Engineered frequency control and filter applications. We have about 2.8 million shares outstanding, with broad employee ownership. At the end of last year, we distributed 183,000 options to our valued employees based on their tenure with the company. We are well-positioned to continue to access long-term value creation opportunities. We are vertically integrated, with the capability to start with a raw crystal and complete it all the way to a finished oscillator or filter. This includes CNC machining, surface mount assembly, and a full suite of test and screening capabilities, ensuring a robust design and high-quality products. We have a global blue-chip customer base, including many of the industry leaders in our key markets. Many of these customers have greater than 10-year history with us.
We have demonstrated consistent top-line growth and improvement of key metrics, leading to the strong market performance we see today. As mentioned, MtronPTI has been providing RF solutions to the marketplace since nineteen sixty-five. Today, we have products covering spectrum control, such as LC, cavity, and crystal filters, frequency control, such as clock oscillators, temperature-compensated oscillators, and ovenized oscillators, as well as integrated modules and assemblies, where we wrap additional functionality around our core products. With trailing twelve-month sales of $44.7 million, we focus on the key markets of defense and aerospace, avionics, and space. This focus on providing solutions rather than simply components has led to a significant increase in high-dollar volume products. We have demonstrated strong, consistent growth of greater than 8% per year over the last five years.
Finally, with constant investment in new process and products, we introduce over 200 new products per year and generate nearly 30% of our revenue from these new products. This has led to an increase in our aerospace and defense program business of nearly 80% since 2021. We cover a broad range of applications across our key markets. We average 16 design slots on nearly every Boeing and Airbus commercial application. We provide rugged, proven, reliable oscillators, clocks, and filters in numerous applications, from flight control to navigation. We also serve the smaller regional business jet markets, with manufacturers using our proven components for similar applications. Our satellite business has grown significantly as our space capabilities increased over the past few years. Electronic warfare is a recent target market for us, and we have made great gains with recent design wins at key suppliers.
Radar demand has increased in the past few years as the need to detect smaller, slower-moving targets has grown. Lastly, precision-guided munitions have become faster, think hypersonic, and very smart, with onboard radar and data links driving the need for our products. Some of the key investment highlights include strong revenue growth and cash generation. We have attractive end markets with long-term contracts and very loyal customers. We have a unique capability to manufacture in the U.S. for mission-critical defense supply chains, as well as the ability to do ITAR-
Sorry, Michael, we didn't catch that. I think you're muted as well now.
Oh, I apologize. Somehow I must have hit the button. Did you miss this entire slide?
Yeah, we missed half of it, I think.
Okay, I'll just repeat it. So investment highlights include: we have demonstrated strong revenue growth and cash generation. We have attractive end markets with long-term contract and very loyal customers. We have the unique capability to manufacture in the U.S. for mission-critical supply chains, as well as the ability to manufacture in India for low-cost situations. We have compelling financials with an organic and inorganic growth strategy, and our production capacity and management team have room to support continued growth. We have strong growth drivers, including the armament and weapons system replenishment driven by global conflicts, the modernization programs and new system development driving long-term defense component subsystem growth, strong commercial airframe backlog for both Airbus and Boeing, expansion into new, rapidly growing markets such as space, and a strong R&D and manufacturing process investment driving more program capture. Each of our key end markets have strong secular tailwinds.
Defense is growing via many technological advancements, including autonomous vehicle. Global fleet of commercial aircraft is predicted to grow by more than 80% through 2041 as more freight and passengers move across the globe in more fuel-efficient airplanes. Satellites and crewed flights are driving space growth. In aggregate, our TAM is growing at approximately 7% CAGR, but more importantly, our served addressable market is growing faster as we add new product families and climb vertically into solutions. Filters and oscillators drive our component product offering, with filters generating 62% of our revenue and oscillators at 20%. We design and manufacture many different topologies within each family of products, each tailored to very specific customer needs. Resonators and solutions round out our product offering.
We are one of the few companies in the world that offer a portfolio this expansive, making us a one-stop shop for all of our customers' RF component and solution needs. We are expanding our customer base every day, securing both future industrial leaders and existing large blue-chip companies. We are also growing our market share within each customer by adding design wins to existing platforms and programs. A testament to our innovation, problem-solving, and customer-centric organization is that we have more than seventy customers that we've been doing continuous business with for ten plus years. We are executing on our growth strategy. By leveraging our decades-long customer relationships, we are building Mtron PTI into a leading supplier of modules, subsystems, and components to the A&D industry, driving program-oriented growth.
Our R&D teams are working directly with our customers, developing highly engineered modules and subsystems, increasing our engineered content and growing average selling prices significantly. We are deploying a disciplined approach to M&A, focused on deploying our accumulating cash on complementary acquisitions. MtronPTI has over 125,000 sq ft of design and manufacturing space over three locations in Orlando, Florida, Yankton, South Dakota, and Noida, India. All three locations are ITAR registered, with both U.S. locations having ISO 9001 design and manufacturing certifications, and India having ISO 9001:2015 manufacturing certification. In addition to our sales offices in Austin, Texas, and Hong Kong, we have 28 sales representative organizations throughout North America and the world.
We employ 310 people across these locations, with 236 in manufacturing and 42 in engineering and quality. With an average tenure of nearly 12 years, we have over 500 years of radio frequency design and manufacturing engineering experience on staff. I will now turn it over to Cameron. Cameron?
Yeah. Thank you, Michael. As Michael said, my name is Cameron Pforr. I'm pleased to recently have joined the M-tron team and have this opportunity to speak with you this morning. I'm really excited by the numerous opportunities to continue to build M-tron into a powerful pure play in the A&D space through both organic and inorganic growth. My background is in investment banking and consulting, and then I have 15 years of experience managing firms in the technology sector. So the M-tron team has executed particularly well since the spin off from the LGL Group in 2022, and I want to review with you some of the key metrics that we follow, and you'll see the improvement that we've achieved over the past several years.
If you look into some of the key metrics, revenue growth and gross margin. Revenue was up 40%, per quarter on quarter since the Q2 2022, which is the quarter directly before the spin-off of M-tron from LGL. That's eight quarters of continuous growth, which is really quite hard to achieve, but the team's done a marvelous job there. They've also seen their margins improve from now up to 43%-46% for the last few quarters. This reflects a continued product shift to more complex products and greater program revenue. So it increased from the mid-thirties to the mid-forties. In terms of net income, this but most of this has dropped to the bottom line, but we've seen an increase over that period of over 300% of net income.
So the net income now is $1.7 million per quarter in Q2, and it had been in the $500K per quarter range in the 2022 period. From an EBITDA perspective, they've, you know, doubled the EBITDA over that same two-year period, growing it from 10.4% to now in the low- to mid-20s, to 21.4% precisely in the last quarter. And that's resulted also in a lot of cash generation. So the cash on the balance sheet has grown considerably from around $800K at the time of the spin-off to now over $6 million, and we continue to add to that. And that's gonna help fuel not only investment in the company through CapEx and R&D investment, but also potential for acquisitions.
And the EPS return to investors is impressive. So, it grew from 19% a share in the first quarter to now 63 a share, to $0.03 a share. If we can go to the next slide, I want. I did mention that we're gonna be continuing to invest in R&D to develop new products and designs. This helps us, you know, expanding our base of program wins, which is in turn helping our margin expansion. Programs are these long-term contracts that you see typically in the government sector, that result from, you know, M-tron developing proprietary designs and projects for its customers. CapEx also remained strong in the period, and we'll continue that investment going forward. This graph here in particular shows some of the results of that.
So the main columns are the growth in revenue over the periods, the annual periods, from $30 million in 2020 to where we expect to be at the end of fiscal year 2024 in the high forties. You know, we'll probably be at $46-$48 million for the period. And during that same period, we've grown our ASPs considerably, so we're now achieving greater than $100 per ASP. So it's up from something around $70 per ASP three or four years ago. Okay. Michael, can you go to the next slide? And this is a great financial summary just to show you some of the compelling metrics of the company.
Strong revenue growth over the past four years, so this shows from FY 2020 through FY 2023, and then the first half of this year versus first half of last year. On the revenue side, right now, from an LTM perspective, we're 22% over the prior year period. We grew 29% in FY 2023 over 2022. We're seeing, as Michael said, strong growth in most of our sectors and continued execution by the team. In terms of revenue, that's resulting in 10% revenue improvement, so 34% gross margins in FY 2020 to 41% in FY 2023, and we expect to end this year in the mid-forties. We had achieved 44% for the LTM period, and so for the first half of this year, we're at 45%.
EBITDA has also improved significantly. You know, we were in the low to mid-teens in the FY 2020 and FY 2021 period, growing to, in both LTM period of 21%, so, like, almost a doubling of the EBITDA during that period in terms of percentages. And the backlog is steady, and this is something we expect to see actually grow by the end of the year. Right now, the backlog is $45 million. We have this will cover actually our expectations for revenue for this year, and we do expect backlog to grow throughout the year. This is really just done due to the date of signing of certain contracts and POs. But we do expect to see backlog increase over the prior year period for this year.
Okay, that's the metrics we wanted to share. Next, I think it's really important to outline what our M&A goals are, so as I stated before, we remain open to M&A. It's something that the company has used as an effective tool in the past. It really helped it in the early 2000s to really concentrate on the A&D market. We're now and not dependent on the acquisitions for the growth that we're projecting. We are quite capable of doing that organically, but M&A is a tool that we do anticipate using. It can help us drive scale, achieve entry into new markets opportunistically, and also continue to expand our technology expertise. It's something we're very keen on.
In terms of the target markets that we're going after, it's really unique assembly and design capabilities that help us build ourselves into more of a subsystem and module company, and increase the kind of proprietary nature for some of our designs. Getting access to key customers and programs, and also adding strong engineering skills in unique areas of expertise, and so Mike and I are very, very focused on finding these opportunities, and we'll continue to spend considerable resources doing that and see what our opportunities are to grow through M&A in the future, so lastly I just wanna cover some of our target models and also our expectations and forecast for this year.
Now, the 2024 forecast has remained the same, but we still expect to hit a revenue figure of $46-48 million for the year. Gross margins are gonna be steady in the mid-40s, but we're, we're forecasting 42%-44%. We had a little bit over that first half of the year, but I think we'll so we'll, we'll achieve this for the year. Our EBITDA margins for the year should be in the 19%-21% range, and we'll expect to see the backlog continue to around $49-50 million for the year as in that figure. Longer term, you know, we feel very, very good about the future.
If you look at our organic goal- organic growth goals, I think for the, you know, next three to four years, we do expect to see continued 10% growth of revenue as a CAGR. Margins in the mid to low to high, uh, forties, so, you know, anywhere from 45%-50%, and a slight improvement of EBITDA margins, you know, hopefully achieving 21%-23% in that period. Okay, thanks very much, Mike.
All right, that concludes our presentation. Anja, if you'd like to open it up to questions?
Yes, thank you for that overview, and those longer-term organic targets are appreciated. Yes, so for the audience, if you wanna participate in the Q&A, you can submit your question in the Q&A function at the bottom of your screen, and I will relay it to the management team. But first, if we start with those targets, the 10% revenue growth, that's sort of at the higher end of the TAM CAGR that you were talking about. How much of that's gonna be driven by new product versus just volume, and new product being higher pricing, right?
Yeah, so I think, Anja, you know, we have historically been approaching 30% of revenue in terms of new products, and I think we expect that to continue in that range.
Okay, and you're also very concentrated in terms of the customers. You have a couple of large customers, but within those customers, you have several different departments. How much of the growth do you think is gonna be driven by growing with those customers rather versus adding new logos?
... Oh, we are adding design wins both within our existing customer base as well as new customers. So I would expect as we achieve those growths, you'll see it spread throughout not only our existing customers, but also new customers.
Okay, thank you. And some questions here from the audience: "Who are your primary competitors?
We have different competitors based on the products. We are, as I said earlier, we are unique in that we have both a full line of frequency control as well as spectrum control products. On the frequency control side of things, we do compete with a handful of what I would call smaller companies that are somewhat, you know, have one or two, you know, core customers, as well as a handful of larger smaller divisions of larger companies. And the same thing really applies on the filter side, although we are unique that we offer both.
Okay, and another question here, on the same topic is: "What would you say is your competitive advantage?
So, one of our key competitive advantages, I think, is our engineer-to-engineer relationships. We really pride ourselves in getting our engineers directly involved with our customers' engineers, and really working on the designs as a collaboration, and solving potential problems early on in the process. And that really builds strong relationships. You know, as I mentioned earlier, we have over 70 customers with over 10 years of continuous business, and that is really, I think, a big competitive advantage for us.
Okay, and another question here: "Do you supply components to commercial satellite operators like Starlink?
We have some business in that space, although more of our space business is on the defense side of satellites.
Okay, and another question here: "Do you think you will do better under a Republican administration or a Democratic administration?
You know, I don't really see a significant difference in either one. I think the tailwinds that we're seeing within our markets are less dependent on who's in the White House, and more dependent on some of the global issues that are going on in the world.
Okay, and again, if you would like to submit your question, you can do so in the Q&A function at the bottom of your screen. Another question here is: "What is the typical lifespan of your product lines?
We have many, many products that have been in production for 10 years, with an expected additional life of another 10 years. You know, when you're on these long-term programs, it's often that you have 20-year life expectancy. On the commercial side, they tend to be a little bit shorter, more in the five-to-10-year range.
In terms of the contracts and so inflation, how do you protect yourself from those if you have those long contracts?
In some cases, our contracts have price increases built into them. In other cases, we do an annual or every other year negotiations on those.
Okay, thank you. And, how do you protect your technology?
We treat it really as trade secrets. We have not been one that has done a lot of patents. We like to keep what we do really tight in-house.
Okay, and here's a follow-up question to my question about customer concentration: "If you look out to your 2027, 2028 targets, do you expect customer concentration to be roughly the same, or more diversified, or less diversified?
I would expect it to be slightly less diversified as some of the programs that we have won with and some of our newer suppliers start to move into volume production.
Okay, and another question here: "What is your most profitable products or product lines?" I guess.
So in terms of gross margins, we don't see significant differences between the filters, oscillators, or solutions. There tend to be a range in each of those, but they're fairly consistent among all of them.
Okay, thank you. And if we go back to the M&A opportunities, first of all, how do you view the market now on valuations?
You know, I think valuations have been high for quite some time. I'm not sure there's any change in that coming. I don't know, Cameron, if you wanted to add any more commentary to that.
Yeah, no, I think that the market in general is very, very strong. You're seeing companies across the board growing strongly. So I'm not sure if we'll expect to see, you know, a lot of changes in the multiples, at least for the next several years. But I do think that we're performing quite well and, you know, getting a share. This is still a huge market tangent in front of us, and given the size that we're at currently, we expect to perform strongly, you know, going forward and, you know, maintain the multiples that we have, hopefully.
Okay, and another one on that-
Sorry
... topic, "How do you think about financing for M&A, and, how much debt-
Mm-hmm
... would you be willing to put on the balance sheet?
Yeah, great question on debt. Right now we have no debt, and we do have the ability to service, you know, close to $20 million of debt, should we choose to. That's not saying we necessarily will. We are looking at our own financial models. We're expected to accumulate quite a bit of cash going forward, so I anticipate using some of that cash for M&A, potentially bring on some small amount of debt going forward. You know, we're not a company that really favors leverage, but we do have the ability to bring some on if need be.
Okay, and, how do you typically integrate acquisitions? And, do you consolidate facilities, and where do you manufacture products now?
... Yeah, so we manufacture our products now in three locations in Florida. And how we would do that, I think it really depends largely on the acquisition target and how they could possibly fit within our manufacturing operations.
And you expect quite a good growth there in the double digits on our CAGR. How are you in terms of capacity at your facilities, and do you see any need to expand or?
So we think we can maintain that 10% CAGR in terms of our existing capacities by utilizing multiple shifts. Certainly we'll invest in CapEx as we go, but our existing footprint should be able to support that for the next several years.
Thank you. And another question here: Is the aerospace and defense industry cyclical, and where are you in the cycle? Are we in the cycle?
I think all industries, at the end of the day, are cyclical in nature. This one right now, clearly we're on an upswing to that. Certainly, the tailwinds that we see have a lot of durability behind them. You know, I think the length of the cycle is largely dependent on the global marketplace right now and what's going on in the world in terms of conflicts, as well as the need to create a smarter battlefield and put the soldier in more of a remote location relative to the battlefield. All of that is driving content for what we do.
Okay, thank you. And in terms of... We touched on inflation before. It's been sort of a little bit of a headwind for you and others over the past couple of years. What do you see in terms of inflation at the moment?
So I think in general, we're seeing a somewhat more stable market in terms of the components that we're buying. The cost of labor seems to be stabilizing a bit. So I think for us, it's a bit more in control than it was certainly when we exited the COVID period. So it... You know, as you see from our margins, we've been able to grow our margins during this timeframe, so we feel like we've handled it pretty well.
Okay, and I'm gonna add this last question from the audience. I think you touched on it in your slide deck, but if in case you want to add some color here: Which of your end markets are growing the fastest?
So space is probably growing the fastest for us, but it's on a much smaller base than the rest of them. So in terms of dollar growth, it would be in the A&D space. In terms of percent growth, it would be in the space market for us.
Okay, and we are almost out of time, so I wanna wrap it up here, and I wanna thank you, Michael and Cameron, for joining us today, and M-tron. I know you have a pretty full one-on-one schedule, but in case someone wants to have a follow-up meeting with management team, I'm sure we can make it happen at the conference or outside the conference. So you can reach out to us directly, or to us at Sidoti or the management team directly. And with that, I'll hand it over to you, Michael, for some closing remarks.
All right. Thank you, Anja, and yes, please, anybody that wants to have some additional follow-up, please reach out through Anja. We're happy to have additional dialogue with everybody. I would again like to thank everybody for their participation, and and I hope everybody is as bullish on our future as we are. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you everyone who participated.