All righty, we can go ahead and get started. Up next, we have inTEST Corp, trading on the New York Stock Exchange under symbol INTT. On behalf of the company, we have Duncan Gilmour, CFO, and Nick Grant, CEO. I'm gonna hand it over to Nick.
Thank you, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate your interest in inTEST Corporation. I'm Nick Grant, President and CEO, been with the company now four years. The business itself is over 40 years since the early 1980s in existence there, but I was brought in to really take this business, which was a small public company, sub $55 million, to the next level, and really pleased with the progress that we've made over the last four years and the journey that we're on, which I'm looking forward to sharing with you today. We will touch on some forward-looking statements and non-GAAP measures, so we do have a number of references, disclaimers out there that you can see on this material, as well as on our website. As I mentioned, unlocking the potential of inTEST.
With me today is Duncan Gilmour, who's our Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer, and I brought Duncan in about six, eight months after I joined, really to bring the right talent into the organization. We built the team up. We're excited about the team we have in place today, but we're driving towards a vision of being the supplier of choice for innovative test and Process Technologies solutions, making great strides. We are an engineered solutions company. We are not a commodity products that are listed on websites for sale. We work with our customers, solve their tough challenges with test and process solutions there. We've restructured the company in 2022 around three technology divisions: Process Technologies, Environmental Technologies, and Electronic Test.
The transformation we've been driving is really moving this business, which was predominantly back-end semi test. When I took over the company, it was over 2/3 of the business coming from the space of this market, and we've diversified it outside through organic investment as well as inorganic activity to position our businesses in the right markets with strong secular tailwinds, which I'll touch on in a minute. We've been growing our available markets, SAMs markets out there. I believe we got a couple billion-dollar market that we're playing in today, so we got plenty of room to grow. I touched on the organization here.
Really, have rebuilt the entire leadership team, and changing this culture at inTEST was a key part of my efforts over the last four years, moving it from a more conservative, though public, somewhat privately run, if you will, with the owner still tightly controlling the business, to driving this, you know, performance-driven, results-driven business and seeing some great success. Part of our strategy is driving M&A to expand our portfolio of solutions for customers, and we've made some nice progress there. When I took over, we were. It wasn't like we started at zero. We had a solid business and good customer base.
You can see some of the blue-chip customers there and the markets working on, although semi was, as I mentioned, 2/3 of the business back in 2020. The business ended last year about $123 million in revenue, and 40% of it going of our products ending up in the Americas, 30% in Asia, and the balance in Europe there, so we are a global organization, so the team and I have been driving really a five-point strategy for growth and something we launched at the beginning of 2020. Nothing revolutionary here other than, you know, this conservative business was not doing the right things to drive global and market expansion.
Driving innovation was very customer specific on product, this application, and not thinking about market specific driven products, products that we could sell to multiple customers rather than one-off. So we've been driving robust new product development roadmaps, focusing on staying ahead of the competition. We've upped our games on service and support, trying to ensure we have customers for life here. More work to be done there, but making some progress. And then I touched on talent and culture as a key area, driving this accountability and results-driven business organization.
Our fifth part of strategy here is M&A, finding the right businesses that allow us to expand our markets, our customer base, drive diversification, and focusing still on engineered solutions that complement our existing businesses. Pleased to announce that at the end of March, we acquired a company called Alfamation, the latest of the deals that we've completed since joining here. This is a test company headquartered in Milan, Italy. They are a automotive test equipment supplier focusing on electronic dashboard, onboard computing systems, lighting systems on vehicles. Doesn't matter if it's combustion, hybrid, electric, it's all the electronics going into the vehicles that they're able to test.
They've been on a nice growth path here for the last few years, and we look to continue to expand that business, helping them globally penetrate some accounts, leveraging you know our broader footprint out there. But they bring a lot of test automation capabilities out there, which complements our other businesses as well. So fits very nicely with our five-point strategy. Great strategic fit, geographic expansion, the culture aligns extremely well, engineered solutions, and bringing some great talent into the organizations. We're really excited to have Alfamation part of inTEST. They were a nice driver for us in Q2. I mentioned the markets we play in.
Yeah, you can see here, just over $2 billion that we estimate, and really, because of our three divisions, we slice and dice it by the different technologies that we play in out there. So we've got some market-leading positions in some, but plenty of room to grow in many of the other markets out there. A little bit about the diversification efforts we've made over the last four years. You can see we finished 2021 at about two-thirds of our business in the semi space, and over time, through acquisitions, through investments in organic growth, we've been able to diversify this our semi exposure and grow our auto EV exposure, grow our industrials tech business out there, added Security and Life Sciences into the business.
So excited to see the progress, and we believe these markets will position us well for future growth with the right technology. A little deeper dive in each of the three divisions. Electronic Test is where the heritage of the company resides. It sits in here with products that are testing, that are making testers and handlers work together, testers and probers, as these interface solutions that optimize the customer's production lines out there. We also automate their changeover of these production lines. We are predominantly an analog mixed signal because they change over the chip lines that they're producing more frequently than logic or memory out there.
And then through acquisitions, we added test Electronic Test capabilities around PCB and circuit board testing, as well as battery test solutions, and then most recently, with Alfamation, the Electronic Testing and vehicles as part of this division here. Excited to have the various solutions serving the nice, attractive markets here for Electronic Test. Shifting to Environmental Technologies. Today, this is very much focused around our thermal solutions. We make temperature chambers that are very tightly controlled, able to test assemblies, boards, chips, you name it, over a wide temperature range, -1 20 up to 300, can get even higher in both directions there.
We also have process chillers, controlling the manufacturing of various products, where thermal is needed in order to ensure the right product is manufactured. And then we acquired a product line in the biomedical cold storage space, where with ultra-low temperature freezers and refrigerators as expanding our thermal knowledge and know-how. One of the focus areas that we have here is to move this beyond thermal into other test technologies like humidity testing, altitude testing, vibration, acoustic, et cetera. So that's part of our M&A strategy going forward. And then process technologies is around two core technologies today.
This is induction heating, a company that the business acquired in 2017 before Duncan and I joined, and these induction heating solutions are used anywhere, joining of materials, welding, brazing, you know, slip fit, you name it. Anywhere there, you know, a gas furnace or a welder is being used, we can do it with induction heating, a much greener solution and much more tightly controlled out there. So we're having some good success there. And then we acquired a business around image capture, image solution, to kind of feed into our automation solutions there around being everything's being visually viewed, whether where it's at in the process or some embedded cameras into solutions like life science applications, dental, ophthalmic, robotic surgery, you name it.
So, great technologies and nice markets. And as I mentioned, M&A is one of our core strategies, and it's something we have been driving as a core competency here at inTEST. I've done it throughout my career over large multinational companies and excited with the progress we're making here. And touched on focus areas for environmental tests that we're looking to do, and we continue to look to broaden our Electronic Test capabilities, as well as process technologies to better serve our customers in our markets. So with that, let me turn it over to Duncan to walk you through the financials, and then we'll open it up at the end for some questions. Duncan?
Thanks, Nick. Great to be here today with everyone here in Chicago. So financials. I'm gonna start talk a little bit about orders. Just gonna run through orders, revenue, you know, go through the soup to nuts through our financials here. From an orders perspective, in Q2, most recent quarter, our orders were down 17% compared with Q2 of the prior year. One of the big elements of our business where we have seen some softness recently is in the semiconductor markets. So, you know, just under $4 million of that decline coming from semi. And we've also seen some softness in, you know, the general industrial space, you know, as well. On a sequential basis, though, we did see an increase, you know, up just over 15%. The recent acquisition that Nick talked about, Alfamation, you know, did help.
It contributed about $3.2 million in order activity, $1.8 million in Q1, so a little bit of a sequential quarter benefit there from the acquisition. We also inherited a fairly significant backlog with Alfamation, just over $20 million. End of March, you know, $55 million or so of backlog. At the end of Q2, sitting on just under $48 million of total backlog. From a revenue perspective, you know, in Q2, we did see record revenue of $34 million. That was up $1.4 million year over year. There was a significant contribution in there from the new acquisition, Alfamation. Just under $10 million of the revenue did come from Alfamation, and that drove you from a market sector perspective, our auto EV numbers were up, really driven by those Alfamation revenues.
One of the big components, our semi business, as I said, has been a bit softer over the last few quarters, so we did see a just under $9 million revenue decline, you know, in semi. Life Sciences, you know, was up a little bit. There is also some Life Sciences revenue that came across with Alfamation. As Nick has talked about, we can clearly see there in Q2 some of the impacts or benefits of diversification, keeping that revenue number kind of ticking over, even though we have seen a significant hit in, you know, our semiconductor business, which has historically been a large component of our overall consolidated business. You know, sequentially, I did talk $34 million record revenue number, so revenue up just over $4 million on a sequential basis.
The acquisition, again, you know, driving a good portion of that. As we look at how that translates into gross profit and margin, so from a margin percentage standpoint, 40.6%, certainly a lower number. Product mix, very different. Nice to see the $9.7 million contribution from the acquisition. The margins there are a little bit lower than some of the rest of our business, so, you know, there is an unfavorable product mix element there, and again, our semi business being lower, traditionally, some higher margins in certainly our back-end semi test business, the impact of that, seeing that in that margin percentage.
Year over year, you know, a big, big drop there, margin percentage, really significant mix shift as we look at where we were in Q2, you know, of last year versus Q2 of this year. Again, the semi business being one of the bigger drivers. Operating expenses. Operating expenses are up in absolute terms, but we had a full quarter of the acquisition buried in here. So although Q2 operating expenses were up $1.8 million, $2.5 million of that is really coming through from the acquisition. Taking that out of the equation, we did see a reduction in our operating expenses.
You know, we have been doing some modest things to right size and balance the business, given the softness that we've seen in semi, and we'll continue to, you know, do that as we look forward. Same thing sequentially, operating expenses up just under $1 million. However, there's $2 million of incremental expenses coming from the acquisition. So really on a pure apples-for-apples basis, we are seeing a reduction in things like selling expenses as well as some corporate development expenses as we tighten the reins a little bit, given the softness that we've been seeing. From an overall profitability standpoint, top line growing because of the impact of the acquisition. Certainly seeing softness in parts of the business as we've talked about, and we do see that in terms of the profitability metrics.
We did $0.02 on a GAAP basis for Q2, $0.08 adjusted. The only adjustment, our adjusted GAAP metric just adds back the impact of intangible amortization, is the only difference between GAAP EPS and Adjusted EPS. Obviously, things like EBITDA margins, EBITDA dollars, we see that similar dynamic in terms of a little bit kind of softer here, you know, Q1 and Q2, versus some strong compares in Q2 of 2023, when the semi business was really kind of ticking over very, very nicely. Capital structure, we ended Q2 with just over $20 million of cash, just over $20 million of debt, so pretty kind of neutral on a net cash/ net debt basis. We continue to pay down debt.
Just over $1 million or so a quarter has been the run rate over the past number of quarters. We, you know, did expand recently our acquisition funding facility with our banking partner. We have $13 million available to us for, you know, for acquisitions under that funding facility. We also have about $10 million in working capital revolver that's available to us, so a fair amount of borrowing capacity. We wouldn't want to over-leverage though. Our leverage ratio, when we think about that in terms of debt versus trailing 12-month EBITDA, we are just over 2, 2.1. Don't want to extend ourselves more than, say, 2.5. So our borrowing capacity a little bit lower, as we've seen a little bit of a softer period here over the last couple of quarters.
Our capital allocation priorities, I mean, the main objective is to grow the business. So we generally want to focus on maintaining our cash for M&A and driving organic and inorganic growth. However, as opportunities present itself, we, you know, we would think and look about share repurchase activity and things like that. But the main priority for the business is to drive growth and reinvest our money on that basis. When it comes to guidance, looking forwards, our most recent guidance, which I guess on our last earnings call, early April, we see Q3 as fundamentally similar to Q2. You know, revenue maybe being a little bit lower. The Alfamation revenues in Q3 and Q2 were particularly high at the 97%. Most of the rest of the business, we see a very similar quarter.
Gross margin, we do see an improvement, as our mix will certainly improve. semi does come back a little bit. Overall, though, really a very similar quarter to what we saw in Q2, is what we see for kind of Q3. That really recalibrates our full year. We recalibrated our full year top line, $128 million-$133 million. You know, gross margins in that 42%-43% range. Operating expenses, as kind of stated, you know, as sort of stated there. So the big change was we did see that softness on the top line, did lead to us guiding down a little bit for the, you know, for the full year. With that, I'll hand back to Nick. Thank you.
Thanks, Duncan. So as Duncan highlighted, you know, we are managing some headwinds in our markets right now, semi being the predominant headwind out there, but we do have good exposure to auto EV, and EV markets are a little soft as most folks should be aware, and just in general, the industrials markets is a little bit slower to see CapEx projects moving forward, but hopefully, with the declining interest rates, that changes out there, so but we do believe fundamentally, we're in the right markets long term here. semi is not going away anytime soon. It cycles, and but over time, the semi market continues to grow: new chips, new applications. You know, it'll be a great, a nice growth engine for us.
Auto EV also gonna be a nice driver for us going forward. So, excited about the work we're making to battle these headwinds here in these slow times and continue to grow the business. And, yeah, I mentioned the progress we're making at the organization around the teams, the culture, the strategy, and really believe we've got the right leaders in place to drive our business to where we wanna get it here. So with that, we got about 12 minutes, open it up for some Q&A. Yeah?
Yeah. Are you saying the front-end semi is... You also said that you're mostly on the back-end test?
Yep.
So is it a case of the thing, you have to wait till the front end starts to accelerate from the back end?
No, no, they're very disconnected, if you will, in some level there. Our back-end test really started to slow down in Q2 last year, at the end of Q2 last year. Our front end, which is driven by silicon carbide, gallium nitride, crystal growth chambers, as well as epitaxy applications, that more today driven by auto EV, which slowed down the beginning of this year. So the back-end semi's been down for a good four quarters, but starting to come back out. We're seeing that and hearing from customers.
So that trough is, you know, so far, we hit the trough and coming back out, whereas the front-end semi is just now kind of heading into the trough, as the demand for EVs and new cars, vehicles, and all that will come cycle back around probably in the 2025 timeframe, is where we're kind of projecting it. But so, but. So we'll see back in semi, which is predominantly 2/3 of our semi exposure is coming out of the trough and the front end, about 1/3 of our semi exposure kind of heading into the trough. Got us. No, they're actually agnostic. It doesn't matter if it's combustion, hybrid, or EV. So they do dashboards for all vehicles, testing, electronics testing, as well as onboard computing testing.
So, to them, it doesn't matter if it's, you know, an EV or not. But they also do some consumer electronics, which we look to grow more, as well as some life science applications with their test solutions as well.
To follow up one more question.
Yeah.
You had product outside of automation, but selling into the EV market prior?
Absolutely.
Okay.
Yeah. Yeah, we have all of our businesses, our battery testers that we have at Acculogic test electric vehicle batteries, our induction heating solutions are used in the production of vehicles, whether it's steering, brakes, you name it, systems out there and that. So yeah, we had the EV exposure that we showed on the chart before was all across our businesses there. Yeah?
So relative to the third quarter, revenues, anticipated to be less than what you were thinking a few months ago-
Yeah
... Is that because of the front end?
Yes
That's weaker, or is back end also weaker in Q2?
Well, it's a combination. Great question, 'cause when we put together the original forecast, it was dependent on the back end coming out of the trough at a faster pace than we're actually seeing it coming out of the trough. So it's a little bit of both. We didn't see the front end slow down as and hadn't planned for that, so the readjust or the adjustment there was driven by both pieces there. We are seeing it come out, but not at a spike. It's gradually coming out.
So, relative to the back end there, that being slower than anticipated, is that a function of just not needing the capacity, your customers not needing the capacity? Or do they have a level of caution that they maybe historically have not in prior cycles, that's leading them to delay decisions, that ultimately, when the time comes, they're gonna be in a bit more of a scrambled rush to purchase equipment more so than the past?
Yeah. No, I think you got a little bit of both happening there. You got some customers that are, you know, cutting back CapEx plans just because they're, you know, concerned about, you know, where levels are gonna be. You got others that are, you know, already seeing certain segments coming back and pulling the trigger on some CapEx plans. But it's the mix that's not allowing the large spike that, you know, could have happened, but we thought might be coming out of the cycle there.
Okay, so I'm gonna go with one more to try to-
Sure
... finally understand this a little better. Are you sensing that those who are holding back are doing so appropriately because they don't have the end in-
Demand
Demand? Or are they doing it cautiously, that they're gonna pay the price for later?
Yeah, I would say it's more the demand out there that's driving it. Not so much. I mean, they usually have a good feel on where their products are going and that, so it's more demand driven than cautiousness. But I do think also lower interest rates, lower CapEx project hurdles will move things forward as well in some of these companies.
Thanks.
Great. Yeah?
How much lower are our automation and gross margins than the rest of it?
So in Q2, it was a bit lower than we had anticipated on that, and it's largely driven by the backlog they had, and they had a number of first unit shipments of these projects that they're doing, and these first units require a lot more engineering efforts. The second and third units, once all that engineering's done, is just goes through on that. So they were in the high thirties, where we anticipated they'd be at right around forty, some of our other test solution businesses out there. So it was a bit of an impact for us. Duncan, I don't know if you have anything.
Yeah, that, that's accurate.
So they're moving to consumer electronics. What do I think is gonna be the margin?
Why do I think what?
Why do I think that could be lower margins with consumer electronics testing, so they're gonna get into that.
Yeah, well, they already are doing small pieces of that out there, some phone components testing, et cetera. For their solutions, these are all engineered test systems, so it isn't like you're going up against a off-the-shelf, you know, solution. So their gross margins ability to capture gross margin is there. It's a matter of pricing it appropriately and getting the value, and some of what they are seeing is third-party supply components into these test systems, you know, where their customers are saying, "You need to use this component or that system," or what have you, as they build these automation test solutions. You know, I'd say higher cost than some of their traditional solutions.
So we got to move more customers using their suppliers versus what you know kind of their preference out there, which we you know we'll work on.
Last one for me. So the stock is very cheap, very low.
I agree.
Is that competing with the M&A strategy at this point?
It clearly is not. Using equity as part of M&A is not something we would wanna do at this stage, given where we are.
Buying down?
Buying the stock.
Buying the stock.
Yeah. No, exactly, where we're at, you know, we've been paying multiples of, say, 6x - 8x , yeah, and out there, and if we're trading at 5x , it certainly is competing against the use of cash. Yeah?
Nick, you mentioned relative to Alfamation, that some of their customers are requesting specific components being used in that test equipment. Are they able to price that in such a way that it actually could be a margin enhancer? Maybe not initially, but longer term.
Mm-hmm.
Mr. Customer, you want that? Great, it's gonna cost you X plus a little bit.
Yeah, well, we get X plus on these, but it's not like... It's 20% versus 40%. We can only mark up the third-party components a certain amount because they've negotiated rates with these suppliers, and then for us to handle it incorporated, we get some margin, but it isn't the full margins that we get on the other. So it dilutes us when we aren't able to leverage our core suppliers on those things.
Thank you.
Yeah. Other questions? All right, three minutes early. All right, thank you all for your interest in inTEST.