Firan Technology Group Corp
TSX:FTG
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Firan Technology Group Corp
Earnings Call Analysis
Summary
Q3-2024
In Q3 2024, Firan Technology Group (FTG) reported robust financial growth with revenues at $43.1 million, an 18% increase year-over-year. Net earnings soared 109% to $2.8 million, buoyed by strong bookings of $45.9 million, up 29%. Their Aerospace segment thrived, contributing 30.4% of sales, reflecting a 34% rise. FTG anticipates continued growth, bolstered by a strong backlog of $121 million and expectations for further sales from acquisitions. Guidance for future performance remains optimistic, driven by operational efficiencies and increased production capabilities, particularly in the defense sector.
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I would like to welcome everyone to the FTG Q3 2024 Analyst Call. [Operator Instructions]. Please note that this call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Brad Bourne, President and Chief Executive Officer of FTG. Mr. Bourne, you may proceed.
Thank you. Good afternoon. I'm Brad Bourne, President and CEO, Firan Technology Group Corporation, or FTG. Also on the call today is Jamie Crichton, our Chief Financial Officer.
Before I go any further, I must caution you that this call may contain forward-looking statements. Such statements are based on the current expectations of management of the company and inherently involve numerous risks and uncertainties, known and unknown, including economic factors in the company's industry generally. The preceding list is not exhaustive of all possible factors.
Such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, and actual events and results could differ materially from those expressed or implied by forward-looking statements made by the company. The listener is cautioned to consider these and other factors carefully when making decisions with respect to the company and not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements.
The company does not undertake and has no specific intention to update any forward-looking statements, written or oral that may be made from time to time by or on its behalf, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
We set many records for financial performance for FTG in our third quarter. We had record sales, record EBITDA and strong cash flow. I would like to thank everyone at FTG for their hard work and their contributions to our success. Our success is a team effort among all 670 employees across the company and around the world. And together, we know that there are opportunities to do even better in the coming quarters.
In Q3 2024, FTG achieved some strong financial metrics, including our bookings of $45.9 million were up 29% over Q3 last year. Our revenues of $43.1 million were up 18% over Q3 last year. We achieved record net earnings in Q3 2024 of $2.8 million, which was up 109% over Q3 last year. We achieved record adjusted EBITDA in the quarter of $7.3 million, which was up 46% over Q3 last year. In the quarter, we paid $400,000 as the final holdback payment for IMI, now FTG Circuits Haverhill. There are no further payments outstanding on this acquisition.
On a related note, the holdback payment for holiday has been in escrow since closing, so that will not impact cash flow when released in October. That deal also has an earn-out provision based on the financial performance of the business from the acquisition date through to October of this year. We do expect some amount of the earn-out to be paid in Q4. As a reminder, the earn-out can range from 0 to USD 4.4 million.
Other accomplishments in the quarter included -- we reached another record backlog of over $121 million. Integration activities in Circuits Minnetonka have progressed well in the quarter with continued improvements in throughput and shipments. Demand remains strong across its customer base and new customer activity progressed well. The site is fully operational in the FTG standard ERP system they transition to in Q2 this year. As the quarter ended, a new general manager was hired to lead that site into 2025 and beyond. Integration activities in Circuit Haverhill advanced with the installation of new drills and electrical test equipment. The expansion of the customer base continued in the quarter. The implementation of the FTG ERP system also progressed in our third quarter.
Jamie will provide more details on our Q3 2024 results shortly. But first, let me turn to some external item. Our end market demand remains strong. Airbus delivered 735 aircraft in 2023. And through August 2024, they have shipped 447, which is below their target for this year. But for the past 3 months, they delivered at an annual rate of 764 aircraft, which is very close to their target.
They are looking to ramp to almost 1,000 aircraft annually in the next few years, and this is a 35% production rate increase. Airbus has a backlog of over 8,000 orders, which is over a decade worth of production at current production rates. At Boeing, they shipped just under 500 planes in 2023, and it plans to ramp their production by about 40% to almost 700 planes in the next few years.
Boeing's backlog is almost 6,000 planes, so also over a decade's worth of orders at current production rates. But the FDA has told Boeing to limit production while they ensure there's sufficient focus on quality. In the past 3 months, however, Boeing delivered 127 aircraft which is up from the run rate for the first 5 months where they delivered only 131 aircraft in the 5-month period. Obviously, the current strike at Boeing will impact deliveries in the near term. It is uncertain how long the strike will last. So it's really impossible to assess its impact on demand seen by suppliers, such as us.
In the business jet market, Bombardier reported low single-digit shipment growth for 2023. Their projections for 2024 are for a similar level of growth. In their second quarter, however, they delivered 39 aircraft, which was 10 more than their deliveries in Q2 last year.
Gulfstream is also projecting high single-digit levels of growth for 2024. This industry remains a robust growth mode. In the helicopter market, Bell Helicopter reported 31% revenue growth last year and are projecting near 10% growth for 2024. In their second quarter, revenues were up 13%. However, their shipments of new aircraft were down slightly in the quarter.
We remain positive as we look to future demand in the various market segments in the coming years. I also looked at results from key defense contractors. Of note, Lockheed's revenue in their second quarter were up 9% over the second quarter last year.
The ongoing geopolitical challenges in the world are expected to keep defensibility high for a period of time. Looking at the longer term, Boeing's recent 20-year forecast shows long-term industry growth in air transport. And it continues to show 20% of all new aircraft delivery is going to China and close to 40% to Asia as has been the case in the recent forecast.
The business jet market has already seen traffic recover, our recent business jet market forecast from Honeywell similar predicts growth in this market in the coming years with near-term double-digit growth rates for the sector. The simulator market mirrors end market application.
But as we always remind everyone about this market, it is lumpy for us. So large year-to-year variations do occur. Year-to-date, 2024 shipments of simulator products for FTG are about $2.5 million as compared to $8.8 million for the same period last year. As we have said for many years, FTG's goal is to participate in all segments of the aerospace and defense market as each moves through their independent business cycle. There's not often all segments are growing together, that seems to be the case right now.
Beyond this, let me give you a quick update on some key metrics for FTG for our third quarter. First, the leading indicator of our business is our bookings and new orders. As noted earlier, our bookings were $45.9 million in Q3. This resulted in a backlog of $121 million at quarter end. Even with record sales in the quarter, we increased our backlog. In Q3 2024, sales were $43.1 million, which is $6.5 million or 18% above Q3 last year. Year-to-date sales were $116.9 million, up $21.6 million or 22.7% over the same period last year.
Our Aerospace business was up $3.4 million or 34% to $13.4 million in Q3 this year versus Q3 last year. The backlog remains strong in the business. Year-to-date sales were essentially flat due primarily to the strike in our Toronto facility in Q1, lower simulator sales and the way it's entering production on some new assembly level products, both Boeing and Airbus offset by strong overall market demand.
Our Circuits business grew by $3.6 million or 13.3% in the quarter due to strong backlog and strong operating performance. For the year-to-date period, sales were up $22.3 million to $86.4 million as a result of having the 2 acquisitions for the full 9 months this year versus 4 months year-to-date last year, strong end market demand and strong operating performance.
At Circus Minnetonka, their annualized run rate in Q3 was approximately USD 29 million. This is up from the $22 million run rate when we acquired them and getting close to their pre-pandemic run rate of $31 million. They had strong bookings again in Q3 and then started to add customers to expand their customer base particularly for defense applications. After a bit of a slow start to 2024, our Circuits Haverhill's run rate is above last year's rate by 6% to 7%. We do continue to believe that we can materially grow this business by adding new customers and investing in selective CapEx.
Overall at FTG, our top 5 customers accounted for 60.1% of the total revenue in the quarter. This compares to 55.6% last year. Also interesting to note, of the top 10 customers, fix our customer shared between circuits and aerospace. And of interest, 1 of the top 10 is the customer that resulted from the Circuits Minnetonka acquisition. In Q3 2024, 30.4% of our total revenues came from our Aerospace business compared to 26.9% last year. The Aerospace business share increased due to strong demand and improved operating performance in the quarter.
I would now like to turn the call over to Jamie, who will summarize our financial results for Q3 2024. And afterwards, I will talk about some key priorities we are working on. Jamie?
Thanks, Brad. Good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to provide some additional detail on our performance for Q3. On sales of $43.1 million, FTG achieved a gross margin of $11.6 million were 27% compared to $8.8 million or 24% on sales of $36.6 million in Q3 2023. The increase in gross margin dollars and rate is driven by the growth in sales volume and related operating leverage, productivity improvements and favorable foreign exchange. The average exchange rate experienced in Q3 '24 was $1.36 as compared to $1.33 in Q3 2023, which is a 2.2% increase.
We continue our focus on operational efficiency to improve financial performance for our shareholders and operating performance for our customers. For Q3 2024, annualized revenue per employee is approximately $251,000, which is an increase of 19% over the comparable quarter of 2023. From a geographical standpoint, experienced revenue growth in all of its primary regions. In dollar terms, Q3 '24 sales to U.S.-based customers grew by 4.1 million and sales to Asian-based customers were up by $1.9 million as compared to the prior year quarter. We track sales data by our ship to location. Activity in Asia is increased as the integrated supply chains for the commercial aerospace sector continued to grow offshore.
SG&A expense was $5.1 million or 11.8% of sales in Q3 '24 as compared to $4.1 million or 11.1% of sales in the prior period. Increased expense level includes head count higher expenses related to the overall growth of FTG and higher levels of performance compensation. R&D costs for Q3 '24 were $1.7 million or 4.0% of net sales compared to $1.6 million or 4.4% of sales for Q3 2023. R&D efforts include product and process improvements at the Circuits segment and efforts to develop and qualify products for future aerospace programs.
The exchange rate at the Q3 2024 close was $1.35 as compared to $1.36 of Q2 '24 which means a slightly stronger Canadian dollar. FTG's balance sheet includes assets and liabilities denominated in U.S. currency, with net balance -- net asset balance of approximately USD 12 million. The translation of our U.S. dollar assets and liabilities to [indiscernible] Canadian currency at the end of Q3 resulted in the fourth exchange gain for the quarter of $0.2 million compared to a loss of $0.1 million in the prior year quarter.
EBITDA was $6.9 million for Q3 2024 as compared to $4.8 million in Q3 2023. Adjusted EBITDA was $7.2 million for Q3 2024 or 16.7% of sales and $5 million -- $5.0 million for Q3 2023 or 13.6% of sales. Please note that commencing with our Q3 2024 filings, we no longer deduct stock-based compensation for our EBITA metric.
However, we do deduct these costs for adjusted EBITDA. Adjusted EBITDA for the trailing 12-month period ended Q3 2024 was $24.4 million which equates to an adjusted margin of 15.5% on sales. The only adjustment to EBITDA for the trailing 12-month period is for stock-based comp. For Q4 2023, FTG had EBIT or earnings before income taxes of $4.3 million or 9.9% of sales as compared to $2.3 million for Q3 2023 or 6.4% of sales.
The Q3 2024 income tax provision of $1.4 million or 34% of pretax earnings reflects that the corporation's Canadian and China operations were profitable and that deferred tax assets on certain foreign operating losses were not recognized in the quarter. Cash flow from operating activities in Q3 2024 was $5.3 million as compared to $3.5 million in Q3 2023, primarily due to higher net earnings. Cash used for lease liability payments was $1.0 million in Q3 2024 as compared to $0.9 million in 2023.
Year-to-date cash flow from operating activities was $10.0 million in 2024 as compared to $7.3 million in the same period in 2023. Excluding $3.8 million of ERC employment retention credits included in the year-to-date period in 2023, year-to-date cash flow from operating activities increased by $6.5 million this year.
Capital expenditures were $0.8 million in Q3 2024 as compared to $1.8 million in Q3 2023 and were primarily for new equipment in the Circuit segment. Capital expenditures in Q4 2024 will include close to $1 million for infrastructure upgrades at the Circuits Toronto facility.
The strong cash flow in Q3 2024 allowed us to make a discretionary USD 0.75 million payment against bank debt. Our net debt position as of Q3 2024 is $2.2 million as compared to $3.6 million at the end of last year. As at quarter end, the corporation's primary sources of liquidity totaled $77 million, including cash accounts receivable, contract assets and inventory.
Working capital was $47.8 million as compared to $41.1 million at the 2023 year end. Accounts receivable DSO are 58 days at the Q3 quarter end compared to 64% last year. Inventory days are 112, 1 better than last year and accounts payable days are 64 compared to 78 at the 2023 year-end. We completed the quarter with a backlog over $121 million, with approximately 86% of this expected to be converted to revenue in the next 12 months. We will continue to focus on profitable growth cash management and operating efficiency. Our filings are on sedar.com.
And with that, I will turn things back to Brad.
Thanks, Jamie. Let me delve into some important items in the quarter end or for the future performance of FTG. We continue to believe our staffing levels are about the right level to support our current demand. While we might tweak it slightly from site to site going forward, the majority of our staffing challenges are behind us. As noted earlier, we have hired a General Manager to run the Circuits Minnetonka site for the long term. Well, Paul Godbout did an amazing job at that facility, and I am grateful for his contributions. He was an interim GM and we needed to find a long-term solution, which we have now done. And at the same time, we have hired a new general manager to run our Circuits Fredericksburg point. This will free up some of Leo LaCroix's time to provide more oversight and strategic direction to our 4 U.S. circuits facilities.
We always remember that we make money by building a shipping product, so we do spend significant time and money driving process and productivity improvements at all the sites. This can include manufacturing process improvements, but it can also involve things like automation. We now have a number of robotic systems operational at our Circuits Toronto facility, maybe surprisingly at our Aero Tianjin facility.
We are adding robotics process in our Aerospace Toronto facility, and it is now installed in that facility. But automation goes well beyond robotics. We have a lot of very automated equipment across our circuit site that help drive both productivity and process control. Automation will continue to be an area for investment across the company.
Also as a manufacturer, we use a lot of materials that can harm the environment, if not managed carefully as part of FTG's overall ESG commitment we look for ways to minimize our impact on the environment, and we have started a project with a small government grant to investigate using water-based paint in our aerospace or cost products business. If successful, we would significantly reduce our use of solvents in this business to the benefit of the environment.
Looking forward, a key item for us remains the integration of our new sites. For Haverhill, we acquired them to grow our presence in the RF circuit board market for aerospace and defense applications. While they are small with a historic run rate of about $4 million to $5 million, we like their capabilities.
The integration is relatively straightforward and we intend to continue to operate it in its current facility with its existing staff. Our focus will be to engage our sales team with them to find new customers and to grow the business. This is not an overnight process, but one where we can generate incremental margins and profitability to the benefit of FTG.
Going along with this, we'll be some focused CapEx to address a few production constraints to enable the future growth. Two new drills and electrical test machine have been added to the site. We did achieve some targeted material savings, which will benefit us going forward. And finally, we will move them on to the FTG standard ERP system in the future, and this project is now underway. FTG Circuits Minnetonka was a larger acquisition.
Their sales were over USD 31 million before the pandemic. They were hurt by the pandemic like we were. We see the long-term positioning of the Minnetonka site to be a source of high-technology circuit boards, similar to our total facility, but with the U.S. footprint. This U.S. footprint is critical as we will look to grow our share of the U.S.-only advanced circuit board or the defense market.
In the short term, we have 3 priorities as we integrate Minnetonka. First, we need to ramp their throughput and revenues. We have closed over 75% of the gap get back to their pre-pandemic run rates. We continue to see strong demand. So ramping throughput remains a priority item for that site.
The second priority is to reduce material costs. We have identified cost-saving opportunities that can benefit the site as they are now part of a larger company. It is taking time to achieve these savings as in some cases, it requires customer approval and internal engineering efforts. But when complete, we expect to achieve savings on the order of about $1 million annually.
Our third priority is to improve pricing. We have had successes already, and we will continue to address this. We want to ensure that any inflationary costs incurred at that site over the past 2 years, whether material labor or other are passed through to our customers and not squeeze our margin.
With the FTG ERP system in place and in use, we are getting much improved data on our cost, which we now use to ensure we are pricing parts more precisely going forward. And lastly, while not an immediate integration item, when we bought the site, we believe that we could expand and grow their customer base focused on the U.S. defense market. This has already started.
We are seeing real interest from numerous customers and adding this site to their approved supplier list. That's the good news. Bad news is it's typically a long process to get a new site approved, but we will stay the course on this to grow the site in the coming years beyond their pre-pandemic high point.
In Q3, we continue to see strong demand across most sites. Our total backlog is $120 million with over $60 million due in Q4. While not a good metric, we ended the quarter -- third quarter with over $14 million in past due orders, up from $12 million at the end of Q2, but down from $18 million at the end of Q3 last year. About half the past orders are at our Aero Toronto site. The site was hurt by the strike in Q1. They also show some past due orders on assemblies where our customers ask for design changes.
So while they are showing late, it is driven by customer decisions. For other work at Aero Toronto and help drive down the past dues as fast as possible. We have worked with our customers to shift some production from Aero Toronto to our other aerospace sites, at least for the short term, and we have decided to add some additional staff. This should help the site recover back to the strong on-time performance.
We are growing in 2024 as compared to 2023. The easiest aspect of our growth will be having the acquisitions for the full 12 months this year as compared to 7 months last year. This should add an estimated $12 million in sales for 2024. If we can ramp production and sales of the newly acquired sites, this would further add to the growth.
And we continue to win new programs across the company that will layer on the yet a third layer of incremental organic growth. At our U.S. sites, we have won some initial orders for a new defense program where the qualification orders are valued at about $1 million deliverable this year. This program should ramp in the wholesale production next year.
And we will still see further benefit from the higher value assembly orders first booked last year after we complete the customer requested redesign. These assemblies on both Boeing and Airbus aircraft and we will see the benefit of the C919 program in China moving into production. We shipped our first production orders last year, and we have booked over $17 million in production orders due in 2024 through 2026.
But you expect our first shipment against this contract either this week or next week. With the more complex geopolitical situation in China, there might be concerns about our activity there. But in 2023, both our operations in China had the best sales year ever. This continued through the first 9 months of 2024 with the site seeing a 14% and 41% growth, respectively, compared to the same period last year.
As I have mentioned in previous quarters, we repatriated cash back to Canada in '22 and '23 and we brought more cash back earlier this year. In total, we have now brought back $3 million in cash. By doing this, we don't have surplus cash stranded in China and it reduces our exposure of things that's ever deteriorated between China and the West. We are working to bring back more cash by the end of this year. We are being cautious to build our operations in China as any further increase in tension between China and other countries could impact our operations there in the future. We continue to assess possible corporate development opportunities that could fit with either of our businesses.
There are opportunities there that fit our strategic priorities. And we are working to see if we can conclude the deal in line with our priorities and with an attractive financial return. With a focus on operational excellence in all parts of FTG, our strong financial performance last year and the first 9 months of this year, our recent acquisition, our key sales wins, we are confident we are on a strong long-term growth trajectory.
This concludes our presentation. I thank you for your attention. I would now like to open the phones for your questions. Nina?
[Operator Instructions]. Your first question comes from the line of Nick Corcoran from Acumen.
Just a few questions for me. Fran, posted a record $43 million of sales. Any indication how close you were to capacity in the quarter?
Yes. I guess I go back to kind of an annualized look at this. On an annualized basis, we did an assessment of what I'd consider real capacity, not a theoretical capacity. And for sure, our real capacity on an annualized basis is over $200 million. So if you look at $143 million, maybe that's $170 million or so, we definitely see room to grow with our existing capacity.
And I guess what I'd add to that as well is in any production site, and I'll use Circuits Toronto as an example because Circuits Toronto is running at the highest utilization rate right now, it's not a uniform capacity through the plant. There's always 1 or 2 bottlenecks that constrain the overall capacity. And so I've asked the guy who runs that site, Hitesh Talati, to look at what would it take to add another 10% or so to capacity at that site. It's not built a new plant for sure. It's going to be a handful of specific pieces of equipment that then opens up the bottleneck and drives capacity. So I'm comfortable that we do have capacity to continue to ramp revenue for the next number of years.
That's helpful. And we're almost halfway through the fourth quarter, any indication with the sales pace in the fourth quarter is relative to the third quarter? And what potential risks of a Boeing strike continuing would be.
Yes. To answer your first one, I have no answer. I'm a lagging indicator in the company. So I'm wrapping up my discussion of Q3 today. on this call. And so I have truly not been paying attention to how things look in Q4, but also to be fair, we typically aren't providing guidance. But we have strong demand, as I said, with a strong backlog for the quarter. if we continue to perform operationally, it should be a good quarter.
Regarding the Boeing strike, as of today, we've seen no real impact on demand as a result of the strike. But if it continues and drags on, at some point, they're going to slow down their supply chain, which would include us. Have not seen that yet, not sure when that would happen, I can't really predict what that impact would be.
But I would also say that a Boeing strike impacts the overall U.S. economy. It's a significant company. And just by reading stuff in the news, there's a lot of pressure on both sides to find an agreement, reach a settlement. Then pressure coming from the federal government in the U.S. from the Department of Labor, there's a lot of pressure and support and interaction going on to try to bring that to a conclusion.
Great. And maybe a couple more questions, if I can. The balance sheet is in a very strong position right now. How are you thinking about your capital allocation priorities between M&A, the share buyback and other organic growth initiatives?
Sure. My capital allocation priorities are: number one, invest in the business organically to drive technology or capacity as we talked about to grow the business organically. Number 2 is M&A. And then number 3 is things like a buyback, but I would do it in that order in that priority.
And then one final question with the completion of the ERP at Surface Haverhill and Minnetonka, what will that mean for margins going forward?
It doesn't impact -- well, just implementing the system does not impact margins, but having a system that gives us better data definitely gives us an opportunity to impact margins in a positive way. we were really running blind at both sides in terms of what our costs were on a part number level or the detailed level, our ERP system will give us cost data down to the part numbers, and that we can use that to make sure our pricing is logical and in line with what the costs are. So it's a benefit in that regard that we will really see happen, but it will take time as parts run through the system, then we get data, then we can react appropriately.
[Operator Instructions]. There are no further questions at this time. Mr. Bourne, please proceed.
Okay. Thank you all for attending. A replay of the call will be available until November 15 at the numbers on our press release. A replay will also be available on our website in a few days. I thank everyone for their interest and participation. Thank you.
This concludes today's call. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect.