Okay, so good morning, and welcome to the Sidoti Virtual Small Cap Conference, and thank you for joining us today. I'm Anja Soderstrom, a Senior Equity Analyst here at Sidoti. And as I mentioned, next up we have Benchmark Electronics, ticker BHE. And with me today, I have the incoming CEO, David Moezidis, and I also have the CFO, Bryan Schumaker. This is going to be conducted as a fireside chat, and we encourage the audience to chime in with their own questions, and you can do so in the Q&A function at the bottom of your screen. So with that, I'll wish you welcome, David and Bryan. So first, maybe David, since you kind of new in your role here or incoming role as CEO, maybe you can do a brief introduction of yourself and also talk about the CEO transition and the timing of it.
Sure, sure. Happy to. Good morning, everyone. I am David Moezidis. A little bit about my background: I joined Benchmark about two years and two months ago, to be exact, and I joined Benchmark after a 25-year career at Flex or Flextronics to some, and at Flex, I ran a number of different businesses, and I left Flex as the president of the lifestyle business after being responsible for their Industrial and Energy business for about an eight-year period. With regards to the timeline here around transitions, so Jeff Benck announced his retirement a couple of weeks ago, and that will take effect at the end of March, and Jeff is going to remain an advisor to me, the board, the leadership team for an additional year thereafter, and that's, I think, pretty much covers it.
That seems like it's going to be a very seamless transition then with a lot of overlapping time. So that shouldn't miss a beat there.
Yeah.
So welcome on board then as a CEO eventually, I mean, incoming CEO for now. And if you could just talk about the growth outlook by sector and the demand drivers for each sector that you touch on with Benchmark.
Sure, sure. So with regards to growth, we're really optimistic around the future for us. We made a pretty significant commercial organization go-to-market formation pivot a couple of years ago, and we've been seeing the benefits of that pivot quarter over quarter with regards to our bookings performance. In July, I had reported in the earnings call that we had a multi-year record high in our bookings, and we're really, really proud of that. One of the areas of focus for us has been focus on our base customers and grow the base as it's just a path of least resistance to be able to take care of our existing customers. So we have tripled down, not just doubled down, but tripled down on that effort in the past two years, and it's really been benefiting us on that front.
What we also did was we created a more dedicated business development organization to focus on those premier brands, those premier logos, and the premier products that really allows us to go after the things that are not, if you will, in kind of being fought with regards to margin challenges or competitive challenges as it relates to the aggressiveness. We try to stay above that and focus on areas that's going to be margin accretive to us and really not dilute us in those particular opportunities. When you start thinking about our various sectors, just if I cover sector to sector, I'll start with Medical. I mentioned in July that we feel Medical has turned a corner on two fronts.
One is coming out of COVID. We started seeing that our customers had a lot of inventory in the channel, and those inventories are clearing themselves up. And we felt in July, as we came out in July, for the most part, that's behind us. So super encouraged in that. And we also have one incremental business in that space, and one of them that I mentioned was a competitive takeaway, and it was. I referred to the terminology as a lift and shift. And when you do that in Medical and the other sector is A&D, the time to revenue is a lot quicker. So we'll be able to see that benefit much quicker than when you typically went in A&D or Medical. It could be a two to three-year story. So those lift and shifts, that's why I emphasized on it.
Coming out of Medical, going into ACC, that's our Advanced Computing and Communications sector. That one has been kind of bumping along, but I reported to all of our investment and analyst communities a couple of meaningful wins in relation to AI, and we were very excited by that, and we believe starting in Q4, we'll start delivering quarter over quarter and again, year over year type of growth performances in that space as we have to go through ramping these customers, and we're in the middle of ramping both of the ones that I mentioned in July. A&D is an area that's been performing really well during the past couple of years. While the other areas were dealing with the COVID overhang with the inventory challenges that I shared about, A&D wasn't.
And so we've seen really great growth in A&D, and we continue to win in A&D, and we feel that we're in a pretty good position as it comes to serving our customers in commercial air as well as serving our customers in the defense space. These are companies, U.S. companies and Western European companies for the most part. Shifting to Industrial, Industrial very similar to Medical. We feel like Industrial has stabilized, showing signs of also growth. Industrial is an area that we've really focused on in the last couple of years. One has to do with my background. So many years in Industrial, I felt like this is an area that we can invest in and go after certain logos that were not part of the portfolio, and we doubled down on that. And we're excited with some of the results of Industrial.
This was another area that I commented on in the call that we did a competitive takeaway, a pretty meaningful opportunity that was also another lift and shift that we picked up a pretty sizable piece of business from Mexico and moved it to our Thailand facility in Southeast Asia. Really proud of that. This was a base customer that we have been executing and performing for them for a number of years. So this was just a share of wallet expansion with regards to this particular customer. That is really beneficial because it helps the margins, it helps the absorption of the factory, et cetera, and it creates value for our customer. The last one, I'll kind of save the best for last, and that's the Semi-Cap equipment sector.
Semi, as most everyone on the call perhaps knows, has gone through a bit of a slowdown in the last couple of years, and a lot of companies have been trying to judge when is this going to turn, when is this going to turn. One thing that we focused on is continue to work hard with our customers and grab market share expansion from them. So even with the downturn, we outperformed the market. And so we're very pleased by that. We continue to invest in vertical capabilities like precision machining. These are areas that are a different margin profile, a different margin pool, and we feel that we have really a great competitive advantage when it comes to Semi. Now, back to when is it going to turn, that's a question that there's many different opinions on it.
The feeling was it was going to turn in early 2025, then people started saying second half 2025. Now we're hearing kind of mixed views of it could be early 2026 or second half 2026, so that was the same narratives that we heard in 2024, but what I can say is when it turns, we're in a great position.
So I mean, yeah, you've been gaining market share, right? And you mentioned it's also higher margins than the overall average margin, right?
Correct.
And in terms of the growth, you said you're doubling down or tripled down on growing existing customers. So how should we think then about adding new logos?
Yeah, so it's a great question. What we've done is in the formation change that we started and implemented two years ago. So this is not a new journey. This is a journey we've been on for over two years now. What we did was we grew our account management organization to make sure that we have more customer focus, better customer focus, and attention and attentiveness to them. So that's on the base expansion. And what we did on the new logo front is we built out a dedicated business development organization in the U.S. as well as in Western Europe to really focus on the right targets that fit our portfolio strategy and our go-to-market strategy. So we're not out there chasing every shiny object. We're not out there chasing low-margin consumer products, things like that. That's not who we are.
We're really very focused on the sectors that I just described to everyone, and that's what we're going to continue to do. So we have a very sophisticated coverage model, and our dedicated business development team focuses very much on that. And that coverage model has a number of different dynamics to it, right? The health of the company and the TAM available in that company. Does it fit our profile? And as we check those boxes off, that's where we say, "Okay, that's the company we want to go after." And we go and we invest a lot of time. We bring forward different solutions that we have as a company. So it's not just manufacturing. We have vertical capabilities around precision machining, as I described.
I really believe we have one of the best engineering organizations in the industry, and we leverage our engineering organization as a part of our go-to-market strategy to win. And that has worked effectively for us.
Thank you. And just back to the semis, what kind of lead times do you have there? And when that starts picking up, will there be a lag for you or how imminent will that be in terms of your revenue growth?
Lead times vary by the different wins, right? The lift and shift lead times are generally quicker. Lift and shift lead times, I would just say nine to 12 months max are the typical lift and shifts. When you start talking about more of the classic, and these vary on industries as well, you've won the business, you've buttoned up the contract, things like that. Those are more like maybe 12 to 15 months time horizon, maybe 12 to 18 months in certain cases. And then in Medical and A&D, you may see some longer horizons because of the regulatory elements and those longer government contracts and such. Those longer horizons in some of those cases could be two to three years type of a horizon. We try to be really balanced with what we go after.
So we're not going to go heavy in one and then have to sit here and wait for two to three years. So our go-to-market strategy is to focus on every sector. We have vice presidents leading every sector. So they're running their businesses focused on delivering the performance that their business needs to perform for us to be able to perform as an enterprise to our shareholders.
Okay. And you mentioned you want two programs that were lift and shift. Were they coming from in-house production or from a competitor? And have you seen any changes to the competitive landscape at all recently?
Yeah. Yeah. So there's three dynamics on the lift and shift. Two of them were competitive takeaways. One of them was a geographic shift where we basically are picking up business from Mexico and moving it to Southeast Asia. One of them was in the same geo shift and lift and shift. And that was related to quality challenges by the competitor. And we brought in some innovative automation ideas that allowed us to differentiate ourselves. So these are not opportunities that we're coming in and trying to undercut price and be reckless and things like that to win the share. We're being very disciplined and thoughtful. And that's why I wanted to bring up the automation example. So you bring automation, you improve the cost of poor quality for the customer.
And that in itself creates value and allowed us to do that particular lift and shift in the geo. The third example I'll share with you, you said in-house. We have companies and customers that go and do M&A from time to time. And the opportunity that availed itself was a longer time horizon customer that we've been really serving them well in multiple geographies. And this customer went and did an M&A deal in Japan. And the CEO called me and said, "David, can you help us? We want to move this business from Japan to your Thailand facility." And obviously, we had great relationships and we assembled a team and we have successfully made that transition and moved that business over. And we alluded to it on a couple of our quarterly calls that we wanted, that we're working on the ramp.
Right now we're looking to have most of that ramp completed in Q4.
Okay. Can you just also speak to some of your main competitors and if there's been any sort of new players coming in at all and is there any room for consolidation in the industry?
So we have competitors in various categories. So as the industry goes, the industry refers to companies like us as Tier 1 electronic manufacturing suppliers. And in that Tier 1 arena, you have the likes of Jabil, Flex, Celestica, Sanmina, et cetera, just to name a few. So you could certainly say we compete with each of them in various different ways. There are certain players that don't participate in A&D, so we don't compete with that particular player in A&D, but then there may be somebody else that competes in A&D with us and will compete there. So there isn't one specific competitor out there that I would say, "This is the one that we see and it's only this one in the Tier 1." But fortunately, we've been winning our unfair share.
I would tell you this, in the last eight quarters, we've continued to increase our bookings quarter over quarter. Again, I think I mentioned that as we reported in July, we had a multi-year record as it relates to our booking. We're winning out there. We're winning in the marketplace. We're really proud of that. That's the Tier 1s. Then you have kind of a longer tail of Tier 2s and Tier 3s and regional players here and there that we may run across them from time to time, but for the most part, differentiating ourselves from those, given our geographic footprint, given our engineering horsepower and our overall capabilities as it relates to vertical capabilities and such, we're able to easily differentiate when it comes to those Tier 2, Tier 3 players.
And some of those Tier 3 players do well because of a very unique proximity to the client. They may have a factory in South Dakota and that company is in South Dakota and just wants to deal with somebody down the street. So I think then that's more of the Tier 3, Tier players that enjoy those types of relationships.
Okay. Thank you. And in terms of tariffs, can you just speak to the impact on your business, what you're seeing there?
So we've indicated, and I'll let Bryan kind of talk to the tariffs. There's kind of two elements of it. I'll talk to the fact that when we have 20 manufacturing sites in the various geographies, we're very well positioned to solve problems for our customers. So if there's a customer that has a tariff impact, comes to us, we'll work with them, or we proactively see something, we'll go to them and say, "Hey, we've spotted this. Let's talk about how we can get you to Mexico because you could leverage USMCA exemptions and be able to avoid maybe certain tariff implications," et cetera. So we're being proactive in the areas that we see something clearly glaring out at us. And then there are times that customers see something and they may be somewhere that they'll come to us from that.
I wanted to address it from where we're in a great position to solve problems. And this is, again, same thing that goes back to some of the Tier 3, Tier 4s. They don't have that footprint that we have. They don't have the ability to move around. And we reported that we opened up a brand new world-class facility in Guadalajara, Mexico that really positions us well to have the necessary footprint to address that. I'll pass it to Bryan, and Bryan will talk about kind of some of the financials as it relates to tariffs.
Yeah. So if you think of the financial impact, I mean, we pass tariffs on to our customers. So a few things. That's only when we incur them. Other ones, our customers are responsible for importing the goods that we produce. So we may not even see that. But if we are responsible for importing, that is a pass-through to our customers. Now, what I will say, it impacts margin because it hits the top line and it's a recovery through cost of sales. But for the most part, it really has no impact on us from a financial standpoint other than grossing up slightly.
Okay. Thank you. And can you also touch on your exposure to the hyperscalers and AI and what's the potential is there for you?
So we're not playing with the hyperscalers as it relates to direct engagements. We have really focused on there's a broader ecosystem as it relates to AI. So it's not about just you have a relationship with those three guys or those four guys and that's it. So instead, we've stepped back and said, "What can we do in this area? What capability set do we have?" And we're leveraging those capabilities. We've shared that we have phenomenal liquid cooling capabilities that we're able to bring to our customers to create value. I mentioned we won a couple of, I would say, meaningful AI opportunities with significant companies that are part of the ecosystem, important parts of the ecosystem, and they're serving their end customers and we're helping them deliver those necessary solutions. So it's not all about the hyperscalers necessarily to participate.
By the way, we participate in AI as it relates to our semiconductor capital equipment companies as well. So we're involved in the ecosystem in a couple of different ways. Semiconductor is one that's been there for a while. And then these new reported wins that we shared in the last couple of months are much more direct in our Advanced Computing and Communications. And just to give some more color on us being credible, we have built some of the fastest supercomputers in the world. So this is not a space that we don't know what we're doing. We don't know how to find our way around it. And we actually we shared a release on building some products a few months ago with Intel and so on and so forth that you can certainly look up. So this is a space that we're good.
We know what we're good at. We have the capability set. We have the right capability set as it relates to cooling. And we're leveraging it. And by the way, that capacity set that I'm talking about is in the U.S. and having that made in the U.S.A., it's valuable to some of these players and they're taking advantage of it.
Okay. Thank you. And can you also talk about the main drivers for your margin improvement over the past couple of years? And as we see revenue growth come back to more normalized levels, hopefully, how could that impact the margins?
Yeah. So if you look at our overall portfolio and what we've expanded with Semicap and some of the other focus that we've had on more complex and continue to drive that rather than not just doing the commodity-type products and really focusing on how do we improve the top line and the gross margin line on that front. As you talk about revenue and what we see into the future, we feel that we are well positioned with our current footprint around the U.S. and internationally to help us scale with that footprint and then with SG&A basically being able to leverage that and contribute to the bottom line.
On a couple of things, as we get these wins, we're able to fill up our factories better optimization on that front on the margin line, and then with our SG&A being able to really drive improvements and efficiencies there that improve to the bottom line. So.
How much revenue could you support with your current footprint?
We wouldn't get into specifics. Now, we talked about Mexico and the expansion down there with the new Guadalajara facility. We announced earlier in the year about Penang 4, a new facility for Semicap, so we have a good footprint and capacity around the globe and basically and in the US to expand, so we do have room to expand in our current footprint.
Okay. Thank you. And a common theme among you and your peers through COVID and as we came out of COVID was inventory build-up and supply chain challenges. Where do we stand with that now?
Yeah. We've done a great job to drive our cash flow and working the conversion cycle down. I mean, this last quarter, we drove it down six days. Working towards the five to five and a half turns is where we'd like to get to on the inventory side, so we've had a lot of focus throughout the team and organization. Last 12 months was about $80 million of free cash flow. Q2, we were impacted slightly due to some one-time tax payments, but then going forward, moving back into free cash flow positive, so we feel good about that and a lot of that's going to come from continuing to drive inventory days.
Okay. And with the improved cash flow and balance sheet, what are your capital allocations priorities going forward?
Yeah. We continue to look at paying the dividend first. I mean, that's one of the priorities. We've done stock buybacks the last few quarters that we've announced to offset some of the dilution. And we've paid down debt. And then, I mean, strategically, I mean, we have a strong balance sheet, so we'll continue to look at acquisitions if they make sense. We haven't done any for a while. I mean, it's got to be the right one. And as David kind of alluded to, the growth internally and the cost to do that. And we'll probably invest more in some of the capital if we need to for the capital investments to help grow some of the current logos that we're winning. And that's where we see that allocation going.
To the extent you would be doing M&A, what kind of deals would it be?
Ideally, tuck-in. I mean, we kind of talked about our footprint. We have capacity. We like where we're at around the globe. So we're very particular on where we want to invest. I mean, it has to make sense strategically and basically with a customer base and partnering with them. So we're not looking to grow the top line just to grow it. I mean, we've talked about the margins and continue to improve those. And we want to make sure any acquisition would contribute to that improvement.
Okay. Thank you. And to the extent anyone in the audience have any question you would like to throw in, you have some time now. Otherwise, I want to ask you, David, what drew you to Benchmark and what are your thoughts coming in as the CEO and for the future Benchmark? And are there any major what makes you excited for the future Benchmark?
Yeah. So what drew me into Benchmark 26 months ago was it was a company that I've always paid attention to over the course of the two and a half decades that I was at Flex, and really, when the opportunity availed itself, Jeff Benck had reached out to me and said, "Hey, would you consider coming over?" We had some meetings and we talked about it, and I felt like, "Wow, this company is really poised to explode," right, to get out of kind of this area that it's been in in the last couple of decades, and I felt that there's a great opportunity for me. I wanted to accept the challenge. I had done pretty much everything you can imagine at Flex at that time, and I made the decision to leave Flex and come to Benchmark and really help the company grow.
By the way, before I made my decision, I had an opportunity to spend some time with the various leaders inside the company. I really felt that Jeff has assembled a great leadership team, has assembled a great team, has really established a great culture. Having those things in place is just going to make it easier for us to really drive the change that we've started, right? This is not a change that I'm going to talk to you about and say, "Well, when I'm the CEO in a few months, I'm going to drive this change." This journey started two years ago. Really, it's about what can you do now? It's continue the momentum, continue to stay in the course. I've shared this as folks have asked me.
My intention is to work with Brian and the rest of the leadership team to try to really accelerate that, so accelerate the strategies, accelerate the path. There's nothing broken about the company. It's really more about build on this phenomenal company that has this great foundation.
Okay. Well, we'll look forward to follow your journey there. And we're definitely kind of out of time. So I want to thank everyone who tuned in and David and Bryan and Benchmark for participating today. And I'm going to hand it over to you, David, for some closing remarks. I know you have a pretty full one-on-one schedule, but if anyone would like to catch up with management outside of this presentation, you can reach out to us or to the company directly, and I'm sure they will make themselves available for you. And with that, I'll hand it over to you, David.
Okay. Well, thank you very much, everyone. And Anja, thank you very much for hosting us today. We certainly appreciate it. And as you can tell, we're very enthusiastic about our future. And I'm super excited in what's in front of us. And we've got the right talent. We've got the right leadership team. And as I've shared, we're going to build on it. And we're going to grow Benchmark and continue to expand the company. So I appreciate it.
Great. Thank you. Thank you, everyone.
Thanks.