. We have better reporting, we have better visibility, and we have launched multiple new innovative products with more on the way. And most importantly, our people have been engaged and committed to seeing our company live up to its potential.We have been working on improving our margin structure quarter-over-quarter, and obviously, the products we sell matter. Not only did our revenue grow substantially over 2021, but our year-end backlog is at an all-time high. None of this would be possible without the commitment of our people. I am grateful for their support, their sense of urgency and their engagement. Together, we have been driving cultural change and improvements in our business.And I think the proof is starting to show up in the put. Revenue growth with backlog growth, with improving margins, while doing a turnaround, that isn't easy. And it goes back to turnaround to our team sport and having people who are really talented in our business dig in and make this happen for us.That concludes the formal remarks. Operator, would you please turn it over for questions?

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] And your first question comes from Andy Nguyen from Raymond James.

[Andy Nguyen, analyst]

Just want to touch on the supply chain you mentioned. So with China reopening right now and that's reported a slightly -- the supply chain is easing up with lower consultation fee. And I know that you mentioned that the supply chain disruption for you guys would be -- chip shortages still remain. Can you just give me some color on the dynamics there? And how is it affecting your operations overall?

[Leighton Carroll, executive]

Yes, sure. So supply chain broadly -- I think the 2 places in our business -- And Andy thank you for the question, I should have started there. The 2 places in our business where we see it the most is to an extent in our Embedded business and absolutely more so in our Satcom business. And it really comes down to the specific things that you are dealing with. So let me give you some examples.Within Satcom, power block, DC power converters, I'll give this a very simple thing. I don't have to talk about a high-end -- as an example, a FET is a field-effect transistor. Power block -- a DC power converter block is super common. All back to 2019, 2020, you could go to any electronic distributor. They would have them sitting on the shelves, no problem. While the world has changed dramatically, there is a lot more being done with electrical components.And those are still -- through 2022, in particular, were very challenging. There were long lead times. We saw some components that you could literally just call a distributor and get before -- we've [ pur ] on 26-week lead times. That's why it will change. What does that mean? You have to, A, plan for it; B, you have to think about how you manage your working capital; and C, you have to make sure you get what you need when you need it.And by the way, if there is a miss with the supplier or they end up having a delivery that comes in late, how do you offset that by producing other products based on what you have in the supply chain. That is [ effectually ] what I just described, is really a lot of the work that our team in Quebec -- in the facility that we do our satellite production. And they have been fighting through for all of '22.My expectation is we're going to continue to see this into the first part of '23, but we are seeing signs of a broader slowdown, I think what you just said. And particularly about some of the more recent data that's come out, I think that's entirely true. And I think we're going to start to see that get better as the year progresses, but particularly at the beginning of '23, it was very evident that we were continuing to deal with some of the same issues.And that's okay because, guess what, we've been dealing with them in '22. We just have to keep grinding and get through it. Hopefully I was able to answer the question.

[Andy Nguyen, analyst]

Yes. So given the inflationary pressure that everyone is feeling right now, have you guys brought up any conversation with the client regarding like price changes -- price increase, sorry?

[Leighton Carroll, executive]

So the short answer is yes, but I'm going to give you a caveat, right? A lot of times when I have to answer questions, I have to give a 2-part or 3-part or sometimes a 4-part answer, right, because of each of our disparate business lines, right? So if you go to one end of the pie, which is the mobile business, that is -- you're doing a high number of purchase orders. It's a very fast turnover business.You win a project typically 6 months in advance of production, 3 months in advance of production and then there's a set of pricing schedule. So you know what you're doing. So there's not a great opportunity to raise prices or deal with pricing in mobile, because it's a very structured environment, particularly with its largest customer. The flip side of that is -- and where you fix things, are on production efficiencies and in your cost structure, particularly your cost structures with suppliers.So, we do spend a lot of time on that side to improve gross profit. The other end of the spectrum is particularly, I would say, in our Satcom side, where we have very discrete competitive differentiation. It's a very strong market broadly, and we are able to talk to customers and talk directly and openly saying, hey listen, if our X and Y and Z underlying cost structure has changed because of these issues, we need to discuss price with you because we need to be able to support our business.And a lot of those discussions, I think they've been handled the right way. And we have been able to increase pricing in several places in conjunction with direct conversations with customers. So customers still are willing to pay for the value we are delivering, and we're having a good conversation with respect to pricing, and that has allowed us to increase pricing. So -- and by the way, when I talk about improving gross profit, it's not just the easy lever, just break the price. If you can do that, that's fantastic, but that's usually not the case.It's a combination of, are you able to get the price at a level that makes sense for your business where the customer is getting the right value and you're able to make the sales velocity that you want? Conversely, are -- is -- the underlying technology is improving? Is it adding efficiency? Are you able to produce at a lower cost structure? It's kind of that balanced approach, which is part of the story how we're improving our gross profits over time.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from Daniel Rosenberg from Paradigm Capital.

[Daniel Rosenberg, analyst]

Just 1 from me. I know, Leighton, you had spoken about the gross profit mix improving in the backlog. I was wondering how you think about where gross profit could get to this year? And when you think of the long-term potential of this business -- because historically, you've seen some higher levels, and you're obviously refocusing on higher-value products. I just want to understand that dynamic?

[Leighton Carroll, executive]

Yes. No, so it's a good question. And I'm going to be -- I might come off a little -- instead of saying it's going to be X, I'm going to talk about maybe some of the components of it. Historically, our mobile business has been such a large portion of revenue, right? And if you go back to 2017, 2018, it produced a pretty reasonable amount of profitability, okay?We are seeing absolutely in large part -- because of some of the issues with our largest customer, we have seen a pretty significant contraction there. And the [ tenor ] of that business, meaning the gross profit profile of that business over time has changed. And it wasn't just due to COVID. It's the way that our largest customer has managed their ecosystem in my opinion, meaning the mobile piece will, over time, contract as a percentage of our total revenue.And it has a lower margin profile to start with, than the other 3 business lines. So maybe that's placeholder #1. The Embedded line, I think is going to be very consistent within its margin profile. My view on that line is that there are opportunities for growth given our strengths, but they will have a fairly consistent margin profile. The places where I do think that there are opportunity and we are working towards improving is in terms of our Satcom business and in terms of our infrastructure business.Our goal is to get the gross profit profile of those businesses stronger today than they are, so that when we blend out, you will see over time our total gross profit increasing. Even though the fact that mobile, which had historically been such a high component of it, is on a glide path down, at least leads, particularly for this year. I know I'm not giving you a very concrete answer, but I want to be careful because there are some components in this, and we're looking at the total pie trying to drive value across all of our businesses.

[Operator]

There are no further questions at this time. I'll turn it back to Leighton for closing remarks.

[Leighton Carroll, executive]

Yes, thank you. Look, at the end of the day, it's kind of -- it's one of those things where I'm really happy with the year, that $16 million year-over-year is good, but there's some categories in that. But if you do an apple-to-apple ,like eliminating the accounting stuff, we're still way better, right? We're just way better. Gross profit is up. When you eliminate the accounting stuff, gross profit is up year-over-year for Q4. The backlog is -- continues to be strong. What's in the backlog is stronger.And we got -- we've launched a bunch of new stuff, and we got more new stuff coming. We still have a challenging balance sheet to deal with. That's going to be a priority for us this year. We got a lot of work ahead. Basically, I'm thrilled that the team has accomplished as much as they have, but man, I really want us to do better.I'm thankful our employees have bought in. I'm thankful for the technology and great minds we have at this company, and it's going to be an interesting year, and I look forward to seeing where we finish and hopefully, having an even more positive call to talk about '23 results in our future. Guys, with that, I appreciate everyone's time and wish us luck. Thanks, guys.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your lines.