Hello. Good morning, guys. This is Jason Lamb presenting LGL Group.
Thank you. Who here is already an LGL Group investor? All right. That's great. Was anyone at the investor day that we had a little bit ago? This is largely a recap of the Investor Day slides, if you've seen them. It's good that there's not a lot of duplication. I'd apologize if folks were there. Our safe harbor. All right. These are just some of the highlights for the business. I'll go through this in the presentation. When M-tron spun out, if you're familiar with the LGL Group and the spin- out of M-tron, Cameron Pforr is going to be presenting in 30 minutes in a fireside chat. We were left with one timing company called Precise Time and Frequency out of Wakefield, Mass., that we'll talk about.
Timing solutions are becoming increasingly important, particularly in the defense market. We'll talk through that, also in data centers and all kinds of other technology areas. Our backlog in that business has been growing substantially. Looking forward to putting out some good news here with the growth in that business unit. We've had a strong balance sheet, haven't been actively deploying that capital. We are looking at starting a period of growth now. You'll see that in rights offering that we have in progress right now. Defense technology tailwind. Whether it be strategic plans to deter China from invading Taiwan, what you see going on in Iran or in Ukraine. Increasingly, GPS-denied operations and challenges in electronic warfare and signals intelligence require a lot of the capabilities that we've been focusing on. Defense technology is probably a generational investment opportunity today.
It's a structural change in how NATO is spending money, how the U.S. is advancing our capabilities for a stronger defense. With me joining LGL here at the beginning of the year, my background is largely defense. That's where I'm focusing our efforts here, at least initially. We'll talk about M-tron in more detail. I won't get into it too much, a sort of adjacent effort that we have with Marc Gabelli and Rob LaPenta's called G Legion. This would be a suite of investment products that are all focused on defense technology that will help build an ecosystem that will provide deal flow for LGL as well as we look to grow platform opportunities. Next slide. Oh, that's me. All right. Just some background on LGL. We've been around for a long time, right? Since 1917 in the founding, trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
M-tron spun out at $13 a share back in 2022. I think today they're actually at 90-something. Yesterday, I think they were trading at 101. Really a good return for shareholders in the spin-out of that company, which had been incubated inside LGL. Whenever I'm with Cameron, who has a much bigger business than LGL Group now, today, I always introduce the fact that we gave birth to M-tron. He really appreciates it. If you see Cameron and talk to him, you can just remind him that I said that here as well. We'll get in a little more detail on PTF. That's in Wakefield, Massachusetts. We have sort of these two verticals. One, building out the operating platforms. Two, the merchant investment. A good example of that is just today, we announced a minority investment in a company called Skyline Instruments.
They're a few former Army signals intelligence and electronic warfare professionals. One of them went and got a PhD from UVA in timing systems. They're building a business around taking these technologies and applying them to defense technologies. As we at LGL Group look to bring PTF and future acquisitions more into the defense space by strategically partnering and investing in, through our merchant line of business, Skyline Instruments, it'll help us enter that market. It's a really strong team. I've enjoyed working with them in the raise process. We'll be announcing a couple other strategic partners that are tied to that effort as well over the next couple weeks. Right now, $46 million. We'll get more detail on the rights offering as well. Marc Gabelli has been involved in LGL Group now for years. Was the CEO, now he's the Executive Chairman.
Brought me in to be the CEO. We've do ne work together since 2018 or 2019, we got started doing work together. I was a partner and advisor to LGL Systems Acquisition Corporation, which was tied to a SPAC that we had. It was one of the investments LGL made that had a pretty good return for shareholders as well, right around the same time as M-Tron spun out of the business. Marc brings great experience in the capital markets. I'm bringing more of a defense technology and growth background. I was a Navy SEAL, retired about 10 years ago now. Recently appointed to the board of AUVSI. That's the largest industry group for uncrewed systems. It's an international organization. We actually subleased an office to AUVSI. It's been a really good partnership.
They do a ton of advocacy on the Hill and have great budget insights. A lot of the systems that we are building have great application inside the uncrewed systems space. Michael Robbins is a great leader of that company. He's the CEO of AUVSI. They're doing really well. I recently left a company called BlackSea Technologies. BlackSea Technologies has been the largest provider of small unmanned surface vessels for the U.S. Navy. At one point, we were building 32 of them a month for the Navy, for the better part of a year. I have background with Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, as well, helping transition technologies. We've got a great, strong board. One of the guys I introduced to Marc a few years ago, Admiral Colin Kilrain, I had the pleasure of serving with in the SEAL teams.
He's got a very tremendous background in the SEAL team. It's a great coincidence that we ended up working together here on the board. A really strong team that we've worked together now across a couple different initiatives and related companies as well. At LGL Group, we're looking to build this strategic platform around how we grow platform businesses. We've got the operating companies that we have and growing those into platforms, much like a traditional private equity platform, a growth strategy through inorganic growth, mergers and acquisitions. The merchant investment line of business doing SPVs or co-investment opportunities to help grow our network and deal flow, as well as strategic relationships. Here's just the growth of M-Tron. Again, that spin-out was in October 7, 2022.
PTF, when I took the job in January, one of the first trips that I made was up to Wakefield to see that company and learn more about it. I hadn't previously been exposed to the value of timing instruments and their importance in defense technologies. I thought that the time that you had on your watch was really good enough to service most of these systems. It turns out that it's not, and that the way time attenuates and distributes, it's vital to maintaining operations in large data centers, satellite communications. Any SIGINT and electronic warfare system really requires precise time capabilities. The industry itself has been growing at a modest clip. I think we'll see in defense technology, it'll grow at a much faster rate than the timing instrument business as a whole.
Here are just a few examples of the areas that precise time and frequency really make an impact on. As you know, if you follow our financials, it's a relatively small line of business looking to grow inorganically through acquisitions of other related businesses to grow that out. Eventually pulling that into more electronic warfare and signals intelligence-based capabilities. This gets into sort of the buy and build strategy here as we get a little bit more scale. I've been building out the acquisition pipeline. Really good progress there. We'll be growing based on PTF and adjacent capabilities and eventually into new capability areas. In our financial performance, I think the biggest thing is our backlog is growing pretty substantially. Our gross margins have been staying the same, which are healthy. The rights offering is going to increase our cash on hand.
The rights offering, we just put out, I think this morning, a press release on extension of the rights offering to the 29th, and that's largely because Computershare sent out the cards late, and I think they'll only arrive to investors maybe Friday of this week. If you wanted to transfer it to trade the rights, that deadline was yesterday, so it wasn't really fair to investors. We've pushed out that deadline to make sure everyone's got plenty of time to trade on these rights. Just in summary, New York listed and have a long history of delivering value through strategic initiatives. We're currently pressing to expand the business. We're starting to become more active since the M-tron spinout. With that's really all I have. Cameron just joined us as well.
I told him that we were the father of M-tron. Yeah. Hey, good to see you, Dan. That's my primary. Part of the value of having a strong balance sheet right now is a lot of the multiples are high on defense technology companies. I don't think that'll last forever. By having the capital on hand when opportunities present themselves, we'll be able to act. One of the deals I'm looking at now is a sub six times EBITDA multiple. Right? It sort of depends on the kind of businesses that you're looking at and the strategy you're deploying. I'm looking for opportunities that are reasonable deals in pricing. Right? We're not looking to overpay on opportunities.
Generally, the way I'm thinking about it is PTF and some of the other businesses we're looking at are B2B businesses that aren't selling direct to the warfighter. Right. A PTF customer might be a Lockheed Martin or a Northrop Grumman or name your large systems integrator. There's not a customer intimacy on the problem that's being solved. It's a component to a solution. Part of the Skyline Instruments investment is that they have intimate understanding of the warfighter requirements, and that they can get prime contracts. Because we're an investor and a partner, we can be part of their supply chain and move towards multi-year contracts. Also, the nature of PTF and a lot of these other businesses in this space have pretty short backlogs. Like 60 days of visibility on backlog is normal in the industry.
In defense contracting, multi-year contracts are normal and what is valued in a business. Between getting closer to the customer, getting multi-year backlogs, you'll increase the multiple of the business writ large. Also moving into adjacent spaces like electronic warfare and SIGINT, where the multiples on those businesses are larger in the space. That collectively the platform will be more valuable. You've done your homework. 100%. That is part of the opportunity. Right now, PTF solutions are largely in climate-controlled environments in a rack. Not at the edge on a USV or a UAS, where temperature isn't controlled and shock and vibe is a problem. Their focus has not been hardening the product. That's part of what we're doing with Skyline Instruments is hardening edge node timing solutions.
Because the government's focus is largely in what they call Alt PNT, Alternate Precision, Navigation, and Timing, has really been around positioning and finding alternates to GPS for positioning, not alternates to GPS for timing. All these systems rely on GPS. All the electronic warfare signals intelligence communication systems really require the time code from GPS. If you can provide an alternate timing source that's hardened at the edge, you can still have a lot of capability that wouldn't exist today otherwise. I'm a scientist, a political scientist, don't press me too hard. Yes? I think it would be an opportunity to buy the whole thing, but the founding team is confident enough in their growth that they're just getting started. They're not ready to sell their company getting started.
I've got an interesting network of people, some of these opportunities just come to me from relationships that I have. We had a lot of intersecting relationships that introduced us, which both helped me vet the company and the team that's the company, and I think vice versa. I'll be on the board of Skyline Instruments. We have some common connections there as well that help me understand the experience that the founding team has and what they're going to be able to do. I think there could be an opportunity in the future to make an acquisition there as they grow. I think we're all open to creating the best shareholder value, and we'll reassess it over time.
Jason, to build on that. All company factors, but anybody here with the emergency mode of focus on matter. Is that your influence that's driving that or something happened that opportunity more coming down in Mark's mind or what would you say?
Some of what you said Mark articulated is happening. In our deal pipeline, we have founders that are retiring, right? Looking for actively working those kind of transactions now. I guess I don't know the factors, right? Yeah.
Three. Getting contract that you might be able take those activities, but Apple put all of that from something that you're involved with that will come from.
Yeah. It's a really unique time in defense investing. It's one of the reasons why I'm interested in companies that are as small as that are earlier stage, like a Skyline. Part of that's because multiples for more mature companies are so high, you need to look sort of in adjacent areas to find value. In this case, it's going a little bit earlier stage than we would normally look. That's part of it. Structurally, a number of things have changed. One, U.S. policy is changing rapidly, which creates opportunities for investment. Where maybe China was a big focus a year ago, all of a sudden, the Southern Command, counter-narcotics operations, border operations become Golden Dome, become opportunities. There's sort of strange movement around where money is getting spent that's unprecedented in terms of rapid, unpredictable policy changes, which creates investment opportunities.
A budget that has traditionally been in the control of Congress has been moved through reconciliation bills that's no longer controlled by Congress. It's in the executive branch. There's an entire industry around lobbying the executive branch now that did not exist previously because it's entirely in the executive branch to allocate billions of dollars that's previously always been controlled. Between the threats increasing, the rate of technology change, the amount of money, and these massive shifts, it creates real investment opportunities if you're positioned to execute on them. Right? Which is part of the reason why we're doing the rights offering to have more money deployed or available to deploy when it makes sense with a good deal. Does that answer the?
Yeah.
I think I'm about out of time. I appreciate everyone's interest, and if you haven't scheduled a one-on-one, we're in booth 706, and happy to chat with you. Thank you for attending.