Fred Kornberg
Analyst · Tyler Hojo with Sidoti & Company
Thanks, Mike. I'd like to provide a brief update and then we'll go into the question-and-answer period. As I mentioned before, for the first time in fiscal 2013, we finally achieved a quarterly book-to-bill ratio of greater than 1.0. And perhaps, more importantly, we received strategically important contracts, which I'll touch on later in my commentary. We now also expect to exceed a book-to-bill ratio of greater than 1.0 in the fourth quarter. And based on the anticipated receipt of certain orders in the quarter, we expect to achieve a book-to-bill ratio above 1.0 for the full fiscal 2013 year. Starting with our Telecommunications Transmission segment, or more specifically, in our Satellite Earth Station product line, third quarter revenues were comparable to this year's second quarter revenues. Bookings, however, were slightly lower in the third quarter compared to the second quarter as some improvement in the U.S. government market was offset by continued weakness in international bookings. Our Satellite Earth Station modems continue to be the technology of choice in providing maximum bandwidth efficiencies for critical applications such as broadcast, cellular backhaul and disaster recovery operations. Despite our clear leadership position in this area, on the commercial side of this business, order flow continues to be depressed by challenging global business conditions and increasingly volatile political conditions. We believe that many large telecom carriers, some of which are among our largest customers, continue to be faced with shrinking capital budgets and therefore, choose to invest their limited available CapEx dollars into enhancing their 3G, 4G and LTE networks in more populated areas where fiber and terrestrial infrastructure are the more efficient choices. We believe, however, the economic need to provide coverage to outlying rural areas, which is where satellite dominates, still exists and in certain cases is mandated by statute or regulatory licenses. So despite the headwinds in this market today, we are confident that spending by our commercial customers for our products will come back as economic conditions stabilize and gradually improve. Although there's much more -- there is not much more clarity in terms of where or when the defense dollars will be spent, we did have a good bookings quarter of the government side of the Satellite Earth Station product line. As Mike discussed earlier, during this third quarter, we were awarded a new contract with a potential value of $29 million to develop the advanced time division multiple access interface processor known as ATIP for the U.S. Government Space and Naval Warfare Systems command. The ATIP is essentially an advanced packet processing unit leveraged from technology developed from our advanced VSAT commercial product line. To date, we have received funded orders totaling of $8.5 million against this contract for development and engineering services. This contract is extremely important to us and strategically important to us as it enters us into the projected -- protected MILSATCOM market and they provide, not only for additional future sales with the Navy, but also non-Navy customers, as well as position us to bid on other related protected MILSATCOM development work. Although business conditions seem to be stabilizing, sustained growth will depend on economic conditions improving and government spending freezing up. In the meantime, we have made appropriate cost reductions to rightsize our business, while maintaining our R&D spending to ensure that we protect our product leadership position in the future. Turning to the other component of our Telecom Transmission segment, we remain very bullish about our over-the-horizon microwave product line. As you know, in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2012, we received a $55 million contract from a U.S. prime contractor relating to the next phase of a major communications project with a North African end customer, which has begun to generate a nice revenue stream in this fiscal year. Just as importantly, this end customer has awarded the same prime contractor another contract for the next phase, the same project. We expect to receive our contract from this prime contractor during our fourth quarter, which should be in the vicinity of approximately $50 million. There are also other substantial opportunities relating to separate projects, which we are engaged with the same end customer directly and through prime contractors. As such, this end customer market, which we have worked on for a number of years, is expected to continue to provide significant additional revenue opportunities for us in the foreseeable future. We also continue to make significant headway with various new potential customers in South America, the Middle East, Northern Europe, Africa and Asia. We're cautiously optimistic about these opportunities, some of which are quite large. These potential customers have real requirements for tropo and are already negotiating with us or waiting for government approval and funding for their project. As you may recall, earlier this year, we received a modest contract from the Swedish military for our mobile modular transit case terminals, and as well as our trailer communications mounted troposcatter systems. We expect such a system, if successful, will require significant follow-on work by this customer. In addition to the Swedish order, we also received another modestly-sized contract in the third quarter to provide modems to a significant potential customer in Asia. Here too, this could lead to potential large follow-on orders. On the U.S. government front, we have supplied our products to a prime contractor that is using its antennas in our Modular Transportable Troposcatter System to offer the U.S. Military a fly-away configuration, which is capable of providing seamless compatibility with legacy-fielded over-the-horizon microwave systems. Although we believe that additional orders for this product should be forthcoming as there are hundreds of potential units to be deployed, this program has continued to move to the right as a result of the continuing U.S. government budget issues. Over the past several years, as you know, our over-the-horizon microwave systems, including upgraded TRC-170s have been fielded by the U.S. Military throughout the world and have proven to be an important link in critical communications channels. We see this trend continuing once the U.S. government resolves its procurement priorities, which it's currently experiencing. Overall, we believe that our telecommunications transmission product line, satellites and tropo, are poised for growth as economic conditions improve and government funding frees up. Moving to our RF Microwave Amplifier segment, our traveling wave tube amplifiers, or TWTAs, and solid-state power amplifiers, or SSPAs, serve critical needs in both the commercial and defense markets. Our TWTAs are used extensively in the satellite communications market, enabling vital services such as traditional broadcast, direct-to-home broadcast, satellite newsgathering and the emerging satellite broadband communications area. Among our more important commercial TWTA wins over the past few years have been contracts for our industry-leading, 500-watt, Ka-band amplifiers, which are key components in the vast majority of North American and European high throughput broadband satellite systems. Here too, commercial bookings in recent quarters have been impacted by weak global economic conditions. On the defense side, our TWTA products are used extensively to support capacity U.S. Military satellite communications systems, such as Wideband Global Satellite, or WGS Constellation, and the MilStar systems. We also have qualified products for both the FAB-T and the WIN-T programs. Here too, we have seen programs shifted out to the right, even high profile ones, like WIN-T. Ultimately, such program represents significant opportunities to drive growth in this product line for us. In addition to commercial applications, such as aviation, medical, satellite, our SSPAs are used in a number of electronic warfare applications, including counter IED systems. In fact, during the past few years, a significant portion of our SSPA sales have come from our participation in counter-IED programs. We have now completed work on developing contracts in support of the DoD's next-generation counter-IED programs, most notably CREW 3.3. However, in light of technical issues experienced on this program, which are unrelated to us, and the uncertain government funding environment, where this program is heading and when the government and the prime contractor would be ready to order our products is not clear at this point. And as I said on previous calls, this large opportunity that is present with the CREW 3.3, we view this program as being on hold. Despite some of these headwinds, we are expecting some sizable orders in the next few months and project the fourth quarter to be at or near our strongest bookings quarters of our RF Amplifier segments in more than 2 years. In our Mobile Data Communications segment, as anticipated, revenues in fiscal 2013 relating to the BFT-1 and MTS have been significantly lower than those reported in the past few years. We are currently providing both MTS and BFT-1 sustainment services pursuant to a 2-year, $43.6 million IDIQ contract. We're in the second year of this contract which has a performance period that began in April 1, 2013 and ends on March 31, 2014, and is funded for approximately $20.8 million. Pursuant to this contract and a related IP licensing agreement that we signed last fiscal year, we received a $10 million annual IP licensing fee, which the government has the option to renew each year for a total of 5 years. At the end of the 5 years, the government will have a nonexclusive royalty of right to use our IP. The U.S. Army has informed us that it intends to award us further contracts to provide BFT sustainment services beyond March 31, 2014, and could go as far as the 2020 area. As of today, we have substantially completed the repositioning of our mobile data communications segment and are now solely focused on providing BFT-related services to our legacy U.S. Army customers, as well as seeking other government opportunities that our technology can be readily adapted to. With that, I'd like to proceed to the question-and-answer period of our conference. Operator?