Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Lou Melluzzo. I'm President and CEO of Air Industries Group, located in Bay Shore, New York. Safe Harbor statement. I'm sure you've probably seen a few of these this morning, none the same. It's displayed for your reading pleasure. Quick overview of who we are and where we are. Air Industries Group is a small business, under 500. We employ about 185 people, both in Connecticut and in Bay Shore, New York. We're comprised of the two divisions, are comprised of the Connecticut operations being predominantly responsible for engine work. You know, General Electric, Pratt & Whitney, Sikorsky are a client of theirs. A lot of round parts.
And in our Bay Shore facility, we're on the landing gear, flight critical parts, thrust struts, aerostructures, and other components for a Grumman, a Collins, Boeing, and others across there. Together, we occupy about 200,000 sq ft of manufacturing space, and again, we are considered a small business by the government. This is how we fit into the food chain in the aerospace, in the aerospace industry. You have your primes up on top, which, companies like Safran, General Electric, they have design capabilities, they have design rights, they fabricate planes and engines. We fit in as a either a Tier 1, working directly for those folks, or a Tier 2, working for other people that have licensing agreements with the Pratts and the Sikorskys and other stuff that do the, that make, that build these components or a sub-assembly of.
So we're in the top 1% or 2% of the food chain in this business, including, you know, the DoD, the government direct, big part of our business. Our orders typically come in on what we call an LTA, a long-term agreement. And these agreements range anywhere from three to five to seven years, which tie you into a quantity requirement per year for the next foreseeable future, a lot better planning than spot buys, although we have spot buys in our business as well. A sampling of the clients that we service is here. It's all big names.
It's all top world leaders in both engines with Pratt & Whitney and Collins Aerospace, which is an RTX company as well, Sikorsky, Rolls-Royce, General Electric, Boeing, Safran, Fokker in the Netherlands, Safran, both in Canada and in France. Then we service all the armed forces, all of them, including the DLA, which is the Department of Logistics, that handles the spares for the US government. In 2023, on $51.5 million in revenue, 83% of that revenue was derived from predominantly six platforms that we service. If you look at the platforms, we have a licensing agreement with Boeing on the F-18. We make landing gear for that project.
On the E-2D, which is the rotodome plane in the center, we make all the gear, all the landing gear. And just to explain what that entails, when you look at a plane, everything that comes out from the belly of the plane down to the tarmac, minus the wheels and brakes. We don't make the rubber part, product or the wheels, but all the hinges, everything that retracts that gear in and out of the plane. We make arresting gear, which is when the planes come into an aircraft carrier, you see it off the hooks, off the back of the plane that catch the string. We make those things for several platforms. Our commercial product in New York is the Geared Turbofan , which is Pratt's newest engine. We make thrust struts.
Last month, we published a $110 million seven-year order for thrust struts. It's a follow-on to a product that we've been making for the last like twelve years in our shop. We're in on the CH-53K, which Sikorsky is the heavy lift helicopter, the King Stallion, and also on the F-35 Lightning, all the variants. A typical sampling of our product. By no means do we make simple blocks. You know, everything is very intricate machining in high AerMet, titaniums, Waspaloy, very exotic metals that are not easy to work with. But you have a mixer assembly, which is the main control for the Black Hawk over on the left.
And what that does is all the cabling that comes off the helicopter all attaches to that thing, and it steers the helicopter with the foot pedals. The hand controls are all attached to that. Full landing system for the Black Hawk, full landing systems for the Hornet, the F-18, steering collars, thrust links for the F-35, chaff pods, the lower center, which are the they hook up to the side of the helicopter, and when a helicopter comes into attack, you see it in the movies, all the flares that come out. That's what these boxes hold, those flares. And then our pride and bread and butter, the thrust strut that we just got that large award for.
The thrust strut, if you look at an engine on an airplane, when the plane takes off, it jogs the engines, okay? Because of the thrust pulling it forward. These equalize the thrust. They push in the other direction and help the engine not snap off the wings. So it's an important part. We're sole sourced on this. We're the only game in town. We're the only people that make it for the end user. So why buy our stock, and why buy it now? We are running on what we call. Okay, I could hear myself. So we are expanding our existing portfolio.
We have a lot of product with a lot of clients, and we, it's become evident that with shops dropping off, with the Boeing crisis and everything else, clients are looking to put more work into suppliers that are delivering. So there's an opportunity for us there to expand our current portfolio, hence the $110 million order, which was a follow-on to a contract that we've been working on. We're securing very long-term agreements, range going up to seven years, which kinda makes predictability and scheduling and everything else a lot easier for the company. We made a $13 million investment in the last, say, three years on new CapEx, so we've positioned the business to be able to do this kind of work, and we're just waiting for this ramp-up to happen.
Aftermarket strategy, which is the second pillar of our growth strategy, is we make a lot of products. We're 85% predominantly defense. The government buys a lot of spares. A lot of times they go through the OEM, but because we're a small business, we have a large playing field to deal with. So we can typically get up to about 15-20% more in revenue, making the part for the government than making it for the original manufacturer, you know, whether it's a Sikorsky or a Pratt & Whitney. So we're exploring that in a big way. We got about $5 million order this year already for with that effort at a much higher margin than we make it for the OEM.
We've announced an exclusive distribution agreement with a third party that has reach and a network into 17 different foreign countries. Almost 100% of our product is stationed here in the United States. You know, it goes back to a Pratt. They might sell to a foreign country. It goes to Collins. They might sell to a foreign country, but us directly do not. So with this licensing agreement, it opens up 17 different countries that these people already have a network in, thus really shortening the cycle. Industry outreach. We've been. I have our business development VP here. We've been doing the shows across the globe. We were in England just a few months ago. We were in Paris the year before that. Numerous shows all across the U.S. There's a need for our services.
You know, our company has a niche in that we are a $50 million-$60 million dollar shop that produces high-precision machine components. Our competition is either small shops in the $10-15, maybe $20 million that get full pretty quick, or companies that are $700-$800, a $1 billion that have a much higher cost structure. Falling into this middle-of-the-road type thing makes us attractive for the big guys to come shop to us. Our backlog coming out of COVID declined by about $9 million. So the government stopped, not stopped, but reduced their spending, and one of our customers moved some product offshore to save money.
We took a hit for $9 million in 2022, 2023, but it, the ramp-up from there has been $35 million to the positive. We not only replaced the nine million dollars that we lost, we replaced it with an additional nice orders. Book-to-bill ratio, which is really the lifeline of any business like ours, is what are you winning? How much are you winning? The typical market industry benchmark is about a 1.2-to-1. For every dollar that you sell, you wanna take in about a dollar twenty.
Since our book-to-bill and business development, we're just shy of $1.40 for every dollar that we take in, which is above the industry standard, and it seems like it's continuing because we've got an enormous amount of our bids out there, hopefully for future business. If you look at our improved bookings, has obviously increased our backlog. So we, as a company, operate on what we call an eighteen-month backlog, which means that for the next eighteen months, the numbers that we publish are fully backed by purchase order and customer requirements. So our awards is a different number. So we have, our backlog has increased from $86 million to about $105 million, which represents about 22% increase in the last two years.
We're bringing in more than we're selling. That's a good problem to have. What that's gonna do is it's gonna secure the next eighteen months to firm fixed orders. If I look at a fully contract value, the contracts that we have in-house that go out three, five, and beyond the 18 months, we're around $280 million. Currently, we have roughly $250 million out with proposals waiting on customers' decisions, obviously. Some are military, some are commercial. The company does not expect to get all these. We don't expect to win $250 million worth of business, but we do expect to get our share of this, which would significantly move the needle for us.
Further, we're now breaking ground on some new initiatives which, being predominantly military, we haven't done anything commercial. The last time we tried doing something commercial was in January of twenty twenty, and commercial industries just fell through the floor with the onset of COVID. It's coming back now. Boeing has its problems, we know that. Boeing is not the only client in the world. Our exposure to Boeing right now is pretty much zero, but there is room to grow in aerospace, in the commercial. There's also room to grow in future lift. Sikorsky lost the Black Hawk follow-on to Bell. We pursued Bell. We got a vendor number. We're gonna be in that mix for the V-280, which is the dual prop. Hypersonic drones, you're hearing about them all the time now. They're top secret.
God knows what's involved with them. We're working on some projects in the shop that we don't even know what it's for. They give us a print, they say, "Make it, and don't ask any questions," and we're doing that. Urban mobility. We believe that the future is gonna be ripe with electric. Just like electric vehicles are starting to catch on, electric air mobility is gonna catch on in the next couple of years, and we're talking with a couple companies that are at the forefront of that. Operating income is our primary measure of performance. In 2021 , coming out of COVID, and in 2022 and 2023, with the transition of clientele, new customers coming in, old customers coming out, it's been somewhat variable. We know that.
But our preliminary results for the nine months really show the curve trending above the baseline, and we expect that curve to continue. Preliminary reports, we have not published our third quarter, so I gotta be somewhat discreet. Preliminary reports for the three and nine months, you know, in comparison to 2023, in the third quarter, we had sales just over $12.5 million. Gross profit and margin was definitely improved significantly. Operating expenses have been well controlled. Operating loss was reduced dramatically, and EBITDA improved. For the nine months, sales increased about $2 million from 2023. The gross profit and margin improved in comparison. Operating expense continues to be well-maintained, and their operating loss reverted to a profit, and EBITDA has significantly improved over 2023.
So right now, the stock, I just looked at it before, is trading around $5.92. We feel that's a very attractive price for our stock. You know, we took a cross, a cross-section of 10 similar companies to us in the aerospace market, and what we've deducted from that is they're trading at about 14.2x EBITDA. You know, as of 10/02/2024 , this data is only a couple weeks old. If you look in comparison, Air Industries is trading at about an 8.9x factor. So that is, that is an enormous discount for what we should do. If we extrapolate the curve from where we are to what we even at. Forget about fourteen point two, somewhere lower, we should be trading around $9. That is, that is our gut feeling.
This represents a nearly 60% increase or a bargain from where we are right now. This is public information, come off RBC Capital Markets. So what are the key takeaways? You know, the company is successfully executing on its strategic plan. We are laser-focused on the three pillars of growth initiatives. We're gonna continue to expand our current portfolio, we're gonna continue to gain new customers, and we're gonna pursue aggressively the aftermarket, which has better margins. We made strategic investments, and we've retained our workforce through all this turmoil of COVID, so that we are ready to expand our business as the orders come in. And more than anything else, we're financially our financial performance is definitely driving shareholder value, and that's the focus for the company.
So I talk a lot, but what supports what I just finished saying? If you look at the industry in general, the industry, with, you know, $51.5 million in 2023, we have a lot of room to grow. The market share right now for the precision high machine components that we produce is about $6 billion. First of all, there's about $100 billion to draw from. Of that $100 billion, we feel that $6 billion fits our model, fits what we do best. We foresee that growing to about almost $11 billion in the next three to five years. You know, being in the range of $50million-$60 million, we see there being a lot of runway for us to win some more business and really filling some voids.
Those, the numbers I just gave you came in from doing a market research with a third party, outside consulting firm, and we're gonna concentrate near term, which we're doing right now, on expanding the current portfolio with current customers. We are targeting the DLA. You know, that's a now initiative. Target legacy aircraft. There's a lot of new planes coming on board. Everybody wants to be on the F-35, everybody wants to be on the 737, although they're having issues, you know, Boeing's having issues. The legacy programs are being forgotten. There's a lot of good money into that, and they're gonna be around for a lot longer than any of us think. Constraint markets. Right now, the U.S. can't build enough missiles.
They just can't build missiles. It's an initiative that we're gonna pursue. There's that, and business jets. Since the onset of COVID, anybody that has money has been traveling privately. That business has really taken off, and quite frankly, we don't need new equipment. We don't need any additional know-how. We have the people, we have the equipment to get into this business, and we're pursuing customers like the smaller Embraers, Gulfstream, and stuff of that nature, to be able to do some of that work. So in summary, on why to buy stock, our operating results are improving. Our future is supported by a growing backlog. The growth in both legacy and new customers is really coming to fruition, and we're on some of the country's absolutely must-have programs.
You know, we are on all the platforms that the U.S. flies. You know, we can't do without that. We think that the share price is stabilized and it's really 50% higher than it was a few months back. If you look at year to date 2024, our stock is 98% higher than where it was in January. So with that, I will take questions if anybody has any questions.
Is that replacement or is that on for new jets?
So the question was on business jets, is that replacement or is it for new jets? And the answer is both. So there is an exorbitant amount of need for MRO, which is repair and overhaul, and we're also trying to get into the production line, which would mean you know, new landing gear. If we can make the new landing gear, we can certainly do the repairs. So the repairs will come along for the ride. So yes.
You have the engineering base to do that?
Yes. We do. So there's two questions here, so I'll answer the first one. We're not a design house per se, so we don't have our own products that we sell to the market. You know, we piggyback off an OEM, an original manufacturer, so we build to their designs, but we have design capabilities. So when instead of designing a new landing gear, a lot of times we suggest improvements to their existing parts, either to make them better, either to make them cheaper, or, you know, just to make them economical. So yes. That's for, yeah, for the electric mobility. We're getting...
We're working on a partnership with a house that's gonna make the material, you know, a forge house that makes the material, and we would do the final design in their concept.
You are catering to top-tier players, and there are Tier 1, Tier 2, three tiers. What's the timeline like? Does that slow us down from getting top-line revenues for you guys? How should we look at that?
Our business, again, is run on an eighteen-month backlog. Our backlog is improving, which means they're firm orders. Now I got to produce those orders. So if our backlog was declining, I would say there's a problem, because it takes time to get material. This is not a short lead time business. You know, it takes the client months, sometimes a year, to make a decision on something, and then once you get that order, it'll take anywhere between three to six months to a year to get material. So there is time to prepare for it. And as I said earlier, we did not affect our workforce during COVID. We decided to make the investment because we don't have just regular Joes on our payroll. They're all craftsmen, you know, and I can't replace these guys. They are...
It's easy to buy a $2 million piece of equipment, but if you don't have that guy that can run that $2 million piece of equipment, you got junk. We protected the workforce through bad times because we could see the ramp up coming. We have a very mild union in our New York facility, no union in Connecticut, and it's very mild. It's almost nonexistent, so.
My last question is, how should Wall Street recognize that the management is executing on its plan, and you're having success? What should be the drivers that we should look?
I think gross profit, EBITDA, an increasing backlog for our business, because again, that's if we don't have the backlog secured now, we're not gonna have a good future. Our backlog is increasing, and as we increase, what happens is backlog turns into hours, hours turn into sales, sales turns into profit, and the more hours you can put into a shop. You know, we collectively added thirty-five thousand hours. In a division does a hundred and fifty thousand hours. We added 35,000 hours with new equipment. We're gonna fill that. So we've got we're ready for it. We're ready for the ramp up. Any more questions?
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We are gonna venture into going to some commercial aerospace. Right now, our commercial exposure is zero, so we are not gonna be a 90% Boeing house ever, but is it safe to be a 10% Boeing house? I, I think it is, especially for the product that we make. Thank you for your questions. Thank you for your time. Okay.